Very much a work in progress, I’ll probably update this daily…
Do I see an expanded description field for the modules? (Being an inveterate smartass, I like having a bit more room to work with while inserting shout-outs and snarky commentary.)
Looks AWESOME Cliff!
Expanded comentaries are a really nice addition!
However, it feels like the powergen, crew used and the other data at the top right is ocupying way more space than it needs, what about adding player comments about the hull? A “Hull Description” were the player can write things like pruposes of the ship, capabilities and flaws, right under “Hull Name”.
Will be the background animated? Stars shinning, asteroids passing, or something like ships or even the ships you created before flying around, even more, fighting? (2 or 3 ships)
Is that ship actually white or is it highlighted for some reason?
That ship is just the blueprint view of it. Don’t forget this is at a big res (1920 width, and the GUI has to squash down to 1280 res, so there may seem to be some spare room here that actually isn’t available on smaller resolutions.
It’d be nice if you add the stats of the ship to be automaticly desplayed somewhere, like shield strenght&resistance, armor, hitpoins and DPS maybe. 
Yes absolutely, that will be going in, it’s just not done yet 
I like the new look of the hull boosts. Gives it a little pep without making it too complicated to grasp and a glance.
I also like having the boosts not in the same space as the hull outline. Speaking from a modding perspective, I have had a few hulls where I played around with the sequence of hull boosts to keep them arranged so as not to disappear behind the hull in the design screen. Good to see that won’t be necessary anymore.
I like it, especially the look its way more appealing than the gsb1 counterpart but, and i think this is what unknown originally meant, is it possible to display the total hitpoints, armor strength, and shield strength.
also, i’m positive this is on the to do list, but will we get a bar for ship descriptions?
other cosmetic things and menus; maybe somewhere in a secluded space of the screen it might say waht hull this is called, and what class it is; ex: Hawk - Fighter Hull
when we select a new / different hull I would like it if there was the ability to filter by race and hull class, same when loading a design, and if we’re still using the fleet hq make we could squeeze in a little button that takes us straight to it
and as for the hq, filter by race specific weapons weapon class (fighter, cruiser) and type (weapon, power)
that is all i have to say
In my opinion, in the ship summary " Power Produced" and" Power Consumed" should be put together in the same bar ( or pie if you like). I would do just the same with Crew.
I don’t understand why “Weight” is near “Cost”. How about “weight” and “speed” in the same line?
How about a Fraction for Crew and Power ?
For example:
Crew: 138 / 250
Power: 34/52
The bar will be in red if the Numerator is greater than the denominator and the bar will be in Green if the Denominator is larger than the Numerator. That way the bar will auto size depending on any new modules that are placed. Saves you some room for other things.
I’ve been tidying things up a bit, and putting in other arrangements depending on screen resolutions. here is the same screen at 2560 res and 1280 res (resized to 1024 for both)…
Design feedback will make an airdrop for me here sometime this evening…prepping some visual aid for it, too. 
Quick question, when your placing modules on the ships will we be using the drag and drop method or will be be able to also pick and place ?
Pick and place: Just like the Mas deployment method from GSB I but used for turrets. So in this case you select the turret with a left click and then left click on the area you want the turret to be placed. Right click or ESC turns off the selection.
Reason why I ask is that pick and place would be better for multiple turret placements plus it would be more accurate as you do not have the turret icon obscuring your vision when placing a turret on a location that has 2 mounts close together.
Yes, some aspects of that are a non-trivial challenge. Doubly so, now that the number and the variety of things that the player community needs this screen to include are more than what the original game offered.
On one hand, I’m not sure the legacy arrangement is meant to be read too deeply into by observers. On the other hand, I can see why you’re peeved by displaying those stats in ways other than logical pairings.
What I find peculiar is what I see when I take a step backwards and look at which stats have a progress bar. Why Speed? Is there going to be a hard-coded speed limit in GSB2? I definitely hope not! And why Cost? Will there be some kind of mission-assigned price ceiling applied to completed ships? That’s another thing I do not wish GSB2 to include. I very much doubt that either Speed or Cost need a progress bar.
Another thing that seriously troubles me about status bar displays for things such as Speed and Cost is that, for players who are completely new to GSB2 and also never played GSB1, these bars strongly imply the existence of a maximum value that cannot be exceeded. Hopefully such a maximum will not actually be the case in the sequel, and experienced GSB1 players like us know that it’s (hopefully) unlikely to be added.
