Quality of Life improvement for outfitting screen

When I outfit my ships with external components (utility mounts, hard points), I like to place them strategically.
For example, if I outfit an ASP with Point Defence, I want to place it in the back just above the hatch. That is the best position (IMO) for the PD as it protects both against missiles and cargo hatch limpets ... but i digress.

I just bought a Type-10 and I want to choose strategic placement for 1-2 point defense, but I just cannot figure out where they are actually located on the outside of the hull.
Where is this?
https://imgur.com/a/qqjyypm

And the other 7 are not easier to locate.

I think I read on the forums, that the workaround is to place stuff, leave station, deploy hardpoints and use the camera view to see where they are located. Really?


I propose the following QoL improvement:
- change the camera angle so that we can see where on the ship the utility mounts and hardpoints are
or
- allow camera zoom out

Has this been brought up before? What was the outcome... My search phrases did not find much on this topic.

EDIT: Cannot insert image in post, when I try to upload says "invalid file"
 
You are correct. Hard to tell. Even a Cutter is weird.

But you can camera inside the station, you can generally see where things are.
 
Yeah, I found there is some limited camera movement inside the station. It helps, but it's clumsy. Still can't zoom out, I think the issue is bigger with larger ships because the fill the entire hangar.
 
How about having a top down and bottom up representation of your ship with boxes where all the core/optionals/utilities/weapons can go, and you drag and drop from a list on the screen? You can zoom in, and rotate the ship once completed to see how everything fits together.
 
It's ridiculous that the outfitting cams are so limited. Another one of those "placeholder" things, I think. What they can do now, easily, would be to use one of the cockpit camera setups. Those are sort of tight spots but you can rotate and zoom a little bit. So, there, leave the locations the same as they are, but switch the camera to one of those, done.
Next.
 
Nice ideas, I hope FDEV reads this forum.

In addition, this might be a "thing to do" with space legs. Frontier have said that walking in and around the ships is not technically difficult, but they won't implement it until they figure out some things to do on foot (repairs, boarding ships).

Well here's a thing to do: walk around the ship in the outfitting hangar. Beats the clumsy camera anyway and as a bonus gives a sense of scale of the ships.
 
One issue I have with dragging is that I don't see how this would work with the keyboard. I exclusively use the keyboard to manage outfitting.
 
Nice ideas, I hope FDEV reads this forum.

In addition, this might be a "thing to do" with space legs. Frontier have said that walking in and around the ships is not technically difficult, but they won't implement it until they figure out some things to do on foot (repairs, boarding ships).

Well here's a thing to do: walk around the ship in the outfitting hangar. Beats the clumsy camera anyway and as a bonus gives a sense of scale of the ships.

+1 Fantastic idea, could be so cool if implemented well. And in support of the OP too: Yes, agreed, the external cameras in outfitting can be a bit frustrating with certain ships. I've never gotten why we can't just enter the camera suit in outfitting like we can when we're just sat in the hangar normally.
 
This has annoyed me too, and I'd appreciate it being improved! :)

Doesn't the camera already moves to show the hardpoint you've selected? Maybe it just needs to be moved back a lot more and the hardpoint be hilighted somehow.
 
This has annoyed me too, and I'd appreciate it being improved! :)

Doesn't the camera already moves to show the hardpoint you've selected? Maybe it just needs to be moved back a lot more and the hardpoint be hilighted somehow.

Yep, but it adjusts for the size of the ship of the position of the hardpoint. Some ships barely fit in the bay or the camera has to back into the wall so some angles are very awkward.
 
One possible workaround that might be easier on the UI - name the utility and weapon mounts in the interface, so rather than four identical utility mounts they're called "front left", "upper rear right", etc.

In this case a drag-and-drop interface could be also made accessible to keyboard/controller/VR+HOTAS as there's only a limited number of places it can go: you select the item to add, then press "UI up" or "UI down" to cycle around the possible locations on the ship schematic.
 
One possible workaround that might be easier on the UI - name the utility and weapon mounts in the interface, so rather than four identical utility mounts they're called "front left", "upper rear right", etc.

In this case a drag-and-drop interface could be also made accessible to keyboard/controller/VR+HOTAS as there's only a limited number of places it can go: you select the item to add, then press "UI up" or "UI down" to cycle around the possible locations on the ship schematic.

Sounds like a fairly manageable solution to me.
 
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