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[Serenitis]

A couple of minor things that could be streamlined and/or made clearer:


Ship Repair Notifications

After a battle you will sometimes see a large number of ships repairing in quick succession, completely overtaking the notification area and pushing everything else off-screen.

This becomes the norm if the player ever learns the Field Repairs skill which provides a non-zero level of free repairs meaning ships will tend to repair 'instantly' after battle if not significantly damaged.
Having singular ships being repaired and being presented to the player by name is fine.
But overloading the notification area with multiple concurrent items to the detriment of everything else is less than ideal.

Suggest to change the format of these notifications to match the same as with general intel - multiple concurrent notifications are 'stacked' into a single item.
For repairs it might look something like



Weapons Group Display

In battle, your display data at the bottom of the screen shows detail of whatever the currently selected weapon group contains.


It would be useful if the weapon group showed if any of the weapons in the currently selected group were disabled.
Something like

[Grievous69]

Excellent suggestions. If I may add on the first one: When we're getting notifications for a single ship (repairs, storm damage, etc.), why not just show the ship icon beside it? I know the name is unique but I never know all the names in my fleet and have to often go into fleet screen to see if something important was damaged.

[FooF]

I like these a lot also.

I’ll echo Grievous69 that a ship icon or the hull-type repaired is more important to me than the name of the ship. I rarely update ship names and naming it “Hammerhead #2” is practical but kills any verisimilitude to actual naming conventions.

Re: knocked out weapons, a red font with a countdown timer as to when they would be online again would be a :chef’s kiss: 

[Amoebka]

If you want to get really artsy-fartsy, instead of a countdown for disabled weapons, the name of the weapon itself can act as a progress bar, with letters changing from red to green one by one until the weapon is fully repaired and the whole line is green again. Saves space on the screen and is arguably easier to read at a glance than a decimal number.

[Grievous69]

If you want to get really artsy-fartsy, instead of a countdown for disabled weapons, the name of the weapon itself can act as a progress bar, with letters changing from red to green one by one until the weapon is fully repaired and the whole line is green again. Saves space on the screen and is arguably easier to read at a glance than a decimal number.

I think Foof's suggestion is much more elegant, having a timer that slowly completes so you can easily tell when it's going to come back (you know like a circle gradually filling out). The problem with the letter idea is readability, it's much harder to tell at a glance. Even the less fancy option that is decimal numbers, at least gives you something digestible. Although not sure how decimal numbers would look like while phased, so that's another negative.

[Alex]

Good ideas, thank you! I appreciate the very nice mockups, too. Made the improvement to ship repair messages - it'll show the ship name on the first one, and then "Repairs completed (<number>)" after that.

Also changed the weapon list to use the orangy-red color for disabled weapons.

If I may add on the first one: When we're getting notifications for a single ship (repairs, storm damage, etc.), why not just show the ship icon beside it?

Makes sense, but is kind of a pain to actually do (i.e. more time than I'd want to spend on it right now). The icon is currently just an image, not a more dynamic icon like the ship icons are. Can't really just use the ship sprite there, that doesn't look great.

Re: knocked out weapons, a red font with a countdown timer as to when they would be online again would be a :chef’s kiss: 

Hmm - I don't actually want to show this info, much like with engine flameouts. For overloads, it's so important that the time remaining needs to be shown, but for these, I like the little bit of uncertainty it adds.

[Grievous69]

If I may add on the first one: When we're getting notifications for a single ship (repairs, storm damage, etc.), why not just show the ship icon beside it?

Makes sense, but is kind of a pain to actually do (i.e. more time than I'd want to spend on it right now). The icon is currently just an image, not a more dynamic icon like the ship icons are. Can't really just use the ship sprite there, that doesn't look great.

Oh yeah that was definitely something I knew was a hassle to make, it just seemed cleaner than a class name beside the ship name idea, which would just add more text to the message. But I guess it's not that much more text when you look at it.

Also WOOOOOO different colours in UI, I always thought that area could use improvements without becoming a chaotic rainbow display.

P.S. While you're in the QoL mood, do you have any ideas to make the hard flux notch on the flux bar a bit more visible? It's definitely noticeable, but imo it could stand to be a bit more prominent, given its importance.

[Serenitis]

What would be really neat if you could pull it off for the hard flux notch (and have the time for it) is to have it actively flash another colour in time with the shields being hit, so there's a visual link between taking shield damage and this little thing on the bar moving.
The colour change would also make it far more obvious something was happening that you need to be aware of.

Failing that, a solid colour might still be helpful.



Probably the red one tbh...

[gG_pilot]

the name of the weapon itself can act as a progress bar, with letters changing from red to green one by one until the weapon is fully repaired and the whole line is green again. Saves space on the screen

Change color of text in a middle of a word, is receipt for problematic readability. Rather use "recharge" bar of a weapon, this way, it shows weapon recharge-reload status when line is green (weapon working), OR weapon repair status  when it is red (weapon is repairing). One graphic elements shows two statuses which are mutually exclusive.

