Overview Setup

Original text by Sanfrey Statolomy

Updated by Azual, Aether

Copyright© 2006 by the Authors, updated 2009

Introduction

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 the PvP-BASIC class.

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 and circles 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:

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.

To edit your filters, we must first open the overview settings window. To do this, click the small white triangle 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:

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 explaination, 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'.

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.
  • (Optional) 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 - These are all bombs launched by stealth bombers. They are very often used against large concentrated groups of ships, such as the one you will be flying in during the class. Having them enabled on on your overview makes avoiding bomb explosions much easier. Bombs have explosion radius of 15km and follow missile mechanics.
• Deployable
  • The only entry here is Mobile Warp Disruptors, otherwise known as anchorable bubbles. You most definitely would like 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. Sometime the FC will want to go and check out the perimeter of one.

Do NOT enable wrecks, cans, 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! 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 high standing
• Pilot has good standing
• Pilot has horrible standing
• Pilot has bad standing
• Pilot has bounty on him
• Pilot (agent) is interactable
• Pilot is an outlaw
• Pilot has security status below 0
• Pilot has a neutral 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 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 fleet, 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.
• 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 classmates who are at war with you should still appear blue. 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. Make sure they are all turned on! The warp disruption icon is a particularly useful one to have turned on. In case you get pinned down but have ECM support, you can call for jams on the ship that is holding you.

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). If you prefer to play EVE in windowed mode, 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 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. When a large battle is imminent, re-sort your overview by Name column. 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 tab for drones (open the tab made above, check everything in the 'Drone' folder and save it as something else. Occasionally we get into a fight with a carrier or something similar, where the FC will order the gang to kill his drones/fighters etc.
• A tab with nothing but planets. When you ship is about to blow up, select this tab, 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.

Original Article

Article from here down is original content, for reference.

Copyright Sanfrey Statolomy & Agony Unleashed

Introduction

This article assumes you are familiar with the content of Configuring the EVE client for PVP

This article describes how to add functionality to your Overview through the use of filters, tabs, and brackets. Firstly, some quick definitions:

• Filters – Presets which can be saved and loaded, which determine the objects shown to you in the Overview or highlighted on screen with brackets.
• 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 and circles displayed in space around your ship to highlight the location of ships, gates, planets and other objects.

Filters

You may remember on that glorious day when you rolled your first character and undocked, one of the first things you saw on your Overview was probably a CONCORD Commander. At some point between then and now, you’ve likely discovered that you can right click those and use ‘Remove from Overview” to reduce the list of items down to those you actually care about.

This is a simple way of creating a filter. In effect, you’re telling the Eve client “Out of all the things that are out there in space, I only care about these ones – don’t bother showing me the others on my Overview.”

After removing all the items you didn’t think you wanted to see, you might have discovered that in some circumstances, you wanted some of those items back. In fact, as you engage in different activities in Eve there are times when it would be convenient to have different items displayed in your Overview. You can do this by setting up and saving filters.

Think about the three or four situations you most commonly find yourself in. For example, you might like to run missions, salvage them, and indulge in occasional low-sec PvP. Tuning the Overview for each scenario would be a great help. The process involves setting up a filter to display only what you want on the Overview, saving it as a preset filter with a name, and then loading the different filters as you need them.

An example – A filter for Missions

• Right click the white triangle next to the ‘Default’ tab in the Overview, and choose ‘Overview Settings’.

 File:Pvpbasic-over1.jpg

• Select the Filters, then Types tab. At the bottom of the box there is a "Deselect All" button - click that.

 File:Pvpbasic-over2.jpg

• Under "Celestial" select "Warp Gate", and "Stargate". Under "Entities", select the various mission ships, and the Rogue Drones. Under "NPC", select Pirate and Mission NPCs. Under "Ship", select all the ship types. (You can control whether you see friends/enemies/neutrals in the States tab). Under "Station", select the Station option if you like to see stations on your overview during missions. These are the basics of a mission setup, they may be tuned to suit your preferences.
• Right click the white triangle beneath the word "Presets" and choose "Save current type selection as..." and give it the name "Missions".

 File:Pvpbasic-over3.jpg

• Now under "Celestial", add Cargo Container, Large Collidable Object, and Wreck. Save this as "Salvaging".
• Thirdly, click "Deselect All" once more. Now add the following types: Celestial: Stargate, Warp Gate. Charge: Select all these. Deployable: Select all. Drones: None, though this is a matter of preference. * "Drones" filter is useful to have, but drones tend to clutter a PvP overview. NPC: Pirate NPC. Ship: Select all. Save this filter as "PvP".

