Make the overview the go to place for things in space, add the directional scanner, and probe scanner too it.
Making a central window with a list of the stuff in space around you. Instead of the need for 3 seperate windows.
The overview would become a passive short range targeting scanner, a long range active sensor array and an extreme long range passive anomaly detector with control for probes added as a supplement when fitted to the active long range active array.
Key features,
de-stack tabs to show multiple 'overviewsā
Mix the things you want to see in different tabs
Scanner button integrated into overview
Probe sizing added to overview
No thanks. DScan and Probing should NEVER be mixed into overview. Itās already a cluster-ā ā ā ā that people need to modify for their needs. If anything, we should be able to see bookmarks on overview. Thatās about as far as Iād like to see it go right now.
Okay, first and foremost, thatās not how Eveās coded. The Overview is pretty specific to a lot of Eve coding and doesnāt play nicely with a lot of other things. Changing how it works in any significant way is not a small project.
Second, just from a UI perspective, youāre trying to pack way too much into one window. Those are three different things, they are not needed all at the same time for a large portion of the playerbase, and trying to mash them together is going to result in something that isnāt very usable to anyone.
In short, no, this isnāt the UI rework we need and personally I really donāt want it.
The first thing Iād do is separate the probe scanner and long range sensor array from my short range overview.
Oh waitā¦
Hard to imagine how this would work.
Where are you putting the settings for short d-scan? long d-scan? the ādirectionalā part?
What happens if im in a big fleet trying to follow primaries (so my overview is sorted by name/ship) and i have a bunch of ships on long scan that i canāt shoot but are right in the middle of my overview?
The d-scan part of the overview is mostly empty. No value for, distance, playername, corp, alliance, speed, angular velocity etc etc and ship name is added (which is not what i want on an overview). Same for probe scan. A bunch of empty info replaced by weird extras (scan strength on my overview?)
And then add all the probe scanner settings and buttonsā¦
I donāt want to see on d-scan the same things i want to see on probe scan or the same things i see on overviewā¦ So separate the overview you say? Awesome, now i have exactly what i had before but each window has a hundred more buttons and settings.
I definitely want to split my overview and see several tabs at once. But donāt want it melded with probe scanner and d-scan.
Great feedback, i can understand its hard to envisage how this would work. Imagine it the other way, having the dscan and probe scanner being able to have additional info on that previously would only be on the overview
Being able to probe enemies on grid from just the main overview without having to use a seperate window.
Having anomalies on the overview,
Having a tab with whats on grid and dscan results in a different color.
Dont think of it as combining the 3 systems but unifying them to spread the functionality and give more options and remove ui clutter.
Tbh i feel the current ui is trash and needs a complete rewrite, the feel and functionality should remain the same. Things like broadcast button being tiny for a much used feature make me feel ccp have work to do.
The main problem lies in that āadditional infoā should be in an easily accessible location that isnt the primary āgo toā that is also used to facilitate combat. On that note, frankly, NO I dont want anomalies ā ā ā ā -festing my overview. When I want to know what the furthest thing in system is that someone may have warped to, I REALLY dont want to sort through 20-30, even 50 anomalies just to find it.
You run into other problems as well. For the probe launcher, aside from anomalies, everything in there are personally determined warpables. No one else can warp to something based on YOUR probe window unless you share the bookmark, anchor their warp, or throw them in warp as a fleet āmanager.ā With dscan, nothing is warpable outside of ongrid objects that are valid warp targets (and already on overview), or celestials (stations, planets, sun, moons, structures, etc).
In other words, the information you can get from dscan is strongly irrelevant to whatās on overview (because the information you do what is likely already on your overview) and has no impact on whatās in your probe scanner (aside from narrowing down areas to probe). Probe scanner information is pointless to have on overview because itās also already āin spaceā and itās more efficiently used with dscan anyways.
All in all, Dscan and Probe Scan are off-grid tools, overview is on-grid. Visible and out of view. I meanā¦ after this change, if I need to have multiple overview windows just to get the same presentation of information that we have now, how did your change make it any better? It just seems to be something that you cram APZ into a window that just doesnt support it. Disparate information doesnt becomeā¦ intelligible (for lack of a better word) just because in in one location. Relevancy and context help.
How does the change make it better? It removes duplicate options, it moves focus for all stuff in space to a single system that is customisable to your needs, it will reduce the screen space needed for this information, can bring more focus to what you want to see by having an seperate overview just for what you need. Unifies the probe launcher and dscan.
Perhaps youāre right if it aint broke dont fix it.
Duplicate information between UI elements that do completely different things isnāt a bad thing though, and thereās a very serious risk here of crippling all three in the attempt to merge them. Either by cutting out useful information or creating something thatās so information dense that itās unusable, especially for small resolution displays.
I want to say that this is another solution in search of a problem but thatās quite right. Yes, the UI needs work and thereās plenty of room for improvement, but this isnāt a great way to go about it.
For example look at the primary function of the Overview, interacting with things on grid with you. Thereās no need to have anything on there that canāt be interacted with directly, either by targeting it, approaching it, warping to it, ect. It might be useful to have an option to put probed results on the Overview, but that doesnāt require merging the probing window with the Overview.
Similarly the DScan is meant to be a quick ping of the surroundings outside of the overview. Thereās a lot of information that shows up on the Overview that doesnāt show up on DScan, and you donāt have enough information to interact with DScanned targets.
With probes the actual probing interface is the most important thing, and results that still need to be pinpointed have the same issue as DScan results, they canāt be interacted with and therefore donāt belong on the overview.
Beyond that generally all three of these things want different filters for what does or doesnāt show up. An explorer wants ships on his DScan but not on his probing interface, a PvP pilot may want everyone on his overview but only enemies on his DScan. Those are just examples too, thereās a lot of other variations, especially between the overview and the other two.
On top of that as I said previously the Overview is basically the king of Legacy Code. From the little bits Iāve heard it seems to be coded as a singleton object that at lot of the client and UI is built around, so significant modifications to it are like open heart surgery on Eveās client. Very tricky, very time consuming, and very likely to go horribly and hilariously wrong.
Thereās a reason that the only changes that have been made to the overview in a decade are the adding of options for object interaction. The two biggest changes in that time are probably the very recent addition of three more overview tabs, and the ability to save and share overview profiles at some point in the past. That last one is more a change to other things than the overview itself though, since profiles themselves have been around since almost the start of Eve I think.