Target analysis - what's useful information, what's not?

[Wildeblood]

If you could target another ship, then press a button to bring up some information about it, what information would you actually want?

[Disembodied]

If you could target another ship, then press a button to bring up some information about it, what information would you actually want?

I've tried to think of what kinds of information could feasibly be provided about a ship. Some of these are obviously already catered for, and combat-related information is more immediately, practically useful, but the non-combat stuff might help to add to the immersion and atmosphere.

Combat-related: (some of these could be estimated, so not 100% reliable)
Armaments, shield strength, top speed, Commander's Elite ranking, legal status

Non-combat-related:
Ship name, Commander name, Commander species/planet of origin, ship registered to Corporation X/independent, outbound from

[Wildeblood]

I've tried to think of what kinds of information could feasibly be provided about a ship. Some of these are obviously already catered for, and combat-related information is more immediately, practically useful, but the non-combat stuff might help to add to the immersion and atmosphere.

Combat-related: (some of these could be estimated, so not 100% reliable)
Armaments, shield strength, top speed, Commander's Elite ranking, legal status

Yes, top speed is relevant, I think. In Combat Assistant I marked hostile ships as either "ATTACKER" or "FAST ATTACKER" depending on whether their top speed was lower or higher than the player's ship. Legal status is already shown on the reticle, and Bounty Scanner is very popular. I think knowing a ship type's missile capacity is reasonable, but knowing how many they are actually carrying is probably not. I don't know how you would determine an NPC's Elite ranking?

Non-combat-related:
Ship name, Commander name, Commander species/planet of origin, ship registered to Corporation X/independent, outbound from

I don't know how you would determine any of those, they'd just have to be made up. Entity personality is a unique number, so could be presented in game as a "registration number".

[Disembodied]

I don't know how you would determine an NPC's Elite ranking?

Neither do I ... but I think there might be some trunk goodies relating to NPC accuracy that might be made player-readable by patching accuracy onto "Elite ranking".

Non-combat-related:
Ship name, Commander name, Commander species/planet of origin, ship registered to Corporation X/independent, outbound from

I don't know how you would determine any of those, they'd just have to be made up. Entity personality is a unique number, so could be presented in game as a "registration number".

Ship name is shown on the reticle if [wiki]Randomshipnames OXP[/wiki] is installed, so probably no point in replicating it. I don't know if pilots have names/species/planets of origin before they are found in escape pods ... and the other stuff would just have to be made up, probably using a similar method to Randomshipnames.

[Thargoid]

It would also depend somewhat on how/where you're proposing to display the information. If it were somewhere convenient on a suitably set-up HUD then it could be useful, but if it's around the ship in question itself then there would be a risk of it getting in the way and actually obscuring things.

There have been a few examples before when having bounty displayed alongside a lengthy name where it could get a bit unwieldy and make actually interacting with (ie shooting in most cases) the said ship a little more tricky.

[Smivs]

Speaking personally, all the info I actually need is already available via the core game features.
I trade and explore, and generally only fight back when attacked, so knowing if they are Offender/Fugitive tells me they could attack. Bounty is un-important - if I have to kill them I will get the bounty but knowing what it might be will not influence me at all and is therefore irrelevant.
As for the capabilities of the ships, well I know the spec of all the ships pretty well so being told its top speed or missile complement is redundant and would be viewed as un-necessary (and distracting) screen-clutter.
I do think that as NPCs get more variety in terms of accuracy etc, some hint as to their Elite Rank might be worthwhile (if it could be done) but ultimately if they attack me they'll reap the consequences whatever they are, and if they don't attack it's not important.
As I say, my personal view. Others will no doubt have their own opinions

[Rese249er]

Personally, I would want an approximation of their closest weapon facing temperature, or at least the facing in use. Missiles are not so important to me. Another valuable tidbit would be the number and/or total firepower of turrets stated in some approximation of damage over time. Multi-lasers on one facing would be helpful to know as well.

[Commander McLane]

I'd like immersion-enhancing information, not information that turns Oolite into more of an arcade shooter.

So anything referring to ship stats (like max speed) would be fine. Default weapons configuration (which type of laser on which mount; and number of turrets) is also fine. In [wiki]Status Quo[/wiki], a target analysis looks like that:

Sidewinder. Mass 52 Metric. Speed .375 LM. Legal Status Clean, Bounty 0 Cr.

That could be a template.

So, I'd like to see everything that can be reasonably expected to be in your ship computer's database. There needs to be some balance between information display and screen cluttering, obviously.

In Status Quo, there is also

Cobra Mk3, 15% discrepancy. 100 Metric, .3 LM.
Gravimetric Radiation Detected!

when Rebecca first meets the new SuperCobra, which isn't in the database yet. Therefore the ship computer tries to classify it as an Mk3 with 15% discrepancy to the normal Mk3 stats. I very much hoped something like that would be possible in the game as well at the time, but I think it's not feasible. With all the ship OXPs, where would we draw the line between ships that are in the database and ships that aren't yet?

