It would be nice if on the left hand side where the green icons for the ships is located if there was a small blue bar beside the icon to monitor shield status as well. Not that it really makes any difference in the slightest, but it would be nice.
+1
+1
+1
= 3
erh…
shouldn’t OP also count as one making it = 4?
Simply counting the +1s old chap!
Tempting, but it might be a bit confusing. Those icons fill up red or green based on health, so having a seperate bar for shields would then be a bit inconsistent. Also, for ships that have no shields but lots of armor, this would be strange, so ideally you need to show all 3, which is trivial, but would result in a very cluttered UI.
I guess one solution would be perhaps to color the green to be the armor / shield color and then switch to armor, then to hull strength as they deteriorate. But then… the problem is armor and health could be low and yet shields could be high (due to shields being dropped temporarily). In that case, it’s even more confusing…
Simply having a thin (5 or so pixels?) vertical bar on each side of the little picture wouldn’t be that cluttered, would it? Just make one on the left side of the portrait that’s blue and one on the right side that’s orange. If a ship has no armor or shields then it would be empty.
I concur…making it effective at clearly displaying critical data doesn’t mean it has to be done in a way that is cluttered and eats up much screen area.