Modified turret listing by TYPE to highlight breaks between groups? Please?

[Buffo]

TL/DR: Would like a space/line break between groups of the various turret types in the ship build menu to highlight each group and make them easier to pick out...

 

First - a disclaimer:  Brand new to the forums here, and this is my first post.  I am enjoying Avorion a great deal at the moment, and I hope the development continues.  My hat is off to the developers (all two of them!).  Avorion has been a source of tremendous enjoyment for me so far.  (Can't believe it was less than 18 bucks.)

 

I have only owned Avorion for about 5 weeks and yet I've logged over 230 hrs split among several galaxy files (including a few MP games, one being played on the beta branch in insanity mode).  And I have another 30 to 40 hours of game play in off-line mode as well.  Amazingly I had this game sitting on my Steam wishlist for over a year before a friend urged me to pick it up.  And now I'm hopelessly addicted!  I should have bought it a long time ago.

 

So while I admit I'm still new to the game relative to most of the members here, I've read a great deal about it since I got started, and I think I've played enough to at least comment on one particular aspect of the user interface that is both very troubling for me and also appears to be fairly trivial to fix: Namely the turret selection portion of the build menu...

 

In the ship-building mode you have the option to sort your turrets using primary and secondary criteria.  Often when I'm re-doing all the turrets on my ship I will switch between DPS and TYPE as my primary sorting criteria, since I usually want to add as much offensive firepower as I can, but I always need to leave room for a few salvage turrets, and maybe some mining turrets too.  (Or, if in the beta branch game, point defense cannons!)

 

My problem is that I have trouble telling the difference between the various turret types, even when I sort by TYPE.  Yes, they are grouped together when I do this, but it's still hard to figure out where that group will be in the list, because the number of turrets in any given group changes with continued game play.

 

Also, so many of the turrets look the same to me that even on a 27" monitor I have to mouse over each turret and read the tool tips to see what's what.  This is frustrating and time-consuming, at least for me.  I spend a lot of time looking for that one mining turret I want, or that particular salvage turret that has the better efficiency, or whatever.  And more than a few times, I've been caught by surprise by pirates or the aliens who warped in right on top of me while I was frantically searching through the turret list for my "good" guns...

 

What I'm suggesting is a change to the list of turrets such that when you sort by turret TYPE there is a visible break between each different type of turret.  It could be something as simple as a blank box, but ideally it would have at least an arrow pointing to the right (to the next group), if not a color-coded symbol or short abbreviation to let you know what the next set of turrets are.  It might be better to have a full line break between each set of turrets, but that would likely require a bigger overhaul of the interface, which probably isn't  feasible right now.  I think a single block separating the groups would be simple enough to add, and that would still make it much easier to find the right group.

 

Thoughts?

[Burnthalo]

the sorting is definitely a minor issue. hopefully it gets better.

in the meanwhile I would suggest using the 'favorite' feature. simply right click the small star on the 'good' turret you like or recently found that is better. that will mark it as a favorite and move it to the front of the list in any search sort. the trash can works the same but moves all items marked as trash to the bottom of the list. there is also a search field where you can type in specific additional search parameters. it helps a lot too.

[LordHavoc]

I've also been putting thought to this problem - A simpler solution would be to add simple clear weapon icons to the inventory - y'know the icons that appear in the shops

[Buffo]

The favorites option does help, and when I'm swapping turrets quickly (say, from mining to salvage for example), that works well.  But when you're completely re-doing your turrets (something I do rather frequently), you really need to see all your turrets, not just the favorites, because the ones you just picked up could very well be better.

 

The idea of standard icons (like you see in the equipment dock list and the tool tips window) is a good one.  If those were used as a marker to separate the different turret groups, you could still have the fancy picture of each turret in the list, but by looking for the icons you could easily see where each group starts and ends.

 

Alternately, you could either add the standard icon to the thumbnail for each turret (maybe in the corner?) or just completely replace them, but I'm sure some people like the idea of seeing the actual gun image in the list vs just the icon and I don't know if a reduced-size icon (small enough to fit in the corner of the thumbnail image) would be recognizable or not...