Just to toss in something. I would still like an in game way to get all the information, even if the "on the field" tooltips give a nice condensed version.
Maybe the tooltips that appear when you hover over the unit name in the reference tab could be the "complete" version, which would contain all the numerical goodness that you would. (And of course, there is always the Excel "stat dump" option)
Also, a slightly more detailed tooltip would be needed for research unlock icons and possibly for the building icons. In these cases, you don't have an active instance of that unit, so that gives fewer ways to "query" data, data which you might use to make a decision
I think that there should be an in-game "miniwiki" (which ironically would be more informative than the out-of-game wiki
) with database-generated detailed stat pages and/or tips (like top 3 unit counters, maybe total cap costs, etc.). In general, a civilopedia style guide in-game would probably help tons.
Missile Frigate - RCIX | 24/s (200) | 120/s (1000) | 200 | 00:09 | Cap: 98 |#######
for higher numbers
Missile Frigate - RCIX | 24/s (74k) | 120/s (744k) | 50k | 00:09 | Cap: 98 |#######
I disagree that we need to compact stuff like that, after all the super-compactness is what got us into this situation in the first place. ;p I don't know whether we need to swap costs (because IMO it is important to know that a cap's worth of Flagships costs X metal and Y crystal). In fact, per-second costs are arguably much less useful because those numbers go out the door the second you start assisting anything with engineers.
Plus, there needs to be a spot for debuffs and I believe next-to-the-ship-name serves that currently.
Note the ###'s thats the farthest the tooltip will ever stretch to the right. This has to be a fixed size. Based on this, you can now arrange every other piece of information below.. Also, you should think about shading and background. The name/player part needs to be visibly different from the rest.
I want to nail down something resembling a final design before messing with fancy styles. At that point I'll probably do a tooltip from scratch with the appropriate information, and cop a few icons from AI War. Speaking of, what font does AI War use exactly? Bonus points for listing any relevant style modifiers and point sizes commonly used in tooltips.
And shortening ability descriptors should be done as well. Lots of superflous wording there.
We already have next to no journal D: I don't want to lose most of the rest of my flavor!
Also, agreed on range being pointless. No idea what range even means in the game. I only know its more or less than something else.
Well, it's in-game units... No one has ever been given a formal definition for what a unit is in League of Legends, but everyone gets a strong feel for what a range equates to on the screen (and there's also a rough informative baseline with melee autoattacks usually being 125 range and ranged being 500-550ish). I'd like range to stay for that reason. If you want, we can attach meters or kilometers or something
Also, omitting Health raw number is something worth trying. It is not a relevant value in the game.
I assume you mean maximum health? Yeah, probably. Though it could stay with a bit of effort given to shrinking number sizes via smart affixes (200k, 400m, etc.).
OK so now I wanna poke around and figure out what
must remain in a tooltip no matter (If I'm correct, it's the name, description, defense panel, and resource panel). From there it's mainly a matter of building a tooltip style which acommodates the common and uncommon information being appended to it without growing to ungodly proportions or insufficiently structuring the information.
*cracks open photoshop*
(weeeee, this is as much fun is playing AI war itself!)