At the moment Addon scanners are only marginally useful. They only show you the equipped addons your enemy has and make a fancy green laser sweep. Kind of crappy for a somewhat rare bot drop.

Realistically you can tell what they're packing just by fighting them anyways.

How about we make Addon Scanners display amno capacity next to the scan results. That'd make them worth using up a S-port for rather than just bringing another blaster or rocket launcher.

Example of what we see now:
"1x Sunflare Rocket Launcher"

Example of what this improvement would show:
"1x Sunflare Rocket Launcher [8/12]"

...this idea could be extended to powercells as well:
"Fast Charge Power Cell [52/250]"

Obviously this shouldn't constantly update in realtime, perhaps once every couple of seconds like a Mineral Scanner. That could make an upgraded one possible as a future addon with a faster scan rate and longer range.

+1

I guess that addon scanners does not deserve to exist alonebeing almost useless as now.

Instead, integrate it with a Cargo Scanner, include proposed ammo count, and brand it as "Cargo Scanner Mk.2"

Maybe Mk.3 reaches longer... or mk.3 include ammo, addons and cargo while mk.2 only cargo and addons...

IMO it should display the energy and ammo count. Sacrificing a small port is fair.

[Stamp of Approval]

Seems harmless +1.

Why not. +1 to OP.

+1 for showing ammo count
While you're at it, you might as well drop the 1x in front of the weapon name since having two of the same weapon gets listed as separate items anyway (both at 1x)

-1 for showing energy of powercells. It could be exploited to see when someone fires if updated realtime, and if only updated once every couple seconds would be pointless anyway. Plus it would just be more data to send over the network.

[Edit]
Displaying the ammo of missile turrets may be a bad idea. Seems like there could be an exploit somehow.

But then you lose all possibility of saving that last missile for when your opponent has lost count and gets too close. I suppose it's balanced by losing a small port though.

+1

Yeah it's definitely balanced by losing a small port. Considering a ship like a Vulture, you're sacrificing half of your firepower to equip this gizmo that does nothing to directly damage your enemy.

I don't see how the energy of powercells could be an exploit. If you're wasting the small port it's already balanced out for the additional information. It's just that too, information. It's not going to win a fight for you unfairly.

The powercell energy could be useful in chase situations or when running from someone.

As for the station missile turrets, they've got infinite ammo anyways so it really doesn't matter. How could you possibly exploit this?

+1 to OP.

And also I swear to fuck Alloh, make a new fucking thread instead of threadjacking with your shit ideas.

+1 to Kierky on Alloh suggestion.

as spence would say: "do it now, or else!"

+1 to OP and Kierky.

+1 to the OP

+1 to thread necromancy
+1 to addon scanner details

Never saw this first time round, but yeah, it makes sense. And as for anyone thinking about the possibility of exploits, errm wtf? Paranoid much? How does showing me numbers on a screen possibly equal exploit?

Anyway +1

I think he's worried about a plugin watching the numbers to detect when a ship has fired. If plugins could still manipulate thrusters I'd wager he was worried about an auto-dodge plugin. As it is, unless the player were using an external program in conjunction with their plugins, the worst they could do is have it initiate turbo or notify them.

The refresh interval on scanners right now is something like 1 scan per 5 seconds which is pretty useless for shot detection.

Then again, if you're sacrificing a good portion of firepower to have this information, is being able to detect a fired rocket really a problem?

Regarding the refresh, I don't know if it applies to the addon scanner, but with the mineral scanner you can force a refresh by retargeting. At least, that seems to be the case. I haven't verified it rigorously.

But yeah, I agree that it shouldn't be a big deal.