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[sqrt(-1)]

Hi Alex, thanks for keeping an eye open for suggestions.

I was watching CohhCarnage's stream and was reminded on how unintuitive, unergonomic and pointlessly limiting the combat deployment screen is.

• Novices have no intuitive insight that it's possible to deploy ships in flanking positions in pursuit engagements.
• Due to the repetitiveness of the dialog it is often even overlooked by experienced players that the it's a pursuit engagement. (at least that's a mistake I make too often)
• Ship selection for deployment positions is very unintuitive and has poor ergonomics. Multi-mode selection click cycles are objectively bad.
• Command ship selection is cumbersomely segregated in the combat dialogue.
• Why shouldn't we be able to control the starting positions of ships precisely, so that a slow Mora doesn't block our fleet?

My suggestions to fix this:

• Ship deployment should happen directly on the combat command screen, without a toolbox hiding what's happening (e.a. seeing that enemy ships are running).
• The fleet should be listed as drag & drop item list at the bottom of the screen.
• The possible deployment positions should be highlighted as areas, with a simple AA grid for drag & drop ship positioning. A 6×2 grid should suffice I think. It can be made vertically (bottom) and horizontally (flanks) scrollable for extreme fleet sizes.
• An auto-deploy button (e.a. frigates to the flanks) could skip obvious and tedious selection, leaving the player the option for fine-tuning like positioning individual ship in the deployment positions and just removing ships depending on confidence. Less clicks all the time, because it's optional.
• Command ship selection should be toggled with a simple right click on the same deployment screen.
• As for everything, descriptive & instructive text for the state of the game / active menu should be displayed at an unobstructive position with a hide button, not just interrupting infoboxes which are  dismissed too quickly out of haste/excitement/carelessness, let alone those random infoboxes.

I think that this would greatly improve the experience for new and experienced players alike while even adding a tiny bit of gameplay depth.

Thanks! 

[Wyvern]

This sounds like it'd be a fair amount of effort to implement...

...And also overall a fairly good idea, though I suspect actual use would bring up some refinements - things like 'click on ship to auto-place somewhere vaguely sane'?

And, last but certainly not least, doing deployment this way would allow ships to get highlighted in orange if their burn-in path would intersect an asteroid, allowing us to finally have a way to avoid "Oops, your ships stopped right at the start of the map, too bad that gives the enemy a bunch of extra time to run away in the pursuit battle you wanted."

[bob888w]

Id also say that: Begin engament should be the first option,
with change fleet command being the second.
I also feel like combat readiness really needs to be hammered in a bit more.

[BCS]

I for one want a "Automatically deploy more ships when DP becomes available" button/option.

[Nick XR]

Novices have no intuitive insight that it's possible to deploy ships in flanking positions in pursuit engagements.

What?!

Add to the list people who have owned the game for 8 years.
Having some control over ship positioning on deploy once your fleet has a few capitals would be great.

[toopok4k3]

Another thing I have noticed Cohh still haven't figured out is the basic "tabs" (refit, inventory, fleet, intel etc.). At least they do work as standard tabs and should be on the top of the screen where a human actually looks (I recall struggling to remember where they are back in the day, bottom is just the worst place, at least when you are in a spaceport.).

He has also never looked at "black market" ship catalog at markets, he's been missing out on the better market option due to this. These market tabs should be visually connected to the ship grid to make it more apparent that the big button actually controls what's on the grid.

The Cohh stream is a gold mine to find UI quirks. Lack of autosave being a big one. I'd personally be fine with time and location based triggers for autosave, having the option of latest 4-5 saves to be loadable. (trying anything more complex would be insane tbh)

[Hiruma Kai]

Novices have no intuitive insight that it's possible to deploy ships in flanking positions in pursuit engagements.

What?!

Add to the list people who have owned the game for 8 years.
Having some control over ship positioning on deploy once your fleet has a few capitals would be great.

Well, it is pursuit battles only though, so doesn't come up often on typical playthroughs.  If the enemy is already running, you can also just auto-resolve.  It also doesn't really help the capitals since you can only deploy frigates half way up on the left or half way up on the right to create the gauntlet enemy ships are passing through.  Destroyers, Cruisers and Capitals are still stuck behind.

You can do it by left clicking multiple times on a frigate and it'll cycle between deploy, deploy left, and deploy right and not deployed.

However, that doesn't take away from the fact that option isn't currently communicated on pursuit deployment screens.  I don't think it is even a tip listed anywhere.  I guess if you fight a retreat, you'll notice enemy frigates coming in from weird angles - but that presumes you actually play through such a retreat and are paying attention to the strategic map.  I think the only way to find the command is by making a mistake or changing your mind.  Deploying a frigate in a pursuit battle and realize you don't want it, and then try to un-deploy it and realize there's more than one possibility.

[TJJ]

The Cohh stream is a gold mine to find UI quirks.

... and then consider his PoV is of someone who plays games for a living, and (something I didn't know) studied game design at university!

[Soda Savvy]

On one hand, after taking a look at the stream, yeah. He does run into some things that aren't the most intuitive.

On the other, he still has that same age old issue many people(streamers especially) have.

*Piece of information shows up on literal center of screen*

"Imma just completely ignore this"

*not even surprised pikachu face because in one eye out the other*