I have been making modifications to some of my ships, and it is taking me forever to remove blocks. The worst part is that these blocks are in odd shapes and designs, so i do not know a quick way to remove them.
If i could select each block, have them highlighted in purple, then order them removed, that would speed up the design process for me quite a bit.
I like the idea of selecting blocks by type, but there is a little bit of a problem here. Currently selections are done based on a parent block. Like a cannon computer is selected with C and then cannon modules can be selected with V or SHIFT + V. The first selection determines what the second selection would be, right? So it's probably not a good idea to keep this requirement, but rather give another ability to select blocks by type without having a parent block selected. But this would cause confusion if they are purple, because right now the color purple means that a parent block has been selected and is now tied to those purple blocks, right? What we need is a third color here and a method of selecting the blocks. This is what I recommend:
Allow players to select blocks by type, using V or SHIFT+V when no parent block has been selected OR when they switch to a "select mode" (similar to "remove mode"). Any blocks selected in this manner would have a BLUE outline. Then in advanced build mode, give some "selected blocks" commands. Such as "Remove," "Replace with..," and "fill." Additionally, when in "select mode," the player could use their build shape to select blocks. For example, perhaps they select a line of 1 wide, 50 long, 2 high. Or they use the build outline to select blocks and then use the "Fill" tool to fill this selection with blocks.
Optionally, I'd also suggest having some parameters that can be changed, for example "Select by Block Type" and "Select by Block Category." When "Select by Block Type" is selected, this would allow a player to select all connected white hull, including blocks, tetras, heptas, ect. "Select by Block Category" would allow the player to further select a category to broaden the scope, "Ship Weapons" perhaps. With this selected in the advanced build mode, when the player has nothing selected with C, they could press SHIFT + V on a weapons group, and it would switch to "select mode", select any connected weapons modules and computers, including missiles, cannons, ect. Or perhaps the player selects "Hulls" as the category, which allows them to select any connected hull of any color. They could then press the "Remove" button, and poof all hull selections are removed. Or perhaps with grey hull, the player might select the "Replace with.." button and then select "white hull." This would replace each block with it's correct type, so all tetras are replaced with tetras, blocks with blocks, heptas with heptas, ect.
What do you think?
