News

User interface rough edges

Posted on Wednesday, June 3, 2015
  • I have yet to find the screen which can show me what uninhabited, but capable of being colonized, planets are within range.  Instead, I'm left with searching the map for white circles.
  • Colonies list on the main screen needs a search box, so I can type in "Clara" and see all colonies with that in the name.
  • Ship list on the right-side of main screen needs a search box, so I can type in "Seed" to find where I hid that colony ship.
  • We need filters on the Notifications tab to suppress display of various categories.  Once you get above 20 notifications, the tab becomes a bit useless as there is no way to suppress notification of trivial events like "planet X completed construction project Y".
  • Govern screen needs to be made much larger, maybe even full-screen to give more room for graphs and detailed information.
  • Govern/Colonies does not tell me useful information like "# of undesignated tiles" (so I know which worlds still need work) or "pop vs cap" (so I know which worlds are under populated).
  • Govern/Timeline should have a way to disable displaying certain races.  So if the YOR are way ahead, clicking on their name should remove their line from the graph.
  • Govern/Colonies should remember sort column rather then resetting to default sort order every time you go back to the screen.
  • Mousing over or selecting a trade route on Govern/Trade should highlight/flash the route line in the map.
  • Planet manufacturing queue - a double-click action should remove the queued item.
  • Planet manufacturing queue - terraforming improvements which add a tile should possibly cancel Econ/Research/Culture projects so that the world will show as an "idle" colony to remind the player to come back and fill in that tile later.  (Alternately, provide a "Terraforming" notification to remind player that there is a new tile to assign.  Can also be less of an issue if Govern/Colony would show the # of open slots on the surface.)
  • There should be some way to filter the strategic map by turning off categories of entities: unowned / pirate / yours / allies / friendly / neutral / hostile / war - which would make it easier to track hostile/war vessels within your territory or to explore the map to spot that starbase you forgot about
  • When a mining starbase is selected on the main map, the lines going to the resources should brighten up and become much more visible.
  • When a shipyard is selected on the main map, the lines going to the sponsor worlds should become much brighter/visible.
  • Ideology window is difficult to see what I have picked vs what I am about to pick, the "about to be selected" circle needs to "pop" visually
  • Tech Tree - mouse wheel should zoom in/out so that you can see more/less of the tech tree
  • There is currently no way to move from shipyard screen to shipyard screen using left/right arrows at the top of the screen like you can with colonies or starbases.
  • "Ships in your border" notification needs to be broken down into multiple notification events: pirates / neutral / hostile / war
  • When a treaty expires in the notification window, I should be able to double-click to go to the diplomacy screen for that civ.
  • Notifications are not persisted in the save file?
  • Starbases should have an "alert" mode that draws the player's attention to hostile / war fleets?  Or maybe that should be a function of military starbases.
  • When a race contacts me to declare war, I should be able to see existing treaties and the mouse-over details (Close/Furious) for both parties.
  • When a race contacts me to demand something, I should be able to see existing treaties and the mouse-over details for that race.

 

All-in-all, the UI is in pretty good shape for 1.0.  It does a very good job of telling me information in most cases.  There are just some rough edges where the player is not given enough information to avoid having to cycle through all 20-30 colonies or 50-100 starbases every few turns.