Difference between revisions of "Overview Setup"

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[[Image:Basicoverview1.jpg]]
 
[[Image:Basicoverview1.jpg]]
  
As you can see, there's a whole lot of stuff on there that you will never actually need to see. By modifying your filters, you can fine tune exactly what does and doesn't show up in your overview window so that you're only seeing the things you actually care about. Not only does this drastically reduce clutter and make objects on your overview easier to locate, but it also avoids incidents of shooting the wrong thing due to a misclick on your overview.
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As you can see, there's a whole lot of stuff on there that you will never actually need to see. By modifying your filters, you can fine tune exactly what does and doesn't show up in your overview window so that you're only seeing the things you actually care about. Not only does this drastically reduce clutter and make objects on your overview easier to locate, but it also avoids unfortunate incidents such as shooting the wrong thing due to a misclick on your overview.
  
 
To edit your filters, we must first open the overview settings window. To do this, click the small square 4-line box (shown as a white triangle in the outdated image above) in the top left corner of the overview window, and select 'open overview settings'. This window is where we will carry out almost all overview related tasks for the remainder of this article.
 
To edit your filters, we must first open the overview settings window. To do this, click the small square 4-line box (shown as a white triangle in the outdated image above) in the top left corner of the overview window, and select 'open overview settings'. This window is where we will carry out almost all overview related tasks for the remainder of this article.

Revision as of 19:37, 5 March 2016

Introduction

NOTE: The client may have changed since this article was updated. Overall, things should look mostly the same but there may be some variations.

The aim of this article is to introduce you to the basics of overview setup, as well as prescribing a simple overview setting which will be effective for fleet PvP.

It is essential that you correctly configure your overview before taking part in fleet activities - this will help avoid friendly-fire, and make locating your targets much less difficult.

Overview Basics

First of all, there are three important aspects of overview setting which it's useful to understand. These are:

  • Filters - Presets which can be saved and loaded, which determine the objects shown to you in the Overview or highlighted on screen with brackets. This is the core aspect of overview setup, upon which all the rest is based.
  • Tabs - In the same way as a ‘tabbed browser’ like FireFox can display multiple web pages and provide a tab to get quickly to each one, the Overview can be configured with up to 5 tabs with unique names and settings. This lets a pilot very quickly change the items listed in the Overview.
  • Brackets - The small squares, triangles, diamonds, circles and other symbols displayed in space around your ship to highlight the location of ships, gates, planets and other objects.

Filters

The overview window is probably the most important window you will ever use in Eve. Unfortunately, due to the sheer amount of information it can display, it can also be the most cluttered. I'm sure you all remember that glorious day when you rolled your first character and undocked, and your overview looked something like this:

File:Basicoverview1.jpg

As you can see, there's a whole lot of stuff on there that you will never actually need to see. By modifying your filters, you can fine tune exactly what does and doesn't show up in your overview window so that you're only seeing the things you actually care about. Not only does this drastically reduce clutter and make objects on your overview easier to locate, but it also avoids unfortunate incidents such as shooting the wrong thing due to a misclick on your overview.

To edit your filters, we must first open the overview settings window. To do this, click the small square 4-line box (shown as a white triangle in the outdated image above) in the top left corner of the overview window, and select 'open overview settings'. This window is where we will carry out almost all overview related tasks for the remainder of this article.

To set up your filters, simply select the 'Filters' tab. This will provide you with a window that looks something like the following:

File:Basicoverview2.jpg

As you see, you can tune your filters according to two things:

  • Types - What kind of object is it? This lets us do things like remove sentry guns and asteroids.
  • States - What is the status of the object? We can use this to, for example, stop gang members or pilots with high standing from appearing on our overview, while keeping those who are neutral or hostile.

When creating an overview filter for the first time, it is always a good idea to first click the 'Deselect All' button at the bottom of the window. This will give you a completely blank filter to work with. When you have finished working, simply click the triangle in the overview settings window, and choose 'Save current type selection as...'.

A few common overview filters you might find useful are:

  • Missions - shows only the various npc rats
  • Loot/Salvage - shows only wrecks and cargo containers
  • Travel - shows only stations and stargates (obviously don't use this in lowsec or 0.0!)

For PvP, our needs are a little more specific. Most pilots have multiple PvP overview filters and switch between them depending on what they are trying to do. We will discuss a specific filter setup for PvP-BASIC later in this article.

Columns

The next section for us to think about is the 'Columns' tab (the 'Appearance' tab is quite self-explanatory).

