Interface Suggestion: Weapons Grid |
I have an suggestion concerning how the range of an weapon could be shown more easily in Space Empires V, and perhaps be able to support more advanced weapon concepts in the future. Below is an picture, but I will also describe what I have envisioned in depth.

What I am thinking of is to display the range of an weapon in the style of an mathematical coordinate graph. For those not familiar with that, imagine a square. Now put two lines that go across it both vertically and horizontally, meeting in the center. Along the lines are notches, usually bearing numbers. In this depiction, an ship is shown in the center of the graph, and from that the range and arc of an weapon can be shown, and perhaps the weapon could be color-coded according to what it does, like yellow for point-defense or red for an energy weapon. The notches along the lines represent the range from the center of the ship to the point of absolute range limitations.
This isn't so different from what is currently implemented in SEV, but I feel an more graphical approach would not just be more simple and require less scrolling to see the outer ranges of an weapon, but this 'weapons grid' could be used to display more functions in the future. Arcs of weapons, their area of affect, whether or not they are turreted and how quickly they change their facing, and so on.
While it would probably take at least an fair amount of time on the part of the game developer, I feel that this suggestion could potentially simplify the game for most users and pave the way towards innovating SEV over it's predecessor.