But the noobs will not know that when they arrive – the ambiguity is clearly there and it’s right in your face. For that reason alone, I seriously think that that method of data display on the Ship Design screen should be re-examined for replacement by possible alternatives. OK, I am reasonably confident that not all noobs will have a problem with the existing method of data-display for Speed and Cost at design-time.
BUT…the vagueness is still lurking there, and it’s definitely going to snare somebody here and there, multiplied and spread out during the long lifetime that GSB2 will have. Why not just nip the trouble in the bud now, before it can take root as a permanent source of misunderstandings?
Now that I’ve looked closely at how the Ship Design status bars for Speed and Cost actually contain the seeds of serious trouble, it makes me all the more critical of the use of those same bars with the other three stats: Cost, Power and Crew. Maybe that is a good thing; do we really need the bars for those stats, too? I’m starting to doubt it. Let’s start thinking about un-ambiguous & space-efficient alternatives for that.
Oh, I surely hope so. We’ve certainly waited long enough for one, and it would be a substantial help for our modding community. At present, we’ve very little means for modders to contact their audience in-game directly aside from the actual gameplay workflow itself. As a modder as well as a deeply expressive person, that has long bothered me. I am absolutely in favor of changing that GSB1 shortcoming for the better.
I’ll second that. I would like some kind of finer-grained sorting method that a player can apply to hulls. At the moment, I think that’s something more topical for the Hull Chooser screen instead of the Ship Design screen, though. If I misunderstood you, i apologize.
Wow. [blink blink]
That’s a good idea, Darkstar; nice space-efficient elegant solution. I admit that the more I look at them, the less enthused I am about these horizontal bar indicators on the Ship Design screen. 
After realizing the inappropriate use of those with the Speed and Costs stats, I can’t leave it alone. With the fraction method from your suggestion, why bother having the status bars at all? Rope 'em in – just leave a short, vestigial version of a bar. Because the fraction is doing the visual “heavy lifting” here. In that case, the horizontal bars would be primarily serving only as a color indicator, anyway; they do not need so much area on the screen to do that task.
I understand the functional as well as graphical role that they occupy, but the more I ponder them, the less necessary they seem. From where I’m standing, it looks to me like you just pointed out a clean, effective and player-friendly way to detour around this particular use of that legacy UI tool…
Seconded, with enthusiasm! Pick-and-place is the way to go.
If we can duplicate the Deployment screen’s “Mass Deploy” feature, that functionality will serve us excellently when applied to modules:
Mouse hover on top of desired module
Right-click to enter pick-and-place mode
Left-click to select the desired module
Move mouse back to right side of screen
Multiple left-clicks upon the hull display to install as many as you need of that one module type
Right-click again to terminate pick-and-place mode
The above entails less total mousing back and forth across a significant width of the screen. And the mousing I refer to is actually a series of bothersome click-and-drag moves, too; good riddance! Mass Deploy for modules means that there would be one less chain of “redundant yet unavoidable” click-throughs in the sequel game.
As seen in GSB1:
Select a module
Click-and-drag right
Install that module
Player wants more copies of the same?
Mouse left
Select
Click-and-drag right
Install
Mouse left
Select
Click-and-drag right
Install
Mouse left
continue “ad nauseam”…
Eliminating the annoying obstacle between us and precise placement of weapon modules into turret slots is a great bonus, too. My carpal-tunnel wrist problems also thank you.
…More feedback tomorrow…
does this strike your fancy?
Visually, that’s close to the essence of the status-bar replacement solution I have been leaning towards, dafrandle – thank you. You did good work there. 
That’s even despite having, as per your filename, “reallyquickedit”-ed your image. 
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The fontography problems at the left side are not a major issue; for the game, Cliff can probably adjust all of the font kerning himself. As for the indicator hashmarks at the midpoint of each status bar, in my mind’s eye I’m imagining them (based on the sample numerals you chose) all the way over to the right, and the bars completely in the green.
The best aspect of your mockup image is that all of the vital numeric values shown are not too crammed together. Though snug, there’s still a bit of whitespace every place that it’s required. Overall, it’s just a bit small but that can be tweaked.
I bet that with a bit of “relaxation” through more whitespace, and some font-tidying on the left, this would be a decent candidate for consideration of replacing the proposed GSB2 Ship Design status bar display.
