Combat Display into New Eden

Over time Starwalker had setup his display into New Eden in a number of different ways but the basic goal was always the same - how to optimise the view for combat. What information was seen frequently and needed to be clearly visible, what functionality was used regularly and needed to be easily accessible?

The latest incarnation was laid out like this, with areas numbered for easy reference:

1. Local was a separate window. It made immediately visible the number of pilots in local and showed portraits of some or all of those locals. This display easily showed when local either rose quickly or fell. Starwalker generally liked to hunt in a system with less than 6 people and ideally no gangs in local. It seemed to Starwalker, who flew solo the majority of the time, that systems that fielded many pilots like Tama, Amamake or Old Man Star were more likely to end in ganks than kills
2. Corporate, fleet, intel and miscellaneous communication channels
3. Log was shown primarily to see damage and quality of the hit (miss, wreck...) during a fight. It would also show what weapon system was being used by the target. Whilst it was only used occasionally, if needed, it was simply easier to see the outgoing and incoming damage here, as the scrolling display was sometimes too fast to really see what was displayed and to take the information in
4. Module management was arranged over three rows
• Main active modules - propulsion, attacking (scram, guns...) and general (neut, nos...) modules. Importantly, these were aligned with the F1-F6 keys for simple and in principle faster keyboard activation
• Defensive modules (damage control, armour repairer, ancillary shield booster, capacitor or shield booster...)
• Passive modules (buffer tank, resist, damage and tracking enhancers...)
5. Overview had changed the most with time and now focused on showing the default views: All, PvP and Drone with two custom views: Scan and Target. In particular, Target was just enemy ships (including NPC) and the sun as a simple warp away point in the event the ship was destroyed. These views were setup to show icons, distance, name, type, corporation, alliance, velocity and radial.
• Starwalker had found on occasion that he wanted to know quickly if the pilots on grid were part of the same corporation or alliance or whether there was a fight going on between rivals - corporation and alliance showed that
• Similarly, apart from knowing how fast a ship was going, which gave clues about its fit (MWD or AB, armour or shield tanked...), radial also showed whether the ship was moving closer (negative) or away (positive)
• The overview and selected item windows were deliberately sized to be close to the modules and to keep the most important items together
6. Drone window was similarly close to the main action area with the drones arranged into groups or folders to allow simple organisation and easy launch of the drones in that group
7. Scan window that complemented the setup of the tracking window in the centre of the screen to allow a simple 5 degree scan by simply selecting the celestial and hitting scan. Setting the tracking in the centre of the screen also simplified manual piloting by keeping the selected target in the same position on the screen

Starwalker had no doubt that over time it would change again but currently he felt that it was optimised for his needs.