Hey all,
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to join you last night, things are very busy at the moment. We will be meeting with a number publishers after Gamescom, to see if they are interested in us and if we are interested in what they have to offer, and we’re busy working on content for that. I do hope to play with you at some stage though.
The Tactical UI is not yet complete, but I have made a good deal of progress on it. I would love to get your impressions: http://i.imgur.com/CfFiMa4.png
Have a look at it before the description below, and see if your first impressions line up with that. Thanks!
Targets (bottom right of the pic):
Each ship has a set number of target slots, in this case it is three. Each has to button on the bottom right of the screen. Target slots are lettered alphabetically.
When a slot is empty (a filled slot can be cleared by clicking on the “X” to the left of the button) clicking on it will ask you to select a contact, from the radar or list, to target.
Once a slot has been filled, clicking on it’s button opens a popup showing whatever information is available on that target. Depending on the scan strength this could range from the type of ship/structure, to the heat and structural integrity of each of it’s systems. If you have information on it’s systems then you can select one of these as a sub-target.
Turrets (top left of the pic):
Turrets are split into Firing Groups, these FG can be configured by the tactical officer.
Clicking on a firing group will allow you to set it’s target (A, B, C etc.) and whether it is in Auto or Manual mode. In Auto mode the Firing Group will fire it’s turrets as soon as one or more of them is “ready”. “Ready” means that the turret is charged and has a the target in sight. In Manual mode the Firing Group will change to a “FIRE” state, clicking on the “FIRE” part of the button will then fire any of it’s “ready” turrets.
To the left of the firing group is the list of turrets on the ship, grouped by the power nodes they are connected to. Turrets connected to a power node (like “Forward Left Thrusters”) share the power going to that node (in this case “Forward Left Thrusters” has two turrets, so each is getting 50% of the power for charging). Clicking on a turret in the list disables it, stopping it from drawing power and causing the other turrets connected to that node to charge faster (in the pic above, disabling turret “T2” will cause turret “T1” to charge 100% faster).
Radar (center right of the pic):
Lastly there is a radar range setting on the bottom of the radar, which allows you to set the radar to a shorter range (effectively zooming in).
That’s it for now, I would love to hear your feedback.
Thanks!