Been watching Alien(s) I see.
Hopefully you get something out before the holidays. That’s pretty much release day for so many games, or the opposite and people are taking minor breaks.
As Gomric said it’s hard to give feedback when we can’t test out the functionality. But a question or two is now rising up from the description you gave. I’m going to go on my usual tangents though. 😛
For the turrets status (in the upper left), it looks like there’s a bar underneath the ‘ready’, ‘charging’, ‘firing’ and ‘not in range’ area. Would this be an indicator to help show the charge status of the weapon? Think of the bar slowly filling from left to right, (0 to 100?) to let us know how slow/fast, it’s working. Could also be used to show the ‘torpedos’ loading/unloading indicator, if we are on that tab. (Share the UI resource) Just guessing here though. What is it supposed to do?
You mention the weapons sharing power nodes with things like thrusters, etc. From the sounds of it, we may be overlapping with Engineering, or you may be going into another Star Trek-like department: Operations. (They do Power allocation to the ships systems actually. Think of them as the nervous system, whereas Engineering just provides the raw power like the heart and physical aspects.) How will a station like Helm and Tactical keep from a tug-of-war with the nodes, by having to turn things on and off at perhaps ill-timed moments.
Example: The captain has us running straight through a gauntlet of ships. Helm needs more thrust to perform a hard turn at the end or to evade a surprise attack. But tactical is currently firing on both sides to perhaps take down incoming torpedoes or fighters, or hold off the ships.
Wait, I reckon I just answered my own question. We’d have to just communicate and come up with similar out of game tactics/procedures’ in the TSN. Duh me.
Although that might not help random pick-up players not in an organised group. I can see heaps of overlapping comms chatter on a voice server, or even people fluttering away with typing in the heat of the moment, attempting to get more recharge, if they’re suddenly needed at a moments notice.
Having typed all that, I do like the concept of a station powering down/up it’s individual parts to give others more of a boost. It also adds some timing and actual thinking to the game, as you’ll need to prep for not always having everything at the ready. I just hope some of the gamers get the concept, of no ‘instant ability’ buttons.
That leads me back to Engineering. Need to see what Engineering controls first, before I keep speculating on false-assumptions. Actually, all of the consoles UI mock-ups would be helpful to see on a page or two. If compared, that could help streamline the process of comparisons and utility? Just what I’d do anyways, if I were having these drawn up.