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I personally think that telling you exactly how much the other guy has in shield, armor and structure is giving too much info.

I like the idea of show the damage type, but I don't know, maybe that's giving too much info? (we did actually discuss both these things at our meetings on Friday)

Would it (in your view) be giving too much info to colour the angular velocity / transversal/ ect in the overview based on the tracking speed of your turrets as outlined in this post post 679 page 34 so that you can tell at a glance which targets are going too fast for you to track?

One thing i think in space that could be added without going too far is to add different brackets if the ship is being ewar'ed or rep'd. Perhaps something like { } around the ship icon if ewar, and ] [ if being repaired. You might end up with ] { icon } [ but you wouldn't know which ewar until you actually targeted the ship.

Also, if you're working on the overview in general, is there a reason we can't decide on the order of the icons like we can with pilots? If I always want stargates at the top of the list, i'm not sure why that's impossible. It would be nice if local system bookmarks were automatically seeded into the overview as well.

I know you don't want to have 2 systems running at the same time, but with the targeted icons in the target list, perhaps we could have simple ones like we have currently except for the focus target, which could be more robust. Perhaps even minimized versions of those that aren't the main focus, while the main focus has a larger icon. With chat windows, dscan window, overview, drone bays, people and places for quick bookmarks, etc. I can't see more than 7 targets currently because I'm out of UI real estate.

There would be a whole lot of info that could be added by displaying it on the tactical overlay. Maybe a second icon on the overlay plane that has the various velocities. It needs an update anyway... it's been buggy for a few years now, which is sad considering how important it is for situational awareness.

Thanks for the reply

Hmm.... Personally if you were going to do anything with the arrows around the active target (or targets generally) I would go with colouring them by standing (according to active overview settings) so that they appear green (say) around allies/fleetmates and red around enemies so that when you have a list of target icons jiggling around you can immediately see at a glance who is a friend you should be repping and who is an enemy you should be shooting.
Which too me at least would be far more useful information than transversal, although you could of course do both.

However the trouble with using the rotation speed of the arrows as an indication of transversal it doesn't give you the information I was after which was how much the angular speed of the target is effecting your ability to track which is a function of both the targets angular velocity and your current tracking speed.
It's hard atm to analyse the effect as you have to remember the current tracking speed of your turrets (in radians per sec) and compare it to the angular velocity of the target and both numbers can often be really small (as in disappearing off the number of decimal places you could managed to budget for angular velocity in your overview). and so you really just end up checking whether the angular velocity is the same order of magnitude as your tracking.

Perhaps if we could get tracking numbers in degrees per second as well as/instead of radians per second.

Then we might get tracking numbers not front loaded with so many decimal points and could make better guestimates of the tracking penalty. It's easier to see where you are if your guns can track 45 Deg/s and the target is doing 25 Deg/sec than trying to compare 0.000234 with 0.000213 (making the numbers up but you get the idea) particularly when you only have enough space for 4 decimal points.

However colouring the numbers would be clearer still, then you don't have to remember what your current tracking speed is (is your tracking computer on or off...) relative to target speed.

Or you could make the number a percentage of your guns tracking speed rather than an absolute value.
that's an even simpler calculation for the client to do.

Maybe if you did the colouring calculations only for targeted objects, which limits to a Max of, what? 12 items.

If adding 12 really basic calculations to the overview all done client side is going to break the overview then I suggest that the overview was already broken.

Also if this is toggle-able then people with performance issues could turn it off, those running quad graphix card i7 rigs could have it turned on

In this thread Thread In features and ideas I suggested an idea for condensing several columns of data you currently need/want in the overview into one more useful and informative one. I wonder if this might also reduce the processing overhead of the overview into the bargain and gain the extra needed to compensate for this idea? I would have thought that fewer columns would result in less cpu/gpu cycles.

Hey Kark ... I got a derpy one for you.

