When the player starts to use larger ships, the weapon groups display in combat can become quite... Expansive. It covers up a non-trivial amount of display space that effectively obscures some part of the action.
Such as:
Also with the weapon groups on display, there exists an odd incentive to have as few different weapon types on your ship as possible,
and have them grouped in a certain way in order to condense the list as far as possible so it doesn't cover up as much of the screen (same types grouped together so you get 1 line of 4x instead of 4 lines of 1x etc).
A fairly minor consideration, but one that does have an effect on the player.
It would be nice if there were an option to hide/remove this if the player is so inclined.
This could potentially be done in the combat screen with a clickable element in the group header.
Which when picked would result in the following, which would remain set until the player reverts it:
The difference is actually
more jarring when viewed side-to-side, instead of just "imagining" what it would be like.
This would have no effect at all on how weapon groups work, and all preset groups will still be accessible via thier corresponding number. All that's changed is the up-front information has been hidden.
Alternatively, if this is not possible / desirable there could be a menu option to toggle this information (defaulted to "on").
Imo this is a less "elegant" and less immediately obvious option, but arguably more consistant with the current game configuration.
As I tend to gravitate toward larger, slower ships that are easier for me to control, I've been finding that the weapon groups are frequently "in the way" of what's going on. And since I prefer not to micromanage and only ever control a single weapon group, the collected group data isn't really all that useful to me.
I'd much rather see more of the action, and if that could be an option that would be really nice.
