Witwat.net

While just a rough sketch, I hope this will get the point across.

When logging in to take your turn, the player is presented with a screen that allows them to distribute the power from their powerplant in order to direct their movement. This version adds one extra level of abstraction and I'm not sure if I'm going to go with this rendition or a slightly different version.

As shown in the attachment, there are several sliders which dictate what percentage of power goes to which function.

* At the top, you have the total available power, split (by the cyan slider) between movement (red bar) and fire control (blue bar).

* The three axes around the sled (complete with retro Asteroids homage) split the movement portion of power between positive or negative values for forward/backward thrust, right/left bank (lateral movement) and right/left rotation. As you increase one of the yellow sliders, the other two move an equivalent amount towards zero.

* The fire control is split (by the green bar) between shields (red) and shooting (blue).

While just roughly sketched out here, let's assume that the mockup attached shows:
* an 80/20 split between movement and fire control;
* a 90/10/0 split between forward (positive) thrust, left (negative) bank and no rotation; and
* an 80/20 split between shields and shooting.

If your powerplant was putting out 1,000 power in a particular turn with these settings, you'd wind up with:
* 720 power to Thrust (.9 * .8 * 1000)
* -80 power** to Bank (-.1 * .8 * 1000)
* 0 power to Rotation (0 * .8 * 1000)
* 160 power to Shields (.8 * .2 * 1000)
* 40 power to Shooting (.2 * .2 * 1000)

** Note that positive values increase your relative Y position, while negative values reduce it... but the value itself still counts towards the total the same way. This applies to all 3 axes of movement.

The alternative method is just having 5 sliders with the 5 possible characteristics (positive or negative for the three movement options) and whenever you raise one, the rest lower by an equivalent amount. I'm thinking that this might be slightly more intuitive (currently, if you only allocate 10% to movement but put the rotation on 100% your total percentage of engine power to rotation is still only 10% of the whole, while in the alternate method, 100% rotation always equals 100% of your available power) but, ironically, more of a nuisance. A player would have to keep moving between each slider to readjust whenever one was changed.

I might try both out and have a few people test it to see which they prefer.

{ Edit: Attachment removed. Gotta work on it anyway. }