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[SafariJohn]

There are several fleet management problems in Starsector right now:
- buying/selling ships (and swapping them from storage) requires switching screens
- some new players don't realize they can buy ships
- outfitting a bunch of ships at once, even using autofit, takes a lot of clicks


These problems can be solved by reworking the fleet screen to include autofit and drag-and-drop buying/selling. Here is a mockup proving it can be done:

Spoiler

The various autofit options are revealed using a button:

[close]

As you can see, this would allow you to quickly swap ships around and assign autofit variants to them. You could even select and autofit ships that are still for sale or in storage, though the former should obviously be reset if you don't buy it. Setting up autofit variants would still need to be done in the refit screen. On top of all that, buying ships and autofit weapons could be tallied up into one complete transaction.

I sized my mockup for Starsector's minimum resolution, but larger computer screens should be able to have multiple columns of ships on each side. Maybe the distribution of columns could even be adjusted dynamically! I can think of some times that would be useful.


I am sure you can imagine how much easier managing a fleet would be with this revised fleet screen. Even completely swapping out your fleet would be a breeze. It would be a big change, but I believe having easy access to autofit, single-screen swapping between submarkets, and tallied-up transactions would be worth it.

[pairedeciseaux]

Indeed, less screen switching to manage player fleet would be much welcome. 

FYI, a previous discussion: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=15554.msg250759#msg250759

My UI idea was player ship list on top, secondary ship list on bottom, drag and drop between the two lists. Also secondary list could be either a market, storage, or a recovery.

I sized my mockup for Starsector's minimum resolution, but larger computer screens should be able to have multiple columns of ships on each side. Maybe the distribution of columns could even be adjusted dynamically! I can think of some times that would be useful.

I think currently the UI does not grow larger than 1920x1080 (maybe the size cap measured in pixels is actually smaller than that). What's coming in next release (I suspect) is only global UI scaling, meaning you won't get more UI elements, you only will get larger UI elements (and text) to fit larger screen resolutions.

[CoverdInBees]

If a radical change like this is too much work, or too clunky/cluttery, it would at least help to make some of the possibilities more obvious.

I was pretty active in figuring out the possibilities when i was a new player (just 10/11 months ago), looking up things on the wiki and here on the forum, exploring menus, etc. Yet, for instance, it still took me at least a couple of days to figure out that storage could also hold ships.

Even just making the buttons a bit bigger could be of some help, i guess. Or maybe some more tutorial tooltips to make you aware of things.

[SCC]

Testing ships before purchase would be nice, but a view like this seems constrained, even if it had 2 columns for both player fleet and markets for 1920x1080 resolution.

[SafariJohn]

At 1920x1080, there is room for 5 columns that are each 6 ships tall. That's actually about double what the current fleet screen shows.

Frankly, I am amazed I fit everything I wanted into 1280x768 (though there is the one overlap shown in the gif). I threw the mockup together in a day or two, so I expect the layout could be put together more elegantly with some thought.

FYI, a previous discussion: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=15554.msg250759#msg250759

My UI idea was player ship list on top, secondary ship list on bottom, drag and drop between the two lists. Also secondary list could be either a market, storage, or a recovery.

That conversation was definitely an inspiration for this! I don't think a top and bottom layout could work for the constraints I used, unfortunately, because the autofit UI elements are too tall.

If a radical change like this is too much work, or too clunky/cluttery, it would at least help to make some of the possibilities more obvious.

....

Even just making the buttons a bit bigger could be of some help, i guess. Or maybe some more tutorial tooltips to make you aware of things.

Yeah, a lot of stuff is tucked away behind inconspicuous buttons and the like. Buying/storing ships is an important one, and I would like to call out autofit, the transponder, and removing d-mods.  When these later mechanics were first added it made sense to slap them behind a convenient button in case they didn't work out, but now that they have matured they deserve a more prominent place in the GUI design so they can be used more easily and are more obvious to new players.