Please read: Elite: some comfort UI and HUD / mild weapon changes

Ahoy there forum raider,
and thank you for stopping by.

Please read the following suggestions and leave some feedback,
allthough i am sure these ideas are not all totally new.

Let me start with what i think will not impair current gameplay:

The Shipyard and Statistics

As you surely know, the shipyard allows you to see the baseline statistics of any ship
purchaseable in that particular shipyard
.
Yet a lot of valuable information is not included in that screen,
and to see basic statistical information on your current loadout,
you have to visit external calculators, or switch the ship
and look
at the "stored" ship.


Now here is the suggestion:

Add valuable information to the shipyard screen, including acceleration per second in m/s,
deceleration per second in m/s, pitch,yaw and roll per second in degrees,
lateral and vertical acceleration/deceleration per second in m/s
and not to forget the placement of key modules (powerplant, engines, sensors,
life support, frameshift and cargo-hatch) on the ship with markers in the 3D model
.

The latter is a key information on what angles to pursue a target and engage
effectively to cripple modules.
But also let us not stop there.
We pilots often want to see our stats, so we can check how the ship performs in the current
power configuration
. Engines, shields and weapons perform differently when rerouting PIPS.
So we need a means to see the effect in numbers, to get a better feeling for the performance.

Here is how i think this could be integrated:
We got a nice little infoscreen situated between our legs,
yet all it shows is a tab "ship" where you get some flavour info on the
current ship and a tab "srv" showing you the srvs at hand, additionally
allowing you to board it.

Originally i thought of an implementation of information to the "info" ui-element,
but i think it is only a textbox. The bottom display however looks like it allready
is interacting with the text, the shipyard displays for every ship.

For pilots who do not use the screen we have no additional value of it being there,
and often curse, looking down on it, having the popping up ui obstruct view on sensor-readings.
An option to set the default behaviour of the screen would be necessary for the following suggestion,
so the pilot can decide if "ship" or "srv" is the default tab shown when looking at the module.

A contextual link between the tab "ship" would allow us to:
A) show current ship statistics/performance regarding power levels/module damage when no target is selected
akin to looking at the modified shipyard-statistical tab
B) show current target-subsystem info, as if you would have selected the tab "subsystem"
in the left ui-panel for the current locked target
C) show the target info, as if you would have selected the locked ship in the left ui-panel "contacts" tab,
to display bounty status, for 10 seconds after a finished KW-scan
D) show target cargo, as if you would have selected the locked on target and switched to "cargo" tab in
the left ui-panel, for 10 seconds after succesful cargo-scan

The HUD

Along with these comfortable addons, by using contextual display of information,
a rework of the colouring of the HUD would be apropriate.
It has been long anticipated, and the colouring matrix is a problematic instrument,
when deciding to choose green as HUD colour for an example.
Increasing visibility on the HUD also should regard the aiming-reticule for primary and
secondary firegroups, it is hard to distinguish between them
when using weapons
with similar properties (pulse/beam).


Changes that do affect gameplay directly:


Chaff and weapons (fixed/gimbals)

Chaff currently is an effective means to counter gimballed weapon lock on,
and that is fine to me, as it is the primary way to counter the automatically aiming
gimbals.

However, chaff does not impair fixed weapons and their limited gimballing at all.
When i think of how the computer would calculate the point of convergence for
fixed weapons, i think he uses a simple means of measuring the distance.
But that means should be affected aswell, when a chaff-launcher paints the space in particles,
interfering with measurement and locking on.


My suggestion is, that when a ship with fixed weapons is attacking a currently
chaffing target, the automatic convergence of fixed weapons is prohibited.

This would let the chaff launcher retain some use for fighting players with fixed weaponry,
being only really effective at high ranges, but impairing sniping modules aswell.
It would force the fixed weapons to stay at the default convergence, much the same,
as if a ship with gimballed weapons, would have to unlock the target
, to increase the chances to hit
manually.

The necessity of unlocking a target for gimballed weapons also is a nuisance.
After targetting the desired subsystem with gimbals, a chaffing target has to be deselected
to have a higher chance of hitting it from afar.
That is problematic, as the player has to then again lock on to target and select the subsystem,
loosing precious seconds in a fight.
To eliminate that problematic i suggest the implementation of a key-bind,
allowing gimballed weapons to fixiate them selves to frontal firing.
This fixiation should not allow any convergence, alike to the proposed changes for fixed weapons,
under the effect of chaff.

Last but not least, this change in chaff-performance would lead to more engagements
at closer range
, allowing even for some use of turrets, as they are more accurate at
close range aswell.


To implement some more elements into the game to increase the impact of pilot skill,
an addition to these changes could be the manual setting of a fixed convergence range,
for weapons in the frontal firing mode (like sensor ranges can be set).


Please read the whole suggestion and leave your feedback.

Yours sincerely,
El Montega.


p.s. I welcome feedback from the developers aswell, nothing is worse,
than a hopefully sensible suggestion dying in the desert.
 
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I like the ideas about the ship statistics but not about fixed/gimbaled behavior vs chaff and locking gimbals. I'll type up some thoughts later on when I have a little more time.
 
