Today's topic comes from a tweet from @erlendur in a conversation he was having with a pilot about having multiple overview tabs open in separate windows:There are numerous solutions to overcome the deficiencies, most notably Sarah Schneider and Blitz Kotare's overview importable .xml files. Plus, a very pvp oriented 'fix' to overview/bracket appearances using pictures:
So that is the topic this month: The Overview. Is it sufficient? If not how can it be improved? Is there some way to replace it? Does it give too much information, or not enough? Please be creative and specific as the overview currently is the heartbeat of the GUI.
The problem with the default overview these profiles are attempting to fix is the 'default' overview setting options aren't really helpful to the dedicated, specialized things eve players tend to get into.
Actually, there's no "Combat" or "Missioning" or "Exploration" that caters to the needs of players, and the 'Brackets' option (the one that shows you icons in space, not the overview itself) is woefully inadequate to keeping lag/performance issues under control.
So the aim of those two profile packages is to make things not only Aesthetic but informative to specialized uses.
I myself have endeavoured to created such a profile package for carebears, and for the most part, i feel i have succeeded. I decided that in order to take best advantage of the mechanics of 'import' and 'tabs' that having multiple files based on career choice, and more importantly, the amount of performance issues (aka. lag) you want to avoid having was the best of both worlds. Not only that but i made sure the number of "selected type settings" was 20 total shared by all 10 'import' XML files - compared to 29 types (excluding the 5 divisions) & 1 xml for Sarah's, and 27 types & 4 xml (solely color styles) for Blitz's. Below are the two core overview profiles you can import at will to tailor your overview needs. The top picture shows the "Belter" type profile and the bottom picture shows the "Shepherd" type profile. the names were inspired by C.J.Cherryh's sci-fi series, "company wars."
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EDIT: I looked at the way Sarah's overview pack displays the 'hover over' cursor information. (the ship type listed first, then [alliance], then pilot name, and lastly ship name; Blitz's used this rather aethetic format i'm not quite sure was the purpose of...And the ship type last...i wonder what advantage that gives?I think i'm going to adjust my profile to be more like Sarah's (ship type first, pilot name bolded)...and i think i'll tone down the tone size. I still like yellow tho.
As you can see in the picture to the right, with OMNM's profile top, Sarah's middle, and Blitz's bottom (red profile), the information shown is much better than the default by far.
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Am i happy with the options i am forced to work with, and the lack of ability to see exclusively WarTargets...not to mention the annoyance i have with the way bountied pilots crop up when i'm trying to ensure every single instance of a wartarget's attributes is checked? Not really...That's kind of a big deal: Not being able to separate wartargets into a tab of it's own (outside of null-sec)...You see, if i choose to check solely pilots at war with my corporation, and uncheck everything else, you'd THINK that would make things simple wouldn't it? but, no, if a pilot has an attribute i have unchecked, say a bounty - no matter if they are clearly at war with me - they won't appear in that type of overview settings.
Besides this annoyance about highsec wartargets (most use background colors to ensure target selection, as a jury rigged solution) the other issue that custom profiles can't jury rig a solution to is bountied pilots are probably the number two problem facing the overview...since CCP fixed what wasn't broken a while back anyone can bounty any pilot with zero restrictions.
TL;DR So if CCP somehow worked a solution so that we could have a "wardec" tab showing only wartargets (by separating bounty indicator from the attributes and having it appear some other way, say perhaps in the 'ships' settings as a check box) that would be an improvement.
EDIT: having differentiation in beacons (especially cynos) would be great, plus something else in that vein but it's slipped my mind
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