My ED Quality of Life Improvement Suggestions

[QUASAR-M]

I’m creating this thread (and I hope I’m not breaching any rules in doing so) because it seems I’ve missed the opportunity to post in the official thread. And I believe there are some things in this wonderful game that can be added/ changed without major undertakings. I also feel there are a lot of CMDR’s out there who missed this opportunity to speak out. So here it is:

QOL - WITH BIG IMPACT

- Button for "SWITCH TO OPEN/ SWITCH TO SOLO" directly in the mission board. People do it anyhow, with a big price in terms of immersion. Maybe if they quickly see there is not much changing in the mission offer, they'll drop the practice altogether.
- Once visited, take the same screens/ UI for engineers that you have when visiting and make almost all of them always available after leaving (minus the mod generation part).
- Have the bottom left station icon in supercruise dynamic showing the orientation of the station.
- Waypoint availability for route planning in galaxy map.
- Hotkey for docking requests.
- Make gimball weapons sight indicators default on forward when the enemy deploys chaff (not flying around like now) with a message like "Tracking assist unavailable."
- Auto triggering of the discovery scanner when first entering a previously unvisited system.
- Make the shop lights more focused and make them shine over longer distances. Especially on the big ships. Maybe even couple them with the players view, so that when I turn my head to be able to move the spotlight.
- Key binding for emergency jump that retracts al hard points and jumps.

- Stop spawning the same NPC right on top repeatedly in supercruise generating an endless loop of escape-interdiction-escape-interdiction (it is immersion breaking).
- Once the landing gear is down, transform the bottom left display panel into a rearview display to see behind the ship.
- Best approach vector (and maybe trajectory) for the selected ground target on central HUD when in orbital flight.
- In supercruse allow total scan of ships even if they are not in view.
- In supercruse, show on radar in a noticeable manner (or even through a message maybe) when someone is lined up for interdiction behind you for more than 5 seconds?
- A filter for the mission/passenger board to show only the missions with destinations that are present in player's active missions.
- Display a decay timer for High Wakes.

Ok, I took it off my chest.

If you feel the same, please feel free to second me mentioning what you believe to be the top 5 most important of these QOL improvements, and maybe the devs will make it happen. I think it has more chances to happen if we keep it short and concise.

All the best commanders!

 

[BAD Canon]

I also just missed out and would like to contribute a suggestion.

I recently went back to playing as a mercenary/bounty hunter and because my ship didn’t have a cargo rack, I was impacted on what missions I could actually accept due to majority of missions having commodities as part of the payment. I really didn’t want to change my build but I didn’t see a choice. So I suggest that either:

1: Like cars we drive today, they all have boot space. So every ship should have a fixed 4 tons of cargo racks that can’t be taken out or

2: If we don’t have cargo racks then a completed mission can still be handed in and the 4 items as part of the reward is automatically sold to the marketplace and the item’s value is given to the player instead.

 

[Adhock]

Oh dear god. Someone else who doesn't pay attention to their instruments.

- Button for "SWITCH TO OPEN/ SWITCH TO SOLO" directly in the mission board. People do it anyhow, with a big price in terms of immersion. Maybe if they quickly see there is not much changing in the mission offer, they'll drop the practice altogether.

Not gonna comment on this.

- Once visited, take the same screens/ UI for engineers that you have when visiting and make almost all of them always available after leaving (minus the mod generation part).

...Wat? Do you mean you want to be able to see all available blueprints for your level of access and their ingredients instead of just the one you pinned? I'll admit this would be nice.

- Have the bottom left station icon in supercruise dynamic showing the orientation of the station.

Station entrance always faces toward the planet it's orbiting. This has not changed. Sounds like you need to change your approach.

- Waypoint availability for route planning in galaxy map.

Do you mean the ability to plot out each individual jump on a multi-system trip manually? I can see people wanting to plot their own route system by system instead of letting the auto planner do the work.

- Hotkey for docking requests.

So I take it you haven't practiced the key combination enough times for it to be muscle memory yet. Only takes me a few seconds and usually I have permission before I consciously realized I've already requested it.

- Make gimball weapons sight indicators default on forward when the enemy deploys chaff (not flying around like now) with a message like "Tracking assist unavailable."

And remove the only downside to gimbled weapons? The way this forum cries when balance is disrupted? Yeah that'll go over well.

- Auto triggering of the discovery scanner when first entering a previously unvisited system.

