Suggestion for turret group UI

[Cralis]

In my opinion, there are three impediments to letting me handle my ship as a ship and not an oversized fighter. I'd like to make a suggestion on how the UI could be tweaked to overcome those impediments (in the order of importance):

 

#1 Rotating the view independent of the ship needs to be a toggle

 

This has been discussed to death elsewhere so I won't belabor the point. Using CONTROL needs to be a toggle not a hold-to-use key. Or at least, another keybind for such a toggle added.

 

The point is that if I'm going to try and use weapons on any facing other than straight ahead, I can't anchor my hand on control as it limits my ability to press other keys, specifically the weapon groups.

 

#2 Turret commands need hotkeys

 

Ideally I'd like to see the ability to press a group number then have hotkeys for the following:

-- toggle group active/inactive

-- toggle independent fire/manual fire

-- attack my target

-- change targeting parameters: prioritize closest enemy

-- change targeting parameters: prioritize enemy shooting at me

-- change targeting parameters: prioritize fighters

-- change targeting parameters: prioritize closest friendly (repair turret)

-- change targeting parameters: prioritize most damaged friendly (repair turret)

(and I'm sure there can be many more targeting parameters)

 

And if we ever get point defense that can operate in defensive mode against missiles or offensive mode against fighters, a hotkey toggle for that too.

 

#3 Turret limit should be on active turrets, not number of mounted turrets

 

So if I have a limit of 4 armed turrets, that should mean I can only have 4 armed turrets active but have more than 4 mounted on the ship. Why? Because it then lets me mount turrets on multiple sides of the ship and use only those facing the enemy.

 

This would allow me to make some meaningful choices. Do I activate all four on the port side so I can do a full broadside against my enemy? Or do I activate 3 on the port and leave one starboard active to shoot at the fighters on that side? Or do I make 1 independent turret active on all four sides of my ship while I concentrate on trying to dodge asteroids and reach open space where I can really fight?

 

Maybe we need a hard limit of turrets like x3 or x4 whether they are active or not. But if you look at the turret limit more like a fire control limit, you can see that having weapons mounted all around the ship is more possible without losing the fire limitation we have now.

 

Another possibility could be that turrets take some energy to mount, which would create a natural limit on how many you could mount independent of how many you are allowed to activate at the same time.

 

Bonus Idea:

 

Now that I've been playing with multiple ships, it would be really nice if the upper left would display telemetry on health, distance, and current actions of both players in my group AND captained ships in my squadron. Captained ships is far, far more important than players in my group.