Geoff the Medio wrote:yandonman wrote:
LOVE the Merge Fleet (wish it was accessible from the main-map fleet icon)
Why? You'd have to go into the fleets window anyway to see the results.
Because I found my self repeatedly trying to do this action from the main-map fleet icon. I wasn't
thinking about it, I was just trying to
do it, and that's what came out.
Upon reflection, this is likely because the operation is on 'all ship at this location', and that main-map fleet icon means 'all ships at this location'.
Additionally, right-click menus, as a general industry standard, operate on the object that is being clicked on. This breaks, or at least stretches, that paradigm, and it feels unnatural.
On the second point: No. One does not necessarily need to. I routinely have planets producing only one type of ship. I know what's at that system because I set it up that way on purpose.
Additionally, one has to click on the fleet icon just to see the fleet window contents. The mouse is already at the map fleet icon. Making the player move the mouse to the fleet window from its position is not necessary. That may sound pedantic, but this is an operation that a player may do a hundred times in a game - it deserves the usability optimization. It'll help (in a small way) keep the player immersed in the game by having fewer mechanics to go through to implement their intentions. For people with carpal-tunnel syndrome (or any other repetitive stress injury), it will make the game hurt less.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Quote:
Default fleet stance (defensive) is not right for attack ships
Switch it to aggressive then...
Presumably you mean "patches along this line are welcome" as opposed to other interpretations.
Geoff the Medio wrote:I don't want to add too many options to the popup menu, and I want to retain the ability to split a fleet without affecting other fleets in the system.
I agree with the goal of not having too many right-click options. Placing the small set of operations that act on 'all ships at this location' as a right-click off of the main map fleet icon would reduce the number of right click options acting on a single fleet. And would actually help with the next question...
Geoff the Medio wrote:Quote:
The layout looks experimental at the moment
Layout of what? The popup menu? How else could / should it look?
The layout of the Fleet popup menu and the layout of the Ship popup menu. On the fleet popup menu, the line separator is a "-" (dash): it should be changed to a proper line break. There are too many line separators on the popup menu: It should have no more than 1 line separator for every 3 to 4 actions. Perhaps: Explore, Rename, Scrap | Merge, Split, Split by Design.
"Split Ships Into Fleets For Each Design" is too wordy: It should be much shorter, such as "Split by Design".
Onto the Ship popup menu, there are no line separators, which is inconsistent with the Fleet popup. And again, it's breaking the paradigm of only operating on the thing one is clicking on. My suggestion would be get rid of the various Split operations that operate on other ships. Baring that: Pedia Lookup, Rename, Scrap | Split Design from Fleet. But the right thing to do would be to follow the paradigm of right click only operates on the thing it clicked on.
My 2c
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