User:Rbos

Name	Tech	Beams	T/F	En	MC	Dur	Tri	Mol	Mass	Cargo	Fuel	Crew	Abilities	Adv
Outrider Class Scout	1	1	0/0	1	50	20	40	5	75	40	260	180	none	0

Here is my list of recent grips (so far!):

It is not 1992 and I am not 13 anymore, and my wrist makes crackly sounds. There are quite a few things you could do to make Planets less "clicky" and have a more congenial UI.

Keybinds

• map markers could be keybound somehow? In VPA map markers were just objects you could click on and delete, but maybe I'm just using 'em wrong.

• keybinds for map filters. capital D, T, M, $, S, F for minerals/cash/supplies/fuel. Annoying to navigate mouse UI elements for this.

• mouseover keybind info for a lot more things. Hover over the 'ready' checkbox and it should say 'r'.

• the 'u' hotkey to unload doesn't work if the planet is unowned or hostile? It should drop everything it can drop regardless.

• When I hit 'm' for mission I'd like to hit a key (number?) to select one of the missions instead of a mouseclick

Navigation

• On a multi-step path I wish to say "don't bug me until it hits the waypoint", so when the ship makes planetfall it should un-ready. This way I can do a multi-planet pickup route without having to think about the ship while it's in space

- When I do a multi-step path, warp well destinations appear to be calculated with the ship's *current* location, rather than its hypothetical future location. Most of the time this doesn't matter so much. However, it can: I have a pair of planets that are *just* over 64ly apart. If I do a multiple-warp path at w8, it puts the ship *just* outside the warp well and takes an extra turn. If I instead wait until the ship is one hop away, and then send it, it calculates the warp well correctly and the ship takes one turn.

• Often I get a little confused which direction a ship is moving. I know it's weird. Click on one ship, set a waypoint. It's just two yellow circles connected by a yellow line. I'd like it to be more visually obvious which is the source and which is the destination. A little arrow indicator maybe, generated in the centre of the path, or replacing the "every turn" dots in the path.

• movement arrow: triangle method used by plugin is pretty nice?

• It would be nice if, in the ship panel, it showed the destination of the ship's waypoint. The name/ID of the planet, the name/ID of the ship, or the space coordinates. It might fit in nicely right next to the Warp: Turns: display.

Dest: Bootes (403) Dest: LARGE DEEP SPA (403) Dest: x:2240 y:1815

Transferring items

• Being able to transfer fighter/torp minerals/cash in the planet dialogue. Similar to the starbase transfer of fighter/torps, except it transfers the appropriate mats to the ship inventory. Doesn't set mkt/mkf though.

• It's great that you can shift, ctrl, shift-ctrl-arrow for different amounts of resource transfer, but there's no UI cue for it. There should maybe be a mouseover when using the GUI buttons or some kind of hint on the screen?

• When transferring clans to a desert/arctic planet from a ship it should alert you if you're transferring more than the planet can sustain, even if you don't own the planet. Right now you have to switch to the planet, and then transfer the amount from the ship.

• An "unload cargo" mission only for freighters would be nice for asteroid fields. It would save a lot of tedious clicking.

• A "beam up all cargo" button on the planet UI would be nice, the way that there's a "drop all cargo" on ships. Save like five clicks.

• on all transfer screens, you have to click on the resource, and then click on 1/10/100 etc. That could be individual smaller buttons beside every resource in a row, like

• • 74 mines [=>100] -> [MAX] [+1k] [+1h] [+10] [+1] | [-1] [-10] [-1h] [-1k] [-MAX]

Taxation

• Taxation of colonists doesn't have the same options that taxation of natives does?

• Borg taxation of natives doesn't have Growth/Growth+ etc options. Is that for a reason?

• Tax and happiness calculations on planets do not take into account HISS missions.

Starbase UI

• Mousing over hulls in the ship build screen should give info about those hulls. It's pretty annoying to have to click through to them, and it's often hard to recognize the ship you need from an array of nearly-identical tiny pictures.

• When I set a ship to "super refit" any subsequent click-backs of that ship should pull up the refit UI, I shouldn't have to set the mission a second time
  • When I use "super refit", buy parts, and then later make a ship at the same place, it uses the same parts to build the new ship, making the refit ship bereft
  • when I refit a drive onto a ship the next turn it should auto-select the new maximum speed on the next turn

• When repairing a ship at a starbase, its warp should automatically be set to its max.

