Kerbal Space Program

The VAB currently allows a vessel to be built facing North. This aligns with the launch pad according to the view out of the door from the VAB. However, this does mean that the player must "pitch right" to make a prograde equatorial ascent as opposed to a more natural "pitch up". The workaround to this is to rotate the vessel by 90 degrees so that it aligns more intuitively on the launchpad before launch. Unfortunately, any subsequent edits to the vessel will now mean that parts must be rotated for every addition, or the vessel must be "reset" to the enforced default.

The proposal is to provide a game option that allows the player to set the default facing of a new or loaded vessel in the editor. This could be restricted to each of the cardinal points, or even freeform. This could be realised as an offset angle from the origin, and should not affect the sharing of, or existing craft files.

One implication of this might be that the SPH is also affected within the unified editor.