Project Clarity: Tooltips

[RCIX]

So as part of the tooltip project, I'm going to be recommending that abilities be broken up into categories. Here's (roughly, i might have missed a couple) the sort I'm thinking of:

Attack abilities:

Armor Damage
Armor Piercing
Attack Paralyzes
Attacks are Self-Damaging
Attritions Enemies
Does More Damage to High Armor Targets
Engine Damage
Insta Kills <= Mark X
Insta Kills Warheads
Reclaims Enemy Ships
Replicates Every XX Build Points
Strikes All Enemies In Range
Vampirism
Must Be Manually Targeted

Defense Abilities:
Absorbs EMPs
Attracts All Incoming Missiles
Counters Dark Matter
Halves Enemy Move Speed
Max Ship Speed X within xx Range
Planetary Tachyon Beam Coverage
Prevents All Teleportation
Radar Dampening (-.-)
Reduces Power of Nearby Incoming Lasers
Reflects Incoming Attacks
Regen Time
Tractor Beam
Warp Jammer

Limitation abilities:
Attrition Per Wormhole Hop Outside of Supply
Blind
Can't Use Wormholes
Personal Attack Boost Limited to X%
Requires Supply
Self Attrition Time
Consumed After Building One Ship

Ability Abilities:
Advanced Warp Detection
Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet
Attack Boost For Allied Ships
Cloaking
Cloaking Booster
Cloaking Superbooster
Construction Rate
Doubles Allies Move Speed
Emits Nuclear Explosion On Destruction
EMP On Destruction
Enemy-only EMP On Wormhole Exit
Gathers Scout Intel
Interferes with Enemy Supply
Repair Rate
Tachyon Beam Emission
Teleports
Transports xx Ships
Warp Detection
Warp Gate

Misc Abilities:
Can Spawn Ships at Intra-Galactic X
Captured On Planet Ownership Change
Retreat Range
Unlocks Ship Type On Capture
Self-Attrition Only on AI Worlds Mark >= X

the idea being that Attack abilities go with attack stats, Defense abilities go with defense stats, Limitations get their own category, and Ability abilities + misc abilities stay classified as "Abilities".

[RCIX]

After seeing the ungodly mess of text I have to deal with as my guesstimated "worst case"... (and I didn't bother getting a description text yet :x)

Save me now There's so much information here that I honestly don't know how much, if any, improvement I can offer over the stock tooltip without A: getting more room to work with (shorter and wider might actually help here though), B: getting a much smaller pixel font for the tooltips, or C: finding some sort of entirely alternate means of presenting this information.

I mean, I'll still try and go through with speccing a tooltip out, but this really isn't the direction I think we should be heading. Consider this my "Unable to validate input; continue anyway?" warning

[eRe4s3r]

You won't fit it in the standard tooltip so make it an new tooltip window. That way, we can always put it to the right on widescreen, or below the tooltip if its not a widescreen (or the resolution is too low)

I think, ability texts should not be part of the main tooltip but open up the same time in seperate tooltip window (obviously they only visually seperate they open close the same time).

But that said, I feel we are already way past the threshold where "use" vs "work" was a positive calculation

[doctorfrog]

After seeing the ungodly mess of text I have to deal with as my guesstimated "worst case"... (and I didn't bother getting a description text yet :x)

Save me now There's so much information here that I honestly don't know how much, if any, improvement I can offer over the stock tooltip without A: getting more room to work with (shorter and wider might actually help here though), B: getting a much smaller pixel font for the tooltips, or C: finding some sort of entirely alternate means of presenting this information.

I mean, I'll still try and go through with speccing a tooltip out, but this really isn't the direction I think we should be heading. Consider this my "Unable to validate input; continue anyway?" warning

As someone who has had to take a whack at such things now and then: don't worry too much about it. Give it a shot. If it isn't an improvement, who cares? It's not like a paycheck is hanging on it.

I've been looking at the Lorc icons linked to earlier, and they're very good. There are hundreds of them, and a lot of them are applicable. But even so, text, and text alone, is more descriptive.

AI War is a complex game, and I think trying to simplify it is a fine intention. But it will always be complex, and simplifying tooltips will probably not win over people who want a simpler game.