The Columns tab allows you to choose what information you see about the objects on your overview. You can also use the 'Move Up' and 'Move Down' buttons to change the order in which these columns will appear in your overview (top column will appear first). Most of these are self-explanatory, there are a few which may need an explanation, which are the following:

  • Radial Velocity - This is the speed at which the distance between the object and you is changing. A negative number means the object is getting closer, a positive one means it is getting further away.
  • Transversal Velocity - This is the speed at which the object is travelling on a plane perpendicular to your position (e.g. across the screen as you look at it). An object with 0 transversal is either stationary or moving directly towards or away from you. This is useful for determining how easily you can hit an object/it can hit you. However, since it does not account for the distance between you and the object, this option has effectively been superceded by angular velocity.
  • Angular Velocity - This tells you the rate at which the angle of the object in relation to your position is changing in radians per second (conveniently the same unit as turret tracking!). This serves a very similar purpose to transversal velocity, but accounts for the fact that e.g. a ship with 500m/s transversal at 1km away is effectively orbiting you much faster than one with 500m/s transversal which is 100km away.
  • Tags - This is for numbering targets when in a gang, but has been replaced in almost all situations by broadcasts and/or voice comms.

Overview Tabs

The final section of the overview setup window that merits discussion is the 'Overview Tabs' tab. This allows you to create tabs, as mentioned earlier, which provide easy switching between overview (and bracket) settings. You can create up to 5 tabs here.

The 'Tab Name' column dictates (predictably!) the name which will appear on the tab.

In the 'Overview Profile' column, you can use the dropdown to select which of your saved filters you want to appear in your overview when that tab is active.

Similarly the 'Bracket Profile' dropdown lets you decide which brackets appear on your screen when that tab is selected. Brackets work off exactly the same saved filters as your overview itself; most users will probably either leave the brackets box as default or just use the same filter for both, though more advanced users might want to create specific settings for their brackets too!

A simple tab setup might be: one for combat, one for looting and one for travel. Again, more advanced users are likely to have more specific tabs, much of which is down to personal preference.

When you're finished editing, click 'Apply'.

You can only have 5 tabs but many more filters. It is useful to keep one tab as "variable" tab to be able to load whatever filter you require.


File:Picture 5.png

Setting up your overview for PvP-BASIC

In this section we will go through step by step the process of setting up an effective overview setting for PvP-BASIC. We will work through the Overview Settings window starting with Filters>Types and moving right.

Types

First of all, click Deselect All. Then, starting at the top, go through and re-select the following:

  • Celestial
    • Stargate - Helps you navigate, align and jump much more easily.
    • Warp Gate - There are acceleration gates as the kind you probably have encountered in missions. This is useful to have enabled in case we find a target in deadspace.
    • Wormhole - Shows wormholes, makes entering and exiting much easier than clicking on the wormhole itself in space.
    • Beacon - This will make cynosaural fields show up on your overview, as well as some complexes. In 0.0 space sometimes you want to be able to see where cyno fields open up.
    • (Optional) Planet - Sometimes the fleet will warp to planets and if you get lost it is easier to navigate around if you can see planets on your overview. Often players will also choose to warp to planets to escape gate camps or when saving their pods from destruction. However, some systems contain very many planets and these will provide unnecessary clutter on your overview in large fleet situations.
  • Charge
    • All bomb entries, interdiction probes, and scanner probes - you want to be able to see bombs thrown at us by stealth bombers and combat probes trying to find us.
  • Deployable
    • Mobile Warp Disruptors, otherwise known as anchorable bubbles. You most definitely want to see these in 0.0 space.
  • NPC
    • Pirate NPC - These are gate/belt rats. While we probably won't be shooting them on the class, it is always useful to know if they are around, especially when your ship is a frigate with no tank whatsoever!
  • Ship
    • All - Pretty self-explanatory: you want to see ships because you'll be shooting ships.
  • Station
    • Station - This will show you if there are stations present in system. Sometimes the FC will want to go and check out the perimeter of one.

Do NOT enable wrecks, cans, or asteroid belts on your overview. These objects are not crucial for you to see and can be warped to by using brackets on screen if needed.

States

Select everything other than the following:

  • Pilot is in your alliance (obviously you don't want to shoot alliance mates)
  • Pilot is in your corporation (as above, but for corp)
  • Pilot is in your fleet (this one is essential for PvP-BASIC due to the large number of pilots from other corps that you will be flying with)
  • Pilot has high standing
  • Pilot has good standing (these will hide pilots who are blue to you, which can help prevent you shooting friendlies. Whether you check these is up to you, and is likely to depend on whether you have any blues!)

Please note that 'Pilot has neutral standing' always needs to be checked. Thanks to the wonderful features of Eve, unchecking this will mean just about everything else disappears too!

