Bullwinkle58
Posts: 6401
Joined: 2/24/2009
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PaxMondo
Moose,
As Michael says, with the new filter available, you need to use the aircraft data tab more often now. The main screen just doesn't show everything about aircraft load outs any more. The tab will show you exactly what you are flying with for any particular mission.
Many IJ aircraft have centerline ordnance conflicts and the aircraft data tab has always been where you look to see those. Or at least it been that way now for at least a couple of years.
I should leave this alone, but in typical Moose fashion I won't.
The issue to me is not the issue you name or the one michaelm outlines. I roger that there are combos of ordnance and that the aircraft data tab exists. I don't use it, except to see maneuver bands. Could I use it? Sure. Should I use it more? Probably.
But the issue is interface design, not that the data needed to play the game is available somewhere, if one only will play the game in one, set way. Interfaces, in game design theory, are baragins between the developer and the customer. The developer, by choosing design conventions such as colors and symbols, inherently promises not to lie to the player. To make the interface agree with itself in every way and in every corner the player can look under the design. The player IOW doesn't get a different story depending on which piece of the interface he consults.
In the case of the early war Beest there are three places the player can look into the interface and address this issue: the range rings, the mission planning screen, and the aircraft data tab. Two of them give one answer and it's incorrect. One of them gives a different answer, and it's the only one that can be correct based on the plane's physical characteristics.
I used the mission planner. It tells me, by the use of yellow text, a design convention, that I can have both a drop tank and a torpedo mounted. I planned a very critical mission on that basis. That the aircraft data tab says otherwise is nice, but it's a cop-out. How, in this example where two interface elements are 180 degrees from each other, can the player, newbie or not, know he should trust one over the other? He can't. That breaks the bargain with the player.
The issue of the range rings is harder, and I understand it's probably a code impossibility to fix, but there too the player is misled. There are four range rings shown for this model when drop tank is co-selected with torpedos. The gray ring, which should logically represent this combo, should not be there, since the plane can NEVER fly this mission. Players who lean on the range rings to calculate strike probabilities will also be led to making a decision which is impossible to fly.
As for bomb load-outs this is to me a different isuse. In mission planning terms for planes which can cary either the only real thing the player needs to know is that a bomb is a non-torpedo. Redding out the torpedo text indicates you've got some kind of bomb. If you want more than that you go to the aircraft tab, since the mission planner never, ever tells the player bomb details, and that's fine because that's what's in the bargain. But telling the player he has a torpedo loaded when he doesn't is not.
This issue concerns one plane for one side in one configuraiton. It's not the end of the world if it never gets fixed. But far smaller issues have been fixed as michaelm has continued volunteer support of the game. I mainly wanted to highlight the reality that not all players come into game management from the same direction, from the same process with the use of the same management screens. Where info can be accessed from more than one place the info needs to agree with itself. When yellow text means one thing everywhere else it shouldn't mean something different here.
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The Moose
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