Feedback at 100 hours - small suggestions

[Hoshizora]

 

Feedback at 100 hours - an overview

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2802.0.html

Feedback at 100 hours - little things overlooked

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2804.0.html

Feedback at 100 hours - small suggestions

you are here!

Feedback at 100 hours - shamless suggestions

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2809.0.html

 

 

This is level 2 of 3 in regards to suggestions.

 

This post is for small suggestions that don't appear to be too complex to put into the game. Take that with a grain a salt, considering I only have cursory knowledge of programming. I also highly recommend gating many if not most of these suggestions behind purchases/questlines, as further described in another post here:

 

www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2801.0.html

 

I know that many of these have already been suggested here and there, but I've been keeping track of everything on a notepad for the past 100 hours, so by George I'm going to throw in my two cents!

 

Without a doubt, hands-down, the most tedious part of the game is inventory management. Tedium distracts from space battles, which makes it inherently bad! Luckily, there are a few simple things and a few not-so-simply things that can be done to drastically cut down on the tedium:

 

• 
  
• Display DPS in the tooltips
  
• If you're really generous, display DPS accounting for heat/cooldown cycles in the tooltips
  
• Give every single window where turrets show up it's own sorting preference. This includes inventory, ship building, vendor - buying, vendor - selling, and researching
  
• Give more options in each drop-down box for how to sort (in every window), such as DPS, independent targetters, heat/cooldown, energy buildup, range, functionality category (damagers, miners, etc), and so on.
  
• Make a drop-down menu when a player right-clicks a turret in the inventory/ship build screens, giving them the ability to add an icon for future reference (such as a star for a favorite, a flame for a problematic heat/cooldown ratio, a cold coin for 'sell this', etc)
  
• Give turrets their own window in ship build mode
  
• Separate the turret windows into separate tabs for damaging/mining/salvaging/utility/healing/force. When I'm mousing over my collection looking for good damage turrets, it's a waste of time to have mining turrets in the same window.
  
• Add a button to throw all [whites/greens/blues] into the slot research machine.
  
• Reduce the volatility of turret stat ranges a bit. While I was fighting the end boss, I still had an iron weapon on, because it was just that good. This means I can't just disregard all iron weapons after a point... which feels like it breaks game lore.
  
• Add a checkbox in the save ship menu to also save the turret loadout, and another checkbox for non-specific turret loadout (as in, the game will fill in each spot with any turret of the same functionality category)
  
• Add a functionality to rapidly deploy turrets on your ship. It shouldn't be efficient, but it can be the quick and dirty solution when you're caught with your pants down when pirates attack
  
• Anything else that someone might have modded into the game
  

 

After that, there's also the following miscellaneous things:

 

• Please add a 'salvage' order for player-owned ships being controlled by captains
  
• The best quality of trading system upgrade should include the current stock/capacity of each buyer/seller.
  
• There's no difference between red and purple item detector upgrades. Why not have the purple upgrade also detect the huge 100k+ asteroids that occasionally show up?
  
• Please add a checkbox in build mode to show the middle lines of each block, to make it easier to place things in the exact middle of large blocks
  
• Please add a button to show all the recent notifications on the right and left sides of the screen, in case you were afk.
  
• Please add a 'buy all' button to vendors, for when you don't want to bother with the details. This is particularly useful at resource depots, when the player has more credits than they know what to do with and essentially never need to mine again.
  
• Please add commas or periods to credit numbers. It's just more satisfying to instantly know that you just gained 81 million credits without having to squint and count the digits to know what you made.
  
• In build mode: please only make my ship do the shield wobble thing when I first place a shield block, or when it's taking enemy fire. It's cool the first time, but after that it just gets irritating and blocks my view.
  
• Please add a button to freeze time while in ship build mode. It's irritating to have pirates and Xsotans show up and for my crew get closer to their pay periods when I'm trying to build a masterpiece! To avoid abuse, only let it toggle when no enemies are in the sector
  
• Please add a graphical way to represent the current crew. Something to look nice and give the sense of a growing warship as you progress through the game.
  
• Please add a speedometer on the lower-right section of the screen, with an estimate stop distance.
  
• Please add a button in build mode to scrap the ship. Include a warning window if scrapping the ship will eject upgrades/turrets or lose crewmembers.
  
• Please stop this spinning craziness that stick-ships do. It completely breaks immersion and it's not engaging gameplay to try to fight that nonsense
  
• Anything else that someone might have modded into the game
  

[Splutty]

Please add a checkbox in build mode to show the middle lines of each block, to make it easier to place things in the exact middle of large blocks

 

There's a dropdown in the build menu where you can select snap points, and one of these is 'middle of block'

 

Please add a button in build mode to scrap the ship. Include a warning window if scrapping the ship will eject upgrades/turrets or lose crewmembers.

 

Disable Safe Mode, CTRL-A, Delete.

[Pob]

Please add a graphical way to represent the current crew. Something to look nice and give the sense of a growing warship as you progress through the game.

I'd like to add show a total crew and crew quarters capacity bar on the crew assignment window

 

 

[nasabot]

I agree with most ideas you wrote in your 3 posts, but there are some, I do not like.

 

For instance the DPS tooltip.

 

1, DPS is not everything

2, tooltips should be easily readable, and if there are stated tons of numbers, it becomes tedious

 

Better, the player has to decide by intuition and the min maxer and theoryrafter can still do some math (as Id do).

 

You have to know somthing about dps:

 

Damage x Attackspeed != Double Damage X Half Attackspeed

 

 

 

About the whole turret situation:

 

Bigger turrets might be a solution. If there were turrets of double the size(but also using 2 slots) inventory management can be reduced.

 

Other options to reduces "turret cluttering" by design is to introduce moduls which increase damage of certain types(and therefore reduce the number of turrets indirectly)

 

Why use 50 turrets, if you can also use 45 turrets and +20% damage?