Re: knocked out weapons, a red font with a countdown timer as to when they would be online again would be a :chef’s kiss: 

Hmm - I don't actually want to show this info, much like with engine flameouts. For overloads, it's so important that the time remaining needs to be shown, but for these, I like the little bit of uncertainty it adds.

Imagine a StarTrek bridge scene, Commander Pickard in the middle says Unleash foton torpedo, .. nothing happens, no one response. Data, Riker all on board are clicking on their panels. Of course 7of 9 , looking pretty. Pickard yells again FIRE!!
Nothing happens, No response,
FIRE,FIRE,FIRE!!! Pickard screams.
No one say a thing,  whatsoever.
only a tiny voice from behind says :
"I like the little bit of uncertainty it adds"

Average Trekkie watching this scene make spontaneous flame-burst .

[FooF]

Fair enough. Though it got me to thinking about weapon damage. I don’t rightfully know if once a weapon gets knocked out if additional damage to it hinders it from coming back online any slower. Obviously weapons come back online even when under Emp fire so I know they can’t be rendered offline forever.

One of the drawbacks of a countdown timer, I thought, would be if additional damage made the timer have to add time as the weapon took additional damage. But I don’t really know if that’s a mechanic or not.

[gG_pilot]

What would be really neat if you could pull it off for the hard flux notch (and have the time for it) is to have it actively flash another colour in time with the shields being hit, so there's a visual link between taking shield damage and this little thing on the bar moving.
The colour change would also make it far more obvious something was happening that you need to be aware of.

Failing that, a solid colour might still be helpful.



Probably the red one tbh...

Use two colors for the main bar should be even better. First part of bar > dark green - hardflux, top part of bar light toxicgreen - softflux. Then you dont even need a notch. Make it flat, use colors instead.

[Alex]

What would be really neat if you could pull it off for the hard flux notch (and have the time for it) is to have it actively flash another colour in time with the shields being hit, so there's a visual link between taking shield damage and this little thing on the bar moving.
The colour change would also make it far more obvious something was happening that you need to be aware of.

Failing that, a solid colour might still be helpful.



Probably the red one tbh...

I'd be wary of mixing flat-ish colors like that, but tying the notch to shields taking damage is an interesting idea. This is too important/not-clear-enough for me to want to do something quick with, though. The other stuff was all pretty "yep, this'll just make things better".

Fair enough. Though it got me to thinking about weapon damage. I don’t rightfully know if once a weapon gets knocked out if additional damage to it hinders it from coming back online any slower. Obviously weapons come back online even when under Emp fire so I know they can’t be rendered offline forever.

It doesn't - otherwise, as you say, weapons could/would stay down forever.

Imagine a StarTrek bridge scene, Commander Pickard in the middle says Unleash foton torpedo...

Considering that uncertainty about when a critical system will come back online is a key source of tension in too many Star Trek scenes to really name, this might not be the best possible counter-argument.

[gG_pilot]

Imagine a StarTrek bridge scene, Commander Pickard in the middle says Unleash foton torpedo...

Considering that uncertainty about when a critical system will come back online is a key source of tension in too many Star Trek scenes to really name, this might not be the best possible counter-argument.

You misunderstood argument.
Point is,
the Star-trek commander gets the info system is down. commander do know what is ship status >Adjust tactic to current situation >Then wait to repair >   here come uncertainty.
 But  your (questionable) design idea is do not provide info that system is down. > commander do not know what is ship status > commander is blind and deaf  man > here comes uncertainty

[Megas]

Hard flux needs to be better shown to the player.  For months after I first played Starfarer, I did not know about hard flux and soft flux because the notch was invisible to me.  When someone mentioned the notch, I found it after some difficulty.  Now (for years), I know where to look, but it is still annoying looking for a notch that is barely wider than - and same color as - the flux bar.

[Alex]

Imagine a StarTrek bridge scene, Commander Pickard in the middle says Unleash foton torpedo...

Considering that uncertainty about when a critical system will come back online is a key source of tension in too many Star Trek scenes to really name, this might not be the best possible counter-argument.

You misunderstood argument.
Point is,
the Star-trek commander gets the info system is down. commander do know what is ship status >Adjust tactic to current situation >Then wait to repair >   here come uncertainty.
 But  your (questionable) design idea is do not provide info that system is down. > commander do not know what is ship status > commander is blind and deaf  man > here comes uncertainty

I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying? I was saying that I didn't want to show countdown timers, in a post right after saying that I'd added red-text to show which weapons are disabled. And of course, even now you still have visual info on which weapons are offline - they're dimmer, spawn repair-sparks, and there's a floating-text message when they go offline.