some have been asking about that new box which shows your gun range and guideline length data that was recently patched in and is now added to the ships auxillary data display bars in the dockyard screen as a utility that allows you see both your main gun max range and the bo sightlinge length while at the ship in its dockspace .. part of the SHIP info tab above waitlist area lower right long box  ...

what it is ? .. and whats it for ?? ..

this is a tool for trimming your bo guideline lengths without having to repeatedly leave harbor and do a mission room or play a game to check your new line trim results .. you now get the number shown in dock .. makes the adjustments that much easier and faster - simpler too ...

and for those still confused as to wth thats talking about ... the old method is outlined below :

[QUOTE]
A word about the Length of Guidelines
While talking about Guidelines: The better your Bridge Operator becomes in terms of CrewSize, Skill and amount of Experts/Veterans, the longer will your Guidelines become! The FCS of a ship also influences their length.

So, don't be confused if the memorised angle to hit the end of your Guidelines is different all of a sudden, it might just be due to your BO leveling up and becoming better!

At high levels, the Guidelines will become much longer than the actual range of the guns. Since Guidelines longer than your maximum range are of no use and just distract you while aiming, you should try to keep the Guidelines' ends at just about even with your maximum gun range.

You may already be familiar with the flip side of this aspect of BO sight lines where a lower level BO can not spot his shells if the gun outranges his vision ability. Adding more experts and vets will increase this ability in your BO and help lengthen the distance slightly. Leveling up also increases the growth of this ability. some even premium boost their BO's to gain sight distance - this can become a counter productive issue at higher levels requiring the trimming of recruits off your bo (read on for details).
CAUTION: Speed leveling BO's has a negative effect on sight lines since its reducing the growth of vision ability stat. Only spd lvl APA or SS or CV BO's. Some players (who understand the trade-offs issues and how to compensate for them) do spd/lvl BB/BC 2nd line bo's - but then for gunship use they will then generally require being boosted and vetted somewhat just to make them merely adequate to sighline the big guns they pwr lvl'd up to. As for normal grind main gunship bb/bc bo's and for all ss cv or apa bo's, many will tell you not to waste any boost on your BO's as it usually causes annoying freaky long gun lines later on and if over-vetted is then also difficult to try to trim down.

There are two factors which affect the length of your Guidelines:

* The FCS on a ship
* The BO on a ship

What you need to achieve is to shorten the Guidelines down to the length where the shells of your longest-ranged main guns impact that the end of your Guidelines.

For this, do not switch to a worse FCS! .. TRIM your BO instead - do this by reducing recruits (see steps below)

While the FCS of a ship influences their length, it also influences the spread of your guns (unlike the BO), so you should not switch to a weaker FCS since your spread would suffer then. Because of this, the only way would be to weaken the BO to have your main ship's (probably your highest-level BB) Guidelines fit the range of its guns.

To weaken your BO , it is the best to decrease the amount of Recruits on your BO, maybe even to zero, if necessary.

Decrease them step-by-step, and keep checking the length of your Guidelines in respect to your maximum range.

If this alone is not sufficient, you will have to kill some Experts by failing at some Veteran Conversions, keep checking the length as you go step-by-step as well.

Do not 'weaken' your BO too much! While you can just refill Recruits, Experts take time to replace!

Just keep on weakening your BO little by little until your Guidelines are of optimal length. To check this, you play a game or just do a mission after each step of weakening.

Optimised Guidelines allow you to aim quickly and accurate.

Please note: The length of the Guidelines will then also decrease on all other ships that BO drives as well, so focusing on the Guidelines of your main ship will not only shorten the Guidelines on that ship, but on all. This is beneficial most of the time, however. (since your highest ship ususally has the longest ranged guns)

That's it for the theory! Remember, practice is what you need the most, practice and patience. Good luck!

[/QUOTE]

its that ..trim>check..trim>check..trim>check..oops>buff>check..play....cycle that gets eliminated
the new range/sightline length display readout now lets you simply trim and look at the numbers change without needing to have to keep leaving the docks after each round of micro trim tweaks .. repeatedly ... its now trim and view and go play .... simpler faster and by the numbers - not by the seat of your pants and test fire to eyeball result as was the old method ..