Commander McLane wrote:Let me explain where I'm coming from:
Thank you for the details! As JazHaz said there are different group of players and we are not in one group in this question, but thanks to you I started to understand the opposite viewpoint.
Based on your words the best if all ships including player ship can be blown at any time if the last energy bank is not full to make more reality. I guess it will be never in the core game due to historical reasons, but I like this idea so I can put it into this OXP if you want.
I think you want to know from your target what can be know in real only. But within this border it is a good idea to know as more as possible imho. You must decide to fight or flee before and during battle from something and the more thing is better until it is not counted as cheating.
So please go ahead and help to make some acceptable rules. Here is my ideas:
1. A surely detectable thing is that your last laser fire hit or miss the target - a fixed scope on the weapon can visually detect it. So I plan to make a flash on the surrounding box when hit. It is a big help to indicate you not waste your valuable laser temp, especially with far targets. The red targe box is not enough, I see often to not reduced the target energy when was red due to maybe moved a bit or not enough accurate to forecast, but this "after event" detector can flag it exactly. In real I surely want to buy or make something similar to my ship.
2. An intelligence system can make a guess to the maximal strength of the enemy without read the internal numbers, but need more work to make the rules. Can based on the standard ship types and equipments but must go futrher to do something real.
3. The current strength can be tracked from the maximum if reduced by the expected value of the detected hits and increased with a guessed recharge rate. It will be less and less accurate over time, but it is the goal.
4. After get the estimated maximal and current strength, your computer can be show it on a low resolution bar to represent it is not an exact value. I think 8 level from zero to the maximum, it is less than the detail of the energy banks and can stay much longer on the last position if guessed below or the fight ending at the half of the bar if over-estimated. I think it is imaginable in real and contain enough uncertainty to fit into the concept of the original HUD and better than if missing completely.
I will use this during fight to determine if I has enough chance to win or better to leave if I can not earn a stable downtrend. It is too hard to calculate it in head but this equipment contain a computer to do it. Without this maybe I leave after some time if I think I can not win but in stable downtrend near the end, or stay too long and lose in a situation where I can not win due to the enemy always recharged to the maximum regardless of my efforts.
I am working on harder enemies (ShipVersion OXP is in my betatest folder) which will make this question is more important than before.
Second part is the summarized player display. I accept that the game is already well-playable with the current HUDs and you need to watch your energy level only to know when must to flee.
The main benefit of this will be shown if you install more and more shield and armour extensions.
I am working on the HardShips OXP to make better damage model with more armour sides. Using this can build ships where the base energy is a small part of the sum, but armours not showed in the current HUDs so this display will be more important in the future.
I think players with NumericHUD likes the exact values and want or accept data in the current numeric form, but other HUDs should get bars instead of numbers. I can do it in the next version.
![[EliteWiki]](/images/elitewikismall.png){kind=small}
NumericHUDv3.1 energy and shield displays,
