Astrogator duties inconsistent

[brisk sage]

Without an astrogator ships seem to never reveal their names, only IDs. This, however, creates a paradox:

• The hailing of other ships is performed from the pilot screen in the OMS, and in the dialogue it is possible to address a ship by its name tag even if said tag is displayed as unknown, see pic. 1
• Astrogator's tactical awareness skill description reads that they're responsible for highlighting ships around by their transponders, not reading those in the first place, see pic 2.
• It appears that to ID a ship by name the ship has to be on screen, and the astrogator then has to highlight it, see pics 3, 4 and 5.

[prisma elk]

I'm not really sure what is your concern here. It seems to work exactly as designed.
Transponders give off their number to LIDAR sweep and that's what you are seeing without an astrogator. If you have one and they mark the ships with tactical markers, you see names.

[brisk sage]

• Captain knows ship names
• Ship names are displayed on the pilot screen

Again, the description of the astrogator's skill:

Why do I need an astrogator to:

• Display names captain already has access to?
• Display names which should be displayed on the pilot screen?

The skill description implies that the astrogator will highlight ships by their tags, that works as intended. But for some reason the pilot OMS screen is also dependant on whether the astrogator highlighted the ship within the camera field of view. This doesn't check out.

[prisma elk]

Ship names are not in your ship computer unless your astrogator puts them there. That is what the tactical awareness skill does. Without it you are working with only the LIDAR data, which contains only the ship transponder.

This seems to work exactly as designed.

[brisk sage]

The description should be altered then

Because right now it does not translate that for some reason only the astrogator is allowed to match IDs with names on the pilot screen when we contact ships knowing their IDs and names

Or, alternatively

Offload that duty from the astrogator because it doesn't make good sense

[brisk sage]

Furthermore:

Same dive, and I do have an astrogator with me, but it will not even apply a name tag to a pirate ship that is both in field of view and identified itself.

Astrogator duties inconsistent

[prisma elk]

I'm sorry, but I don't see any inconsitency. You are expecting something that does not match how it works in the game, its working is consistent with what it is supposed to model.

[brisk sage]

What it's supposed to model is nowhere near consistent with how it is presented

[prisma elk]

That's your opinion, mine is different, and you didn't manage to convice me on that.

[brisk sage]

Again, the list:

1. Both IDs and ship names are known without an astrogator, yet the astrogator is for some reason the only one who is allowed to match them to the IDs
2. Ship names are to be displayed on the pilot OMS screen, not an astrogator screen, but for some reason the astrogator is required, see point number 1
3. Ship names are not displayed for ships without a transponder, yet the astrogator on the crew highlights those ships a) despite claiming they will highlight ships by their transponders and b) without their names which are known, see point number 1.

Consistency there's none. Internal consistency is none of my concern, but external does not back it up.

[prisma elk]

1. The fact that the ships are known by someone doesn't mean that someone put them into the tactical console.
2. This is where IFF is.
3. Ships without transponders cannot be found in the database of ships, mostly because, well, you don't have a transponder to look up.

[brisk sage]

Then I do have an astrogator to put a name in the console, I do have IFF which understands which ship is which, and I do have them telling me their ship's name, yet the astrogator can't put two and two together and put a name on a ship without transponder, which to be fair he shouldn't be able to highlight on the screen in the first place 😄

The weeds are thick

[prisma elk]

You imagined another way this operates than I did, and you seem to expect the game to yield to that. This is not going to work this way.

[brisk sage]

The internal logic is not what is being telegraphed to me, the player

I'd need more than "yes, I designed it to be this way" to convince me otherwise

[prisma elk]

I don't doubt that.

[native meteor]

Interesting. I was under the impression that

1. Transponders contain both the ID and the ship name
2. Tactical marker for ships with a transponder are automatically assigned using LIDAR data

But it's been a while since i've flown without an astrogator. I usually hire one right away if possible.

[prisma elk]

@pearl oxide I'd like to hear your opinion on this.

[pearl oxide]

I'm not sure this is a reason for taking the skill from the Astrogator; the key issue here seems to be that the (Target/Shipname) in our dialogs doesn't account for when we don't actually know the shipname, right? It sounds like replacing that with the transponder in the cases that our astrogator hasn't tagged the shipname would be a solve -- right?

That's not a broken tactical system, it's a dialogue that knows more than it should.

As for flying without an astrogator, I think we've made the assumption that a number of duties are performed by the captain without a crew role present, hence why you can control your ship without a pilot.