Which is not to say that tooltips can't stand some work. Which is, in turn, not to say that tooltips will be reworked because of this discussion! Which, of course, does not mean that this is not a discussion worth having.

Video games.

[TechSY730]

AI War is cranking through ship relative stats, which I'm starting to regret telling it to do I'll also have it export whatever else it does and see if any of that helps.

Woa, you were doing the combat simulation matchup thing? Yea, you didn't need to go through all that. You can just export the "static" data the contains only the ship stats.
Not that the matchup thing isn't useful (it can be a great tool (among others) for measuring balance and stuff), but I don't think you need it for this.

P.S. Yes, I know this reply is a few days late. 

[RCIX]

Heh, i found the info on the wiki Pretty sure it hiccupped once or twice along the way and started over in the 6 or so hours I left it running in the background.

[LaughingThesaurus]

The categorized ability list is great, but maybe on the side we can find good ways to shorten the names so they just aren't as wordy as they are.

[eRe4s3r]

There are many things where shortening would work.. sadly I lost my post accidentally  ;P

Self-Attrition Only on AI Worlds Mark  X
Attrition on AI Worlds >= Mark X

Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet
Planet wide ally attack boost

Planetary Tachyon Beam Coverage
Planet wide anti cloak

Emits Nuclear Explosion On Destruction
Nuclear explosion on death

Attrition Per Wormhole Hop Outside of Supply
Attrition per hop outside of supply

Reduces Power of Nearby Incoming Lasers
Reduced power for nearby lasers

Captured On Planet Ownership Change
Captureable

(like seriously, how else would you capture it?)

Does More Damage to High Armor Targets
More damage against strong armor (or stronger???)

Some ideas ,p

[RCIX]

There are many things where shortening would work.. sadly I lost my post accidentally  ;P

Does More Damage to High Armor Targets
More damage against strong armor (or stronger???)

Some ideas ,p

Going with "Target's Armor Adds To Damage" for now, it's not that much shorter but it helps.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Armor Damage
Armor Piercing
Attack Paralyzes
^ Good

Attacks are Self-Damaging
Attacks self-damage

Attritions Enemies
^ Good

Does More Damage to High Armor Targets
Damage Bonus vs High Armor

Engine Damage
Insta Kills <= Mark X
Insta Kills Warheads
^ Good

Reclaims Enemy Ships
Reclamation Damage (It's about the same but seems like it'd fit better with the immunities listed.

Replicates Every XX Build Points
Can Replicate

Strikes All Enemies In Range
...I can't think of a good short way to say "PBAoE Attack"

Vampirism
^ Good

Must Be Manually Targeted
Manually Targeted

Absorbs EMPs
(Wait, does this mean immune to EMPs? Does the ship gain a benefit from EMPs instead of a detriment? Maybe this could just be an immunity instead?)

Attracts All Incoming Missiles
Attracts Missiles

Counters Dark Matter
Halves Enemy Move Speed
^ Good

Max Ship Speed X within xx Range
Slows ships to x in xx range

Planetary Tachyon Beam Coverage
Planetary Tachyon

Prevents All Teleportation
Prevents Teleportation

Radar Dampening
^ Good

Reduces Power of Nearby Incoming Lasers
Weakens incoming lasers

Reflects Incoming Attacks
Reflects Damage

Regen Time
Tractor Beam
Warp Jammer
^ Good

Attrition Per Wormhole Hop Outside of Supply
Attrition Outside of Supply?

Blind
Can't Use Wormholes
^ Good

Personal Attack Boost Limited to X%
Attack Boost Limit x%

Requires Supply
Self Attrition Time
^ Good

Consumed After Building One Ship
Consumable
or
Consumed on Use

Advanced Warp Detection
^ Good

Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet
Planetary Attack Boost

Attack Boost For Allied Ships
Attack Boost

Cloaking
Cloaking Booster
Cloaking Superbooster
Construction Rate
^ Good

Doubles Allies Move Speed
Doubles move speed

Emits Nuclear Explosion On Destruction
Nuclear Explosion on Death

EMP On Destruction
EMP on Death

Enemy-only EMP On Wormhole Exit
(I don't know)

Gathers Scout Intel
Scouts

Interferes with Enemy Supply
Interrupts Supply

Repair Rate
^ Good

Tachyon Beam Emission
Tachyon Beam

Teleports
Transports xx Ships
Warp Detection
Warp Gate
^ Good

Can Spawn Ships at Intra-Galactic X
(This is already a major part of the warp gate description... does this need to be visible as an ability?)

