What I’m about to suggest here is to collect some suggestions about graphical UI elements compatible with Steve’s text&numbers-dominated perception type.
A bit of self-explanation
My own perception type is another rare one - it isn’t grapheme-based, but map-like-mixed-sensorical-representation-based, i.e. to understand anything I have to visualize (or, rather, sensualize) it in form of multi-color+sound+texture+flavour diagram-like representation, something like making a map while exploring a landscape, and I cannot avoid it being multisensorical because I have quite an obsessive form of synaestesia. Though the common thing with the Steve’s case is I’m an information-density-obsessive type too, despite having completely different primary perception type and so having another perceptive metrics of information density. Long story short, I think I understand what Steve feels and means when saying he doesn’t like graphics and so I think I can suggest something usefull for both him and other players with sensoric primary perception types.)
The 1st thing there is (another) suggestion to make a compact optional and customizable Fleet marker.
1. What for
Marker is actually the same type of information-dense-instrument thing as a grapheme - the same thing as a letter or single-number code, just more context-specific. It has to be compact, easily undrstandable in it’s context and hard to confuse with another graphemes and markers. The difference with letters and numbers is that a marker is not a language-specific sign. Aurora players are a specific subculture, so developing our own set of specific-context signs is exactly an increasing of information density thing.
2. Why customizable
Because we cannot do it good enough with one step. Our comunity is too much culturally and percentionally diverse, games (campaigns) are also differ enough. Customization mechanics (similar to those of flags, pics and especially medals) makes it possible to develop better marker sets for every subset of players and games (campaigns).
3. An example I came to with manually set markers
Currently I use the following set of prefixes for Fleet names as a substitution for the thing I’d like to see (because it’s quite tedious to maintain this thing manually).
It’s made of two rules:
- a division of vessels on small craft (<1000t), auxiliary ships (“commercial” ones) and military ships.
- a division of fleets on individual vessels, small groups, flotillas and fleets (where margins between groop types are a bit fluid and arbitrary)
ˇ - an individual small craft Fleet name prefix
ˇˇ - a small group of small craft Fleet name prefix
ˇˇˇ - a flotilla of small craft Fleet name prefix
ˇˇˇˇ - a fleet of small craft Fleet name prefix
ˡ - an individual auxiliary ship Fleet name prefix
ˡˡ - a small group of auxiliary ships Fleet name prefix
ˡˡˡ - a flotilla of auxiliary ships Fleet name prefix
ˡˡˡˡ - a fleet of auxiliary ships Fleet name prefix
- an individual auxiliary ship Fleet name prefix
- a small group of auxiliary ships Fleet name prefix
- a flotilla of auxiliary ships Fleet name prefix
- a fleet of auxiliary ships Fleet name prefix
** - a small mixed group Fleet name prefix
*** - a mixed flotilla Fleet name prefix
**** - a mixed fleet Fleet name prefix
It’s quite simple to implement as an auto-built prefixes, yet it has some issues. For example, I’d prefer to have elements of these markers line up vertically rather then horizontally, so that, for example, a ˭ sign would mark a small group of auxiliary ships, instead of ˡˡ, just to use less space. Having more options for different classes would be nice, too, currently it’s just hard for me to maintain the set of symbols manually and not confuse what marks what (that’s exactly why I prefer a game to remember things like this for me until I memorize it through repetition).
Classes are already available in Aurora - it’s the thing shown in a ship design summary.
For mixed groups (Fleets, by Steve’s term) it’s posible to auto-classify them by the largest BP value (i.e. when commercial ships have more summary BP then any other classes in a fleet, then a fleet is auto-classified as commercial) or by the seniour commander’s ship class (i.e. if a seniour officer of the fleet is a CO of a comercial ship, then a Fleet is auto-classified as comercial).
A bit larger problem is making a useful and properly scalable rule for Fleet sizes. Here I’d suggest an Empire-scaled aproach, i.e. to mark group as Large when it’s more then 10% of Empire’s total Navy BP points (and for this Empire the Alien fleets would be marked by their own scale, i.e. they’d see an indivdual alien superdreadnought an armada if it’s bigger then 10% of their own small starting fleet), and, similarly, mark a group as small when it’s less then 1% of the Empire’s entire Navy BP sum.
Make margins and symbols customizable and it would be nearly ideal, I think, both for dfferent players and your own different campaigns.
