Show the system security (lawlessness) in the map sector view #5654
Conversation
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I was surprised (a while back) to find we didn't already have this indicator, perhaps I'm thinking of OldUI or maybe even original Frontier. Either way, happy to see this.
Ping @nozmajner |
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How about these icons? |
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Nice @nozmajner. I might already have picked that skull one for 'Deadly' :-) Are we happy with 7 levels reported to the user (I'm just mapping the 0-1 numeric value), so we could have more or less depending on our preferences. |
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I think 7 levels is a little much, especially given the lack of distinct verbs to refer to them. I'd prefer 5 - Safe, Mostly Harmless, Dangerous, Very Dangerous, Deadly. |
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I think you meant nouns, @Web-eWorks |
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I'd even argue 3 is sufficient, but we really do need "Mostly Harmless", and then we probably need one below, and 3 above that level. |
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Five seems a bit simpler, yeah. I've put them to the empty space in the svg: I did not update the theme file to add them though. |
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@Web-eWorks or others, how does the asset conditioning pipeline work to import a new icons.svg? I'm probably missing something but I can't see an obvious way to import it. |
Edit in Inkscape / etc., save as |
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Ahh, thanks, I searched for |
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After playtesting this, I have some fundamental objections to the effect of this PR. A system like Wolf 359 shows as "very dangerous", even though it's quite literally a star and a single orbital spacestation, with no in-universe reason for a significant enough amount of pirate traffic to threaten a player who might be in a kitted-out AC33.
The way the danger rating is currently communicated to the player feels very "meta", as if it's an out-of-context message to the player directly about whether they will, with their current ship/loadout, survive jumping to that system or spending a significant amount of time there.
I don't think the single lawlessness variable for a system is necessarily a good fit for what's being proposed - the [safe ... deadly] range is a better fit for a more direct indicator of hostile (e.g. pirate or aggressive faction) presence or spawn chance, and I think a "security rating" number more akin to EVE Online's security system might do a better job at expressing the concept of lawlessness in a way that isn't confusing to the player.
The lawlessness of a system shouldn't be a direct indicator of pirate presence - e.g. we don't want to always spawn a pirate megabase in every single 1.0 lawlessness system - but rather an indicator of how well the system is patrolled or secured by the faction who nominally "owns" it. I think a separate factor - possibly derived from the faction system but still influenced at some level by lawlessness - should be introduced to more directly control the spawn chance of hostile encounters and that factor would be a much better fit for this style of "danger indicator".
It'd also be very confusing for a player to see a system marked Very Dangerous or Deadly still have a bunch of civilian trade ships flying around completely unmolested.
In sum, my feedback is I like the idea, but as currently implemented it communicates a clear and present danger to the player ("you will die") for even being in the system, rather than a warning indicator that they're "on their own" if they are unlucky enough to encounter hostile elements.
| @@ -123,6 +126,22 @@ local function calc_star_dist(star) | |||
| return dist | |||
| end | |||
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| local function rate_lawlessness(system) | |||
| if system.lawlessness < 1.0/5.0 then | |||
| return icons.security_shield, lc.SYSTEM_SECURITY_1, sytleColors.success_500 | |||
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When using colors in this context, we prefer to create semantic component-specific aliases rather than use the style colors directly, e.g. theme.colors.systemSecurity_1. Also, you imported the variable as sytle, which will break Ctrl+F for usages.
Our semantic color system is loosely based on this article if you're interested in further reading (...or updating the developer docs to cover the topic of UI programming).
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I haven't tried it, but the critique sounds relevant to me: if a system is dangerous player expects there to be danger. (perhaps relevant, but I have a branch that adds pirate system) |
In the sector view add a security indication for the system being looked at:
I've arbitrarily decided on 7 different security levels and English translations for them, a color scheme and a warning icon for some levels, using a blank icon for safe systems as I couldn't find something I like. I don't know if we need one?
Note: this lawlessness doesn't do much in the current iteration of the code. Happy to roll this into a bigger PR when I've added more that hooks into it but feel there is enough here for a discussion.