dubbeltje wrote:I hadn't seen that 'quick-close windows' option. That seems useful, although the right-click doesn't feel intuitive to me, because that used as a way to get context-sensitive menu's elsewhere (e.g. "move up in queue" or encyclopedia lookups). I now aways just spam ESC a couple of times when I want to clear the screen, which works but may not be the most elegant solution.
Some more comments/questions:
- * Are there ever players who actually want to go to the next turn when research points or production will be wasted? I found the exclamation mark indicator after a couple of these mishaps, but I wonder if maybe a "You will be wasting RP/PP, are you sure you want to go to the next turn" popup would've been useful.
Yes, two reasons: in early to mid game you might have a planet out of supply that literally can't produce anything else: Trenchers are an obvious example of a conquered native species, supply will catch up but isn't there yet. The production of that supply group will be wasted. For research, rarely, no, but in the end game if I've forgotten to queue PsyDom early enough then there might be an excess before my "all production" focus change really kicks in and Transcendence isn't unlocked—this is less common but it does happen to me. Tech victories are for other players.
* (how) can I what systems are affected by things like the 'molecular cloud' that somehow reduce shields?
Ideally, see where it is, if you turn off gas fields in the options they become a lot more visible, but you do learn to look for them, they shrink or grow, and move, most turns.
I am planning a sitrep for ships affected by these but there is a tradeoff in the UI between making something obvious and obtrusive.
* The sprites for the stars sometimes show planets, but this does not correspond to the actual number of planets in the system.
That's not meant to be planets, it's meant to indicate binary systems and is purely aesthetic, the map view doesn't show system content and it's my understanding making it do so would slow things down massively.
* The way production is shared between planets is elegant. Would there be a way to visualize the directions in which production flows? Small brown moving dots for example?
What purpose would it serve? All supply connected worlds may or may not be using the PP, most of it will be heading towards your main shipyard and for the most part I'd end up with all dots heading to one place.
If you can see a reason to do it I suspect it could be done (backend code is beyond me), there used to be a UI thing using moving dots for, IIRC, fuel which was separate from other supply, but that was removed years ago. But I can't see the use.
* The visual effect over planets you cannot see is really neat and clear
Heh, unless it's an asteroid belt, I meant to open an issue about this a few days ago but forgot to get the screenshots.
* I made peace with one AI but not the others. Would it be possible to denote on the map which colours are enemy/friendly? For example a thin red outline around enemy ship icons?
Not currently, but the Empires window shows an icon for status before the empire name (what is this "peace" thing of which some players speak, is that when you lie to an AI about your intentions in order to finish another off first?
)
* The system for creating/splitting/merging fleets is really intuitive
People keep adding extra bits to that and I always like it when someone comes up with a new tweak.
* What does the "200 uu" message on the top left mean?
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Distance.
Speed and similar in the game is measure in uu/turn, most starlanes max out at 120uu, Scanning Facilities boost a planets detection range by 75uu, etc. You're basically looking at the range measure, at that zoom level the line is 200uu long, zoom in or out and it'll change (and press alt+c with a system selected and you'll get a circle the same radius as the meter, if you have a ship selected then the zoom in/out will go to that ships speed if you zoom in the right way)
I snipped a few Qs, I can't answer backend stuff and never use the list view in research, someone else can/will.
Again, thanks for the game; it has been a lot of fun to play a coupe of turns during my train journeys.[/quote]