Engineers
How do we send Engineers around? I don't see them on the ship, like we have the crew in FTL or DamCon in Artemis. Oh, wait, the small icons on the equipment in the Power Wheel. Got it.
Will we be able to rename Engineers? Maybe by modding? I believe that a role-playing community would have a lot of use and benefit from something like that. Having the same Engineers on the same ships, advancing their stats through missions, promoting them to officers and moving them from the ships to other ships (the promoting and moving doesn't have to be handled ingame, it can be roleplayed by simply removing them through modding, if we're abble to mod them).
Yeah you'll be able to rename Engineers, without modding (though the Engineers system will have moddable elements too).
Engineers will be persistent by default, they will will be attached to the Chief Engineer's (the player's) profile. If the ship's Chief Engineer is replaced by other player then the Engineers will change too. There will be a server option to disable persistent Engineer, this will replace them with a random group.
We have big plans for Engineers in terms of roleplaying and gameplay. They will have hidden personality traits which might cause them to abandon their assignment during combat, or show extreme courage in fighting a serious fire. On top of that an Engineer might get Critically Injured, which would mean that they will die (permanently) if they are not taken to a starbase with a medical facility within a certain time. On top of that, when repairing a severely damaged piece of equipment an Engineer might request a part (like a flux capacitor, or self-sealing stem bolt) from one of a selection of stations to make the equipment fully operational. We're very excited about these procedural narrative driven gameplay elements.
Up to now the plan has been to have Engineers "follow" the Chief Engineer (when you are playing as Chief Engineer on the ship, you use your Engineers). Your idea of transfers is very interesting though, perhaps a Chief Engineer can transfer one or more of his Engineers to another player, using them to give a boost to a more junior player for example. Perhaps there could be a loan system during a mission as well... there's a lot to think about there.
Bottom bar and Ship Status
The chat seems awfully small, so if everyone is spamming something, it'll be really hard to read. On the other hand, if people are using voice, the chat is mostly useless. Will it be possible to resize or scroll through chat ingame, without modding/scaling the UI? Will it be possible for the chat to display other status messages, like the amount of damage taken with last hit or current ship status? I do see there's one status message, but I don't know how many will there be.
I tried to give the Chat as much room as possible, but it is limited. Clicking on the Chat box expands it upwards (over the exterior view) and allows you to type.
I am still working on the design for Notifications/Alerts, but there will be a way of getting up-to-date info.
Will the ship be limited to 5 stations? No chance of two people sharing the same role, like (partially) in Artemis? Having two people on the Science/Comms might sometimes prove beneficiary, though I do seem to recall you said it won't be needed.
The icon indicating the number of ships locked onto ours seems unnecesarily big. It seems like there should be something else useful sharing that space.
You have "forward" and "aft" shields. That is a difference in terminology. You should either use "forward" and "back" or "fore" and "aft", and not mix them.
The ship is in three colours: blue, gray and reddish(?). Why? Is it an indication of damage? I guess it is, since the "hull integrity" is not at maximum, but what do the different colors mean? How can it be repaired? Is it dependent on the equipment in the appropriate part of the ship?
What's the energy signature? The amount of energy left to the ship, so "the more, the merrier"? The amount of energy that the ship is using, where using more energy leads to easier discovery by the enemies, so "as few as possible"?
At the moment the system does allow players to share a role/station, if the Captain enables the "Shared Roles" setting. I think this will mainly be useful for training though, as two or more players in the same role would just get in each other's way.
Yeah the target locks indicator is too large. Any suggestions on what other info might be useful to the whole crew?
I will clean up the terminology, well spotted.
The armour (ship silhouette) and equipment icons are colour coded for damage. These colours are only to give a general impression, the Captain/crew will need to ask the Chief Engineer if they want more specific info.
Green = 0 to 20% damage
Yellow => 21% to 60% damage (The yellow does look grey on the hull, I will correct that.)
Orange => 61% to 99% damage
Red = 100% damaged (destroyed)
Equipment can be repaired in flight, armour and hull damage has to be repaired at a station with a repair bay.
The Energy Signature is how visible you are to sensors, it is a product of the power, heat, and active equipment (shields, sensors) on the ship.
Everything else
Ship name: I'm curious, what does the "U.B.G." stand for; "UNION Battle Group"? And what are the numbers below the name?
Top right corner: What is the icon "manage crew"? Why are there the icons of all 5 stations in the corner? Will a player be able to switch between stations without returning to the "operations menu"? Will the players be able to play every station without reserving one for themselves, like in Artemis? That's a recipe for disaster.
Equipment status: What's all this? I can try guessing, but there's too many options. Will the empty field below it be filled with different ship equipment?
Presets: Like for the tactical screen, I do believe that the gear icon should be moved to the right hand side, so it's one below the other, which allows for shorter mouse movements in order to click on each one. On the left hand side you could have an indication of the shortcut key (numbers from 1 to 7 could work nicely).
Power wheel: I do not know if you've changed the colours at the outer rim of the equipment parts, but the two red shades are much clearer now. Also, how come there's no connections between the nodes?
Exterior view: What's the difference between three views? Can we see them? Are we able to switch the camera we're looking from in the "Cameras" view?
Yeah U.B.G. is "UNION BattleGroup".
Manage Crew is a button which brings you to the menu where you select your role(s), and where the Captain manages the crew (changing settings, kicking players, etc.). The circular buttons allow you to switch to other roles (the TAB key) will also do this. In this example the player only has the Engineering role, so the others are not clickable (which is why they are flat and dark).
Players can only share roles/stations if the Captain enables the "Shared Roles" setting for the crew, otherwise you have to claim each role you want to play in (the Captain can remove people from roles too).
Currently the bar displayed on the Equipment Status panel is just the variables of the current selected equipment (Power Level, Heat, Integrity, and Stability). Underneath that will be graphs, information, and buttons for actions you can take on the selected equipment (such as Shutdown and Flush Coolant).
Good point on the Presets, I will move the gear icons across and see what that's like. The shortcut keys on the Preset buttons are a great idea, I'll add those in.
I have tweaked some of the colours on the Power Wheel. This is a mockup of the UI, using the actual vector assets which will be used in-game. I didn't bother adding the connections to the mockup.
I haven't yet worked on the cameras for the different views. The first button, Cameras, will allow you to chose from the cameras on the hull of the ship. The second, Targets, will let you choose one of the targeted ships - the view will do it's best to keep it in view using the cameras on the hull, and Torpedos will toggle between the camera mounted on any active or loaded Torpedos. If there are no Torpedos it defaults to a forward camera.
Whew! I do hope I'm not getting on your nerves with so many questions and comments.
I love the questions, so keep asking as much as you'd like.
