Since it seems that only swarm lists are going to upset the system can you make 2 templates for the TIEs? Have everything standard at say 5-6 of your regular 8 and include an upgrade section in the extra space. Then just make a TIE(upgrade) at the new standard size then a TIE(swarm) with far less room for upgrades and closer to the size you have now. This might be able to overcome the issue and will help eat up a lot of that blank grey space. \

Additionally, and this is minor, but I think it would look better if instead of a blacked out box you use a greyed out box for the lost hull/shield. You should be able to use the same system just behind the colored version used a greyed yellow/blue. This gives a bit more clarity to the viewer on what the person has eaten through, especially if they don't know much about the ship.

I don't think it's that cluttered but if you want to streamline stuff a bit you could switch the hull/shield overlay to numbers.

It would mean that all ships have the same basic layout including health.

This would give you some real estate to put upgrades on the right side of the ship card.

To animate just have X different opaque numbers on top of each other that you can switch off when needed (or just put the correct number on top).

For stealth do the same: have an overlay with the correct agility number and switch it off when lost.

@Icareane: I don't want to have too many layers to dive through, plus with a bar, you can see what the ships original value was, which to new players would easily show "Oh, this ship has lot half its total HP, that ships isn't doing so well." particularly if they don't know the ship.

I think the scrolling upgrade bar is enough of a solution right now.

@PastrySandwich All the ships are the same uniform size so that when they are placed in Xsplit they all have the shield and hull bars in the exact same location, so I don't have to move any bars around and reposition them.

Having two different 'types' for ship overlays creates a lot more work for me (and I've already spent 20 hours on this bad boy) and also means I have to have two 'sets' of shield and hull indicates in the appropriate area, meaning more set up time as I switch between the different sets. It just makes set up of the game that more complex, whereas with this ticker tape style of upgrade bar, I can edit it on Xsplit on the fly in seconds and it doesn't take up as much room. Furthermore it would mean the extra space is there for both booth cam and dice cam should we need them.

Plus its not just TIE's I'd have to do it for. I'd have to accommodate the possibility for an A-Wing Swarm (7 ships), Z-95 Swarm (8 ships), M-3A swarm (7) granted they may not happen, but I HAVE to consider the possibility when creating a modular system. The system was designed to save set up time and shave off as much set up time as possible, creating a second set would make all that work redundant since now I have to spend time to switch to 'swarm set' as it were.

Fair enough, looking forward to watch the first game with this layout !

Just say no to adding the upgrade cards mate, that's way too much visual clutter to put up on the screen at any one point. Keep it simple wherever possible, just track damage and talk us through anything else happening in the game. Sorting out some way to show Dice rolls in realtime like FFG do at worlds is the main improvement, I've watched some of the games where you and the other commentators have been struggling to work out what's happening as you don't know the results yourself which is doubly awkward when people are taking their sweet time to decide what they are doing with modifiers.

Hey guys, another update:

I've added a 360 primary attack indicator to ships and added outline to shield and hull pips to make it clear what has been destroyed to the viewers. Also next to the player bars is a small picture of the damage deck the players are using, not sure if it's worth it but it's there.

As you can see I have added the upgrade bar to the ship overlays and in XSplit these will have he upgrades scrolling by, I did attempt an extended sidebar but testing it lead to logistics problems and longer set up times and thus made the whole project void, we have elected for this simplistic solution. Our only concern is that the scrolling bar may be too distracting, but only testing will tell, should it prove distracting we will abandon the upgrade idea entirely.

Athena Games will be doing a test stream with the overlay on Wednesday to get feedback on it in action.

hi

do you have a version you can share or do you know of one that's not too complicated to use?

thanks