Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Not sure if this has been discussed before as I can't find any relevant threads to this topic.

I'm proposing the idea of being able to drag a box on the main screen and the game will start to lock all valid targets within the box, governed by an array of settings that the player can set to define what and when to lock.

How to drag-and-lock?
- By holding down a modifier key, this freezes the camera and allows the player to drag a box in space. Upon releasing the mouse button, the ship will start locking all applicable targets as defined in the drag-and-lock filter, and according to the usual restrictions like max target locks, locking range, etc.

What filters should there be?
- Players should be able to set the ship types, like how the Overview Settings filters are done, to be locked, and to set a level of priority to determine what targets should be locked first.
- The available filters should include distance, and aggression status (towards the player's ship). Not sure if it's possible to base the filter on aggression towards other players' ships, but if it can be done for drones' guard command, then I think it shouldn't be a problem?

Scenario: PVE
- A player enters a L4 mission with multiple groups of hostile NPC ships.
- The player wants to blitz the mission, and the requirement is to destroy all targets within a group.
- The player box-targets the group with just a click-and-drag action, and the client will start locking the targets according to the player's targeting priorities.

Scenario: PVP
- A fleet enters a direct battle with a hostile fleet.
- In most situation, the commander would call out individual targets.
- But, leveraging on this mechanism, it may enable further ways of box-targeting and box-calling targets for the fleet to fire upon. It will also allow easy filtering of locking so that you can visually choose the group to lock, while the filters and targeting priorities will help you to lock the right targets.

So, a typical targeting priorities list for fleet battle engagement may look something like this:
- All hostile player ships that are using EWAR modules against my ship within 20KM
- All hostile heavy interdictors and interdictors within 20KM
- All hostile interceptors and recon ships within 50KM of my fleet commander

And, let there be an option for each level of priority filter to lock the valid targets closest/farthest away from the object of interest (e.g. "my ship", "my fleet commander", etc).

Also, maybe there can be a "reserve" target list where targets can be dragged from the overview/main view and dropped into this list, so that once there is a free slot in your targeting arrays, your ship will automatically choose the top-most ship in this "waiting (to die) list" and start locking it? And box-targeting ships will also allow you to add excess targets exceeding your current lock limit to be placed, in order, on this waiting list.


Not sure how much this could potentially help in reducing the number of manual clicks, but in my opinion the less clicks there are, the less data transfers and requests/calls are needed, and thus improving the networking and processing speed.