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[Proposal] Simple Drone UI feature, massive usefulness
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Katsu Kho
Kho Incorporated
The Lone Space Wolves
#1 - 2014-07-16 12:28:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Katsu Kho
I make this forum post following my reddit post from yesterday:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/2as3e9/why_are_there_no_health_bars_on_undeployed_drones/

Quote:
I've been wondering this for a long time. Whenever I open my drone bay there are no bars for the current health my stored drones have, only for the deployed ones. Wouldn't this be handy if using multiple sets of drones (e.g. spare ones if some get damaged)?


People responded that it was an often-requested feature, and others responded it would be a near-impossible programming challenge that would require large portions of drone deploy and even ship undock code to be rewritten. Arguments were also made that it would strain the server alot if it needed to keep stats for every single drone in the system, which makes sense.

This got me thinking... If performance is a huge issue CCP could implement a feature to 'mark' drones locally. Like when drones get damaged we can give their names a red color IN CLIENT, or a red icon in front of their names. If possible they could maybe later automate this feature, or choose to keep it versatile with the color marking in addition to the folder groups (still being entirely optional). This would not require huge coding work and would not strain the server nor the game client, since a text color change is pretty lightweight.

For example, selecting it would go like this:
http://i.imgur.com/pVxIwNc.png
Edit: a clear marking option would be nice as well ofcourse

And the outcome would be this:
http://i.imgur.com/LQkGCHy.png

Thoughts on this?

Katsu Kho

Ambassador of the Jin-Mei Interstellar Space Bushidō council

Find me on YouTube - Latest video: Project Discovery Tutorial
Dark Drifter
Sons of Seyllin
Pirate Lords of War
#2 - 2014-07-24 16:41:28 UTC
a nice little bandaid there for the severed limb that is drone operation and UI:

there needs to be an entire expansion pass on these little bad boys

key fixes:

--UI
--drone behavural updates
--drone skill reworks (half done)
--EW drones to be majurly fixed
--ECM drones to be nerfed
--faction/sentient drones reballenced (making intergrated/augmented drones viable)

to mention only a small portion of what needs fixing
Soapy5
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2014-07-27 08:21:37 UTC
To one up this, why not just have a client-side update that will mark the 'last know status' of a drone as damaged, or even better, simply copy/paste the 'last known' shield/armor/hull of the drone?

I mean, you could literally print screen that little block of the ui and paste it next to the drone in the bay and i'd be happy.
Theo Audeles
Audeles Security Enterprises
#4 - 2014-07-28 12:33:37 UTC
What Dark Drifter said. +1
Wallace Warmkestle
Glitterforge Adult Daycare Services
Keys Network
#5 - 2014-07-31 23:28:28 UTC
Strongly agree - if the server calculation is a load issue make it client side. Maybe when the drone returns to ship it saves it's hull/armor/shield stats locally.

I don't know if we necessarily would then need the color coding, we could just move drones around into the existing groups if we knew their condition. Put all the broken ones into your 'borken drone' group.