These are things that I'd like to see.

Things that I wouldn't like to see are anything regarding the current state of the NPC: shield status, energy status, laser/hull temperature, number of missiles left, amount of cargo in the bay, whatever. Basically anything that can't be retrieved from a database, but would require my ship's computer to somehow hack into the NPC's ship computer in order to retrieve 'live' information. I think ships would be protected against this sort of scan.

Taking the number of remaining missiles as an example: of course my database would know the default number of pylons for any ship, and the computer could subtract any missile that's being fired in order to get an estimate of the number of missiles left. But my computer could not know whether the NPC has fired missiles previous to our encounter, and it could not know whether all pylons were filled with missiles in the first place. Thus reading out the exact number of remaining missiles would not be possible.

To sum up:
Anything that enhances immersion and doesn't require magic on my ship computer's part: yes!
Anything that would require magic, or would resemble a 'life energy' bar over an NPC's head: no!

[Wildeblood]

It's a funny thing about Commander McLane and I: we seem to always be in furious disagreement or furious agreement. In this case I think he sums exactly my thoughts on what is reasonable with regards to NPC ships. But returning to my original question:-

If you could target another ship, then press a button to bring up some information about it, what information would you actually want?

I should point out that in Oolite there are only two classes of entity, and anything that isn't a planet is a ship and can be targeted. If you target an asteroid you don't want to be informed that "Forward weapon: none", that's just silly. What statistics could be displayed about a station - either from the entity in game or just made up - that would add to, and not detract from, the ambience?

(What about cargopods? Remember Okti's cargo pod scanner that would read the bar-code on a cargopod and tell you its contents? I think that is reasonable, but normal cargopods don't actually have their cargo set before scooping, so he had to fake it by first setting the cargo so he could then discover it. Somewhat similar to the wormhole analyser that first causes mis-jumps so that it can warn you about them.)

[Pleb]

Could you not first determine what had been scanned (ship/station/asteroid/cargo pod/etc...) and then let the type determine what information was displayed? So for a ship it could give you Sidewinder. Mass 52 Metric. Speed .375 LM. Legal Status Clean, Bounty 0 Cr. like Commander McLane suggested, and then subtract information not relevant for a station or asteroid or add information for a cargo pod? I think following the example in Status Quo would be a good idea, all I ever really want to know is is it worth me destroying the ship and how fast is it travelling? I guess knowing its armaments would help but it might make things too easy - you wouldn't take on an Iron Ass if you're piloting a worse ship...

Also knowing what cargo a ship is carrying might help. I'd love to know if a Boa with loads of escorts is carrying something of value...

[Commander McLane]

What statistics could be displayed about a station - either from the entity in game or just made up - that would add to, and not detract from, the ambience?

Size, rotation speed, techlevel, number of docking bays (the individual 'parking spaces' for ships, not the dock entity as a whole), population, facilities of the station (like Zero-G cricket arena or whatnot). The latter examples would have to be made up, of course, preferably in a pseudo-random way.

[Thargoid]

I'd argue the opposite for the docks, as from 1.77 onwards stations will be able to have multiple ones. It would be more useful to practically know how many ways to fly in there are than to clog up the screen with additional fiction about parking spaces.

[Commander McLane]

What statistics could be displayed about a station - either from the entity in game or just made up - that would add to, and not detract from, the ambience?

Ownership, too. The very basic distinction would be "GalCop" or "private", but the latter could be differentiated, of course. It could be interesting to investigate the readMe-lore and bring it into the game, or—where there is none—to make some up. For instance, who owns the Superhubs? And the Hoopy Casinos (I'd expect either an inter-galactic parent company, or individual casino firms from the planet below)? Or the Kiota Research Stations?

[Wildeblood]

Ownership, too. The very basic distinction would be "GalCop" or "private", but the latter could be differentiated, of course. It could be interesting to investigate the readMe-lore and bring it into the game, or—where there is none—to make some up.

You're right. I like it.

For instance, who owns the Superhubs?

Gasec. They're too expensive for anyone to buy, so they're all leased. That's why they're portable.

And the Hoopy Casinos (I'd expect either an inter-galactic parent company, or individual casino firms from the planet below)?

They're all owned by Coachwhip, it says so on the sidewinders that appear if you ping one. (The same company that owns the tourist ferries at Tianve?)

Or the Kiota Research Stations?

I dunno. Ask Thargoid.

[Pleb]

The idea of station ownership keeps cropping up though (not wanting to start another argument for the pros and cons of player ownership) but its a good idea. I also agree with Thargoid as when more stations have multiple docks it would be handy to know how many they have.

The only problem I could see with rotation speed is that there is already an OXP (think its trunk only) that changes the speed of the rotating stations so I don;t know if you could take this into account? The tech level would be a good idea though, I quite like that some systems are low tech levels but then you find a station there selling Galactic Hyperdrives...