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Capacitor Readout on UI Again?
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MortisLegati
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#1 - 2012-05-16 19:30:34 UTC  |  Edited by: MortisLegati
I remember years ago seeing a screenshot of EVE that had a percentage readout of Shields/Armor/Hull, which made me realize I could get a physical readout of those without mousing over each of those little strips on my ship's status-UI. This was incredibly helpful and let me fly my ship to its fullest.

Knowing your ship's shields, armor and hull amount is extremely important, this is reflected by the UI as of now. Back to that screenshot.... MY PROFANE TENTACLED GOD! A CAP READOUT! IN PERCENTAGE?! I don't have to mouse over to get it?! Where is that? Hmm. Searching... Searching... ... ... Uh. Where is it?

According to the UI. Your ship's capacitor status is completely unimportant. There's no readout except for the lopsided, difficult to read capacitor wedges where 50% and 100% are really the only discernible cap percentages (since the 0% is a little off from 100%). I suggest we bring that back in one way or another.

I was thinking about it earlier and I thought that putting it back the way it was before (I was informed by a GM that the game was once that way but it was removed. Baffling.) would be an acceptable situation, especially if it was optional (new drop-down choice). There are also a plethora of ways one could rectify the lack of readily-available at-a-glance information available to you, the pilot, regarding capacitor. There could be a big smacking number in the middle that could indicate percentage or x/y of your capacitor. (Since the wedges do serve a purpose to show you approximately how much capacitor you have over your noobship.)

There are probably also other ideas I haven't thought of that everyone else might have been thinking of, or had inspiration sizzling just beneath the grey matter biting at the bit, waiting for just this specific issue.
MortisLegati
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#2 - 2012-05-18 04:19:10 UTC
Shameless bump.

Nobody thinks a readable cap display like the percent/absolute shield/armor/hull readout we have now is important?
Velicitia
XS Tech
#3 - 2012-05-18 12:11:25 UTC
apparently not.

Since you already know if you're stable or not before undocking, having a number that is perpetually at ~35% when you're doing stuff gives no real benefit...

One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia
MortisLegati
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#4 - 2012-05-18 12:22:50 UTC
Cap stability ingame is extremely tenuous, though. You have to offline/online modules and cap stability doesn't even come close to other drains on cap like the use of cap warfare either by NPCs (yes, some of them do that) or other players.
I know many who prefer to fly ships that aren't cap-stable because they're more effective and challenging to use. Personally, I can micromanage my way to tanking a level 4 in a Rokh (people call me daft for doing so) by carefully watching capacitor and shields.
That's all in relation to PVE, though. I honestly think bringing back the capacitor readout, even as a checkbox or right-click option somewhere could benefit PVPers since cap warfare is way more common there. Regardless of the activity, knowing recharge curves and exploiting those to the best of your ability lets you eek out a lot more than what one could assume possible out of a particular fit or ship.
I was talking to a friend of mine on the subject and he basically said "Well, EVE has taught me that capacitor isn't important in any ship because they only show me details my shields armor and hull. All the information it really gives me is Empty or Full and therefore that's all the information I care about." (He is an extremely snide person, so the statement is layered beyond face value.)
MortisLegati
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#5 - 2012-05-18 12:28:03 UTC
Velicitia wrote:
having a number that is perpetually at ~35% when you're doing stuff gives no real benefit...


Not making a personal attack, but I always see this kind of argument used and it's alarmingly fallacious to me. I think because it's operating off an assumption that doesn't necessarily have to be true. Tautology?
To make a further attempt to make my murky point more clear I could easily say "Why show hull, when you know you're tanked and aren't going to go into it?"