Radial selection for commodity quantities

[Danieros]

Currently, for buying commodity we have a - and a + selection (left/right). It starts slowly, then crazily speeds up as you keep it selected. I believe we could have an option offered to do this more quickly, and efficiently.

Having a wheel display going from 0 to maximum amount, and then having the mouse movement or analog input from gamepads letting you quickly select any point and then dragging from it would be a tremendous gain in speed and general precision:

Want to go the maximum amount? Start with an almost full up input to start at about 95% of the way then easily move the remaining amount before clicking/releasing the hold.

Want to go for a precise amount? A simple right, down or left start would be 25%/50%/75%. Then carefully move for the remaining amount.

 

[varonica]

Personally that sound absolutely terrible, and looks horrible, I certainly hope they don't implement anything like that, but that's my opinion, I don't use the market much so it probably doesn't count for much but I find the current implementation fine.

 

[Danieros]

Personally that sound absolutely terrible, and looks horrible, I certainly hope they don't implement anything like that, but that's my opinion, I don't use the market much so it probably doesn't count for much but I find the current implementation fine.

The look is just a visual representation since I talked a lot of directions.

I wouldn't remove the existing option, so it would certainly not be a problem for those that prefer the existing method.

I trade a lot (even more after I got a FC) and a radial option like this would make it much, much faster to fill a hold. The difference will be even bigger when setting up FC orders, or when you want to have different commodities. It's extremely annoying when you don't want to fill the hold - if you have to stop at 25%/50% or another specific amount for a mission and end up you overshooting it because the speed is going up by 1 unit increments and then suddenly it's going up by 10.

 

[metatheurgist]

I'd like it if i could just type the amount in.

 

[Danieros]

I'd like it if i could just type the amount in.

For keyboards that would be very natural (to the point I wonder why we can't do it - the game started as PC only), and very comparable to this method leveraging the mouse speed.

But for gamepads that wouldn't be much of a gain.

 

[Lugh]

For keyboards that would be very natural (to the point I wonder why we can't do it - the game started as PC only), and very comparable to this method leveraging the mouse speed.

But for gamepads that wouldn't be much of a gain.

keypads are pretty easy to type in even on game pads.

 

[Danieros]

keypads are pretty easy to type in even on game pads.

It still takes a few seconds with multiple inputs, rather than the fraction of a second you'd take when used to radial selection. It's comparing about ~3 button presses (supposing it's a 3 digit cargo number) along with navigation to each number on the screen that would pop up with the digital keyboard versus moving the analog stick just once for the starting amount - want to fill up half your cargo hold? Just move the analog stick down and you're done with one single input.

 

[Connie Spaceplone]

i am just as dissatisfied with the current commodity quantity selector, but i dont think this is the solution.

maybe three rows of inputs, +/- 1, +/- 10, +/- 100 would be better?

 

[Danieros]

i am just as dissatisfied with the current commodity quantity selector, but i dont think this is the solution.

maybe three rows of inputs, +/- 1, +/- 10, +/- 100 would be better?

I thought about buttons, but it's going to make a clutter of the UI having eight different buttons with a +/- value associated and a lot of inputs cycling between them (we'd need 1000 for FCs). I'm trying to keep it as fast and clean as possible. Frontier clearly wanted a clean design since it has just one single +/- button and the speed up effect (it starts at moving at 1 per interval, then goes up to 10) but it results in this usability mess.

When offering a radial solution like this, it would be fair to also offer keybinds to a few values. Speed throttle is a good example. You can use the throttle at an incremental hold (default) or you can set it up to be one single input increments of like 16.6%/20%/25% (iirc). Or you can simply setup keybinds for directly setting it at -100%/-75%...etc all the way to +100%. For example, a lot of the time I use the 0% keybind to stop the ship and the 100% to go full speed with a single input.

 

[Lugh]

It still takes a few seconds with multiple inputs, rather than the fraction of a second you'd take when used to radial selection. It's comparing about ~3 button presses (supposing it's a 3 digit cargo number) along with navigation to each number on the screen that would pop up with the digital keyboard versus moving the analog stick just once for the starting amount - want to fill up half your cargo hold? Just move the analog stick down and you're done with one single input.

True but a keypad on a game pad is less inconvenient than a radial menu on m+kb