FreeOrion

Just another brainstorming idea thrown out there.

So, there's some blank space on the system panel that I would like to suggest be used as a viewport onto the surface of the planet that is currently selected (production UI) or hovered over (main/galaxy map UI). Each surface of the planet view would show an image that represents certain characteristics of the planet. Oceans would show oceanic scenes, swamps would show swamps, etc. On top of that, the amount of industry would show more or less buildings. The amount of research or production (or other) would influence the building types - aka: research would see more universities, high production would show more "production" buildings. Happiness could add some minor tweaks (fireworks, carnivals, etc). You would see depictions of your people. Certain buildings would influence the portrait: concentration camps would show concentration camp style buildings, staryards would show stuff associated with staryards, capitals would show governmental buildings.

Here are some mock ups that give a general idea of what I'm suggesting (note: it does not convey very well the correlation between the planet circumstances and the portrait):

The space may be blank in some cases, but it's not unused, particularly when there are more than three planets in a system. Aside from that, I don't think it makes much sense to put single planet pictures in an area otherwise used to show multiple planets' info... If they went anywhere, it'd need to be on a single-planet display widget or area.

The idea is not bad.

I think this is more of a UI thing so I'm not sure if they will really want to mess with it at the moment. I may be wrong but from the road map, the UI won't be really looked at until later.