Captured On Planet Ownership Change
Captureable

Retreat Range
^ Good

Unlocks Ship Type On Capture
Unlocks Bonus Ship

Self-Attrition Only on AI Worlds Mark >= X
Attrition on AI Worlds Mark <= X

I gave each a proper try.

[doctorfrog]

I'm anal as heck about text (I'm a tech writer by trade), so I can't help what I'm about to do to your suggestions. Just making things shorter doesn't necessarily make them easier to parse, so we should be careful.

There are many things where shortening would work.. sadly I lost my post accidentally  ;P

Self-Attrition Only on AI Worlds Mark  X
Attrition on AI Worlds >= Mark X
Yes! Except >= is kinda booty, so since there are only five possible marks, just list the marks. Example: Attrition on AI Planets Mark I-III

Attack Boost For All Allied Ships On Planet
Planet wide ally attack boost
"Attack Boost" should come first as it's easier to parse, then "who" and "where" comes logically next, so:
"Attack Boost for Allies Planet-wide" if we change it at all... except now it means everyone, and not just ships. So we have to put ships back in there... and we're right back where we started.

Planetary Tachyon Beam Coverage
Planet wide anti cloak
This game is thin enough on "lore-ish" text, and we should retain "tachyon beam." I'd also venture to say that anyone familiar with cloaking space ships will pretty quickly grasp the equally fictional function of tachyon beams. I suggest retaining this description.

Emits Nuclear Explosion On Destruction
Nuclear explosion on death
Individual ships that aren't Neinzul aren't alive, I think, so "destruction" is more proper than "death." "Emits Nuclear Explosion" just sounds cool and I'd rather not ditch it

Attrition Per Wormhole Hop Outside of Supply
Attrition per hop outside of supply
This is a real tangle of terms and concepts, and I can't think of a good way to shorten it! We have the concepts of "attrition," "supply," and "hops," all of which are super-specific to AI War. This is a toughie!

Reduces Power of Nearby Incoming Lasers
Reduced power for nearby lasers
Another fierce tangle of words. We should keep "reduces" to remain consistent with other similar unit verbs. Removing "incoming" makes it sound like it reduces friendly lasers as well as hostile ones, and would it mean laser beams, or laser turrets? Again we start running into problems when we chop out words.
One possibility: "Diffuses Hostile Laser Fire," although this omits how much diffusion takes place.

Captured On Planet Ownership Change
Captureable
(like seriously, how else would you capture it?)
I can get behind this. Without "Planet Ownership Change," a new user might start looking through his roster for a tow truck unit, though. But yes!

Does More Damage to High Armor Targets
More damage against strong armor (or stronger???)
Alternative: "Pierces Armor" or "Anti-Armor," or "Anti-Armor Specialist." Whatever change we make here should be done parallel to similar specialties, such as "Does More Damage to High Health Targets."

Some ideas ,p

Yeah, this is all pretty anal stuff on my part, but you can see how a lot of thought originally went into making these short yet descriptive to begin with! Shortening them still further is no easy task.

[eRe4s3r]

The thing is, I currently have no idea what that laser power thing -> Reduces Power of Nearby Incoming Lasers <- even applies to, ships, incoming fire, turrets, the enemy? laser fire that passes into the range, or that originates in range? What's even an laser, is energy bombs are laser or is it specifically lasers? And why doesn't it exist for other attack things, like missiles etc..

As for ships vs not ships in attack boost it's including turrets isn't it? ;P Because turrets definitely are getting attack boosted by fleet ships and so this boost applies for ships and everything that can shoot. So including ships is a misinformation to begin with. Unless that changed recently... could swear that always boosted everything, not just ships, but I may be wrong.

More ideas are always better. I only picked the longest and made them shorter after all ;p

In the end, the abilities can be as long as they need to be because we are not putting them in the same window as the consolidated tooltip.... ;p (or are we?)