The Zetin Sunn
1st Armored Division
1
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Posted - 2013.12.09 00:16:00 -
[1] - Quote
Drone UI is in serious need of love.
I would suggest getting rid of the clunky right click box (yes you can drag and drop into space now but the majority of your time with UI is right click and selecting from a menu) and replacing it with an icon on the central HUD, near where the buttons for stop, open cargo and scanner are.
Clicking this opens up a window that shows your drones in your bay in one box (BOX A) and your drones in space in another (BOX B) and a handful of buttons
If you want to launch your drones, you drag them from BOX A to BOX B. Similarly if you want your drones to return to your bay, you drag them from BOX B to BOX A. This can be done individually or by group.
Drones returning to bay will blink in both BOX A and BOX B, until they are safely in your hold, where they will appear as normal.
To make a drone group you simply click the appropriate button in the drone window, type a group name (or press enter and use the default e.g. 'GROUP A') and this will appear as a sub-category in BOX A.
You then drag your drones onto this group and they are then grouped together. Visually it could display this on the drone info (e.g. where it would say the drone name it could also say the group: Hobgoblin II [GROUP A]) as well as a colour highlight so its instantly recognisable what drones are in what group.
With the drones in space, there could be some big buttons for the basic actions.
- A big red one for 'All Attack selected target'
- A big yellow one to stop all hostilities.
- An orange one to fire at will and a blue one to return to drone bay.
You could also shift+click a certain number of your drones, and click these buttons to assign orders more specifically.
In both BOX A and BOX B you will be able to see the type of drone, its group, its shield/armour/hull (which itself should be colour coded so as its immediately obvious what is damaged).
Drones in BOX B should also be customizable to show information you could see on the overview (velocity, distance from ship etc).
The entire window should be entirely customizable. The names of groups and their colour coding. The order and position of the various buttons Whether BOX A and BOX B appear side by side or above and below each other etc.
Also, the button on the central HUD should have a radial menu similar to the scanner, allowing you to quickly select the basic orders eg 'all attack selected target,' 'return to bay' etc, so if the menu closes during combat for any reason you can simply and quickly give orders to your drones without having to wait for the drone menu to open up (reducing clicks needed to do what you want). This radial menu would also be customizable.
I think that is everything. I personally have no experience flying carriers, and obviously drone UI is a key issue for those guys. It would be nice if there are any UI implementations I've missed out that would help, or if there's anything I've suggested that would make things tougher for them.
Cheers |