I've been thinking. Sandro Sammarco often mentions the difficulty of juggling things and adding things to the user interface. This is bothersome because there are three major distinct playing styles, each with it's own needs and priorities.
Now, this has very likely been proposed before, post a link to your thread, whoever proposed it first! Moving on.
Currently, the HUD is a compromise between these three major game play states. This makes just about every one unhappy, to some extent:
Explorers don't want the comms panel hanging in their face, and the info panel is useful, but maybe somewhere else.
Traders, well, not much is readily available for you. If you're not paying attention, the most useful piece of info can be missed (the state of a system), as it is only transiently in view.
Combat/Powerplay players, these guys seem to have most of the HUD set up for them, though they have to share space with the needs of explorers and traders, so they miss out on having even more info available.
This list is a mere sampling of wants and dislikes, so I have a proposal:
Four different HUD options!
These HUD modes would be selectable from the right hand FUNCTIONS screen. They'd be as follows:
1. Default (The current HUD, as is)
2. Combat (This would incorporate the desires and needs of the combat community)
3. Exploration (This would incorporate the desires and needs of the exploration community)
4. Trade (This would incorporate the desires and needs of the trade community)
Players could change on the fly, just look to your right, select the mode, and a few fancy (short) flickers later, new HUD! I imagine, at a future date, a fifth mode might be added that allows the player to mix and match HUD elements. Maybe.
I propose that this change in HUD extend to the default views of the Galaxy and System Maps. I recommend this strongly because the tabs used by Explorers are not the default tabs (as the should be, not that I'm biased towards a particular style of gameplay, or anything, but I couldn't care less what factions are in a system 48,000 ly from Sol, I do however, want to know details about the planets I'm scanning).
The advantages should be pretty self-evident, but I'll include a few suggestions here and now:
1. Default: Current HUD, leave it alone.
2. Combat: well, most of the current HUD is geared towards combat, but there's a few things that might prove helpful, such as displaying repair/rearm capacity of starports. I don't know.
3. Exploration: Every system is low security outside the bubble, instead keeping the star class visible when FSD is active.
4. Trade: Lots of things!
Anyway. This would allow you to do a lot more and be less constrained by the HUD real estate, it would answer a lot of the communities desires, and it seems like it would be a simple thing to implement, albeit time consuming to produce (3 new HUDs! that's a lot of work).
I hope you read this, Sandro "No" Sammarco, I'd love to hear you say your trademarked phrase in the comments! But seriously, this seems like a reasonable compromise that adds flexibility without taking anything from the default experience. Hopefully others really have suggested this already.
TL;DR: More options please.
Now, this has very likely been proposed before, post a link to your thread, whoever proposed it first! Moving on.
Currently, the HUD is a compromise between these three major game play states. This makes just about every one unhappy, to some extent:
Explorers don't want the comms panel hanging in their face, and the info panel is useful, but maybe somewhere else.
Traders, well, not much is readily available for you. If you're not paying attention, the most useful piece of info can be missed (the state of a system), as it is only transiently in view.
Combat/Powerplay players, these guys seem to have most of the HUD set up for them, though they have to share space with the needs of explorers and traders, so they miss out on having even more info available.
This list is a mere sampling of wants and dislikes, so I have a proposal:
Four different HUD options!
These HUD modes would be selectable from the right hand FUNCTIONS screen. They'd be as follows:
1. Default (The current HUD, as is)
2. Combat (This would incorporate the desires and needs of the combat community)
3. Exploration (This would incorporate the desires and needs of the exploration community)
4. Trade (This would incorporate the desires and needs of the trade community)
Players could change on the fly, just look to your right, select the mode, and a few fancy (short) flickers later, new HUD! I imagine, at a future date, a fifth mode might be added that allows the player to mix and match HUD elements. Maybe.
I propose that this change in HUD extend to the default views of the Galaxy and System Maps. I recommend this strongly because the tabs used by Explorers are not the default tabs (as the should be, not that I'm biased towards a particular style of gameplay, or anything, but I couldn't care less what factions are in a system 48,000 ly from Sol, I do however, want to know details about the planets I'm scanning).
The advantages should be pretty self-evident, but I'll include a few suggestions here and now:
1. Default: Current HUD, leave it alone.
2. Combat: well, most of the current HUD is geared towards combat, but there's a few things that might prove helpful, such as displaying repair/rearm capacity of starports. I don't know.
3. Exploration: Every system is low security outside the bubble, instead keeping the star class visible when FSD is active.
- Remove the comms panel to either the left or between-the-legs panel (I favor the latter).
- Remove the 3D player ship/shields status, replace with simple text/health bar indicator under the cargo scoop indicator (kind of like the fuel indicator)
- Remove the power distributor readout (I have a 1D power distributor on an unshielded AspX, it is less than worthless to me)
- Use this space for a text list of system jumps with the jump distance between each and move the info panel to this area as well. Make these both scrollable
- Make the object details tab on the system map the default tab. There are no factions outside of inhabited space.
- Remove the 3D player ship/shields status, replace with simple text/health bar indicator under the cargo scoop indicator (kind of like the fuel indicator)
- Remove the power distributor readout (I have a 1D power distributor on an unshielded AspX, it is less than worthless to me)
- Use this space for a text list of system jumps with the jump distance between each and move the info panel to this area as well. Make these both scrollable
- Make the object details tab on the system map the default tab. There are no factions outside of inhabited space.
4. Trade: Lots of things!
- Just as for exploration, remove the 3D player ship/shields status, replacing it with a text/health bar. The power distributor? take it or leave it, the Traders can has that out.
- Provide a list of system attributes in it's place: Economy, System state, black market status, quick select list of stations, plus largest landing pads (this could be indicated by a simple (S) (M) (L) following the name). I'm sure there's more that the traders are longing for.
- Provide a list of system attributes in it's place: Economy, System state, black market status, quick select list of stations, plus largest landing pads (this could be indicated by a simple (S) (M) (L) following the name). I'm sure there's more that the traders are longing for.
Anyway. This would allow you to do a lot more and be less constrained by the HUD real estate, it would answer a lot of the communities desires, and it seems like it would be a simple thing to implement, albeit time consuming to produce (3 new HUDs! that's a lot of work).
I hope you read this, Sandro "No" Sammarco, I'd love to hear you say your trademarked phrase in the comments! But seriously, this seems like a reasonable compromise that adds flexibility without taking anything from the default experience. Hopefully others really have suggested this already.
TL;DR: More options please.
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