I propose a loot scanner for Archwing

[Rociel]

Hello,

Let's start with the issue. Currently picking up loot in Archwing missions is infuriating, at times I must spend 3-5 minutes to find a mod I can see on my minimap, especially in large open areas like Interception missions. Problem is that the dropped loot is very small and we travel large distances very fast, so it's way too easy to go past the dropped loot without finding it, in fact it requires certain level of precision to drop your archwing on top of it even if you do see where it's floating. Another problem is that the minimap range isn't so big so you can loose loot in the vast space without knowing that anything dropped in a completely different corner of the map. Which is a pain, considering how rare some rare archwing mods are.

Now about my proposal. I think a quick addition to the UI, a simple on-demand pulse scanner would be all I need (aside from better Univacuum, but that's completely different topic). How I think it should work:

You are in your interception mission and after beating several waves of incoming enemies you get a breather and want to pick up some mods they might have dropped near your post or a point defended by another ally. You press 5 (or 6), a pulse similar to Volt's Overload or Mag's Magnetize comes out of you (visible client-side only) and then instantly shows you all the 'droppings' in your visible range for 2-3 seconds. Something like this (stole picture from google to add the effect):

Now, I won't pretend I know how the spaghetti-code or resource optimisation works and what's easy to do, but this is just the simplest way I find to deal with it.

Additionally to what you can see in the picture, since it's an extremely busy screen, a better version would be if UI would clump together together the droppings and, instead of showing each one of them, would just say e.g. "23 droppings" and "2 dungs", "Rare dung". Of course including energy orbs and health orbs would be nice too.

Scaling the size with distance would also be neat, so you can tell how far everything is, but then it might pose problems with resolution scaling (4k display here, UI sometimes tortures me) and would require minimum and maximum size set. Alternatively it could also not say what that is, just the distance to the clump of resources, but personally I would prefer scaling and what it is.

[artemisfortune]

I can't see any reason why this would be a bad idea. Making it a pulse sold it for me. +1

[Weidro]

as much as i understand the problem of picking up stuff in archwing i think adding a super busy screen is no good idea

for me there are only 2 real problems with drop in archwing

• not knowing how high or low stuff is relative to your position
  yes the minimap has a little triangle arrow thing (which i like) but it should change its size depending on how far above or below something is
  part of this problem is that loot aura and other mods like it don't work like a sphere instead its more like a flat cylinder which makes you miss loot in some normal missions unless you are constantly jumping up and down
  having the radius work like a sphere combined with a size changing arrow would solve this
• you can fly past stuff and its not dragged behind you
  the vacuum radius on archwing is fine in my opinion
  currently vacuum works like a magnet which pulls stuff but if you move to fast the loot is just moved around without being sucked in
  id like to see vacuum on archwing work more like a net grabbing stuff and never letting it go till u stop to move then its all pulled in and picked up
  like in regular missions where loot sometimes follows you over long distances if you don't stop
  (alternatively DE could just remove vacuum on archwing completely and increase the pickup hitbox to the size of the current vacuum which would instantly pick everything up in its range without puling it around ever)

[Rociel]

3 minutes ago, Weidro said:

as much as i understand the problem of picking up stuff in archwing i think adding a super busy screen is no good idea

Yes, I immediately saw the busy screen as a problem, that's why I`m proposing it as an on-demand pulse. So if you are not interested in the loot, you don't use it and it never bothers you. If you are interested, you get the direction in which you should be flying for 2-3 seconds, after that the loot is not shown anymore and you are back to your normal screen.

I agree that immediate pickup in the "magnet range" would be better, but then I can work even with current magnet, as long as I know that there is something I`m interested in.

[Weidro]

8 minutes ago, Rociel said:

on-demand pulse.

even with it being on demand only
from my experience the amount of stuff that ca be picked up a a looooooot higher than what u drew on the example image
and I'm afraid that even with the on demand only system the screen gets so busy and full of information that you can't decide whats important and whats not and which way to got

[Rociel]

5 minutes ago, Weidro said:

even with it being on demand only
from my experience the amount of stuff that ca be picked up a a looooooot higher than what u drew on the example image
and I'm afraid that even with the on demand only system the screen gets so busy and full of information that you can't decide whats important and whats not and which way to got

After spending 5 minutes flying around like a stupid moth and looking at minimap to find Extend (I have those in abundance), i will take on-demand busy screen anyday, unless someone comes up with a better solution.

[Grimlar]

With it being on-demand and only lasting a few seconds, and presumably being at least somewhat range limited, then yes, I would go for this, absolutely. Even if I had to fly to each point of the interception and use a pulse at each one to make sure I got everything.

If its too cluttered in one location then you can 1) pick some of it up, leaving less on screen, 2) move away from the crowded location, or 3) dont use it again that mission.

You could also have a config list in the options so that the pulse only displayed certain types of loot drops, ignoring the rest. So maybe resources, mods, energy/health, etc.

[xXDeadsinxX]

Would be nice to see this feature in Archwing since loot is extremely hard to find in Archwing.