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Machaon -> RE: Master Wishlist Thread (4/18/2010 3:14:23 AM)
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Dear Santa,
I wish for better ship control. Fleet control is currently horrendous; control of multiple ships that aren't in a fleet is even worse. When selecting multiple ships a player should be able to give them the same orders as if they were a single ship. In both fleets and multi-ship selections, the player should be able to deselect a ship from the group while keeping the others selected (say by shift-clicking the little icon for the ship you want to deselect). It would be nice to also be able to select all ships of a certain type (with a ctrl-click for example) from a selected group/fleet. For example, the fleet consists of various military ships and some troop transports; I should be able to ctrl-click one of the troop transports. This would select the transports and deselect all other ships, so that I can give orders to the transports. Conversely, I should be able to shift click each transport to deselect them and give orders to everything else (ctrl-shift-click to deselect all transports at once would be great!). The same functionality should be added to the physical ships as well, not just the little icons.
Also, for this to work, the selection window needs to have a scroll bar added so that you can scroll it to see all ships. With the scroll bar added, everything in this window can be enlarged, including font and icons, since it would be less room restrictive. (I've had instances where not all information could be seen, like troop count at a colony, already).
Troops drive me crazy. They take way too long to train. I think they should be trainable in batches of up to 3-5. Training time should remain the same in this case. Otherwise it needs to be hurried up. As is, it's quicker to take a transport on a colony-hopping spree that spans the galaxy to pick up 5 troops than it is to wait for 5 to be trained at one.
On the subject of troops, I had an interesting thing happen in a game - I refer to it as the "Ryluth 3 incident" (2771.04.21, never forget). Myself and another empire (we were neutral to each other) were attacking the colony of a third empire at the same time. I decided to do a quick troop landing amidst the chaos, but just before I landed my troops, this other empire, "The Slukis Collective", managed to land a troop or two of their own. I ultimately landed way more troops than they did, but when it was all said and done, the colony went to the Slukis Collective, screwing me out of what eventually went on to become one of the most prestigious colonies in the galaxy and sending me into a fit of rage (I had worked hard to get this colony; it had been a long term goal). I also lost all those troops I dropped. The troops should have had a three-way free-for-all with the victor getting the spoils! I guess troops are flagged as "defending" and "attacking", with ownership being ignored. This situation isn't likely to present itself very often so probably isn't an essential fix, but boy did it suck.
The interface - do the devs have something against checkboxes, right-click menus, wheel scrolling, and tabs? These things are all way underused. Lack of right mouse button functionality is especially befuddling. Did a right mouse button kill someone's dog when they were a kid er something? Literally no menu in the game has any right mouse functionality. Not a one.
- You know that fancy mouse-over that occurs on the main screen when you hover over pretty much any object? Why doesn't that also work in the game menus? If I hover my mouse over an entry in the colony screen, that same window should come up; same in the ships and bases menu, and possibly others. Also, this mouse-over should not appear for the object that is selected, as it'd get in the way.
- Same with the right-click menu. Right-clicking a ship in the ships and bases menu should bring up the same menu as would right clicking the same ship/base in the main screen (at 100% zoom). Same with colonies and possibly others.
- Right mouse button can be used to counter the left mouse button. You know the icons to either side of the selection window? One side cycles forward, the other backwards. Well, utilizing the right mouse button, you can make left-clicking go forward/backward, and right clicking backward/forward. This way, you can get rid of some icons and possibly enlarge the selection window, or just reduce the size of the HUD.
- Right-click on icons for options. Prime example; the "Ships and Bases" button. Let me right click on this and select my filter BEFORE I open the menu so I don't have to wait for it to populate all 80,000 ships and bases (which should really be separate anyway!).
- I would like an item added to right-click menus when right-clicking an object called "properties", or "see details". This should bring up a properties screen with detailed information about the object. One thing that must be included here is information on stored cargo/resources if applicable, as well as resources set to be used in the construction queue. This window should show as much information as could ever be needed about the object though. With tabbing, you could eliminate many of the menus in game. For example, opening the properties screen for a space port. There should be a tab showing the construction queue, with all the functionally of the current construction menu (well, except better, because the construction menu is probably the most dysfunctional menu in the game right now). This should only apply to individual objects. Right-clicking a fleet, for example, would maybe bring up an option to open the fleet manager.
