Varius Arcturus' Overview Guide: Difference between revisions

{{uwc}}  

The Overview Guide is a step-by-step guide, designed to teach new players how to set up their own overviews in EVE Online.  

Setting up your overview is compulsory for uni fleets. It is very important to have your overview set up properly. Your overview presets are your eyes in Eve Online.

In Eve Online, the overview is the only practical way to organize and view items in space. It is a powerful, (almost) fully customizable list of interactive items. It is one of the most important parts of Eve's interface, and will help you in PvP, missions, mining, traveling - practically every activity in Eve requires use of the overview. It is vitally important that you set up your overview in a way that is not confusing, and will allow you to easily see whatever you want to see at any given time. The consequences of not setting up your overview properly could range from not being able to see a war target and subsequently getting destroyed, to firing on your own ally because he appeared as a hostile, to being destroyed by NPC pirates that didn’t even show up on your screen.  

Before you even touch the overlay itself, however, you should organize the rest of your interface. Eve is a game of communication and numbers - your screen layout should reflect this.  

Now that we’ve gotten that down, let’s get onto the overview itself.

To view all your overview settings, do the following:  

'''NOTE - This guide will cover optimizing overview settings in the next chapter. For now, follow along in your own overview and learn.'''  

The types tab is where you select what you want to see on your overview. You can use this tab to select specific things - if you’re a veldspar miner, you might only want veldspar asteroids and NPC rats. If you’re a PvPer, you might only want ships on your overview, or maybe even just specific types of ships.  

*'''Station:''' Pretty self-explanatory. Structure POS structures and modules - you might use these if you were attacking one, or living in one.

In the States tab, you can further define what you want to see in the overview. Whilst the Types tab is pretty straightforward, some care has to be taken with the States tab.  

This is the trick to the overview, and (apart from bugs) the most common reason why players can’t see all the things they want to see.  

Colortags allow you to set which tags appear or do not appear, and which tags have priority. Setting colortags correctly is important because they dictate which state you see. For example, if you have '''Pilot has a bounty on him''' set higher than '''Pilot is at war with your corporation/alliance''', you will only see the black skull bounty colortag rather than the red star war target colortag. The consequences of this could obviously be very bad.  

Another thing to remember is that changing these settings won’t dictate what you can and can’t see in your overview - you will still see all the things you dictated in the States tab. The only thing you’re changing here is how said things are displayed in your overview, in chat and in space.  

The Background tab allows you to change the background of items in your overview, as well as the background of icons in space. It doesn’t affect things in chat.  

Like in the Colortags tab, backgrounds have priorities. If a pilot fulfills two or more criteria, the highest ranked one will take priority.  

The EWAR lets you modify which electronic warfare notifications are shown on the overview. These notifications show up on the right side of the overview line belonging to the ship (or drone, or POS module, etc.) using the module. These should all be checked.

Columns let you select which columns you want to see in your overview. Some of them are pretty useless, so you obviously don’t want those columns cramping your style.  

*'''Angular Velocity:''' is an object’s speed relative to you, measured in radians per second. This means that angular velocity takes distance from a target into account, a very important factor when trying to hit something. Even if a ship has a high transversal velocity, it may still have a very low angular velocity because it is far away; meaning it might still be easy to hit. Basically, if the number in the angular velocity tab is lower than your tracking speed, you can hit your target - or the other way around.

The Ships tab lets you customize what you see when you mouse over an object in space. It also lets you customize the order information is shown in, and the brackets used on either side of each bit of information. Again, some bits are useful, and some bits are not. Ship Name, for example, is rarely useful, whereas Ship Type is very useful.  

Since I generally use the overview to look at all of this information, this tab is not so important to me. It can, however, be useful when you are looking at a battle from long range in Tactical Overview mode, and you want to see all pertinent information when you mouse over different ships.  

The Misc tab allows you to reset all of your overview settings and start from scratch. It also has the option of moving objects that are mentioned in broadcasts to the top of an overview. This can be useful in fleet operations when the FC broadcasts an align command, or the like. The relevant stargate would then move to the top of the overview.  

This tab allows you to set up to five different tabs, with five different overview and bracket profile presets. This lets you easily switch between different profiles for different situations. Brackets are the icons you see in space for an item, such as squares for players, circles for planets, etc..  

<br> The next section will show you how to set different presets and optimize your overview for different situations.  

The following section will tell you how to set up your overview for Eve University fleets. Please follow the instructions carefully.  

#In your overview settings, go to the '''Columns tab'''.  

#Make sure your overview is wide enough to easily see the information in all these columns. The Militia tab can be hidden in the right side of the screen if you don't need that information, it is mostly used by scouts in lowsec PvP fleets to identify Faction Warfare pilots, some of which are unlikely to aggress Uni fleets (although some FW corps will happily take a criminal flag to shoot down Uni targets of opportunity).

#Go to the '''Ships tab'''.  

This removes irrelevant information - if you’re fighting against a Privateer, you want to know he’s in the Privateer Alliance, not which corp he’s in.  

#Go to the '''Misc Tab'''.  

#Check '''Move entities with broadcasts to top'''.

#Go to the '''Appearance tab''', and then the '''Colortag tab'''.  

*If you attack someone.

