FreeOrion

I think a simple checkbox in the fleet window can work for this.


When unticked it says "passive", when ticked it says "hostile". Now, you can argue, that this is counter intuitive, because it suggests you have to tick the box, if you want your fleet to be passive. The alternative is, to have it always say "hostile", no matter what is clicked, but by not clicking, it's not hostile(=passive). It's tricky.

I think the way it's done in the mockup works best, because it's interactive and in the worst case, it takes one click for the player to realize how it works.

I thought it would be appropriate to move the part of my post relevant to the topic back here. The rest of my previous response has been moved to this thread.

Assuming for the moment that there is some need for a player to choose whether or not his fleet is generally hostile, perhaps for the sake of determining whether or not to blockade resource supply lines or something, and further assuming that there is no need to specify towards which empires the ship will act with hostility (even though there is, IMO), I would say that what you have there is OK. Perhaps if there was a button which said "passive" on it, and some indication that it would change to "hostile" when clicked might be better, but I can't be sure...

The tricky issue about whether the text should change when the toggle is switched might be solved by using a different graphic than the customary on/off toggle; that is, the toggle wouldn't appear graphically "on" or "off" in the same sense that the rest of the toggles appear "on" or "off", but would either be "hostile" or "passive", and of course the accompanying text would reflect this. Alternatively, the toggle might not change at all between hostile and passive modes, and instead would simply indicate that some kind of change will occur if it is switched, with only the text indicating whether the fleet is passive or hostile. Having only text change isn't as good as having graphical indicators change as well though. The "on/off" toggle doesn't work quite as well, IMO, for a decision that isn't explicitly an "on/off" decision, but rather a decision between two distinct options, neither of which can quite be considered "on" or "off".

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the graphic solution seems more or less right.

the question of weather such settings need to exist at all, however is far from clear.

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