I like the ideas about the ship statistics but not about fixed/gimbaled behavior vs chaff and locking gimbals. I'll type up some thoughts later on when I have a little more time.

I'm more than happy to read your criticism!

Yeah: Good luck with that. Nice essay, by the way.

I'm intrigued as how you see the proposed ideas.
Do they seem to be too work intensive?
 
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How can fixed lasers converge? I thought fixed lasers were much like, cannon on a HIND Gunship, say? If they do converge, like on a Spitfire, (apparently 260m out), you'd have to constantly adjust the throttle in order to hit something.

Fixed weapons still have a slight gimballed effect, they auto converge.
 
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I agree with the statistic changes, especially since just yesterday I was trying to figure out my sensor range, and I couldn't, because the station I was on wasn't selling Class 6 sensors. For the chaff part, not sure about the fixed weapon convergence, but I very much would like a keybind for forward fire mode. Both for gimbals and turrets, as currently it is a major PITA to go through functions and lock down the turrets if needed.
 
"when a ship with fixed weapons is attacking a currently
chaffing target, the automatic convergence of fixed weapons is prohibited."

How can fixed lasers converge? I thought fixed lasers were much like, cannon on a HIND Gunship, say? If they do converge, like on a Spitfire, (apparently 260m out), you'd have to constantly adjust the throttle in order to hit something.

I thought fixed weaps essentially just beam straight out?

If you look at the aiming reticule and target a ship 1 km out, they are very close to each other sitting neatly on the spot.
That is weapon convergence due to rangefinding, if you deselect the target, the aiming reticule is different.
Now we have the weapons set to converge with the aiming reticule at a fixed distance.

Truly i am not 100% sure, that the fixed weapons use rangefinding to slightly gimbal,
for better convergence relative to target distance + gimballing to hit a selected subsys.
But to have a pilot use the default aiming reticule (no target selected) makes it a bit guessing as where the guns would hit,
giving chaff a use against fixed weapons, hampering fixed weapon fire precision, as it allready does against gimballed ones.

These are great suggestions! For the shipyard menus, you would need some way of expanding them so they don't take up too much place…

Originally i thought of having the ship-wiremodel alternate with the stats to save space on the screen,
but i think that would annoy a lot of people.
The shipyard currently uses 3 tabs (purchase/stored/location),
easiest method would be adding a stats-only tab.
 
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Through a little bit of tweaking you can actually change your hud's color already, as for the shipyard I completely agree that there needs to be more information on it, including for stored ships to see the modules that we have on them. I mean it's a shipyard so they are supposed to be trying to SELL us these ships, so imagine going to buy a new car that's insanely overpriced as all new cars are but hey you want a new one so they let you look at it and there's the speedometer, every car has one and you know by the speedometer of how fast it can go, there's no special selection in this process, it's just there by default.
 
Through a little bit of tweaking you can actually change your hud's color already, as for the shipyard I completely agree that there needs to be more information on it, including for stored ships to see the modules that we have on them. I mean it's a shipyard so they are supposed to be trying to SELL us these ships, so imagine going to buy a new car that's insanely overpriced as all new cars are but hey you want a new one so they let you look at it and there's the speedometer, every car has one and you know by the speedometer of how fast it can go, there's no special selection in this process, it's just there by default.

Colouring the hud:
I tried it, and it took a lot of time to mix up colours to suit my taste,
even when using external sites that help calculating the outcome.
What really bugs me, is that the colour scheme is not separated, like in "Starlancer" where you could colour each
HUD element individually.

The matrix is mashing up colours and limiting the choice,
it also requires a reboot of the game client to apply a change.
It simply has to go as the solution, being replaced with an ingame setting,
allowing real recolouring of the hud.

Weapons:
Any opinion about the proposed changes?
I feel gimballs really get the stick currently, when you try to use them
in competitive environments.
I'd really love to not have to deselect my target and marked subsystem to fire straight.

It rather kills the notion of "high-tech tracking weapons" if they are simply unable of switching
into a fallback mode.
 
Basically what we need is a keybind which will switch fire modes so we won't have to unlock from our target. That should be forced on target ship dumping heat and/or going silent running like as it is now.

For turrets: It switches between fire at will/target only/forward fire
For gimbals: Gimbal tracking/forward fire (without fixed convergence assist)

Fair request if you ask me and should be very easy to implement.
 
Basically what we need is a keybind which will switch fire modes so we won't have to unlock from our target.

Would be nice, but something akin you can at the moment achieve with a secondary (or tertiary, etc) fire group - just switch the group, no need to untarget anything.
 
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Would be nice, but something akin you can at the moment achieve with a secondary (or tertiary, etc) fire group - just switch the group, no need to untarget anything.

Can you elaborate a bit on that, i don't get what you are trying to express.
Talking about gimbals being chaffed?
Turrets?
 
Would be nice, but something akin you can at the moment achieve with a secondary (or tertiary, etc) fire group - just switch the group, no need to untarget anything.

Speaking for turrets that would've been a decent workaround if only we could assign fire modes to different fire groups... wait can we do that? :S

Also doesn't change the fact that it will make managing fire groups more cumbersome as an imperial surely you would not want that or maybe you can get a slave to switch it for you but we fedscum need this :D
 
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