How come nobody noticed...

That the range indicator UI on the deployment screen is half the size it should be…
Either I’m going mad or it is… and always has been. I’m just fixing it now. Someone check my sanity and take a look at the range indicators on the deployment screen (the feint white circles), and then the indicated range when you select a turret in battle (those ones are definitely right).
I’m glad I spotted it before someone here humiliated me :smiley:

Spotted this ages ago. I kept trying to wrk out if it was optimal range for a wepon, or what. Its harder when you dont know the size of the squares. If its max range… always wondered why you didnt put that in.

Never noticed.

BTW, on the deployment screen ships are pretty small (but perfectly workable) on a 8192x8192 map. On a much larger map it gets sorta tricky :slight_smile:

Probably nobody noticed because those circles aren’t that useful after all.

Something I would like to know is why there is a grid in Deployment that the ships do not snap to? I mean they should either snap to a cross section or the center of a square, right? And how far exactly is Range compared to the grid squares?

Probably I didn’t notice because the grid isn’t labeled. I only use the circles for things like matching weapon ranges for a cruiser and its escorts; as long as all the ships’ ranges are off by the same factor, it doesn’t change that.

I think each grid is about 100mx100m.

The range being expressed in ‘units’ with no indication ever ingame as to what any given distance is ‘units’ wise meant working out ranges etc was just trial and error.

A new player just looks at it, sees ‘range 500’ and thinks, ‘um, ok… is that… like… a lot?’ It’s a pain in the ass even to work out where to place escorts or whatever to have useful engagement ranges.

I worked out about how long 100 units was ingame simply by using fighters with escort orders.

It’s worth noting that a redesign of the design-ship layout screen would allow weapon ranges to be expressed meaningfully (including the differences due to hardpoint layout) using a tiny amount of screen-space. It’d be useful to allow people to balance ranges (and ensure ‘rear’ guns aren’t accidentally kept out of range) without a hundred million test-runs.

I thought the ships were scaled up to be easier to see on the deployment screen rather than that the ranges were scaled down. I never quite connected my surprise at sudden furballs breaking out immediately on small maps with a bug in the weapon range display in deployment. Now I feel like a dumb beta-tester. :wink:

how dumb do you think I feel? :smiley: