[FeatureRequest] visualizing values

[MoonKid]

A big problem of how VS playing feel is the information VS give to the player.

For example the factions. There are just numbers. It is unergonomic. There could be a bar from red (-100) to green (100) with a middle point (0) indicating how the faction relation is. It would be easier and faster to "read".

Or informations about ships and upgrades. It is very difficult to comparing ships because there is a lot of information to read in a very tiny box that I need to scroll.
All values (e.g. the cargo volume) should described with bars. You remember racing games and how they visualizing the skills of the cars?
For example there is a ship with the minimals cargo valume (maybe 100) and one with the maximum (maybe 99000). (I don't know the real values!) This should be the range for the bar on each(!) ship. Than I can see very good how much the bar is filled on the different ships. You understand?

This should be done for all attributes on ships and upgrades.

[loki1950]

Then how would you accommodated the size differences ie.shuttles 20-30 meters in length to the Clydesdale about a 1000 meters and there are a couple that are 2 km long.

Enjoy the Choice

[MoonKid]

[quote="loki1950"]Then how would you accommodated the size differences ie.shuttles 20-30 meters in length to the Clydesdale about a 1000 meters and there are a couple that are 2 km long.[/quote]

Of course tiny ships have a lower cargo volume. But in that special case the size of ship doesn't matter. For example: I just want to compare the cargo volume. And the simplest way is to look on the bar for that. Of course the bar of a shuttle would be low filled.
The size could be displayed as a bar, too If there is a need for it. But for me as a player the size of a ship doesn't matter. Just the mass and the cargo volume are interesting. And of course I know that his has affect on the real size of a ship, too.

I can not see any problem with that. Do you?

[TBeholder]

Then how would you accommodated the size differences ie.shuttles 20-30 meters in length to the Clydesdale about a 1000 meters and there are a couple that are 2 km long.

It would be best to have some schematic projections. Size could be marked there. As well af placement of mounts, subunits, docks and other external devices and radar arcs. Even better, don't put them into common scrollable area and highlight selected features. The same scheme could be used to show damaged parts (much like in WC) as ships stats screen obviously will be unified.
Ship/hold volumes can be represented by logarithmic scale bar just as well. Obviously one thin line means fighter, long bar means freighter, order-of-magnitutude differences are obvious. Players who must discern 120 from 130 probably going to look at those numeric stats anyway. Much the same for accelerations.
Just brief overview first, details later.

Also, present categorizing of ships in list is obviously flawed. Even mods of the same ship are placed in different categories, so player has to browse more than half to see available choice if it's not known beforehand what exactly is needed.

[loki1950]

Good point about using a logarithmic scale forgot that trick and since you mentioned WC/priv schematics of there ships they use it for one of the in-flight displays a well the damage report so that should be easy to integrate RFN just a matter of generating a schematic for all of our ships lots of GIMP/PhotoShop work and using the WC/Priv code.

Enjoy the Choice

[safemode]

Part of the reluctance to go with a racing game style method of displaying statistics in VS is that it implies certain things that the values of the various statistics may not reflect well in VS. If such a thing were to be done correctly, it would have to take into consideration what ships such a computer has access to in order to give the player the graph readings when they are looking to buy it. That is to say, if no in-universe data is known about some ships from a different faction (due to war info embargos or because it's not yet available at the time), then the graphs should not take into account those ship(s) when laying out the graphs. So if i have a ship and the speed is showing that it's the fastest, then i should not expect that some future ship that becomes available or is discovered in game, would not cause my ship to be "downgraded" as far as the graph being maxed out. Also, i should expect to go to some bases and the computers think that certain ships are maxed or empty as far as their graphs go, but go to a different system and see the same ships have slightly different graphs due to the info available to those different factions.

Though, the whole aspect of scale in the game is in need of some fixing, due to all sorts of different aspects of the game, bar graphs and such alone wont be enough.

[TBeholder]

it implies certain things that the values of the various statistics may not reflect well in VS. If such a thing were to be done correctly, it would have to take into consideration what ships such a computer has access to in order to give the player the graph readings when they are looking to buy it. That is to say, if no in-universe data is known

Good point, but IMO in this case it's alleviated. There's always can be place reserved for things like that old "d12 of Doom" battleship, monstrous experimental crafts, "Next year's extra-heavy bulk transport project", and so on. With log10 scale, this means over-scale values most likely need 1 more unmarked step. And if it's still over-scale, just mark it as such (e.g. with >>> at the end), that would be just enough for preview.
Ah, another idea: show volumes ([unused:] cargo: free hold: [magazines:] upgrade volume: upgrade space: external) on the same bar. Such diagram would tell a lot about ship.
I'm not sure how to show accelerations best (other than showing 10-sec full-throttle ellipsoid around model/projections, but that means little problem with scaling), though.

Though, the whole aspect of scale in the game is in need of some fixing, due to all sorts of different aspects of the game, bar graphs and such alone wont be enough.

That status preview is just a good convenience feature, nothing more...