Why not just do like every other display on hit game and spit them out above the target taking damage? I really like the flashy thing .. but it works better when I hit THEM, imo.

Ex:
128
128
256 Well Aimed!
512 Wrecking Shot!
0 Miss!
Ship Goes Here


Oh .. and colors. If you do the "flashy thing" (hereafter referred to as the neuralizer effect) .. let's color code it. Decouple it from the targeting reticule on the main view. So now we can have x color flash when I hit shields, y color when I hit armor, and z when I 1 shot their structure. (what? it could happen!)

as for visually indicating I am getting hit .. I think modern shooters are generally doing it right. Glowing visual representation from the direction the shot came from. This could even be pings on a sphere surrounding me ship, but maybe just the side of the screen glowing. same thing, tick off the damage counter above me ship.

I'd like to also support the idea of getting information on target tracking. Right now it's mostly hope and pray that you hit the target - of course, there's always educated guessing once you're familiar with the system but it's still not really an easy mechanic to understand and master. I'm not saying give an absolute "you will 100% hit this guy" readout, but maybe just give a broad estimate so that only the ships that are -so- far outside of tracking would be indicated.

I'd also like to request the ability to disable the HP bars that's displayed over primary target on your screen...I'd really like to see the ship itself and not have to look past the readout - which as you can see on the preview pic, covers up a large portion of that titan. The current bracketing lines on the main target are thin and easy to look past, but the new overlay is with thick bars do take away from the visuals of the ship itself. Or maybe display them below the ship or something...

Overall the main objective for this feature is to provide information that is clear and specific in a way that is meaningful on who is doing the most damage to the individual. I see three areas that this can be handled.

1) Overview
2) Locked targets
3) In space targets

The client side of the program already has information in relation to the total HP of the ship we are flying and therefore we can use this as the basis of graphical feedback to the user. Also we are already receiving information about the amount of damage being inflicted onto the ship through the current messages. It should be an easy task for the client to keep a record of the current damage inflicted and the total damage of a fight. Also we are already having this information provided when we receive kill mails.

The overview can be used to determine who is doing the most damage to the player by sorting on this fact. Highest total damage to the top of the screen (obviously an option in the overview settings). In massive fleet fights this would be an easy way to see who is the main damage dealers for this fleet and see who you need to avoid.

The overview can also provide graphical feedback on the amount of relevant damage being inflicted by a green yellow and red level of intensity of each hit. This could flash across the line of the opponent being shown in the overview.

To the left of the overview we could have a separate green to red scale similar to an equalizer bar on an amplifier showing the total damage graphically. As more is received this increases to red based on the total damage received.

In relation to locked targets we can use a similar equalizer bar concept. Showing this next to the graphic of the locked ship.

In space I would suggest a flash emanating from the ship doing damage to you on a green, yellow and red scale. This way you can scroll out and view this from a distance to get on overview of the battle from afar.

I believe the best tools we have are already in place and this generally is the overview view.


DRONES
Is there some way we can see which ships are locking our drones? eg a blue target icon in the overview - flashing when damage is being done...

If you insist on making these icons circular, check out this illustration:

Here's is an awful but illustrative picture detailing my idea



It would make things far clearer.

I want to make two suggestions how to limit this unfortunate dynamic.

1. Add a feature to the forums: View only dev posts in thread. Even a dedicated person like me gets tired of 30 or 50 pages of posts, most of them by ranting players (often double- or triple-posting). Most of us are not interested in other players' questions, we are interested in questions that have been answered: What we want to read is what the devs said, and the question they were responding to. If we could filter that out without scrolling through 50 pages to spot the blue badges, it would save us a lot of time and you some trouble!

2. In threads like this one, you need to update the first post or even the dev blog as you go along. So we can see what new information was posted by devs in the thread, which common player complaints were already addressed, which features from the dev blog were possibly changed in the meantime due to player feedback.

Some people would still complain about things that were already addressed, but I think it would become much less frequent.