After seeing that "anti-lag" suggestion, I remembered something that would be cool to have in this game.
The idea is simple:
-Whenever you reboot a ship, it generates a small 2D top-down image of the ship.
-This image would be displayed on the HUD, and would start off looking green. It may optionally have a blue aura surrounding it to represent shield strength when present as well.
-When the ship takes damage, the areas of the ship that lose blocks change color, going from green to yellow to red to black (black representing when there simply isn't any ship at all there anymore).
-Optionally, there could also be a way to see the image of whatever vessel you have targeted. This could potentially increase lag however (from having to send the images, even if they are very small, over the internet), so one option could be to give players (those with good computers mostly) an option to have the target simply rendered in top-down view somewhere on the HUD.
-If it only shows the 2D top-down image for your own ship, then you can reduce lag by only loading the image when you enter a ship, and either not using any sort of target view, or using one which doesn't increase network use (such as a small "window" that simply renders a view of the target).
The idea is simple:
-Whenever you reboot a ship, it generates a small 2D top-down image of the ship.
-This image would be displayed on the HUD, and would start off looking green. It may optionally have a blue aura surrounding it to represent shield strength when present as well.
-When the ship takes damage, the areas of the ship that lose blocks change color, going from green to yellow to red to black (black representing when there simply isn't any ship at all there anymore).
-Optionally, there could also be a way to see the image of whatever vessel you have targeted. This could potentially increase lag however (from having to send the images, even if they are very small, over the internet), so one option could be to give players (those with good computers mostly) an option to have the target simply rendered in top-down view somewhere on the HUD.
-If it only shows the 2D top-down image for your own ship, then you can reduce lag by only loading the image when you enter a ship, and either not using any sort of target view, or using one which doesn't increase network use (such as a small "window" that simply renders a view of the target).
As you can see, the HUD includes top-down images for the ship you are piloting and the ship you are targeting. Since FS2 has 4 shield banks per ship, it also shows those (Starmade doesn't have this, so unless it gets it we don't need to worry about that)
In the lower left, there is also a 3D rendering of the target so you can see which way it is facing relative to you. This is the sort of thing I was talking about as a potential alternative for the "target status" view that doesn't require sending lots of top-down images around the network.
In the lower left, there is also a 3D rendering of the target so you can see which way it is facing relative to you. This is the sort of thing I was talking about as a potential alternative for the "target status" view that doesn't require sending lots of top-down images around the network.