• The components you selected last turn should maybe already be up in the starbase ship build UI. It's annoying to have to rebuild the same ship every time since you're almost always going to want the same options. I'm virtually never going to want anything but TW drives for instance, and I usually standardize my torp ships on mk7 or mk4 depending on game stage to simplify logistics. It should just remember your last selection and use that.

• When building a ship, there's no option for "none" when it comes to torps/beams.

Battle order

Setting battle order is a pain and involves very fiddly friendly-code setting. It is *incredibly* non-intuitive for new players and unpleasant for old.

The default UI should have some kind of indication of battle order and the ability to visually change it.

• • A new button in pretty much all panels: sort by ship ID/combat order, and it should be persistent when switching ships. You might also want to add things like "sort by mass", "sort by fuel/dur/trit". Often I want to quickly find the ship in a large group with the most of something.

• • drag and drop in the ship select panels, or in (fingers crossed) the multiselect panel.

The list starts off in order: numeric FCs first, non-numeric second. If you drag a ship to a certain spot in the order, all *numeric* friendly-codes of ships will be shuffled: generate N random numbers, order them, assign them to the ships in the appropriate sequence. A computer-generated random number is much less likely to collide with a human-generated "random" number.

For instance, ships could be displayed in order with FCs:

a:001, b:010, c:020, d:030, e:040, f:mkt, g:mkt, h:mkt

Moving the fourth one to the first position might result in

d:005, a: 007, b:021, c:023, e:045, f:mkt, g:mkt, h:mkt

Thus creating the desired battle order.

Multiselect

• the ability to give orders to multiple ships/planets simultaneously to ease the 'clickiness' of the UI. Prone to error, takes a long time, frustrating.

starbase/planet/ship screens: ctrl-collect to create a multi-selection. Put a green box around any selected ship.

Optionally on the starmap: ctrl-click, drag to select multiple. left-click on any ship or 'x' to clear selection. A multi-selection on the starmap will have to create some kind of popup showing which ships are selected.

• • click on map - set waypoint/multiwaypoint for all ships.
  • 'u' - unload all ships where applicable.
  • 't' - open a transfer window, select a target. Only valid if all ships are in the same location.
    • Any items transferred to the multiselect are distributed evenly cargo-room permitting.
    • Any items transferred out are transferred out (say) lowest-ID first, or evenly if you want to deal with rounding.
    • This enables use cases like "select 6 Cobols, dump fuel to planet, transfer back 120 fuel" so that each Cobol gets 20, or "select 3 Nebulas, transfer asteroid field cargo to waiting cargo ship", with FAR fewer clicks.
    • Easy ammunition rebalancing. Transfer all ammunition to starbase or one ship, then transfer back.

• Setting "send duranium" on a bunch of asteroids is tedious clickery and prone to error. It would be nice if I could multiple-select planets and simultaneously set mission for all of them.

Planet economy planner

The existing economy planner builds factories, then defence, then mines in a weird order. I almost never want to build defence posts before maxing out on mines. We should be able to configure that.

• I'd like to be able to say eg "build up to 110 factories, then when that's complete, build up to 200 mines, then when that completes, build up to 20 defence posts". The UI could be a list, like:

• • build 110 factories
  • build 200 mines
  • build 20 def

and you could modify it like

• • build to 50 factories
  • build to 20 def
  • build to 110 factories
  • build to 30 mines
  • build MAX factories

• Alternatively, and probably way easier to implement, I should be able to clone the settings from an existing planet.

• and there should be a "default" profile for planetary buildings that just automatically applies. For bonus points? Have different profiles you can apply.

- building factories/etc: a "priority" concept might be a good use. "build these first". Maybe drag & drop to order the build priority? Drag factories first in the order to build them first. This might be an alternative to a planetary build planner.

misc

• Clicking on the temperature of a planet should give you a popup about the danger level. Like estimated losses in percentages, maximum population. Shouldn't have to use help for this. Ditto other numbers in the UI.

• We should be able to share map markers with people. Borders, for instance, you can agree on an unambiguous treaty line. It adds a layer of shenanigans too. Like you can draw a border line that LOOKS fair but isn't, or is conveniently straight or not-straight.

• The "home sector" training mission has an asteroid cluster and you have to colonize all the asteroids before you can continue, but that means putting stations on all of them, which is a Project, and there are no supplies for them to eat so you can't avoid them dying off in the interim. Maybe in "easy" mode, turn off death by vacuum or allow some minimum amount to live in inflatable habitats (10?) with no mining bonus.

