Hi, the problem with lenses getting undeterministically damaged is that they become impossible to manage as a group which is a huge detriment in combat because it means you can’t use weapon groups anymore and have to manage every gun individually.
Not only that, but with different levels of damage, dragging a lens over a gun in Fitting also doesn’t work, presumably because they’re not damaged equally (if Rookie Help is to be believed).
So there are three problems in total:
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No easy way of seeing lens damage - it doesn’t show in container details (no column), doesn’t show in Show Info, doesn’t show as a tooltip outside of fitting. It can only be seen when fitted, but it won’t even fit if your weapons are grouped (and they’re always grouped because why would you not group). And if you do manage to finally see its damage in Fitting, and you’ve got 10 or 20 lenses of the same type, it becomes a nightmare to tell which ones are which.
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Fitting damaged lenses to weapon groups doesn’t work, which not only leads to #1, but also leads to not being able to use the lenses, unless the player is familiar with the quirks of this system and knows to ungroup, fit, group again which is functionally completely redundant and UX-wise totally overcomplicated.
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Losing 1 lens out of your group in combat makes zero sense. You either have the range you want (e.g., 200km with Aurora) or you don’t. Nobody wants only 3/4th of the guns to work.
My suggestions are:
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Fix the lens damage indicator. Damage levels should be seen and sortable-by in containers. Come on guys, you said it yourself at Fanfest - 20 years of evolution, how hard is it to display a cruicial item’s attribute in the container details.
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Make the damage chance 100% to make lens groups predictable just like regular ammo.
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Set the “ammo counter” (volatility damage to lens hp) to a statistical average of what it is now, that is, if on average an Aurora L holds for 500 shots (making up a number here), then just make sure it always hold for 500, no more, no less.