Thread by @RvengefuLobster

Okay, I'm losing my mind over this #StarWarsSquadrons! Some other very sharp eyed folks already caught some of the UI hints that indicate this game is drawing HEAVILY on X-Wing & TIE fighter! So I went through to find more, and let me tell you, I'm hyped. 1/?

First up the thing we've all been most excited for, POWER management!

We get a VERY clear shot of the power distribution for Lasers, Shields, and engines. We even see them in motion as energy drains out of lasers & shields & into engines! 2/?

The arrows under the indicators appear to correspond to D-Pad directions.

We even see the engine arrow light up.

Lasers seem to be the only one that can be pushed up or down. Shields & engines appear to both be all or nothing commitments. Neat choice! 3/?

Next up, near the start of the trailer we get a good view of two returning UI elements: the hemispherical shield indicator & laser ammo!

In this shot, we clearly see her shields are set full to aft & that laser ammo appears to no longer be tied to individual cannons.

4/?

This shot from the end of the trailer is actually our clearest shot of the X-Wing UI.

You can see the shields, laser, radar, and what appear to be astromech and ordinance trackers in the middle.
5/?

Radar gets its own tweet because there's a lot to break down here. The forward and rear screens appear to have been replaced by a single, isometric radar.

The lower quadrant seems to be stuff that's behind the pilot. Star Destroyer is dead center, wingmates to the side.
6/?

This shot from early in the trailer appears to confirm that bottom quadrant = behind. We can see the pursuing TIE Interceptor highlighted on it.

7/?

The radar kinda reminds me of the circle and quadrant radar from the TIE Fighter inspired dogfighter #HouseOfTheDyingSun

But in HotDS the center position is bigger cus it's your whole front view. The quadrants are what's behind you & indicate an object's relative angle.

8/?

If there's one part of the UI I'd really expect to see iteration on, it's probably the radar. So far it feels the most "placeholder" part of the UI.

Still no sign of a targeting computer but I suspect that there will be more to be had there in the future.

9/?

Okay, so that's everything we've seen from the X-Wing. Now let's look at the TIE Fighter! And this is where things go from, "oh look at all these homages" to "by The Force they are actually doing it!"

10/?

This shot is pretty straight forward, we see a sillouette of the TIE & the number 100. Which seems to be a health indicator. We can also see this indicator in the original TIE Fighter UI.

We also see this board again late in the trailer. 11/?

Now, if you are pilot trash like me, this is where you start getting excited. Because what we did NOT was any indication that TIEs have shields!

This is confirmed later in the trailer by this shot where we see the TIE only has engine & laser power, just like in old TF!!!! 12/?

This is the detail that excites me the most because it shows us (A) consistency between the two UIs which makes it more likely that these will be full on mechanics AND (B) that Motive appear to be embracing asymmetry between Rebel & Imperial fighters! 13/?

Now, it's possible that shields & armor may just result in X-Wings & TIEs having the same health pool but different restrictions on how that health regenerates (or doesn't). 14/?

But either way, that's a SUBSTANTIAL departure from Dice's BF2 which treats fighter health as basically identical. 15/?

Okay, back on course. Targeting computer.

This element appears to be showing functional information much like the TC in TIE fighter.

In particular, we seem to be seeing target's name, it's health (medical cross) and distance (dot, arrow, dot). Consistent between shots. 16/?

Also worth noting in the above shot we catch a glimpse of the radar and it appears to be formatted the same as the X-Wing's. Again the consistency is beautiful! 17/?

Up last is our clearest view of the whole TIE cockpit. And the whole flight console looks consistent with what we had in the X-Wing and old school TIE Fighter.

Laser ammo & ordinance counters (super laser+bomb+missiles?) in the center. Health to the right. Radar left. 18/?

You can even see the target name on the top of the targeting computer. 19/?

So, that's all I could glean about the UI from this trailer. Honestly, I'm floored. The team at Motive seems to have embraced building their UI entirely into the cockpit in the 3D and that is so exciting!!! 20/?

There's a temptation to think this could all be window dressing, but to me, there's just too many common elements between the the interface for XW & TIE for it not to be indicative of how the team at Motive is approaching UI & the cockpit. 21/?

For contrast, compare the amount of information in the cockpit model to the pretty but information free cockpits in Battlefront 2. 22/?

I'll say, assembling the research for this thread has got me so excited for this game!

I cannot wait to find out more! 23/23

Oh, and just in case this gets any lot of people's attention: #BlackLivesMatter

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