Mod to aid ship creation/balancing.

[Nózmájner]

I was thinking recently, and I was talked a little about it with Halleck. He said it is an interesting idea.

My idea is a simple mod, which can aid ship (and station and so) creators, and generally stat balancing.
It could provide a HUD with more information, like accelerations and speeds, both linear and turning. Numerical hull and shield power display, a clock and things like this.

It could have some different scenarios for different tasks. Like an obstacle course with some marked places with distances or something to check manuverability. Maybe some unarmed hostile here, so one can check if the ship can turn fast enough to track the opponent.
A simple scene with some hostile ships to check combat capabilities.
A simple scene with a straight "race track" so one can compare different ships accelerations. Something like a drag racing.

And also (if possible) a partmarket where every equipment is free, so you can check their effect on your ship.

And a simple empty scene with one or two light source for schecking texturing and light positioning.

Those different scenarios could be accessed via shortcuts whith proper xommand line options pointing to each scene and mission, for the lazy people It would be better to have some key binded to transfer the player to each scenario, but I'm not sure if i is possible.

Any opinion? Any other ideas?

Anyway, I will need a lot of help, If there's enough interest for this mod to make it.

Edit: The idea comes from that little prog for the "Nexus The Jupiter Incident" where you had a rotatable view of your ship, just like ingame, and you could check it's engines, turrets, damage maps and such.

[peter]

I was thinking recently, and I was talked a little about it with Halleck. He said it is an interesting idea.

My idea is a simple mod, which can aid ship (and station and so) creators, and generally stat balancing.
It could provide a HUD with more information, like accelerations and speeds, both linear and turning. Numerical hull and shield power display, a clock and things like this.

It could have some different scenarios for different tasks. Like an obstacle course with some marked places with distances or something to check manuverability. Maybe some unarmed hostile here, so one can check if the ship can turn fast enough to track the opponent.
A simple scene with some hostile ships to check combat capabilities.
A simple scene with a straight "race track" so one can compare different ships accelerations. Something like a drag racing.

And also (if possible) a partmarket where every equipment is free, so you can check their effect on your ship.

That would be sweet. I'd use it to take ships for test drives before making my buying decisions. Currently there's no in-game way to see what the max reactor or shield level a ship can take (in 0.4.3 anyway), although there are tools to show you this info. Still, seeing the actual effect with your planned weapon, reactor and shield loadout would be ideal. Surely some ship dealers in the galaxy allow potential customers to take test drives...

Besides the drag strip, a slalom or otherwise twisty course would be cool.

I don't suppose anything like this ever got written, and is already lying around somewhere...