starbases (and capial ships) 'blips'

from Sins Forums

you know those blips in the empire tree that symbolise fleet strength at a glance? I find it a bit irritating - at least in smaller engagements - that single ships apparently cannot occupy more than one blip. you see, I tried out, upgraded a starbase with weapons and one armor, it still was one blip. in contrast, 2 light frigates are displayed as two blips. that somehow does not make sense. and I think it's the same with capships.

so, at least for larger items, I'd like them to scale a bit better, so you can use it to correctly gauge odds at a glance. granted, a vanilla SB might not be that huge of an item, but it's still worth more than half a dozen light frigs. and a fully upgraded SB ... well, it deserves more too. it's not the unstoppable fortress of doom, but 400 or so dmg and 20.000 + hp/sp is not a factor to be ignored in equations. at least not if they are placed such that the attacker has to deal with them in some way or another.

1,778 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

No.  The blips are used to allow you to quickly see how many units are present in a gravity well, not their effective combat strength.  Doing as you suggest would clutter the screen even more.  And how big should blip for a cap ship be?  What about blip size of each level?  And type of cap ship, because certainly some caps are more powerful than others. If you want to gauge odds, look at the grav well.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

ok, some valid points. but I wonder, what good are pure numbers? the information of 100 ships is far less useful than a modified version of, say, 100 basic frigate equivalents. if that means 100 basic frigates, 30 or 40 heavy cruisers, a bunch of carriers or whatever is also important, but secondary. and for what other reason than a quick estimation are those blips good?

cluttering could become and issue, but in a way it already is, when fleets do get very large. if there were more like ranges for blips, like one blip indicating 1 - 3 basic frigs or 1 heavy frigs or carrier or 1 - 2 long range ships/ support ships ... something along those lines. and capships could start out with a few and gain one every other level or so. it does not have to be hyper detailed and exact, but I'd like it, if they showed more quality instead of pure quantity.

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

and for what other reason than a quick estimation are those blips good?
End of quote

None, but that's exactly how it was intended :P You can see exact numbers of everything by hovering over/expanding the tree.

So why would you need them to be anything different?

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 3

and for what other reason than a quick estimation are those blips good?


None, but that's exactly how it was intended. You can see exact numbers of everything by hovering over/expanding the tree.

So why would you need them to be anything different?
End of Annatar11's quote

This is my exact response.  Acquiring the information you want doesn't require completely re-doing the HUD or coming up with some arbitrary number like 3 light frigs are a blip, but 2 heavy frigs are a slightly larger blip.

Although, forums arguments about why someone's favorite ship blip isn't big enough could be pretty fun.  "You know what?  F-you!  Teh Cielo deserves a much bigger blip than those POS "carriers".  I hope you burn in hell."

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 3

and for what other reason than a quick estimation are those blips good?
None, but that's exactly how it was intended You can see exact numbers of everything by hovering over/expanding the tree.

So why would you need them to be anything different?
End of Annatar11's quote

c'mon, hovering over and reading all ships and their numbers takes several seconds. looking at blips and seeing 'their fleet is quite a bit larger than mine' takes one second. and yes, in larger fleets, in can factor in, if one player relies on long range, another on heavies and another on lights. and then, a seemingly larger fleet can be weaker in fact. not to be dismissed.

what I do grant you is that reworking it may be more effort than it is worth (or rather effort spent better elsewhere), but it would still be nice to have. in other games you also don't go and say 'he has the larger army' you want to know 'does he have the more powerful army'. of course, powerful or not depends on the situation ...

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

c'mon, hovering over and reading all ships and their numbers takes several seconds. looking at blips and seeing 'their fleet is quite a bit larger than mine' takes one second.
End of quote

Re-doing blip sizes or whatnot will make reading plain numbers much faster than looking at the blips. :P Seeing "Javelis x100" is much better and faster than "medium blips" :P

Sorry, but I see absolutely no logic in your suggestion. If you need a quick side estimate, you look at the blips. If you need a quick strength estimate, you hover over the blips. Comparing numbers is much more intuitive than comparing blip sizes. What the hell is "I have 3 large blips to his 5 large, but I have 10 medium blips and he only has 5" supposed to tell you? :P It's a poor comparison in and of itself, because a heavy cruiser isn't always scarier than a bomber squad. That's why you look at the exact numbers. I can have no heavies and the enemy can have 30, but I can still take them out with all my bombers.

Or how would you even distinguish between fighters and bombers? Or light frigates and long range frigates? They're the same size, so it'd have to be the same size blip.. but 50x fighter is quite different from 50x bomber, and 100x cobalt is different from 100x javelis..

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I never said anything about different blip sizes. I meant that 1 ship can be multiple blips, that's all.

in fact, my initial post did not even mean to compare firgates among themselves so much as at least make a distinction between capital ships,  starbases and the rest. sort of like saying one capital shows up as 4 blips, a starbase also, with a few added with military upgrades. be done with the rest of the post, that was just side notes anyway.

so, you think capitals and starbases should show up as one blips, just as everything else? doesn't make sense to me, but, meh, people don't always have to agree on everything.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

so, you think capitals and starbases should show up as one blips, just as everything else? doesn't make sense to me, but, meh, people don't always have to agree on everything.
End of quote

It's the only way to make it universally easy to understand. If you start using multiples for one ship/structure, you open a can of worms. An un-upgraded starbase is no more threatening than a couple of gauss cannons, but the same isn't true for an 8/8 base. Same with a level 1 capital vs a level 10. So the easiest is to just leave the blips as a quick "number of crap in system" gauge, rather than "try to guess the relative strength of crap in system" gauge :P