Now you’re able to run Missions with the minimum distractions on the Overview, and easily load a new Overview filter when it’s time to salvage or fight. The PvP filter above is a 0.0 setup - in Low sec it will be useful to add gate sentry guns.

Tabs

You may have noticed that the ‘Default’ tab has a frustrating habit of returning to its default settings. Never fear! Five more tabs can be added to your Overview, and once configured, the Default tab becomes irrelevant. Each tab can be configured with a preset filter, so your most commonly used filters are always just a mouse click away. Other filters can still be loaded temporarily onto any tab as well.

To add a tab, right click on the “Default” tab, and select “Add Tab”. Give your new tab a name. Add as many as you like or need.

 File:Pvpbasic-over4.jpg

To set a default filter for each tab, right click the white triangle next to the “Default” tab, choose Overview Settings, then “Overview Tabs”. The menu presented will allow you to select a preset filter for each tab, along with the brackets setting (explained below.) When finished, click "Apply".

 File:Pvpbasic-over5.jpg

Brackets

Objects in space are difficult to see. Have you ever noticed that the further from the sun you are in Eve, the darker it gets? Your client helps you locate items in space by marking them on your screen with symbols, and in Eve, these symbols are called ‘brackets’.

 File:Pvpbasic-over6.jpg

In exactly the same way as the Overview can be configured to display only certain types of object, the brackets can be configured to highlight only certain types of object on the screen. In fact, the filters created for the overview are exactly the same filters as are used to configure brackets – Eve doesn’t distinguish between the two. When you set up a filter to display certain items, then save it, that filter could be applied to the Overview, the brackets, or both.

Some players prefer to always display a consistent set of brackets on their screen, regardless of their overview setup. To do this, set up a filter to select the objects you’d like to highlight, using the instructions above, saving it exactly as if it was for your Overview tabs. Save it with a meaningful name such as “my brackets”. Then in the Overview Settings, select this filter in the ‘Brackets’ drop down box for each of the different tabs.

When selecting the “Mission” tab, Eve will display the objects you’ve selected in your Mission filter on the Overview, but it will display the brackets on screen according to the filter named “my brackets”. When you change to the “Salvage” tab, the Overview will use the “Salvage” filter, but the brackets will still highlight the same objects on screen, dictated by the “my brackets” filter.

Other players prefer to use the same brackets on screen as the objects selected in the Overview – to do this, select the same filter name for both the “Overview” and “Brackets” setting of each tab in the Overview Setup.

The most advanced users of brackets like to fine tune their filters, usually by having different bracket settings for each tab, by adding or deleting a few extra items. For example, in a Mission filter, I may not want Stations, Gates and Wrecks to display on my overview, but I would like Stations and Gates to have the icons on screen so I can find them quickly if I need to. I would create a filter that only displays the NPCs and other mission objects, and save that as my Overview filter, then I would add the gates and stations and save that as my mission brackets filter. I would then set up my Overview Settings for the Mission tab to use the Overview and bracket filter I’d configured.

Hints

• You’ll end up with a lot of filters doing this! I prefix my bracket filter names with “b-“, so I have them in pairs.. “Mission” Overview tab will use the ‘b-mission’ bracket filter.
• ALT+X - toggles bracket for Moons and Large Collidable Structures
• ALT+Z - toggles all brackets
• Always, Always, Always target from your overview. This is a thousand times easier than targeting in space. There are a very few special circumstances when you will target in space, but by the time you need those, you'll know the game well enough to know it's the right thing to do. So for now, always target from the overview. This helps avoid shooting gates, friendlies etc.
• Control-Click targets someone, control-double click targets and approaches.

Suggested Filters

• Miners may like to use different filters for different ore types to simplify finding the best 'roids.
• Drones and Fighters - Using a separate tab for these is very useful. Being able to quickly flick to a Drones tab to see what drones are on the battlefield without having them clutter your main PvP Overview is a big help.
• Planets - Covops like to use a planets-only filter to quickly see ranges relative to each other and relative to the ship's scan range. This can double as a 'safeish plances to warp to' filter.
• All Celestials - anything a player can warp to, (gates/planets/belts/stations/moons) - Covops use this to help them locate players in space by range
• Selective PvP - If you are in a ship that specialises in combating other ships, or if you have a specialised role in a gang, a filter that only shows you valid target ships is useful. For example if you're a destroyer, you may want interceptors/frigates/drones. If flying a Crucifier with tracking disruptors, you may only want to display ships the carry guns.
• "Spare" - Keeping one of the 5 tabs free for you to assign things to on the fly, without having to worry about your regular tabs, can be useful.