Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: SafariJohn on December 15, 2019, 12:49:31 PM
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I don't know about you, but for me the supplies/day UI element hides more than it shows. Fuel/day is outright useless.
I suggest replacing these two UI elements with more player-friendly stats. For supplies, I suggest the UI show how many days remain before supplies run out, including CR recovery costs, etc. For fuel, please just give us how far in lightyears we can go.
You can see how nice to have these UI elements will be with the Logistics Notifications utility mod: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17379.0
In addition, the mod gives audio and visual alerts when you run low on supplies and/or fuel, which I also suggest for vanilla.
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Fuel/day is more useful to have on hand in the travel view, because you also get days-of-travel to your set destination in the same screen. It's also good because that way all the info in the same panel is "per day".
For fuel range, the most important and most useful is the fuel-range toggle on the map screens and that's really all you need because it works perfectly due to the fuel consumption mechanics.
Although a "enough fuel to reach destination" light that goes green/red or indicates some other way on the current destination panel might be useful - the problem there being that "enough fuel" isn't a binary state, it's trinary: Not enough to get there. Enough to get there. Enough to get there and back.
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A lot of people are not as good at math, so going from total fuel to lightyears remaining isn’t as straight forward as one might think, compounded by the fact that videogaming goes well with beer.
Although, that being said, the fuel range overlay in the intel map is far more useful than than the fleet info bar for telling the player how far he can go.
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Days remain before supplies run out would be useful, especially when you get these gigantic spikes after combat or through a storm or corona or whatever. As it is I see no reason why they shouldn't appear when you hover your tooltip over them and/or press F1. Same with for range. Though I am fine, I recognise that not everyone can estimate figures as easily as I can.
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As it is, while the information is there, a few warnings would be nice.
Most notable one is, if you set a destination, it tells you the fuel consumption for the trip. However, this doesn't include round trip cost (which is usually important) doesn't tell supply cost, and I would like to be able to also have 1-2 battles worth of supplies earmarked for every ship, to handle the battles that will likely occur, as well as hyperstorm/solar damage.
Having enough to reach a rim system before realizing you used the wrong warning is kind annoying, in a save scum kind of way. "Realistically" while yes, you as the captain should make sure, one would hope at least one crew member/logistics officer would point out that you are being an idiot.
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I realize now I wrote this suggestion poorly. Showing fuel LYs is a minor thing. The meat of the suggestion is showing the number of days until supplies run out.
Many new players struggle while trying to figure out how many supplies they should carry. Days of supply remaining converts the abstract su/day and su/month values into something people can understand. For example, it feels quite dramatic when you skim a corona and lose 30 days of supply in a few seconds.