With all the ships, guns, defense, and other possible options, it’s important to have a way of determining what works for you and what doesn’t. This is what the statistics are all about: how well did you do.
Unfortunately, I don’t find the current statistics very useful for this. I can tell how many of my shots hit, but I don’t know which weapons were hitting and which weren’t, nor do I know what range I was at or how fast my target was moving (two major things that affect whether or not you hit them). Likewise, I don’t know what weapons were used against me and how effective each was. I don’t know who my ships were spending their time targeting or how effective they were at killing their enemies – all I know is who they helped kill and whether or not that ship was left standing at the end of the battle.
The shot hit/absorbed/deflected bars are also confusing. If it says I hit 80% and 20% reflected, does that mean 20% of the 80% that hit are reflected? Judging by the fact that they often add up to more than 100%, it seems so, but I can’t always tell which bars come from others.
Basically, I want to see a lot more data, and I want to see it broken down in finer detail: percentages of hit/reflect/absorb per weapon per enemy, time spent on each enemy, ranges that enemies were targeted at, damage done per weapon per enemy – basically anything that would point to what weapon to use on which enemy. Likewise for hits taken so you can determine what defense to use.
While doing so, keep in mind that you don’t want to always see the details – sometimes you’ll want to see all damage, not just per weapon per enemy. I don’t have a good suggestion for how to manage this, but players will want to have a lot of freedom to filter and categorize data as generally or as specifically as they need.