Pause/Alert when rocket reaches its destination

[Meltdown]

Sometimes, it is hard to pay enough attention to all parts of your colony. Rockets, especially on their early stages, are such parts that you absolutely have to keep in mind - dupes inside them are sitting on limited resources, sometimes even limited infrastructure, and you want to make sure their time is used as efficiently as it can be. However, usually you don't want to spend time just staring at the starmap waiting for rockets to reach their destinations - after all, you may have other problems that demand your attention. As a result, no matter how much do you try remember about having a rocket that should arrive somewhere soon, one day you would inevitably end up forgetting about it.

In order to reduce risks of missing the timings of your rockets it would be nice if we had some way notify and/or pause game when rocket reaches its destination.

I would suggest 3 ways of doing it:

1. An additional setting available for Rocket Control Station. 

Basically an option "Reached destination action" with drop-down list containing the following options:

• Do nothing
• Notify (adds notification in top left corner of the screen when the rocket reaches its destination)
• Pause (same as notification, but pauses the game, opens starmap and zooms on starmap tile with the rocket)

Pros:

•  Accessibility - an option in rocket UI is noticeable and always ready to use.

Cons:

• Potential rocket UI clutter
• Lack of flexibility - 3 predefined behaviours is not a flexible solution.

2. Allow players to utilize Automated Notifier by adding automation port to Rocket Control Station.

When rocket is moving to its destination, Rocket Control Station should output red signal. When rocket stops, it should output green signal. That way, simply connecting Automated Notifier to Rocket Control Station would allow creating customizable notification/pause system, if it is necessary for the player.

Pros:

• Allows players to solve the problem by themselves using existing tools.
• Flexible solution - players decide for themselves, how does Automated Notifier react on signal, and may utilize new signal source for other tasks.

Cons:

• Output port may not be the most noticeable thing, and some people may miss it.
• This type of solution takes valuable rocket interior space.

3. Allow players to utilize Automated Notifier by introducing new rocket fitting/rocket exclusive sensor.

Special building for rocket interior that outputs automation signal by the rules described in the previous variant. It works in the same way, except that having a dedicated building is more noticeable and would help players to explore their options to solve rocket tracking problem.

Pros:

• Allows players to solve the problem by themselves using existing tools.
• Flexible solution.
• This option is highly accessible as there is high chance that players would notice the new building.

Cons:

• This solution takes even more rocket interior space compared to previous variant.

[sakura_sk]

If I remember correctly, early on there was always a notification when a rocket reached destination. At some point there was none and now I've seen it some times (there is a "plop!" - "this rocket is suspended in space with no set destination") but not consistently (when rocket reaches orbit of another planetoid there is no notification).

I think a status notification on the upper right menu would be more useful (on top of any "plop!" sound and/or pulse)

Spoiler

 

[Meltdown]

1 hour ago, sakura_sk said:

early on there was always a notification when a rocket reached destination

So, my first suggestion turns out to be an extension for already existing feature.

1 hour ago, sakura_sk said:

I think a status notification on the upper right menu would be more useful (on top of any "plop!" sound and/or pulse)

These would be userful, I agree. But, personally, I would appreciate having an option to forcibly pause the game, if I really don't want to miss the moment rocket reached it's destination. We already have a tool that allows us conditionally pause the game, so my suggestions are mostly based on adopting it to this exact task. Sure, I can set up Automated Notifier with Timer/Cycle Sensor and get pause of that, but it rases additional problems, such as reliably syncronizing actual rocket launch with timer start, remembering to change sensor values to match flight duration, etc.

So this is more QoL suggestion to make this task easier, and allow solution to be cleaner and more logical.

[KonfigSys]

there was a solution in the vanilla game which was removed from the DLC - space scanner. 

I used it for rocket automation - pausing the game, focusing on the rocket landing, starting pumps, etc in the vanilla game....