Appearance

Colourtags

Colourtags display a pilot's status in relation to yourself. They are a small icon which appears next to objects both in space and on your overview. They are very useful for identifying which pilots are valid targets, and which are not. Remember that entries higher up the list will overrule those lower down, so the order is highly important! Just click-and-drag each entry to rearrange the order that they display in.

We recommend you rearrange your colourtags as follows:

  • Pilot is in your fleet
  • Pilot is at war with your corporation/alliance
  • Pilot is at war with your militia
  • Pilot is in your corporation
  • Pilot is in your alliance
  • Pilot is in your militia
  • Pilot has excellent standing
  • Pilot has good standing
  • Pilot has terrible standing
  • Pilot has bad standing
  • Pilot has bounty on him
  • Pilot (agent) is interactable
  • Pilot has a security status below -5
  • Pilot has security status below 0
  • Pilot has neutral standing
  • Pilot has no standing

It is essential that fleet is first to avoid friendly fire incidents on the class. We recommend you turn on all of your colour tags, since it's essentially more information for free! You can also check the 'apply to ships and drones only' box, since you don't need to see that a stargate is neutral.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are obviously, backgrounds. Like colour tags, they appear on icons both on the overview and in space. They are also pretty obvious, which makes them a great way to make various objects stand out!

As with colourtags, the order is important. Use the same order as above. Right click to change colour or turn blink on/off.

As for which of these your turn on, and the colour you choose, the following is recommended.

  • Set all corporation and alliance pilots as well as as those with good or high standings as various shades of blue. These are the pilots you do not want to shoot under any circumstances, so should be made obvious as such.
  • Leave fleet as purple.
  • Set all valid empire targets (pilot is at war with you or pilot is an outlaw) as red and turn blink on. That way it is very obvious who you can shoot in empire without getting concord or sentry gun aggro, and who you can't.

Since gang is at the top, any fleet members who are at war with you should still appear purple. Remember, you cannot shoot other classmates under any circumstances!

Ewar

These provide a small icon to the right of your overview when a pilot is using electronic warfare on you, as well as a larger icon above your HUD. Make sure they are all turned on! The warp disruption icon is a particularly useful one to have turned on to see who has you tackled.

Columns

In PvP-BASIC, the most important function of the overview is to help you locate a primary target as fast as possible. For this reason, we recommend you cut down the columns visible in your overview to just the following, all of which assist in this task.

Make sure the following columns are turned on and in the following order:

  • Icon - useful to differentiate objects.
  • Distance - tells you how far away objects are, if you are in range, etc.
  • Name - the most common way to call a primary target is by name, so this column is essential!
  • Type - sometimes a target will be called by ship type e.g. 'target is the megathron' or with both name a ship type e.g. 'target is Deadmeat in the megathron' so this column is also essential.
  • Alliance - useful for knowing who is who in the middle of a fight, or for quickly identifying e.g. whether the ship that just appeared is allied with the 10 other neutrals in local.

Ensure that the Name and Type columns are large enough to fit pilot and ship names to at least 5 letters. Also make sure the Alliance column is big enough to display the largest alliance tickets (also 5 letters). You can set up your overview to have many columns but expand it on screen to see only 4 by default (Icon, Distance, Name, and Type) then when needed expand it further to see other columns.

The overview window should be quite tall, since when the fleet is engaging 50+ hostile ships you want to be able to find the correct one quickly, and if your overview can only fit a quarter of the opposing fleet on it this will be quite difficult! A properly set up overview tends to take up about half to two-thirds of the right hand side of your screen.

By default your overview should be sorted by distance. This will also ensure that all ships which are on grid with you usually appear at the top and makes it easier to find which targets are within your range. When a large battle is imminent, re-sort your overview by Name or Type column depending upon how the FC is calling targets. To do this, just click the column heading at the top of the window.

When creating your own overview settings, you may also wish to include other columns such as velocity, radial velocity or transversal velocity. Obviously you want to avoid clutter, so only include information that is relevant to what you're doing (e.g. if missioning in a turret ship, angular velocity might help you decide whether or not you can track something).

Additional Overview Filters

Other filters we recommend setting up are:

  • A filter or tab for drones - open the filter you made above, check everything in the 'Drone' folder and save it under name of "Drones". Occasionally the class might get into a fight with a carrier supporting enemy ships. In this case the FC might order the gang to kill his fighters. Having them showing on the overview will enable you to target them quickly.
  • A filter or tab with nothing but planets. When your ship is about to blow up, select this filter, choose a planet, and keep hitting 'warp to'. As long as you are not in a bubble, this should give you a decent chance of getting your pod out in one piece.