On damage bars...
It occurs to me that there's already an existing HUD display for all ships in combat. Every ship has a triangular boundary indicating if it's friend, foe, or neutral. (And I'll just diverge a moment here to remark on the beautiful way this has been tweaked in the sequel such that the triangles are clear at a distance when they are needed most, but smoothly fade away as a ship becomes larger on your screen so that you don't notice them once things get big and beautiful).
Anyways, I think this display could be ammended to indicate other things such as damage, as well, but not seem too excessive given that it leverages a display that we're already used to seeing.
If this option were enabled (and as well as a default value, it ought to be able to be toggled on and off by mouse and/or keyboard during combat), then the triangles would not fade from view (or not to the same extent), and they might look something like this very rough mock-up:
One of the long sides showing shields, the other hull strength, and the short side indicating the status of the on-board systems.
At the front I've put a triangle to indicate that the ship is in "aggressive" mode (see Hugo's
ramming/auto-evasion thread).
There are probably better ways to do it, but something like this would blend in fairly well I think... not too distracting, but telling you (once you're used to it) pretty much everything you need to know.
Re: First Impressions
Threaded Mode