#Go into the '''Appearances tab''', then go to the '''Background tab'''.  

You have now set up all your general overview settings - we’ll move onto setting up individual presets now.  

#Go to your '''Filters tab''' , and go to the '''States tab'''.  

'''''Note about neutrals:''''' In the past, there has been a bug that prevented a player from seeing important things like stargates when Pilot has neutral standing wasn’t checked. I’m pretty sure that this bug is still present, based on recent information from people who have used my guide.

#In your overview settings, in the '''Filters''' tab , you should see '''Presets: not saved''', and a little white triangle next to it. Right click the '''white triangle'''. You can also find the same white triangle in your actual overview, on the tab that says '''Overview (not saved)'''. Clicking on this will do the same thing.  

#Type in '''1 - PvP''' and click '''OK'''. You have now saved these settings as a preset.

#Click the '''white triangle''' and select '''Load 1 - PvP'''.  

This preset is useful if you are being aggressed by drones and want to destroy them, or want to help out a fleetmate who is being attacked by drones.  

#Click the '''white triangle''' and select '''Load 1 - PvP'''.  

I don’t tend to have stations checked in this preset, because it just clutters you up. Some solar systems have too many stations, so it’s better not to have these checked. If you want to travel to a station, right click in empty space and just select the station from there.  

#Click the '''white triangle''' and select '''Load 2 - PvP Travel'''  

This is a useful preset to have for those times when you have to make a shopping trip to a busy system like Jita, or an FC takes the fleet into a really busy system. This preset will eliminate neutral pilots from the overview, reducing lag. '''Please don’t use this all the time, though - seeing neutrals is useful, and flying without them on your overview is dangerous.'''  

For setting up a missioning preset, I loaded the Standard preset, then ran some missions. I removed the things I didn’t really need to see as I went - you can do this by right clicking on the item in the overview, then selecting '''Remove *item* from overview'''. Eventually I had a preset I was happy with.  

Once you’re done creating a missions preset, save it as '''3 - Missions'''. If you never run missions, you obviously don’t need this preset. If you don’t run missions, but like to go mining, you could create one called '''3 - Mining''' with just asteroids, belt rats, enemy players and anything else you need. It’s up to you  

#Click the '''white triangle''' and select '''Load 1 - PvP'''.  

This is useful to loot the field after a PvP engagement. It is necessary to have all states selected to see all wrecks (except the '''Pilot is in your fleet''' state). Having fleetmates checked will clutter up your overview with your own fleet's ships.

#Click the '''white triangle''' and select '''Load 1 - PvP'''.  

Also, you could have an aggression timer. Aggression timers stop you from docking or jumping through a gate for exactly 60 seconds after the timer begins. When the timer reaches 13m 59s (shown in-game when the timer says 13 minutes, you can dock up or jump).  

Wormholes are unique places that require many different different things to be visible on your overview.  

'''Remember that wormholes are 0.0 space.''' That means you can find anything inside, from capital ships, to bubbles, to bombs. '''Be extremely careful when entering wormhole space.'''  

Brackets are the little icons you see in space, depicting different objects. Sometimes having too many of them can cause lag, but they are often useful.  

See the next section to see how to set assign bracket presets.  

#Go to the '''Overview tabs tab''' .  

You should now have five different tabs with five different overview presets. During war, you can switch the Missions/ Mining tab to the '''PvP Travel without neutrals''' configuration. This tab can be used if you need to fight in a trade hub that has a lot of neutrals cluttering the overview. However, be warned that you cannot see neutral remote reppers if you use this tab, so it is often preferable to fight with the pvp travel tab and sort by alliance name with the arrow pointing down (or corp name if the war targets are not in an alliance).

The Tag feature allows you to assign a number or letter to individual ships or objects in space which will be visible in the Tag column of the overview. The tag will remain assigned to the object until it is destroyed, you dock in a station, or enter a jump gate. This is useful for marking trigger ships during missions, prioritizing PvP targets, marking NPC convoy ships for attack (see [http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Guide:Attacking_Convoys Eve Wiki Attacking Convoys Guide] for more details), or any other activity for which you may need to quickly identify specifics objects.  

The Tag option is only available while you are a member of a fleet, and in a command role (i.e. FC, WC, or SC). If you are alone, you may simply form a fleet with yourself (your default role with be FC).  

To tag an object, simply right-click, select "Tag" from the context menu, and you will be given a choice of numbers or letters. Pick the number or letter you wish to use and you are done.  

Congratulations! You’ve (hopefully successfully) set up your overview.  

Please read on for a few advanced tips for more experienced players that I’ve picked up. New players shouldn’t bother about this stuff until you get the basics down.  

EVE isn’t a very system-intensive game, and people often have computers that can easily handle the game on max settings.  

For me, it’s gotten to the point where I’m always zoomed out with all brackets on so I can get a really good idea of what’s happening on the battlefield. I only zoom in when I need to do some fancy manual flying.  

I’m always using this column to determine the speeds of things in relation to myself. And yes, I have removed the transversal column from my overview.  

I still think transversal is useful to new guys for them to get an idea of how guns hit targets.

If you have access to the EVE University forums, please take the time to visit [http://www.eve-ivy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16571 this page] and post your thoughts.  

Please don't ask, it's never going to happen.