4 UI improvements to SE IV I would like to see

[aapomeranz]

I sent the following mail to Malfador. Thought I'd post it here to see what comments the rest of you have:

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I've been playing your Space Empires IV demo and I really like it. I do, however, have four UI suggestions that would be VERY useful to the common player.

1) Whenever doing anything that involves picking a star system (eg. in
diplomacy, telling the enemy to get all their ships out of a particular
sector), being able to see the sector map with names would be very useful.
There have been several times I've gone into diplomacy to tell the enemy
to get their butts out of my system, only to realize I have no idea what
the system is called (or even worse, I've remembered wrong).

2) A "summarize system/sector" icon that would give a quick rundown on
what planets exist in a system, their mineral/organic/radioactives
resources, atmosphere and type (gas/ice/rock) (both of which could be
abbreviated by single letters), colonizability status (red or green star),
special (ruins or whatever), and what any colonies on that planet are
producing.

3) If you've been to a star system, but don't currently have any ships in
the system, you should be able to still view the planets as you Last saw
them. Just because I don't have a ship in a sector doesn't mean my
computer isn't storing all the information I previously saw for easy
recall. It's irritating to have to send a ship back into a system I've
previous visited so I can see the attributes on a particular planet I'm
possibly interested in building a colony on.

4) I often use the colony view (f4 I think?) to make sure my colonies are
busy building things. However, after clicking on a colony, being taken
there, and assigning something to the build queue, there is no way to get
back to where I was in the colony view. That means if I've had to drag
the slider to get to a particular colony I want to change the build queue
for, next time I have to redrag the slider down that far again to continue
with the remaining colonies. It would be nice if the state of the slider
would "stick" so I could just continue browsing without having to reslide
down to where I left off.

You might also think about making a flag that lets the log tell you that a
particular colony has finished everything in it's build queue. MOO2 did
this, and I found it very useful.

[General Hawkwing]

aapomeranz:
Point 1: I agree 100%, there has to be a better way.
Point 2: A system summary is a great idea.
Point 3: You can accomplish most of this by using the planet view button.
Point 4: They need to put the right button commands back in like they were in SE3.

[Fionn]

I'm not a beta-tester but I saw a post from somebody who is saying that the issue covered in point #3 is high on MM's list of things to do and may already be implemented in the new demo coming out soon.

[wingte]

[quote]Originally posted by aapomeranz:
[b]I sent the following mail to Malfador. 3) If you've been to a star system, but don't currently have any ships in
the system, you should be able to still view the planets as you Last saw
them. Just because I don't have a ship in a sector doesn't mean my
computer isn't storing all the information I previously saw for easy
recall. It's irritating to have to send a ship back into a system I've
previous visited so I can see the attributes on a particular planet I'm
possibly interested in building a colony on.


This same problem plus an additional one happens when you play as an "Anchient Race" where you can see the who galaxy. Yes it is possible to see the planets characteristics in the planets list. But if you go to the planet ,, you can't examine it and,, if you try to use the "Send Colony" buttons it won't work. It looks like that feature is inactive until you have been to that system with a ship. This must be a bug.


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Wingte

[wingte]

Really need the SE III feature of being able to highlight multiple ships and send all of them to the same place without having to establish a "fleet" first. Either that,, or there needs to be a way to turn off the "fleet stratege/formation" during tactical combat.


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Wingte

[Richard Link]

This is one of the most frustrating features of SE 3, which I hoped SE 4 fixed.

Leaves you with no idea of what`s in the system after your ship leaves, are the planets occupied, by which race, what fixed units guard them i.e a BS or a ss or what.

Even just a "text" file, or "snapshot" of the Last visit would be very helpful, and more useful then more strange race traits IMHO.

I dislike making hand notes in a computer game.

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by wingte:
Really need the SE III feature of being able to highlight multiple ships and send all of them to the same place without having to establish a "fleet" first. Either that,, or there needs to be a way to turn off the "fleet stratege/formation" during tactical combat.

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You can. SHIFT-CLICK on the ships and a little arrow/triangle will appear beside them... now you can issue orders and all of them will follow. There is a problem, though. If your ships finish the movement in the same turn you give the orders, the ships AFTER the first one don't get their orders cleared, and will repeat the orders on the next turn if you don't go clear them manually. If you send them off on a movement that takes more thanone turn to complete it seems to work ok.


You can cancel a formation in combat, too. Select the lead ship in theformation is choose "clear formation" on the orders menu. This will clear ALL ships from the formation.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 24 September 2000).]

[wingte]

[quote]Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
[There is a problem, though. If your ships finish the movement in the same turn you give the orders, the ships AFTER the first one don't get their orders cleared, and will repeat the orders on the next turn if you don't go clear them manually. If you send them off on a movement that takes more thanone turn to complete it seems to work ok.


Hmnnn,,
Well, this sort'a solves the problem but it creats some new ones. When I give the orders all the ships move at the same time on the turn I give the order,, but,, if the orders wern't completed on the firct turn,, then each ship moves seperately on the next turn. This means that if I send a group of ships to attack something and they don't get there on the first move,, then on the next turn they will arrive at the enemy one at a time and go to battle one at a time if I don't abort the attack for each ship.
UUgghhh,,

The second part about clicking on the "leader ship" and selecting cancel formation also only sort'a works. It does cancel the formation,, but,, unless you are very careful,, you can still find yourself moveing all the ships at the same time but now they all try to maintain the same relative positions they had when the formation was canceled.



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Wingte

[dmm]

That CancelFormation command sounds great, except that it is misnamed. It should be ReplaceFormation. I usually don't like any of the default formations, so I set them up each time. But then it's a pain moving my formation one ship at a time, so I'll be trying that CancelFormation command.

If you really want to cancel all formations, use CancelAllGroups. I don't see how you can do tactical combat without this!

Speaking of default formations, does anyone else wish there was a StraightLine formation?

Also, what's the point of these open formations? Is there some advantage to having all your ships several spaces apart? I don't see it.