"Buy cargo" order improvement

[andreykl]

Please make it easier to find commodities to buy. It's a pain to rearm and refuel ships. Suggestion on the image:
   
P.S. Ideally a 'resupply & rearm' order is needed which would fill up both fuel and ammo, with options to fill at a percentage of cargo hold e t c

[Ivan]

I like the first idea (the new list layout) very much, but the second seems redundant if the first one is implemented because there are many types of ammo, so you'd need to pick them from a list anyway.

Btw, probably you already knew this, but ijust incase you didn't: you can save a resupply ammo order mission for a specific type of ammo to an inventory storage item, you can just load this mission for any ship that you want to resupply with that ammo type.

I even made 2 sequences that load everything (crew, troops, cryopassengers, guns, ammo, lenses, fuel, food, tools, construction mats, pharmaceuticals, cryo passengers...) for 2 different ship types. So I just have to put the officer onboard, load and activate the mission and turn on power (and the transporter, if you have those ofc) if ship is not near a station/landed at an airport, or move the ship to a station/airport. officer takes care of the rest.

[andreykl]

but the second seems redundant if the first one is implemented because there are many types of ammo, so you'd need to pick them from a list anyway.

Depends on implementation.
Ex 1: If your ship has only a kinetic gun, if it automatically filters to heavy ammo for you to pick from it's going to be more convenient.
Ex 2: Option to specify to just pick best ammo that matches the guns won't need to specify ammo, just give an order (or based on what already in the cargo or just pick enough of every lens type).
Ex 3: Specify default loadout as a part of blueprint (as with mass distribution), so a resupply order will simply aim to match that with little to now setup (if autonomous cargo/trade ships are planned they probably will need something like this either way).

I even made 2 sequences that load everything (crew, troops, cryopassengers, guns, ammo, lenses, fuel, food, tools, construction mats, pharmaceuticals, cryo passengers...) for 2 different ship types. So I just have to put the officer onboard, load and activate the mission and turn on power (and the transporter, if you have those ofc) if ship is not near a station/landed at an airport, or move the ship to a station/airport. officer takes care of the rest.

At least half of the actions are 'standard' for every vessel and even stations, player shouldn't have to bother with making lists of orders just to make a ship combat ready.

P.S. And warehouse needs same type of UI upgrade.

[Ivan]

For combat readyness all you need is load crew, maybe load troops (for turrets), load 1 type of ammo and/or lenses per weapon bay/turret type and that's it. Also fuel if there wasn't enough fuel present when the ship was constructed. 4 orders + 1 for each additional weapon bay/turret type. The most people would likely need is 1 type of lenses, 1 type of missiles and 1 type of bombs.

So again, yes I agree with your nice list UI, but the ammo loading really seems redundant. (as in is it really that much effort to give 4 orders? Especially once you have a list like you suggested.). Besides the list of all ammo contains 30 items. Picking only ammo would reduce it to 4. If you look at the list in the trade channel ("Ask for items" which is similar to what you proposed for the buy orders), is it really that hard to spot the 4 heavy ammo in the list of 30? (resize window) And mostly is it really that much of an improvement to reduce the list to 4? It stands out very clearly due to the icons and all ammo being grouped together (alphabetically).

Would it really justify the programming effort of automating all that for that minimal benefit? (again, make sure to consider this after a hypothetical implementation of your list idea).

Giving your suggested "rearm and resupply order"(where you have to also mark ammo type) every time or loading a mission that contains it every time, instead of making a list of 4-6 buy orders once and loading that mission every time? If you'd like to change the ammo type, you'd have to remake the mission either way.

The list thing would be a large improvement over the current situation. Sure JUST the ammo thing would also be an improvement over the current situation, but after the UI list implementation, the ammo thing would barely be an improvement, if at all.

Your opinion may differ, but to me the UI list suggestion feels ike a "scan sector order" that adds an order to scan every system in the sector (improvement), whereas the ammo thing is in the ballpark of a "scan the galaxy order"(why even?). Ok a bit exagerated, but you get the point.

But if other players and Haxus feel the "rearm order" would be a large improvement and it gets implemented, I wouldn't mind. But I just don't think this is needed.

The UI list however made me give this thread 5 stars :)

[Deantwo]

P.S. Ideally a 'resupply & rearm' order is needed which would fill up both fuel and ammo, with options to fill at a percentage of cargo hold e t c

The biggest issue I see this an order like this, is how it will feel to use it. If you are on the ship, the UI can check which weapons are on the ship easily.
But if you are not on the ship the UI won't know what the ship is outfitted with. For example when sending the order remotely, maybe even sending the order to multiple ships at once, or loading a mission from a storage media.

Players are already confused when they are sending remote mission orders to ships. Wondering why they can't see the list of worlds/cities where the ship is.

[andreykl]

The biggest issue I see this an order like this, is how it will feel to use it. If you are on the ship, the UI can check which weapons are on the ship easily.

It can be a combobox that lists damage types instead of ammo.

'remote' commands is one of the reasons why I want that option. It is technically possible to request a berth on a ship, teleport over, check ship's stats then to decide what to resupply the ship with based on ship's guns and execute it (if ship wasn't on the loop with such an order already), but it is long and micromanagy. Better just give a 'resupply' command, that command would decide on the go based on availability of ammo on the planet/vicinity.

[Deantwo]

Maybe an easier and more useful solution would be some way to define a manifest of essential supplies that your crew should maintain on board. Maybe set in the spacecraft policy or something.

Then you could have a simple order that tells the crew to resupply to the defined essential supplies level.

This essential supplies manifest could be pre-defined in the spacecraft blueprint or as part of the blueprint customization.