Hello ladies and gentlemen!
While I was fighting, the little 3d ship icon that wiggles within our shield indicator caught my eye, and I somewhat realized we could do a couple of very cool things with it.
You see, all that icon does right now is tell us what type of ship we're in, and in what general direction it's being steered - it tells us stuff we already know, basically. It's hardly problematic, but I'd suggest it's much more relevant in the enemy icon info to the left of the UI, where it actually shows the target's relative rotation.
And I thought, Man! wouldn't it be awesome if that little icon, thought small and weirdly angled it may be, actually displayed the status of different systems, for both our ship and the target?
For an example, at full 100% status on everything, the icon would appear its normal bright red-orange color, without any difference (That's what I think that color is, but I'm slightly colorblind so yeah... if I say anything stupid color-related, blame my genome). However, everytime a subsystem would be hit, its model would appear a bright yellow in transparency through the ship's icon. You would see the drives, the FSD, the power plant, etc. as the enemy hammers them with his weapons. Also, with increasing damage, the module would progressively brighten itself so as to display its poor state without the need to dig through the modules window.
In the same way, targeting an enemy's subsystem would show a white outline of its position within the enemy ship's icon, and any subsystem we manage to damage would also glow and change color.
Indeed, that would require the creation of sub-meshes within the ship icon for every ship, and that's a lot, but hey, it's a suggestions forum, after all. One can dream...
New and inexperienced players would be unable to make much sense out of it because of the icon's angle and the complexity of the systems, but more experienced ones would be able to see exactly which modules are being targeted by their opponents and how damaged they are, with just a glimpse at the icon.
I think that would increase the UI's ability to communicate information in combat a very big lot.
Thanks for reading!
Also, we need a reload button.
While I was fighting, the little 3d ship icon that wiggles within our shield indicator caught my eye, and I somewhat realized we could do a couple of very cool things with it.
You see, all that icon does right now is tell us what type of ship we're in, and in what general direction it's being steered - it tells us stuff we already know, basically. It's hardly problematic, but I'd suggest it's much more relevant in the enemy icon info to the left of the UI, where it actually shows the target's relative rotation.
And I thought, Man! wouldn't it be awesome if that little icon, thought small and weirdly angled it may be, actually displayed the status of different systems, for both our ship and the target?
For an example, at full 100% status on everything, the icon would appear its normal bright red-orange color, without any difference (That's what I think that color is, but I'm slightly colorblind so yeah... if I say anything stupid color-related, blame my genome). However, everytime a subsystem would be hit, its model would appear a bright yellow in transparency through the ship's icon. You would see the drives, the FSD, the power plant, etc. as the enemy hammers them with his weapons. Also, with increasing damage, the module would progressively brighten itself so as to display its poor state without the need to dig through the modules window.
In the same way, targeting an enemy's subsystem would show a white outline of its position within the enemy ship's icon, and any subsystem we manage to damage would also glow and change color.
Indeed, that would require the creation of sub-meshes within the ship icon for every ship, and that's a lot, but hey, it's a suggestions forum, after all. One can dream...
New and inexperienced players would be unable to make much sense out of it because of the icon's angle and the complexity of the systems, but more experienced ones would be able to see exactly which modules are being targeted by their opponents and how damaged they are, with just a glimpse at the icon.
I think that would increase the UI's ability to communicate information in combat a very big lot.
Thanks for reading!
Also, we need a reload button.
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