When you get a message alert in the bubble flashing Comm, why not have 1 saying red alert flashing in the corner when your ship is under attack?!

+1, I hate when I'm online NPCing, andf then I get an alert a trap triggered, but it actually happened 5 minutes ago, and I'm also now disabled. If I could get an alert in general when being attacked that would be a nice have. Since attacks only last a few minutes max, it's sort of random luck whether you will be alerted in time by a trap triggering..

+1

if you're doing anything on your side that changes a value in your stats bar (energy, shield, hull, gp, rp, rank, credits) you immediately get any outstanding red alert popups...

if you're just chatting, energy and shield refresh ticks also bring up your red alert popups....

if you're chatting at full energy and shield.... that's when you usually won't see red alert popups for a while (but who chats at full energy?)

if you switched to a different window or tab for a while or stopped using the kybd or mouse for a while (i think it's around 5 minutes or so) the game will stop refreshing your energy and shield ticks until you come back and mouseover the game again... during the inactivity time, that's another period when you won't receive red alert popups.... when you come back and move the mouse again, any outstanding red alert popups appear at that time

as you can see... the game already constantly polls for red alert popups (just not regularly enough) and instantly hands you those popups the moment it sees them

in short, keep actively doing things in-game that change values on your stats bar (like, buying and selling 1 dynite repeatedly)..... then you can be assured to see your red alert popups the instant they happen and can thwart the attackers with more traps



i agree though that Dan really should use the chat refreshes for popup polling too.... some active chatters with slow energy and shield refreshes don't get to see the popups in time to respond

+1 it happens to me a lot i'll be looking at something and next thing i know im disabled...many time while even running a mission (for instance the seasonal) and then get a message your ship is too damaged to do that message i look at my status bar still shows i hae full shield and health, about 45 sec to a min later i'll get the alert that i was disabled.

if you get that error message when attempting a mission, no energy was used, so the stats bar hasn't been updated yet due to something you've done... that's why the popup didn't appear (though in that case i agree the stats bar SHOULD get a refresh in which case you'd get your popups and you'd see you're already disabled)....

the 45 second delay you experienced came from the delay until the energy refresh timer hit 0

I think they are asking for an enhancement to the system and not an explanation of why they dont get alerts sooner.

there... i've highlighted my recommendation for an enhancement
it was there, you just didn't read my whole post

Why not make it an optional feature?? Better yet, allow a sound alert!

+1 just as the author suggested above.

just to add my own thoughts though,
I hate that you dont know who is attacking you until they either hit a trap or disable you.
I think you should get a "Red Alert" as soon as the attacker fires his 1st shot.
the attackers cloak compared to defenders scan should determine if defender gets the name of his attacker in the alert or not.
example if defenders scan are higher than attackers cloak, then the chances of seeing the name of your attacker in the red alert are high,
if he gets the name of his attacker, then he can click on the name and see his attackers ship.
On the other hand, if attackers cloak is higher than defenders scan, attacker has high chance of not being detected and defender gets only a red alert that he was attacked, but not the name of the attacker.
with each shot fired by attacker, the chances of being detected go up.
after 1st shot which triggers the 1st red alert, no more red alerts will appear until the defender is detected, in this case the defender will get a 2nd red alert containing the name of his attacker.

This is really only good for when you are online at the time of the attack.
If you are not online at the time of the attack but the attacker was detected, the alert containing his name should expire after a set amount of time (relatively short) .If the time expires and you come online and click the attackers name, you will get a screen saying this ship is no longer in your scanners.This is because the attacker has by then fled the seen of the crime and no longer within scanning range.If you are online for the red alert, you have the opportunity to retaliate or alert.If you are not online for the red alert, it will expire.Of coarse if you are disabled or attacker hits a trap, you will get the normal message as always.

that is the best idea for this alert issue I have seen yet! I love it