Allow deeper nested block groups in the Control Panel
Hello Keen team.
I would like to suggest deeper nested block groups in the Control Panel.
At the moment, grouping is not enough for very large grids. I am building a large mining ship with many functional systems: drills, hydrogen thrusters, atmospheric thrusters, gyroscopes, batteries, hydrogen tanks, lights, conveyors, docking systems and several flight modes.
Two levels of grouping are not enough to organize such a ship comfortably.
Example of useful grouping:
Mining Ship
Thrusters
Hydrogen
Forward
Backward
Up
Down
Left
Right
Atmospheric
Cruise
Mining mode
Emergency braking
Drills
Main drill head
Outer ring
Center section
Power
Batteries
Solar panels
Hydrogen
Tanks
Generators
Utility
Lights
Connectors
More nesting would make large ships much easier to configure and maintain. It would also reduce the need to scroll through hundreds of individual blocks.
I like this feedback 
Yes, grouping is very limited for now. Besides the obvious (temporary, I hope) quirkiness, especially when you try to add or remove new elements to a group, missing reordering and so on, there is one fundamental limitation now for the groups compared to what we had in SE1. You kinda can have a block in multiple groups but they need to be nested. And as the OP says, the nesting is limited as well.
This feels like a step back from the original game rather than an improvement, even if all bugs and features are finished. It adds limitations to how we can control different blocks we need to control in different contexts. The same block can make sense to be controlled together within many different groups. For example, you might have a group named "all lights", so you can quickly turn them off together. At the same time, each light can be part of some different context, like airlock warning lights, docking lights, landing lights and so on. It makes more sense to group those lights together with other related blocks. For example, 2 doors, an air vent and a couple of lights can be grouped together into one "airlock" group, but now you lose the possibility to group all lights together into one group. Then, when it comes to automation, it becomes much harder to find related blocks. It can be somewhat mitigated by introducing a feature like wireless terminal, but I still think these new grouping hierarchy mechanics are limited. They have their advantages too, of course, but with substantial trade-offs IMO.
Yes, grouping is very limited for now. Besides the obvious (temporary, I hope) quirkiness, especially when you try to add or remove new elements to a group, missing reordering and so on, there is one fundamental limitation now for the groups compared to what we had in SE1. You kinda can have a block in multiple groups but they need to be nested. And as the OP says, the nesting is limited as well.
This feels like a step back from the original game rather than an improvement, even if all bugs and features are finished. It adds limitations to how we can control different blocks we need to control in different contexts. The same block can make sense to be controlled together within many different groups. For example, you might have a group named "all lights", so you can quickly turn them off together. At the same time, each light can be part of some different context, like airlock warning lights, docking lights, landing lights and so on. It makes more sense to group those lights together with other related blocks. For example, 2 doors, an air vent and a couple of lights can be grouped together into one "airlock" group, but now you lose the possibility to group all lights together into one group. Then, when it comes to automation, it becomes much harder to find related blocks. It can be somewhat mitigated by introducing a feature like wireless terminal, but I still think these new grouping hierarchy mechanics are limited. They have their advantages too, of course, but with substantial trade-offs IMO.
It's kind of critical to automation that blocks can belong to multiple groups, like in SE1.
It's kind of critical to automation that blocks can belong to multiple groups, like in SE1.
i am agree, especially when you try to add subgrid object in one grid group.... impossible to do.
i am agree, especially when you try to add subgrid object in one grid group.... impossible to do.
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