I’m sure everyone knows that on Directional Scan, when you sort by “distance”, the ships/objects closest to you actually appear reversed. Meaning that ships that are “on-grid” with you are sorted from furthest away at the top of the list to closest listed further down. That means if there is a list of a dozen or more ships on grid with you, you very likely have to scroll down to see what is actually the closest ship/object to you.
This is not a simple “sort by distance again, dude”, because if you do that, the ships that are not “on-grid” with you are the ships that show up at the top of the list. And you have to scroll to the bottom of the list to see what’s “on-grid” with you. And if you’re scan distance is set at 14.3 AUs, that list is usually quite long and more annoying to scroll through than just dealing with the fact that furthest away “on-grid” ships are listed at the top of the list.
I know it’s a little thing, but it’s annoying to me. No other panel in the game displays a list of ships from furthest to closest at the top. They’re all closest to furthest.
Why do you want to see the ships closest to you on the top of the list?
I would want dscan to do the opposite thing: the ships of which I know the distance are irrelevant to dscan.
After all, if I know the distance to these ships these ships are on grid with me and visible on my overview. The overview shows much more information about those ships than on my dscan window. These on-grid ships are clutter on the dscan window.
The relevant information on your dscan is the list of ships that you do not yet know the distance to, because that is the information your overview lacks. Everything on grid is irrelevant to the dscan, because you already have eyes on them.
How does your database handle null results when sorting a by a field? Most treat them as zero, like this one does.
You’re butting your head against a limitation of an out of date system, likely something that can only be fixed by a complete recode of the EvE game engine. If at all.
Since the order of the displayed results has no effect on the game world, this correction could be implemented client side. I don’t believe it would be difficult.
The bigger deal is what Gerard said. Sorted lists will sort the smallest value to the top on the first click and treating - as the smallest value sorts all of the most relevant ships (Those not on your overview already) to the top of the list. If you had it sort by actual distance, you’d have to double click instead of single click to bring those things to the top. It’s not a big deal, but still effort expended to reduce the QoL for many pilots on the basis that the current sort order is unexpected the first time you try it, but still understood.
