Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Dear forum readers,
as my post is rather long I've quoted the gist of each block in a short summary to speed up reading for those who only want the management summary :)

In the past weeks I have been playing around with highsec exploration and found some issues with the (probe) scanner window and solar system map which I'd like to discuss here and present some ideas for improvement.
Upon opening the scanner window I found that it is rather large and clunky which cannot be amended by reducing the window size since there is a minimum window size restriction in place. In my opinion the scanner window should be as small as possible since players need the screen space for many other things, foremost for positioning probes in 3D space.
This formulates one of the goals the improved scanner window should achieve:

The second thing I've noticed was the listing of the probes' individual status on top. I could be wrong, but in my opinion this method of displaying the status is rather inefficient. In my experience probes are treated as one group and there are no reasons to change the range or recall individual probes. Therefore a single line stating the status of the probes as a group, the remaining time to live and the scan range would suffice.

The third area needing improvement is the button bar. Explorers will need 4 buttons constantly, which are Scan, Toggle Map, Deploy Probes in Pinpoint Formation and Recall Probes. The other 4 buttons are for special cases and could be hidden in a dropdown menu button of sorts.
I'd like to propose an idea to customise the order and appearance of the buttons. In a configuration mode a grid will be shown in which buttons can be dragged and dropped, allowing for individual configurations of the buttons. Players will be able to choose from a pool of available buttons and drag the ones they want to see on the spot they want to have them or leave unwanted ones in the pool. This would for example allow for an optimised workflow from left to right for western cultures, arranging the buttons in their click order: Map, Launch Probes, Scan, Recall Probes or in other personalised ways.
The grid also allows for buttons to be increased in size or to add blank spaces to organise buttons in groups. Additionally, buttons with a combination of actions appear in the button pool. These combinations could be to Launch Probes in Pinpoint Formation AND Open Map or maybe to Recall Probes AND Close Map

Next I'd like to propose some ideas of how the scan result list could be improved. The current way of displaying the information about found signatures and anomalies is compact already, but the ignoring of signatures could benefit from some attention. Currently the signature ignore list is lost on session change, which often results in signatures being probed several times. My idea for this would be to enhance the functionality to allow the permanent ignoring of signatures, especially for static dungeons, which only recently have been made scannable.
Also, I feel that the filter options could be improved, allowing players to set individual filters for signatures as well as anomalies, for example never showing combat anomalies, ice belts, ghost sites, or maybe DED 4/10 sites, depending on what their goal is.

In the introductory sentence I've mentioned issues with the solar system map, which I'd like to describe in detail now.
Opening the solar system map through the scanner window will show me a really close-up view of my position in the solar system, which is not what I want to see as explorer. Scrolling out is very slow and a real PITA, for the lack of better words. What I want to see is a good overview of the solar system and the signals that are to be found there. Therefore I propose to add an option to always open the solar system map in overview mode
Having opened the map and launched the probes, it is time to position the probes. Here I often have the problem that I try to grab the sides of the positioning box but I grab one of the arrows and accidentally drag the probes light years off their position since a small movement that was intended for one axis can be enormous in another axis. My proposal here is to add an option to disable the positioning arrows, or to hide them until a modifier key is being pressed, such as ctrl.
A feature I'd find handy would be to control the camera movement by double clicking on a side of the probe positioning cube. A double click would move the camera in such a way that the cubes side that has been clicked will be facing the camera frontally, making further adjustments of the probes easier.

Thank you for reading, I hope some ideas are generally found to be useful and I am looking forward to maybe see some of them in game.

Well, to point 2. I intended in my original post that the view can be toggled between compact probe list and the current one.

For 3. I imagine a pool of buttons and combined buttons of which you can choose the buttons you want to have on the UI. If you like the current buttons you can simply use those. If no combination makes sense for you then you can simply not use combined buttons.

I'm aware of the filters but I'd like a functionality similar to the inventory filters. Such as Filter Signatures starting with...

The option to remove the probe box arrows would be toggleable, so people using the arrows can continue using them. People who don't like the arrows can still toggle them via the option or by holding the modifier key.