The basic headers you need in the overview are logo, distance, name and type. They already take a lot of place. If you add the 4 columns regarding velocity ; velocity + radial, transversal and angular velocity, the overview is now way too big.
The velocity columns have their use and they can determine how to optimize DPS on the target so we should have easy access to that data. In the screenshot, I’ve added those 4 values on the enemy ship icon (top left) and on the locked target area at the bottom, I’ve added only 2 values (angular + velocity). We could also add those values in the “selected item” box.
Adding those values on the target wouldn’t necessitate labels, the players could personalize the emplacement of the values ; if I want angular at the bottom of the target and velocity on top or if I want to display only angular on the right, I could do whatever I want. On the locked target area, displaying values left and right could be problematic, so top and bottom could be enough to display up to 2 values out of 4.
i always found it annoying to spot important information in the overview, especially if it gets full. the ui is just not as funcional as one would expect from a game in 2023.
however, i would prefer something like a customizable hud projection of certain values from the selected target instead of having the attached to the targeted enemy.
Oh I’d way rather spot this information in the overview. I don’t want to add more elements to my scan. But I agree it isn’t well laid out and I’ve always found the overview columns frustrating because to have full information you need like 800 horizontal pixels.
The newly added multiple overview windows goes a huge part of the way to fixing this. I hide almost all columns in my Gates overview window but I keep the ones you mentioned in my primary/pvp window.
I think “aspect” (from RL pilots BRAA information) is more useful than transverse+radial velocities. It describes the relative motion of the pilots. I would communicate it with color.
Add a Relative Velocity column whose values are color coded by aspect.
A red relative velocity of 220 means the target is hot (every second he is 220m closer to me)
A white relative velocity of 220 means the target is orbiting (we are remaining at same range)
green relative velocity of 220 means the target is cold (we are increasing range by 220 m/s).
Other things that would help:
Move the most relevant information to front of types and names
Gallente Scout NVY-5 Gallente Small ADV-1
NVY-5 Scout Gallente ADV-1 Small Gallente
Allow scientific notation with user-specified precision
1022 m/s 1,203,112 km
1e3 m/s 1.2e6 km
Provide a combined Alliance and Corp column or have alliance fallback to corp if the pilot has no alliance
Fix the padding, it only needs to be on one side of each column
Going with colors is a good idea. Also my proposition is optional and fully customizable, so if you like your overview, create a zillion tabs and switch between them all the time, you’ll still be able to do it that way. Personally, I’d like to have velocity information mainly when I have a battlecruiser or battleship shooting at small stuff. If angular velocity is high, no need to waste ammo and a cycle on target. If the target makes a mistake and its angular velocity drops to 0, then a well timed volley will take care of it.
Here’s a sample with colors and as I mentioned before, you could setup 0 to 4 additional values within the new layer:
The main problem with colors, is that you don’t have the real value of “low”, “mid”, “high”. Sometimes low isn’t low enough, so you’d need the real number to take the best decision.
this looks fancy, but its not very practical imo. when manual piloting or reading the grid/environment the camera gets rotate often which means it can be all over the place.
to find something fast(er) it has to be close to where the eyes are most of the time, always at the same place, visible enough and not hidden in less important information.
Red could mean it is above 1000m/s, orange could be between 1000m/s and 500m/s, yellow could be between 500m/s and 250m/s, and green could be below 250m/s, or something like that so you have a reference of what each color means
Edit: or red could be between 100% and 75% of it’s max speed, orange could be between 75% and 50%, yellow could be between 50% and 25%, and green is below 25% of it’s max speed
Of course, however, let’s say green is angular velocity from 0 to 0.5, but you’re shooting a frigate with battleship artillery and you know that anything over 0.2 won’t connect, then in this example, “green” doesn’t give you enough information to take the best decision.
We could go on forever trying to tweak it the best we can but we need a system that can help the frigate pvp brawler and the pve players. The pvp brawler looks at the target, not the locked target. The pve player will fix mostly the locked targets. In the end, we need a system where velocity values can been seen from multiple points of views, outside the overview. Let’s hope the CSM or CCP pick up the idea…
The would imply all sorts of calculations going on every seconds on all ships on grid in relation with your weapon properties. Only CCP would know if that would be feasible or not.
Also, if you go with colors, you could see switching colors on the screen every seconds, which could be annoying if not subtle enough. Anyway, those are details, professional game developers take days/weeks to develop the best solution. I’ll leave it in their capable hands.
I just want to push the idea that velocity values outside the overview could help us in certain situations, it would help keep the overview as small as possible and prevent an overflow of information restricted to the overview.