With reduced effectiveness, of course, given captain skill is effectively a missing role, 0%.

[brisk sage]

I know access to clean lidar in the OMS is on the cards, so this may as well tie into this: the tabs could be decoupled from the professions in the first place, since it is possible to not have a person of that profession on the team. Besides, currently the pilot doesn't even have duties for what is effectively the communications tab to warrant it being named after them.

So the screens could be instead named:

• Maintenance
• Astrogation
• Geology
• Communication

The crew instead could be displayed on the side, as a column of professions and their portraits by them if present, and hovering over the profession could display a tooltip as to what their duties are or would be.

As a sidenote, I've worked in a company of three people. Whenever someone wasn't available the others performed some of their duties, it was necessary. They could not be adequately replaced in their area of expertise, of course, but something as simple as punching a name by the ID into a terminal should not require special knowledge.

[pearl oxide]

The UI rework looks like just moving things around, but rebuilding that interface sounds like a bigger job than it might seem, at first. UI work can suck down a surprising amount of time. I think we might want to avoid this as a "we're touching OMS, we might as well rebuild the UI" project unless we can articulate a clear reason we need it.

I don't know if it's so much that it requires hard expertise, rather that it's done from the console that the astrogator tasks are done from.

[brisk sage]

...

This commitment to a fictional "console" utterly baffles me. Fiction is malleable, altered and shaped to purpose. It's the easiest thing to do. Barely any player knows that it works this way and I guarantee that absolutely no one would ever notice if it was changed. Victimless crime. Yet for some reason internal consistency to some bit is deemed more important than what is actually being telegraphed to the player interacting with the game?

I do not understand this as a conscious creative decision. It is why I keep partaking in this thread for so long and don't just leave it be now that my astrogator is out of hospital and back to being underpaid. Why is the unspoken, as far as in-the-game experience is concerned, being respected here more than the game's own interface?

[pearl oxide]

This is less "We had this in mind from the start and it constrained our design," and more "We designed it this way due to a variety of factors, and when questioned about it, there are obvious ways we can justify it."

Now, I feel like you, you're looking for a gameplay goal. All the arguments so far have been lore arguments and in-universe design arguments, but I feel like there's a gameplay or QOL improvement you're targeting with it. Let's start with the gameplay you're looking for, and explain what you want, and why you feel it would be more fun. And if we agree, we can look for ways to fit that gameplay result into the universe so it makes sense.

Right now I feel like you're trying to argue that the lore is broken to guide us to a gameplay result that I'm not clear on. But at the end of the day, we can justify what most things with much smaller and less time-consuming changes, so without knowing what you're reaching for, it's hard to pick up a time-consuming redesign of the OMS UI as the first tool in our belt.

[brisk sage]

I've laid out earlier the minimum effort solution that would solve the biggest inconsistency by altering just the titles of the OMS tabs. Previously a clean lidar line was also present, it is gone now:

I do not care about lore. One bit. Can keep it. It helps, but it's not what I'm here for. My arguments were all about consistency between the game's messaging and what my experience is. This particular case is about not being properly messaged that astrogator's duties cover functions present on the pilot tab. Tab's not named pilot anymore? Major inconsistency solved, minor ones we'll fight about another day.

[pearl oxide]

I may be using lie on a broader sense than you expect. What console they work from, what jobs realistically make sense for their duties are all things I'd consider lore. It's in-universe consistency rather than gameplay.

Let me revisit the crux of it -- the key factor was knowing the ship's name when you shouldn't, right? That's why the astrogator not being able to label ships becomes a logical inconsistency in the story of how they do their jobs?

Also, I'll be away a while, work hours and all.

[brisk sage]

Unexpected behavior: ship's name is not displayed against the ship's transponder ID on the pilot OMS tab without an active astrogator.

Reasons why this is unexpected:

1. Astrogator duties are listed as: highlighting ships around by their transponders, tracking astrogation targets. There is no indication they are the ones responsible for matching transponder and ship names in the list of transponders in range. Every other communication aspect works perfectly fine without the astrogator (or even the crew member the pilot tab is named after) - receiving transponder ID, hailing, responding, finding out ship names or even knowing them in the first place.
2. The list of transponders in range is on the pilot OMS tab, and the IDs are not being matched with ship names when the crew has an active pilot but no astrogator. This is a contradiction between the name of the tab and the crew member which actually covers the duties for the tab, reinforced by active pilots being displayed in the background of the tab.