Some (hopefully) not hard to implement thingies

Gratuitous Forum Suggestions
1

  1. A more ‘in depth’ icon for the list of ships on the left side of the battle screen. Considering those icons only list the health of the ship’s hull, wouldn’t it be possible to add two bars for shields and armor? Or, more simply, replace the green color with blue (until shields are gone) and the orange color for armor. Once both are gone, back to green as the hull breaks. Splitting the icon down the middle, with one half blue and the other orange would help in the cases where armor is blasted off but shields are still going strong. The green would show when one of them failed. Making the icons a little bigger would help of course.

  2. As for the list itself, being able to ‘specify’ which kind of ships you want to see would be helpful. The ideal method would work just like the deployment screen with ‘Fighters/Frigates/Cruisers’ and the ability to ‘mix’ them.

  3. Or, the list could have a column or two added instead of the scroll bar. This option could cause problems in ridiculous situations, but there should be some solution I just can’t see.

  4. Mixed Fighter squadrons. Pretty self-explanatory. The squadron would move at the speed of the slowest fighter, so as to keep them together and provide a drawback, but not a horrible one.

  5. A ‘Parting Gift’ Cruiser module. It could double the shockwave damage from the explosion, but it would still have the drawback of harming friendly units alongside enemy units. Yes, I recognize the kamikaze option, but I don’t think anyone would hate it too much.

  6. While scrambling the guidance systems of incoming missiles is very fun, what about a Cruiser module to reassign a missile’s target? Aimed at the enemy, naturally. A SLOW recharge and a short distance the stolen missile can travel would make it somewhat reasonable.

  7. Alliance Lightning Beam should have no minimum range. Might be worth using then.

2

#1 is an excellent idea, not sure about the implementation (note you can be down to low hull hitpoints and still have full shields, for example) but would be very helpful for quickly switching your view to whoever is taking a pounding at the moment.

#2 Is a fine idea as well, but #3 is a can of worms I suspect.

#4 could be resolved by allowing fighters to be assigned escort orders targeting other fighters; not sure why this isn’t allowed now.

#5 would be fun. In general I’m seeing a lot of requests around the forums for some kind of Area-of-Effect weapons, mostly to discourage stacking a little. 123stw has implemented something like this in the mod he’s working on, see viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4995&start=60#p32486

#6 could probably be done in a non-overpowered way, but I’m not sure if it would actually see use unless it was a little too good.

#7 is trivial to implement as a mod. I can post the code for it if you want.

3

I believe the damage (and possibly the range) is determined by the power output of your power plants, so you can replicate this effect yourself by putting an enormous amount of power on a cruiser.

4

Yes, the manual states that the effect of a shockwave is proportional to the power output, but it’s silly to toss 100+ power on a ship that needs 60 or 70. It’s also expensive, while a module would be cheaper, especially if you’re going the kamikaze route. It might work better as a frigate module now that I think about it.

5

Bumping my own thread for simplicity’s sake.

Two more very simple ideas.

Give ‘Protect’ a command like Formation and Escort. Shift + P.

Place the name of the currently selected ship in the status box along with the modules. I know you can center the camera on the ship with a click, but sometimes it’s just is easier.