Manipulator ARM transit position

[wispy vessel]

During the undocking scene with the Enceladus station, and during the entire transit to the rings, the manipulator arm is fully deployed and extended. This seems unrealistic to me, and you can't power it down at any point before coming to a stop in the rings following the first transit.
I propose that the manipulator arm be powered off & tucked away by default for the initial ring transit cut scene, and there-on until you press the key to deploy it. I would expect the captain of any ship to fold it up and power it down any time they were docking or in transit.

[covert jetty]

this was actually tried a good while back. I believe the reason why it got retracted was due to some issues it caused with them being unpowered at enceladus (unfortunately I can't give you an exact reason, discord search isn't great)

here we go, guess i overlooked it: #experimental-feedback message

[silk sedge]

i bet it caused issues with Equipment, Tuning, and Repairs at Enceladus

[wispy vessel]

Thanks for finding that context. That's too bad, but makes sense. How about retracting the arm in at a certain point once the cutscene starts? That way it is only the current ship that is the target (none of the others in the fleet/list). I imagine some kind of logic like "If arm equipped = true, then deactivate arm (auto-press 1 key)" or something like that

So it looks like your pilot retracts the arm for transit, at least

[covert jetty]

that certainly could work. there is this issue on backlog that looks to be pretty close to what you're asking, and I believe there's also the ability to decide which equipment is disabled on insertion on backlog, which would work about the same (and I can say can work for this as it has been done with mods)

[wispy vessel]

Yes! Thank you!

From the post:

"Especially noticeable with the Manipulator Arm, feels like it should start in the "stowed" position during station launch and then unfurl when you arrive." - this is my exact thinking

Possible solutions suggested, as you've alluded:

"What we would really need is to add a "start in powered-down state" flag set on per-equipment basis."

"Could make the "Initial power state: On/Off" part of ship tuning and let people discover the cradle interaction on their own as a learning experience."

I love this train of thinking. [strike]I'd just add my vote to this open 'issue', but I might be having trouble loading the site properly or something, I can't click the thumbs up button[/strike] Looks like I'd need an account to add my vote to this issue

[covert jetty]

Apparently gitlab has issues when there's a lot of traffic, and I wouldn't worry about it too much as these will be added in due time

If you're interested in seeing what it's like, I'd try the velocity plus mod as that has its own take on it

[wispy vessel]

Excellent, I'll check that out! Haven't tried modding delta-v yet, maybe that's where I start

[wispy vessel]

You sound certain. That's a relief to hear!

[covert jetty]

Well, it may take a while but it will be eventually (the CERF being the current major addition being added right now has been planned for 4 years I believe)

[wispy vessel]

Yeah well I'm not all that put off by it. Good things take time, and I'm a patient gamer.