Suggestion against visual confusion

GSB2 GSB2 Gratuitous Discussion
1

Hello,

I would like to suggest something since I have problems in terms of overview during the battles.
For me it is hard to tell what type the ships are just by looking at them. Especially the difference
between Fighters/Gunships and Frigates/Destroyers.

Back in GSB 1 it was always clear on first sight if a ship was a fighter, frigate or cruiser.
In GSB 2 with the 6 sizetypes it is way harder. Ships from the same size appear in different sizes
due to being on different z-levels for example. There is also the option to change their visuals in design
which can further mess with that.
A zoomed out frigate with a alot of attached viasuals can appear bigger than a cruiser.

To adress this issue I have some ideas:

The easiest way as a minimal solution would be to include the shiptype on the tooltip where it shows the
shields/armor/hull-stats.
Another idea would be a toggle-button in battle which overlays all the ships with a (tranparent) color depending
on their type. If that is too awkward to code maybe just reduce it to the shieldbubbles.
One more idea would be the use of tactical symbols on the minimap.

2

Good suggestion.

Like you, I also think that this is the easiest way to accomplish the improvement. It’s also the cleanest and least ambiguous way to accomplish this without also introducing any new inconveniences.

What’s vital here is to convey the hull-size text in a way that is neither a weird new visual distraction, nor a user-interface boondoggle which is not linked to any other helpful data of interest to the player. Since the ship-info popup during battle is something that’s mission-critical to the player, and already displays very relevant data, adding a single new line of text to the popup is not an involved, overly-complex fix.

The admittedly, well, mini minimap [ :slight_smile: ] can escape being overrun by new symbols, and no messy translucent overlays upon the attractive ship sprites would be needed on the main map.

3

I think exaggerating the size differences would also help. Increase the size of gunships just a tad, make frigates a tad smaller, increase destroyer size slightly, and make dreads a lot bigger. Some of them are almost the size of cruisers.