Oh, heh, for some reason my computer is set to open up xml files with my text editor, and I didn't even realize it, so I just thought it was a text file.... Even though I have extensions shown.... Oh well...
Opening it up in Open Office Calc doesn't work though.... Know of any free spreadsheet programs that might do the trick?
As far as the link to why showing just the multiplier numbers is bad, I do agree with that. But at the same time, the part about them being misleading in some cases, specificly:
"How the ships perform if the player uses any tactics other than just running the two groups at one another. "
Is why I would love to have a way to see the bonus damage in game, because I do like to use tactics, and to tell my ships to attack stuff, and I DON'T want to select the entire group and tell them to attack the raid starships, when most of them do low damage. Knowing that fighters do bonus damage means that I can select just them, and tell them to attack. Since starships pretty much don't have a useful strong versus week, that is the most useful place where being able to see bonus damage would be handy. But other things...
For example, if I have fortresses, and Bombards together, and a bunch of ships are heading wards me, if I start to micro, the bombards are listed as having a high percentage to frigates, but they actually do half damage, while they do full damage to bombers, and have a lower percentage. So it's better for me to have my fort's shooting the frigs and the bombards shooting the bombers. Someone that doesn't micro isn't going to care about that, but someone that does..... Well, personally, I think that seeing the damage bonuses is mainly a micro thing... And while I know you don't like micro, it's sometimes fun to micro battles, so as to feel like you are actually commanding the fleet and stuff.
*shrug*
All in all, I realize that it's not all that important, but it would be cool.... Or some other way to micro so you can tell your ships "this is an important target, if you have a high bonus, shoot it, if not, don't". Being able to see bonus numbers and then have the player do that seems the easiest way to me, but I would be perfectly happy if I could "select" a hostile unit type from the scout bar, and then see a listing of all the types I have in system, and how well they will do against that type, compared against each other, rather then compared against what they are shooting at. Then we could just select the top few, or maybe some in the middle if the top few are already shooting more important stuff, and set the "high priority targets" kind of like if you right click on a target that type becomes important.....