• I'd like to see clickable nodes along ship paths. If I want to do an intercept I should be able to click the ship to a spot, then navigate to another ship and click on the end of that line, or their projected next-turn location, as a waypoint without having to zoom into the grid and match the coordinate exactly. This would make precision manoeuvres much less time-consuming and fiddly.

• selecting a different ship recentres the map on that ship, which makes setting waypoints for multiple ships annoying. Click, scroll, find spot, click, repeat. If I have both ships in view, I don't want the map recentring or zooming.

• Cycling through ships - I'm not sure what algorithm is in use to determine which ship is next (it seems to be at least partially proximity-based, which is good), but it would be nice if we could configure it a little. For instance I almost always will want to do freighters first.

• It would be nice, if in the fleet overall summary screen, you could select ships via checkbox, and give some orders there. Randomize FCs, set PE, set mission. A "select all" would be nice too.

• keybind: toggle the drawing layer, have a toolbar with tools. Say shift-L turns on drawing mode, then keys to do individual drawing items. It should also autoselect the default layer, and create it if needed. The workflow doesn't need a lot of tweaking but it could be a lot smoother.

• viewing planet/sb mission on mouseover would be handy, like for instance when trying to find which planetoid in a cluster is set to 'send duranium'. :/
• When building planetary defense posts, it'd be nice if defense ground combat ratios (with race taken into account) were shown as well as planet weapon values.

• The overall UI could be a little snappier and more responsive, but that's not really a good specific criticism. It just feels slow to respond to clicks. Could just be my machine.

• I'd like to have "temporary" circles that I can easily draw with a keybind that clear when I hit x or something. Planning a location that's within 84ly of three different planets, for instance - the measure tool isn't very good for that. Like hit shift-m-84-clickclickclick to draw three 84ly circles (snapping to the planets), and then I can drop a marker on the intersection. Also helpful for HYP or MCBR towing routes, or to plan the "mineral-shed" for a starbase. Like dropping 243ly circles around resource planets to show where a reasonable starbase location might be. The layer-drawing UI is clunky and it's annoying to delete the circles after.

• When hitting 'clear all' on the map message markers, it'd be nice to have "clear all" or "clear all similar messages". Like I don't always want to dismiss all combat messages, but I might want to dismiss all "asteroid hits".

• When clicking on an explosion in the map, I have to click 'results' or 'watch'. What if I just want to skip it? I know the results, I don't want to watch it. A close button would be nice.

• Sometimes I clear a VCR and I want to rewatch it, maybe to see what kind of armaments the enemy planet has, and then I have to dig through the often-tedious list of VCRs to find the specific one I want. Having a link to the combat recording available when clicking on the notification at the bottom of the ship/planet panel instead of just the message would be nice.

• A lot of the time I want to just build maximum factories, mines, etc. I have to click the builder, set it to 1k. If I could just shift-click the builder icon and have it set condition MAX that would be nice. Alternatively! Use the keybinds for item transfer, so that ctrl, shift, ctrl-shift click work.

• it's not super clear that having supplies on a planet allows one additional clan to survive. Some kind of UI hint that indicates that you need a laid-up stock somehow.

• recentring the entire map every time you select a new ship is annoying.

• Custom keybinds might be nice, with lists of actions. You could drop down an action from a list, like "beam up" "beam down", and have a list of actions that it'll attempt to do. FOr instance, you might create a keybind for "beam down[/up]" "1200" "clans". Anything that you feel you are going to be doing a lot of, which can't necessarily be predicted in advance. A keybound action list of the form "beam up 1200 trit" + "beam up 1200 dur" + "beam up 1200 moly" on an LDSF for instance, would save a fair bit of keypressing on a freighter doing a resource pickup loop.

• When there's a VCR combat marked on the map, mouseover of a planet stops working until after you actually interact with the VCR.

• If you go back/forward a turn while selecting a ship, you should stay with that ship, it should stay selected.

• Setting planet colour could possibly be put into the planet interface to save a click. It's not super obvious that it's under the 'notes' panel. To set colour you have to open notes, select colour dropdown, pick colour, hit okay twice. That's five clicks that could be reduced to a couple.

• Ship screens should show the class of the ship as well as the name. Sometimes it's confusing to have only the name. I like to get creative with names sometimes, like renaming a warship "LARGE DEEP SPACE FREIGHTER" or something.