Bozworth's thread about Auto UNdock got me thinking... the vast majority of my collisions these days (excluding NPC scan-and-rams) occur whilst undocking, where I'm thrusting up off the pad and inadvertently bump another ship going past. I think the root cause for many is the darn landing guide being drawn over the usual sensor display at the bottom of the HUD for a good while after leaving the pad. The Anaconda cockpit doesn't have much visibility on the top, so while that landing guide is present, all I have is audio cues to go by. I remember having similar problems in the Cutter.
So my question is: why do we need to see the landing guide at all while taking off? If we want to immediately re-land, we can't; we have to leave, re-request docking, and land again, possibly on a different pad. So why not just immediately show the sensor display upon choosing "Launch"? Or perhaps simpler, tie the guide's visibility to the landing gear's state as well as current distance to pad since that's the first thing I have to do after launching anyways?
I hesitate to say it'd be as simple as this, but maybe:
So my question is: why do we need to see the landing guide at all while taking off? If we want to immediately re-land, we can't; we have to leave, re-request docking, and land again, possibly on a different pad. So why not just immediately show the sensor display upon choosing "Launch"? Or perhaps simpler, tie the guide's visibility to the landing gear's state as well as current distance to pad since that's the first thing I have to do after launching anyways?
I hesitate to say it'd be as simple as this, but maybe:
Code:
if (Ship.DistanceToPad() <= LANDING_GUIDE_THRESHOLD [B]&& Ship.LandingGearDeployed[/B]) RenderLandingGuide();
