Why is targeting stations and components so hard?

[Submarine]

With X4 targeting ships under crosshairs in a dogfight usually works OK but there are a two situations where targeting what is under the crosshairs does not work.

One is when you are close to a station. you simply cannot target the station unless you are over about 5 clicks away when you need to be closer than that to get docking permission. So you have to go to map and manually click the station and press T to target it so you can dock, far too often.

The other is when you are opposite a component on the surface of a ship you are fighting, when you can line up the crosshairs on a component, activate target under crosshairs and the game will select anything but the thing you are trying to target, especially if there is something on the other side of the vessel which intersects with the hitbox.
So you have to...

• stop the game and try to select it with your mouse or

• select nearest enemy, cycle through the many components to get to the one you want or

• select nearest enemy, press external view twice, then navigate around the object and select a component using the mouse, when the engine plumes or the ship's own selection box can obstruct selecting components.

These are all clunky methods and its an exercise in frustration. For the chance of a better future, in case sanity should prevail in the direction of X4 development and the user experience is given development time, it strikes me that the objects in LOS should be given priority and the relative size of targeting hitboxes needs to be adjusted so a station can be targeted but so can other smaller and closer objects.

[A5PECT]

I made this very complaint in the devnet section last week. I outlined my idea for a solution there

Tapping the "Target Object" key functions as it currently does. Holding the key while a target is selected activates a new "Target Element Under Cursor" mode:

1. as long as the key is held, all surface elements on the target and within line of sight become outlined
2. any non-destroyed surface element under the mouse cursor becomes highlighted
3. releasing the key targets the highlighted surface element

[Submarine]

Well I am glad you agree. I was beginning to think I might be a lone looney.

Now there are two of us!

The method you suggest does sound like it might feasibly work.

One situation I find difficult is when targeting Ks engines I am often completely unable to target it and the attempt picks up M shields on the other side of the ship. I think the culprit may be the engine plume which also obstructs manual targeting of the side turret in remote view mode. I dont know if that is deliberate but it doesn't play very well imho. I dont think the plume should interfere with targeting at all if you can see the object through the plume it doesnt make sense. It just looks like someone made a mistake with the engine plume properties.

[LameFox]

Another option I think would work here is to be able to lock your target (a station or ship) and then when using your usual targeting options, they only select equipment like turrets or shields on the locked object, and clearing your target resets to the locked object itself until you unlock it.

Curiously I did find a lock target keybind in the settings at one point, but when tested it appeared to have no clear function of any kind. Maybe it's intended for another control scheme?

[af_2017]

Curiously I did find a lock target keybind in the settings at one point, but when tested it appeared to have no clear function of any kind. Maybe it's intended for another control scheme?

This might be a case for controllers which uses "auto selecting targets" in front of the ship.
So the shortcut is for the cases when you want to stop "auto selection".

[S!rAssassin]

Context menu of target with list of all subsystems will be also useful.
And drop-down menu in map mode, like "docked" menu, with subsystems heath-bars too.