Rangefinder QoL

[Joshua]

Please make the rangefinder show the range unconditionally (at least in e'x'amine mode). Often when playing stealth I have only a melee weapon equipped and I have to tediously count to find out how far away squares with e.g. enemies vs. items are to know whether I'll be spotted or not.

[Kyzrati]

Yeah I can see the need. I've had similar needs plenty of times, although I use other methods to gauge distance (for example 'v', since I know the distance that represents, or sometimes other item activation distances ).

The problem with doing it in the Volley window is that its primary purpose is to describe the volley, not serve as a rangefinder in all circumstances. Like what happens when you have no weapons at all and want to measure a range? The Volley window is certainly available for use, but that's not its purpose, which is rather confusing and inconsistent...

Ideally we'd have an alternative solution, which just hasn't presented itself yet, at least not with respect to the default UI... Maybe there could be an advanced option to add one next to the cursor itself? That would probably get annoying, actually. Unless maybe it only appears after the cursor has been stationary for a certain amount of time.

[Joshua]

The problem with doing it in the Volley window is that its primary purpose is to describe the volley, not serve as a rangefinder in all circumstances. Like what happens when you have no weapons at all and want to measure a range? The Volley window is certainly available for use, but that's not its purpose, which is rather confusing and inconsistent...

Interesting! I almost always look at it for the range, very rarely for the volley info (matter, energy, heat cost). I wonder whether most players primarily think of it as the volley window or as a rangefinder (if they're aware of it at all).

[Kyzrati]

Good question, not sure... Though to be honest I bet it only really comes into play with pretty experienced players anyway, in which it's just a source of info. A lot of beginners don't even seem to realize they can get volley details there, like shooting time. Obviously many figure this out eventually, but calculating specific ranges tends to be important only in advanced play.

Anyway, not really sure what to do about this just yet, though I agree it would be nice to have. Maybe others will chime in here? (Or I'd have to ask on Discord xD)

Personally I actually use it mostly for the volley info, since I care a lot about especially the total matter consumption, and sometimes total energy or heat. If I'm out of range for some weapon(s) to fire then I'll just use 'v' and examine the results, but I don't care about ranges quite so much in melee/out of combat. If I do what I want to know is how close an enemy is to spotting me, which pretty much only matters if you have a modified visual range, in which case you can toggle your utility to see the difference being animated and figure it out that way (you'll sometimes see me doing this on stream...)

[Trione]

I would appreciate the ability to always have a consistent way to checking the distance to a target cell, even with only active melee weapons.  The volley window seems like an okay place of doing it, or the scan window if it would fit.  Seem worthy of a toggle-able setting.

[Kyzrati]

Yeah I've got some ideas for this, nothing permanent I don't think, but I'll see about adding at least an optional temporary solution until if/when a better possibility presents itself based on other needs in the future.

[Kyzrati]

Followup on this thread: A ruler overlay was added in Beta 11 which released this month, as demonstrated in this post.