Brainstorm UI tweaks for Cargo Charges

[resinneublem]

I'd like to talk about some ways to make managing charges and drones across multiple fits less painful. Currently searching for each charge you need, dragging an individual one, and editing the charge amount is a clickfest.

First, let me mention my current workaround, which feels a little gnarly to reduce the clicking.

1. If I wasn't fortunate enough to clone an existing fit with close enough to the right charges. I will search each charge and drone I want and add one item of each.
2. I use a calculator app to determine how many reloads I want for each charge. Common charges I use might be around 2x-3x reloads. Very infrequent might be closer to 1.5x
3. Then I copy the existing fit as EFT (Ctrl-C) and paste it into a text editor.
4. I think use search/replace to change all the "x1" charges to the correct amounts I want.
5. I then copy the edited fit from the editor and paste it back into pyfa. Which creates a duplicate from the original fit.
6. I then delete the original fit I started with.

That's a pain in the ass. But trust me, after managing the charges for 20+ fits. This is much faster than changing the charge amount one at a time within pyfa. But this will stink after I start recording notes for each fit in Pyfa because that will be lost.

So I have a few ideas I'd like to bounce around. I'm not sold 100% on any of these but I was thinking that this might get the juices flowing and we could settle on 1 (or more) ideal workflows that I might be able to work into some PRs. Keep in mind these ideas are not mutually exclusive.

Dragging a charge drags a full reload worth. Ctrl-Dragging drags a single charge

The first issue I have is dragging single charges. It doesn't make a ton of sense because most fits don't go out with a single missile. I thought about multiples of some number (like 10 or 50). Or even a tooltip-ish UI component that would let you specify how many charges you want immediately.

However dragging a full reload based on how many weapons the fit currently has makes sense to me.

• If they don't have any weapons of that type, it would just drag a single charge.
• If we're looking at an atron with 3x neutron blasters, we know it can fit 3 * 80 hybrid charges for a full reload. So one drag would bring over 240 units of the charge they're dragging.
• If they hold CTRL while they are dragging, it would only bring over 1.
• Bonus if they hold SHIFT while dragging, it would open the a small window to allow you to specify how many charges. (Like "split a stack" inside EVE).

Copy the cargo/drones from another fit

This seems like it could be done very low key. I'd like to try and avoid an entire other area that manages "charge sets". Instead, they could treat a certain fit as an "charge set" by manually giving it all the charges/drones they want.

Then on new fits they could specify "copy all the stuff in that fit's cargo and drone hold to this fit". I think that would save a considerable amount of time. This also helps the pain of not duplicating the right fit the first time around.

A stab at the interaction: the user right clicks on the whitespace of a fit in the main area. And they can choose to copy the cargo/drones from any other open fit (in the tabs). That simplifies the whole find-the-other-fit workflow. It doesn't overwrite the cargo/drones. It just appends to it. They can trim out whatever they don't want.

A charge wizard for each fit

The user can open a new window for a fit something like a "charge wizard". We know from the mods they have added what charges they can use. They can choose multiple (maybe with checkboxes?) and immediately set the amount of charges. After they apply, all of that gets appended to the cargohold. We could even add an optional checkbox in that window to "overwrite" the cargo/drone holds instead of appending.

I think it would be sweet to be able to automatically scale the number for all items up. A lot like the way multibuy works in the game. I personally could use that for the number of reloads.

Allow someone to edit the EFT in-place

This is more of a poweruser way of editing a fit. But if someone is wanting to change several fits in place, why not allow them?

I could see this as simply right clicking the whitespace inside a fit and it turning into a giant text area with the EFT format. They could manually edit it or paste something else in and click a button to update.

It would behave just like CTRL-V (From Clipboard), except it would modify the current fit without creating a new one.

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So yeah, I'm not married to any of those ideas. And I'd welcome any new ones. I'd just like to reduce a current headache I have when it comes to managing multiple fits and varations of fits.

This is to address #361 and #314

[resinneublem]

Ok, original description is now updated. My bad on the early blank post.

[Ebag333]

Seems like a lot of work to get around a quantity popup. I definitely think that some of these options would be too confusing to new users.

Allow someone to edit the EFT in-place

This is the one I like most. Do a text field on a tab with the EFT fit. Let users edit it live. That's a LOT more work and dangerous to a degree (what if they edit the ship type?) but would be pretty cool, while better exposing the most common export option.

[resinneublem]

Seems like a lot of work to get around a quantity popup. I definitely think that some of these options would be too confusing to new users.

Speaking from experience, the quantity pop-up UI workflow is pretty terrible and time consuming when you're managing fits with 5+ charges. (Projectile or Missiles + Nanite)

[resinneublem]

@blitzmann I just saw that the new fitting interface has something similar to what you're talking about in #314 letting the number in the cargohold be editable. If you don't have any objections to that, I may try and pick up where you left off (the ideas you posted in the thread).

I like that the UI would be consistent with the EVE ghost fitting interface.

[blitzmann]

sorry, just getting around to this thread,

Dragging a charge drags a full reload worth. Ctrl-Dragging drags a single charge

Preferably, the qty popup would spawn (as has been mentioned somewhere at some point). The qty could be defaulted to the logic explained above.

Copy the cargo/drones from another fit

I don't like the idea of using a certain fit as a "charge set" in that particular fashion, however the idea of editable cargo sets, similar to implant sets, has been brought up in the past (again, mentioned somewhere at some point). if this route is taken, it should function in a similar way to damage pattern editor, implant set editor, etc. however, I personally would like to see the first item before this is played with,

A charge wizard for each fit

and

Allow someone to edit the EFT in-place

ehh, tbh not really interested in these atm (partly because of the complexity, and partly because they seem really focused on certain niche use cases).

@blitzmann I just saw that the new fitting interface has something similar to what you're talking about in #314 letting the number in the cargohold be editable. If you don't have any objections to that, I may try and pick up where you left off (the ideas you posted in the thread).

If you want to fiddle with the inline editing, go for it. let me know how it goes :)

[resinneublem]

Thanks man. I'll give that a shot.

One other thing to mention/discuss in this thread. Dragging multiple items into the cargo hold at once. You can select multiple items/charges on the left, but if you drag them it will only add the charge you dragged.