Elite Dangerous's UI and control setup, for all its complexity, works well on consoles, but introduces unnecessary limitations on PCs.
Allow keybinding of module targeting, where pressing the button again cycles through modules in that category (i.e. Target Powerplant, Target Weapons). This would remove the massive amounts of in-combat menu scrolling (that blocks your view and relinquishes control of your ship) required to target a specific module on a large ship. If I wanted a 500 APM dogfight involving menus I'd be playing StarCraft and at least StarCraft has hotkeys.
In kind, allow the same for powering on and off core/optional internals with a single button press, because some builds rely on on-the-fly power management.
Note that if players want to roleplay with fiddly menus, they can just keep doing it as usual.
Alright, I get it. There are not enough buttons on the Xbox and PS4 controllers to comfortably accommodate more than two fire buttons, and Frontier probably doesn't want to maintain two working versions of the HUD/the backend between consoles and PC; however, I think it would be worth the effort to add multiple fire buttons for the assortment of weapons and scanners available to players. As more and more new modules are developed, more fire buttons will be necessary.
Also, make scanners toggleable and ungroupable with ordnance. There's no benefit to push-to-scan and it forces you to dedicate a finger for several seconds of nothing.
I hope some of these suggestions show up in the core gameplay improvements that were hinted at for a future patch.
- Allow players to bind keys to specific, time-sensitive actions
Allow keybinding of module targeting, where pressing the button again cycles through modules in that category (i.e. Target Powerplant, Target Weapons). This would remove the massive amounts of in-combat menu scrolling (that blocks your view and relinquishes control of your ship) required to target a specific module on a large ship. If I wanted a 500 APM dogfight involving menus I'd be playing StarCraft and at least StarCraft has hotkeys.
In kind, allow the same for powering on and off core/optional internals with a single button press, because some builds rely on on-the-fly power management.
Note that if players want to roleplay with fiddly menus, they can just keep doing it as usual.
- Remove firegroup scrolling and allow multiple fire buttons
Alright, I get it. There are not enough buttons on the Xbox and PS4 controllers to comfortably accommodate more than two fire buttons, and Frontier probably doesn't want to maintain two working versions of the HUD/the backend between consoles and PC; however, I think it would be worth the effort to add multiple fire buttons for the assortment of weapons and scanners available to players. As more and more new modules are developed, more fire buttons will be necessary.
Also, make scanners toggleable and ungroupable with ordnance. There's no benefit to push-to-scan and it forces you to dedicate a finger for several seconds of nothing.
I hope some of these suggestions show up in the core gameplay improvements that were hinted at for a future patch.
