Berkut
Posts: 757
Joined: 5/16/2002 Status: offline
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Not so much the visual map and units, which are not great but adequate. I am talking about some other things, when I call it "terrible". Stuff like: 1. Its a bitch to change production around. There is one screen to show you what is being produced overall, but it is just a raw list, with little summation. And you cannot go from that screen to the production facility you want. You have to close it, and then find that spot on the map. At a bare minimum, the production screen city names should be hotlinked to the city. Better would be a production interface that allowed you to change production while exmaining it in aggregate, rather then having to go to individuals cities, click ont he relveant factory, click on what it is producing, selecting a replacement, etc. 2. Why all the "codes" for crap? Why are sorties, for example, listed as something like Sorties: 1167 (43) (something like that) That is not intuitive at all. Why doesn't it just say Sorties remaining: 43% There is all kind of stuff like this. Another example: IJN Support Squad (22) x 143 WTF? Could we be more cryptic? How hard would it be to change the label to: IJN Support Squads: 143 of 165 IJN Support Squads: 143 active, 165 total Or something that someone looking at it doesn't have to refer to the manual to figure out what it means? The game is chock FULL of crap like this - needless complexity that adds nothing to the game, but makes it much harder to understand easily. 3. Why is is so ahrd to figure out the relative merits of two aircraft? If I click on the "upgrade" button, how come I then have to go out to the database screen to compare the aircraft I might want to upgrade to? And search through this terrible list that doesn't allow me to fileter on anything useful to find the aircraft I care about? 4. Don't even get me started on the "load transport" interface. Jesus H. Christ, its like they WANT me to screw that up! And then, if I do...Haha! You can't fix it! The crap interface combined with buggy code that doesn't list the load costs properly is like a minefield for the player. 5. Have you ever watned to put together a ASW TF of Japanese destroyers? Hey, look at that, there is now ay to tell when I am selecting what DD to put into the TF if it has any ASW capability at all! Swell! 6. How come when I select ships to go into a TF, I click on the ship name, but when I select LCUs to load on a ship, I select the "Load unit" tag instead? Personally, I *like* the load unit interface a lot better, since it lets me look at the units characteristics as I am selecting it, something sorely lacking the ship selection interface. But why is it different? I could go on, but you get the point. After you paly a while you forget about all thee little quirks, and it is no big deal. But from a interface design standpoint, this game is horrendous. It is a database with a bunch of poorly written reports sitting on top of it.
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