Why would it do that? Each scanner has a range on it. You want to unveil they entire system in one go without a scanner drop into the Nav Beacon and scan the Nav Beacon itself. Voila. Instant map. Still need to surface scan each planet though.

- Make the shop lights more focused and make them shine over longer distances. Especially on the big ships. Maybe even couple them with the players view, so that when I turn my head to be able to move the spotlight.

Not gonna help you unless the sun's being blocked. Running lights are fine as they are, if you can't react the second something is in your lights, YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST.

- Key binding for emergency jump that retracts al hard points and jumps.

So the fact the ammo counter is on your screen isn't hint enough your hardpoints are out and you need to pull them back in?

- Stop spawning the same NPC right on top repeatedly in supercruise generating an endless loop of escape-interdiction-escape-interdiction (it is immersion breaking).

No comment. I don't see a fix to this myself.

- Once the landing gear is down, transform the bottom left display panel into a rearview display to see behind the ship.

What the hell are you doing that requires you to need to see behind you when you're LANDING? The landing radar that show you your whole ship not good enough for you?

- Best approach vector (and maybe trajectory) for the selected ground target on central HUD when in orbital flight.

Same as when you break atmo. Between 5 and 60 degrees depending on gravity. Not that hard to figure out when your ship is not in the blue zone on approach.

- A compass for orbital cruise.

Not paying attention to the HUD again I see. Otherwise you'd see the Lat/Long numbers above the gravity indicator. Compass degrees are top of the HUD when you hit atmo.

- In supercruse allow a basic scan of ships (based on the others ship transponder) even if it is not in the view.

Already in game. I can already see what kind of ship it is and where it's at. That's as basic as it gets and tells me quite a bit. Not to mention it's position and orientation compared to me.

- In supercruse, show on radar in a noticeable manner (or even through a message maybe) when someone is lined up for interdiction behind you for more than 5 seconds?

The whoosh of them flying past you uncomfortably close wasn't enough of an indicator? Not even the message of "I've been waiting for a ship with a haul like yours" is enough of a warning that someone who doesn't have your best interests is interested in you? How much of your instruments are you ignoring at this point?

- A filter for the mission/passenger board to show only the missions with destinations that are present in player's active missions.

And still ignoring your instruments I see or you'd have noticed the little orange globe that's present in the Galaxy, System, and Navigation panels. That's your mission destination indicator.

- Display a decay timer for High Wakes.

Okay. That would be handy.

If you'd pay more attention to your instruments instead of trying to fly entirely by eyeball, half of these issues won't be issues.

 

[QUASAR-M]

Oh dear god. Someone else who doesn't pay attention to their instruments.
If you'd pay more attention to your instruments instead of trying to fly entirely by eyeball, half of these issues won't be issues.

Thank you for your well-argued, detailed reply.


- Have the bottom left station icon in supercruise dynamic showing the orientation of the station.

Station entrance always faces toward the planet it's orbiting. This has not changed. Sounds like you need to change your approach. - I'm already approaching from the planet, but it will still be helpful to have a more precise approach in order to deal better with the planet's gravity well. As you already know, the stations entrance is not perfectly perpendicular towards the center of the planet. I'd wish that everything "stationary" that is displayed in there (station/ planet aso) to rotate according to my relative position to that object...

- Hotkey for docking requests.

So I take it you haven't practiced the key combination enough times for it to be muscle memory yet. Only takes me a few seconds and usually I have permission before I consciously realized I've already requested it. - In my book it is a QOL improvement, no matter how good I am at doing it as it is now. It takes a "few seconds" to long for a simple docking request.

- Make gimball weapons sight indicators default on forward when the enemy deploys chaff (not flying around like now) with a message like "Tracking assist unavailable."

And remove the only downside to gimbled weapons? The way this forum cries when balance is disrupted? Yeah that'll go over well. - They won't have convergence on target, nor will they benefit of the minute gimbal and higher firepower the fixed weapons have. I'm also advocating vor a smaller tracking radius for gimbaled weapons. Right now they track so much that I'm amazed, they are more like forward turrets.

- Auto triggering of the discovery scanner when first entering a previously unvisited system.

Why would it do that? Each scanner has a range on it. You want to unveil they entire system in one go without a scanner drop into the Nav Beacon and scan the Nav Beacon itself. Voila. Instant map. Still need to surface scan each planet though. - I hear you. Indeed the discovery mecanic could/ should be more engaging than it is now. I like your proposal. Maybe the drop on beacon should be mandatory for a full discovery of the system. And there should be no "infinity" scanner. The most powerful scanner could have maybe a 10.000 - 15.000 ls range, and all the scanners should have the ability to detect the highly emissive celestial bodies in the system (stars). Outside the bubble, where no beacons are present, one would have to engage in a bit of exploration to entirely discover a system. This could be coupled with a higher bonus for discovering and/ or surface scanning an entire system. But this is another story. If what you say is that the current exploration system is not engaging enough I'm with you.

