Firegroups/analysis/scanners etc - General Solution

[DaveB]

This is an expansion of a suggestion I made during beta feedback. Apologies in advance for what is likely to be a bit of a wall-o-text.

There are currently a lot of things that either can be or have to be assigned to firegroups. They don't all work all the time and yet we still have to cycle past every firegroup to select the one(s) appropriate to our current ship state. This is causing frustration and the situation is only going to get worse as the game develops further. Several suggestions to address this have already been made and while they are all good ones for a particular play style many of them conflict with each other and I think we can agree that any "solution" which works for one group of players while making things worse for another is probably one that FD should not implement. Furthermore, whatever solution is chosen must be one that FD can implement in a general, open-ended manner so that it can grow with the game and not force Frontier's developers into having to code for a lot of special cases or bolt on kludges and hacks as features are added to the game.

There are currently three largely independent factors that determine whether or not a module can be "fired":

• Hardpoint state (deployed/retracted)
• Ship environment (Supercruise/Normal Space)
• HUD mode (combat/analysis)

Not all of these will be relevant to every module that can be assigned to a firegroup, of course, an internal module or one fitted to a utility mount shouldn't care about the hardpoint state, for example, and should "fire" whether or not the hardpoints are deployed - provided all its other conditions are met. Similarly defensive utility modules such as chaff should probably work irrespective of the HUD mode.

I propose adding a 3-way option to the right-hand UI, similar to the turret fire mode.

• All firegroups
• Hide invalid firegroups
• Hide invalid equipment

This would default to "All firegroups" and under this circumstance the current behaviour would be unchanged. All firegroups and modules assigned to them would be visible in all states whether they work in the current state or not, just as now.

With the option set to "Hide invalid firegroups" cycling forward or backwards through firegroups would skip firegroups in which none of the modules assigned to them are valid in the current state. When the ship state changes (hardpoints toggle, enter/leave SC, switch HUD mode), if the current firegroup would become invalid the active firegroup would cycle forward to the next one valid for the new ship state. If even one module assigned to a particular firegroup is valid, the entire firegroup is shown including all modules assigned to it whether they are valid in the current state or not. Just as in current state, you can attempt to trigger an invalid module. If you do, any warnings or messages resulting from that attempt will be displayed.

The option being set to "Hide invalid equipment" implies invalid firegroups are skipped. In addition, equipment not valid for the current state is hidden when a firegroup is selected or when ship state changes. For example if your current firegroup had both an interdictor and a discovery scanner bound to primary fire, switching from combat to analysis mode on the HUD while in SC would hide the interdictor and show the discovery scanner and vice versa. Modules hidden in this way do not generate warnings or other message when the fire button assigned to them is pressed.

This is sufficiently versatile that as players we could set up almost any behaviour we want, including most of the ways many of us have proposed resolving the frustrations we've been feeling over firegroup bloat and HUD modes. Being a ship-specific setting rather than something in the global game options, if we want our mining ship to behave differently in this regard to our exploration ship, our trader or our combat craft we can achieve this.

(example for "separate fire groups for analysis and combat" under the spoiler)

Spoiler

For separate fire groups depending on the HUD mode, you've two choices depending on how you want it to behave when you switch between them.

Option1: Set "Hide invalid firegroups." Put your combat mode gear in firegroups A,B,C..., your analysis mode gear following on in firegroups D,E,F...
Set up this way when you switch HUD modes you will always be in the first firegroup for that HUD mode. This "known starting point" could be handy if you use macros on your controls.

Option2: Set "Hide invalid equipment" and set up each firegroup with 2 analysis mode and 2 combat mode components. This would probably be better if you have things like chaff on a firegroup rather than on a hotkey because that would have this firegroup in the same place in the cycle whichever HUD mode you were in.

It also allows ample room for FD to add additional ship environment states - "Atmospheric flight" or even "Submerged", for example - without needing to rework the framework. Similarly there's space for additional HUD modes if new features require them in the future. All without having to find somewhere to bolt it on or code around loads of special cases with all the opportunities those provide for introducing bugs or making the code harder to maintain.

 

[Screemonster]

+1.

Also get rid of the "module can only be used in supercruise" messages. As it stands, if I want to use my DSS I have to either put it in an empty fire group that clutters up the list while I'm mining, or else put it in every fire group so I can have the desired "regardless of which mining tool I used last, pulling the trigger brings up the probe launcher in supercruise" behaviour.

Thank god my interdictor is minimum-priority and powers down when I pop weapons otherwise I bet that'd be spamming me in combat too.

 

[DaveB]

+1.

Also get rid of the "module can only be used in supercruise" messages. As it stands, if I want to use my DSS I have to either put it in an empty fire group that clutters up the list while I'm mining, or else put it in every fire group so I can have the desired "regardless of which mining tool I used last, pulling the trigger brings up the probe launcher in supercruise" behaviour.

Thank god my interdictor is minimum-priority and powers down when I pop weapons otherwise I bet that'd be spamming me in combat too.

Under the proposed system, to achieve that you'd just set "Hide invalid equipment" and put your DSS and interdictor in the same firegroup, which they potentially share with other stuff that you use outside SC - only the DSS would show when you were in SC in analysis mode, only the interdictor when you were in SC and in combat mode. Neither of them would show or spam messages in the other's HUD mode or when you weren't in SC.

 

[XandoBrannigan]

I hate the new analysis/combat mode. Its just another thing I have to assign a hot key for and cycle through. I don't know why it's necessary.

Just if you have an analysis hardpoint selected then you're in analysis mode. If you have a combat hardpoint selected you're in combat mode. If you have both then through up an error or something.

 

[UebelBAM]

I think i would prefer two seperate fire group ... groups. One for combat and one for analysis. I think my problem with your suggestion would be, that depending on the current ship state it would be unclear if i had to switch my firegroup one time, or two times or more. I would need to memorize when a fire group is skipped. Currently is it a nightmare to switch back and forth from scanners to weapons because i have 3 limpet controller and several scanners on board, which forces me to assign 5 firegroups. And that only works because i have SCB and heatsinks on hotkeys.

I would rather have fire groups for combat and different fire groups for exploration. So with switching the HUD i would also automatically switch from my selected analysis fire group to my selected combat fire group.

 

[DaveB]

I think i would prefer two seperate fire group ... groups. One for combat and one for analysis. I think my problem with your suggestion would be, that depending on the current ship state it would be unclear if i had to switch my firegroup one time, or two times or more. I would need to memorize when a fire group is skipped. Currently is it a nightmare to switch back and forth from scanners to weapons because i have 3 limpet controller and several scanners on board, which forces me to assign 5 firegroups. And that only works because i have SCB and heatsinks on hotkeys.

I would rather have fire groups for combat and different fire groups for exploration. So with switching the HUD i would also automatically switch from my selected analysis fire group to my selected combat fire group.

For your preferred approach to organizing them, that would indeed be better. I could live with that myself too, based on how I play the game (although I do find that within a couple of trips after swapping ships I do have the firegroups configuration on what I'm currently flying memorized to the point I just "know" that from this group to that group is so many clicks in a particular direction without having to think about it.)

However, what I was aiming for here was something that could be adapted to just about anyone's preferences, not something that was ideal for yours or for mine. I've grumbled on these fora often enough about folks advocating "fixes" that are basically just tweaking the game to suit their own play style that I didn't want to fall into the trap of doing it myself. I wanted to put together a solution that "no matter how you want to use it, you can set up something workable for you."