I'm revamping the UI, just as concept art to see how I'd solve UI problems, and simplify the interface. I'm not only redesigning the existing interface but changing it and adding gameplay mechanics changes as well.
FYI this is not a mod or an upcoming mod. It's just a design exercise for me. I'm not planning to make this, I don't have the technical skills on how to make mods, and probably the engine not allowing this kind of modifications either. I tried to not to do something that I think the game engine wouldn't allow, but I can't be sure, and as I said, this is concept art. If anyone wants to use some of these ideas, wanna actually build something like this, feel free to contact me, or just pick the idea and use it. But I'd be happy to contribute and help design a more consistent and logical interface.
Tactical map
Because sometimes the map is very crowded, why not to split into tactical and trade map. Both important, but frequently used, but you rarely need those two types of information at the same time. It also shows some information about the selected ship, speed, hull etc (no weapon system and shield type atm, just because it needs to be scanned), but showing which ship your target is targeting.
Tactical Map with filters
This is the tactical map, with ship filters. (Not sure this is actually a useful feature, let me know what you think.)
Trade map sector filters
This is the trade map, with sector information. Just an example of how I'd design the map interface if I'd work for Egosoft as a UI designer.
Trade map trade filters
Hire crew member
I think it's also boring to look for crew members, you should be able to see people for hire (as in the real world), and their skills. So I also added some randomly generated dialog. Every NPC in the game says basically the same, and for me after like a couple of hours became very repetitive, and I really like random features in games. (Although I can imagine in some cases you have to find an outstanding candidate because that person not on the job market, but it should have been done differently.)
In this case, I imagined a very simple text generator, maybe creating 10-20 personalities, and a couple of variations for every line in the conversations. (And also stealing a little bit from The Expanse, to create interesting character dialogues, dialects, slang etc, and give some personality to characters. Until there are no proper TTS engines in games, it should be simple text-based in my opinion.)
For example:
[Neotech Samurai]
Line 1 variations: {Konbanwa / Konnichiwa / Hajimemashite, ...}, {Battle Master san / Sensei / Captain / my friend / ...}!
Line 2 variations: {I am / My name is / You contacted with / ...} [name comes here].
Line 3 variations: {...an extremely talented and experienced / I'm a professional / ...} [profession comes here]
Black Market quest
While I think Egosoft did a good job on the design of the ships and stations, walking through stations and seeing all those NPCs gives me the feeling I'm playing with a modded fps 10 years ago. I think it's awkward, and the concept you have to physically go to places on empty and borings stations makes me feel it's just a feature to increase time spent in the game, and not adding anything meaningful to the gameplay. I miss X3-s easy to use tree menu based system, where I didn't need to use my mouse but was able to get through menus just using my keyboard. So this is a concept for that user flow.
On this one I'm adding gameplay mechanics as well, I think just A>B type quests (go here > do that) are boring, and just combining simple quests to a chain quest would add already a lot of variety to the game. (So, to create a formula, to generate quests out of 10-15 basic types and combine them, so some quest would have 2 steps, some 5 or more.)
I was also thinking why pirating, and being a mobster is so much punished in this game? Any type of criminal activity instantly lowering your reputation, while in the real world people are using fake personalities, committing crimes and getting away with it easily. So I created this concept of fake transporter ID (or borrowed from The Expanse) when you can buy a one-time use/limited time use transponder codes, so if you're doing something illegal you can get away with it. So, by mechanics, you can use them one time, and next time you'd need a new one. So, for example, if you have illegal cargo in your ship, and the police scanning you, you can get away with it. They'd look for the transponder codes, so if you reached the safe distance you could change to another ID. It's like the save game insurance, expect this one actually makes sense, and it'd give many possibilities to create pirating quests and to build a criminal (trading) empire in the game. Of course it implies you should be able to create your own Spacewed/Spacefly Eggs/etc factories (I'm not sure if it's possible or not at the moment), and your smuggling feet. I suppose it would need an additional mechanic (like heat in GTA), police would look after you somehow, but wouldn't it sounds exciting?
I would love to see a thought through well-designed UI and user flow in X games, because on this level of complexity I think it's very important, and while Egosoft improved a lot, they're still not there (sorry guys, I love you btw!)
