Assembly Hall

Hi, I'm doing this the first time. I had this idea about new drone UI, I just opened photoshop and did what I could for you to visualise this idea.

Since I'm not photoshop genius, be gentle it's just a rough draft, what you need to imagine it is with eve colours fonts appropriate boxes act.

BASIC NAVIGATION


Let me take you through it step by step:



Launch / Return Button

This is going to be one button. Upon clicking 'Launch' the drones will launch and the button changes to 'Return' and vice versa. This will give the UI less buttons.

If one set of drones is launched in space and you'd like to launch another set then 'Launch' of another set of drones is pressed. The set of drones in spaces automatically returns back to drone bay, once returned the new desired drone set launches.


Engage / Disengage Button

This button will spawn once the particular set of drones is launched. By clicking 'Engage' the set of drones in space will engage the selected target. And of course as with the Launch/Return button, the Engage / Disengage button changes its state once pressed.


Damage Indicator

The indicator will spawn and start flashing when a particular drone is being attacked, that goes for ECM, webs, TP and all offensive modules being applied to a particular drone. Once the indicator is clicked the drone will make an attempt to return back to drone bay and immediately launches itself back to space and engages the target the whole set of drones is engaging.



Groups

The separation of drones is sorted via three different groups for better navigation. The first group Illustrated as 'Heavy PWNAGE !' is the one group which houses up to 5 different sub Groups (Illustrated as 'Hammerheads, Ogrezz, My Favourite'). All of these groups are fully customisable inside drone bay where you can create folders and folders within folders, name them however you like. The desired drones are dragged and dropped inside these folders.




Heavy PWNAGE ! Folder

Is the main folder housing other sub group folders. The drones cannot be dropped into this folder.



Hammerheads, Ogrezz, My Favourite Folders

These folders are where the drones are dragged and dropped and are assigned to specific sub group just like now. These folders can house unlimited amount of drones (depending on the size of your drone bay).


Other folders

These folders will be particularly designed for ships with greater amount of active drones in space (carriers act). The folders will be created inside folders like Hammerheads, Ogrezz, My Favourites where the user can drag and drop desired drones and amounts of drones to each folder.

There should be 'Launch All' button which would launch all drones from all the mini groups. Each of these groups shall have engage / disengage and launch / return buttons themselves next to them.



Once a drone is killed from one group it will be possible to drag and drop single drones from group to group. The replaced drone will automatically behave like the drones in the particular group. That means if the group is engaging the drone will launch itself and start engaging the target the group is engaging.

There can be multiple master folders that will improve drone separation. There will also be navigation arrows between master groups like 'Heavy PWNAGE !'.

Example of folder hierarchy :

I can get behind this.