- Checkboxes. There are many instances where drop-down menus are used in places where checkboxes would be better. The best example is in the galaxy map screen. The filter here sucks. It doesn't actually "filter" anything, but rather highlights the selected. This is dumb. Instead, the filter should be a series of checkboxes. If "Our Enemies" is checked, it should show them. Checking both "Our Enemies" and "Our Colonies" would show both. This is, in my opinion, how a filter should work, and should be applied to most filters in the game (the filters in the design management screen perhaps being an exception).
- On the subject of the galaxy map screen, the ability to find an object here is essential. Frankly, this screen is of little use without it. My idea is either a dropdown list, or, preferably, a scrollable list to the side, which contains every system known to you in alphabetical order. You could then expand a selected system to see its corresponding planets, and those should be expandable to see their moons. The crosshairs should move to what you have selected. The only thing about this, is that the list could become gargantuan, so I dunno. I think it would work though.
- Add checkboxes to the selection window. You know that blue arrow that indicates a ship is currently automated? Get rid of it and put a working checkbox. The auto-refuel addition that's coming? Checkbox. Again, for this to work, a scroll bar must be added to the selection window. These checkboxes should be present for individual ships, fleets, and multi-selections as long as these attributes are applicable to all selected objects.
Mousewheel - Any and all menus, windows, lists, and anything else that has a scroll bar/scroll arrows should make use of the mouse wheel. I'm not sure how others feel, but drop down menus should NOT use the mouse wheel I don't think.
Paused means paused! - I'm surprised I have seen no mention of this. Perhaps I am the only one to whom this happens, or maybe I am alone in the fact that it infuriates me to no end. When I pause the game for whatever reason, I am immediately and invariably blasted with pop-ups. This also happens when I open a menu screen, but usually to a lesser degree. The instant I pause, something is attacked by a kaltor, a colony gets founded, two others rebel, a spy gets caught, my political advisor tells me I should declare war on three different empires for no apparent reason and slap a trade sanction on another, two empires try to sell me something and two more tell me to get my military ships out of some system that I probably colonized first. Some of these things cause the game to unpause when closed (THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN), and so I have to pause again, and the whole thing repeats! I usually have to pause two or three times before it sticks. I have seen things pop up when the game pauses to save! STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!
There has got to be a menu screen added that informs you of the condition of your economy. Total resources for your entire empire should be noted as well as a breakdown for each base, and colony. Or something. I haven't really brainstormed this, but there's gotta be something!
There is a breakdown of racial populations for each colony, I've noticed. I would like to see an empire-wide breakdown in the empire summary window. If there's no room, don't be afraid to add tabs or a scroll bar. These things are not evil. Actually, the economy summary could be a tab in the empire summary window.
I wish I could limit the amount of certain ships/bases/whatever that the AI could build. The AI in one game made about 100 troop transports. I will never need 100 troop transports. Ever.
Limitations on ship designs. Placing limits on ship/base designs now will cause a bit of a ruckous since the game was released without them, but they really need to exist. A frigate with a size of 650, 2000 firepower and 12000 shields is not a frigate. Without size limitations, the ship classes are pointless. The fact that bases can be as big as a person's imagination is a bit silly. It needs a hard limit. These limitations should be fairly generous and only apply to size, but they need to exist, and the AI needs to be aware of them.
The auto-save files need to be time-stamped in real world time. As is, the only way to see which is the most recent is to have windows tell me which is the most recently created.
Randomization - I'm a big fan of randomization. I'd like the ability to randomize more pre-game options. About the only things I would probably never randomize is the star count and research speed (which needs to be slowed down by the way).
Moon names - It's been mentioned many times in the thread, but it can't be said enough, moon names are ridiculous. You know how they say you can't please everyone? Well, I believe that in adapting the common sense Sol 3a format you would come closer than anyone ever has.
Some of the base sprites are bigger than the moon sprites they get built on. This makes it impossible to click on a colony. Someone suggested that bases should be built slightly off to the side, this would easily solve this.
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