- Make the ship lights more focused and make them shine over longer distances. Especially on the big ships. Maybe even couple them with the players view, so that when I turn my head to be able to move the spotlight.

Not gonna help you unless the sun's being blocked. Running lights are fine as they are, if you can't react the second something is in your lights, YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST. - Bigger ships should have more powerful light projectors and searchlights. When I am on the dark side of a planet, I really need those lights, not only in name. The searchlight of a police helicopter shines more light than what we currently have on an Eagle. I think this is a very important feature, especially for those roaming on planets.

- Key binding for emergency jump that retracts al hard points and jumps.

So the fact the ammo counter is on your screen isn't hint enough your hardpoints are out and you need to pull them back in? - It is when I'm not stressed. It was about emergencies, like combat engagements that can be decided in seconds. It is a QOL improvement, that I think it would be welcomed. Maybe not a key binding, but a double keypress or something.

- Once the landing gear is down, transform the bottom left display panel into a rearview display to see behind the ship.

What the hell are you doing that requires you to need to see behind you when you're LANDING? The landing radar that show you your whole ship not good enough for you? - This would benefit large ships that are assigned landing pads located right there near the stations entrance (I always fly my ships manually). And all the ships in crowded stations more or less, so that you know when you have a huge ship coming straight at you from behind. It is definitely not a "must do" but I think it is a QOL improvement.

- Best approach vector (and maybe trajectory) for the selected ground target on central HUD when in orbital flight.

Same as when you break atmo. Between 5 and 60 degrees depending on gravity. Not that hard to figure out when your ship is not in the blue zone on approach. - I have no troubles guiding my approach (but my girlfriend does have). I think it would be a QOL improvement for a lot of other casual players. Then they'll have to maintain the correct path (I imagine something resembling a grid like tunnel - "like that one we have for launced ships docking" - towards the destination), so it will still be gameplay involved. It would be best if we can trigger such a feature on/ off.

- A compass for orbital cruise.

Not paying attention to the HUD again I see. Otherwise you'd see the Lat/Long numbers above the gravity indicator. Compass degrees are top of the HUD when you hit atmo. - You are right (I’ve removed it from the initial post.). I always wondered why I don’t have a sense of orientation around planets, but now I realize I never discovered this feature because I was never really in need of it. I couldn’t notice it, and I find out from the forum now, like many other things in ED. I think maybe there is problem with ED, and that’s too many numbers displaying things and too few graphical ways of displaying those numbers. It maybe needs more graphical and dynamic UI to look more “gamey” and self-explanatory.

- In supercruse allow a basic scan of ships (based on the others ship transponder) even if it is not in the view.

Already in game. I can already see what kind of ship it is and where it's at. That's as basic as it gets and tells me quite a bit. Not to mention it's position and orientation compared to me. - Again you are right. My suggestion doesn’t stand as it is. It is valid only if it is to scan all the info without facing the other ships. (I have edited the main post) But maybe (for some) it would take out the fun of spiraling in supercruse chasing “tails” and acting as a time sink. After all, sometimes it seems like this game is poised to make one sink time in highly repetitive activities. (I hope not.)

- In supercruse, show on radar in a noticeable manner (or even through a message maybe) when someone is lined up for interdiction behind you for more than 5 seconds?

The whoosh of them flying past you uncomfortably close wasn't enough of an indicator? Not even the message of "I've been waiting for a ship with a haul like yours" is enough of a warning that someone who doesn't have your best interests is interested in you? How much of your instruments are you ignoring at this point? - What about in open when other players are involved? And if I follow someone coming straight from behind from a greater distance, do they still hear the whoosh?

- A filter for the mission/passenger board to show only the missions with destinations that are present in player's active missions.

And still ignoring your instruments I see or you'd have noticed the little orange globe that's present in the Galaxy, System, and Navigation panels. That's your mission destination indicator. - That's something different. I was talking about a QOL improvement. I meant to have a way to quickly see directly in the mission board if there are any other missions having destinations that coincide with the missions I already have stacked, without sifting through maps that sometimes take a lot of time to load.


Thank you again for your feedback and insight, I really appreciate it.