Okay, took a quick crack at station interface(s). Yeah these are kinda crappy so far. I'll modify more stuff when I get time.

I find that having a visual point of reference to start from really makes the process easier.

Don't like brushed steel? Too bad. Just used whatever was easy to create in a few hours.

Feel free to critique.

** EDIT ** - almost 3 years later, looks like most of these suggestions in this thread have been implemented. ***

If the lounge is to be made a separate "tab" than other com channels, then it might as well include a table list of people in the lounge. Sort of like a group list.

But, before you dwell into this, have you asked the devs if they have anything at this point?

They've been working on it for a while they say so they probably have visuals and layout themselves.

if the bar is a big chatroom, why not extend it all the way to the bottom of the page and absorb the universe chat as well

Just trying to spur development. Get suggestions based on a picture, instead of a written description.

But, yes. Include list of folks in bar-room. Eliminate sector chat whilst in bar-room mode?

Add tequila dispenser?

The things that really popped out at me were the comments.

I couldnt care less about how it looked (no offence leber you did a good job), but i liked the VPR illigally increasing patrol etc and stuff like that. And that yarr were pirates here thing.. USE IT DEVS!!

I wanted to do that! Damn you Leber, you always do stuff first...

Actually I was thinking that the size of your bar chat window should be the regular chat window. I mean when most people want to sit in a station and chat, we only have like 7 lines...a larger regular chat window would be nice.

oh, and we TOTALLY need news posts like that!!!

w00t!

As I understand it, the new UI stuff Ray's been doing will allow us to design our own "skins" for the GUI.

@TNA: Yeah, not my best artwork, but then again it's just to get visual feedback. I agree with your comments about the comments. Adding less "boring" stuff would be cool in station news.

What kind of "News" would be dependent on the station you were in.
If you were in a Corvus station, you'd get a corvus-biased view of the universe (a la our Viper story) If you were in a TPG station, you'd see a story similar to "Vipers heroically increase presence in Sedina B-8, causing the stinky pirates to run back to Odia..." etc.

I really liked the idea of a "Station Welcome screen" and that's what got me started on this, it kinda snowballed into more than I had originally intended. I'm biting off more than I can chew again. Oh well, more posts to come later.

I like it, but what if the top non-"We Need Ore" news story was displayed, and then you clicked "More News" for everything. It would put more stock in being a bounty hunter, because honestly, how often do you all check the news?

Well, if news was written based on real ingame events, everyone would ACTUALLY read it. (Which would require more actual guides to be online to monitor real events, so pffft. Perhaps player-submitted stories?)

But yeah, Bounties would be listed, kind of like the police blotter?

What fonts are those?

ooo...
ooo...
I should know this...let me try....

heavy stuff looks like IMPACT...
the lighter type in the newspost looks like EUROSTYLE...

what do I win????

Very good, k.p! You get a cookie!

Eurostile for all fonts actually.
The larger bolder stuff is just Eurostile condensed bold. Which, in k.p's defense, looks a lot like Impact or Helvetica Inserat.
Eurostile always looked technical to me. Perhaps because almost everything in the series "Space:1999" used it for all the signage.

+20 tracking to give some "KERNING" between the letterforms to make it easier to read.
Eurostile here:
http://store.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_1180.html (regular stuff)
http://store.adobe.com/type/browser/P/P_1181.html (condensed & expanded)

you should add a "guild membership" tab for making deposits to a guild bank, taking guild missions, leaving a buddy note to guild members, getting a list of all online guild members, etc.