Beta 1.15: UI change requests

So, having played GSB 2 for quite a while now, I thought it was time to branch out from bug reporting to actual gameplay. I’ll leave balance issues to those who are actually semi-competent at the game, and stick to the UI. I assume a list is the most convenient way of organising this for you, Cliff? Without further ado, please:

  1. Swap the power produced/consumed to power consumed/produced. The current system is just weirdly counter-intuitive. Same goes for crew.
  2. Remove the current ability of the player to click buttons on the main menu while the Positech logo is still being displayed.
  3. Bring back the humourous, unique descriptions for each module from GSB 1. I know this isn’t strictly necessary, but the flavour text just added so much character to that game!
  4. Organise the modules in each of the four categories better. The groupings of beams, missiles, plasma etc. not only made it easier to find things in GSB 1, but also gave the player an intuitive indication of what everything actually did without having to look too closely at the stats.
  5. Add a tooltip when mousing over the ‘warhead’ stat that explains what each kind actually means. I know that radioactive means damage over time, but will a new player? (Actually, does it still mean that? Radioactive weapons don’t have the relevant stats for damage over time anymore).
  6. Allow a method of distinction between the cruiser pulse cannon and the cruiser pulse cannon other than clicking on both of them to compare stats.
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  7. Add a ‘snap rotation’ feature that allows the player to choose between, say, 16 different angles for a component’s rotation. Making minute adjustments to the slider in order to get something perfectly straight is incredibly annoying.
  8. Have a feature similar to composites, but for colour schemes. Basically, it would be possible for the primary, secondary and tertiary colours to be saved, and then imported to any compnents the player had selected.
  9. Have some consistency as to how a colour actually appears on different modules. At present, it’s a bit annoying having to check a whole bunch of similar colours just because what’s bright orange on one component is murky brown on another.
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  10. Make the cursor be where it should be when typing. When pressing backspace, for example, it’s a shot in the dark as to which character within two characters either side of the cursor is actually going to be deleted.
  11. If a component has less than three colourable aspects, remove the excess tertiary/secondary colour selectors from the colour palette. Having to change the secondary and tertiary colours for each component just to see if they do anything is a bit of a hassle.
  12. Make sure the rotation speed in the visual designer matches the rotation speed in-battle. Currently, setting the slider to max in the designer gives a gentle spin, but in a battle that turns into an obscenely fast whirl that would surely kill any occupants of the ship.
  13. Add a bit of text to the research screen that says which race a weapon is for. For quite a while I thought the pulverizer and the heavy shield support were MIA.
  14. This is by far the most important: please, please, please give us the option of typing in a value whenever there is a slider. It would shave about 20% off the time spent setting up a fleet, and it would mean no more awkwardly nudging engagement ranges between 749 and 753 because the f****** thing just won’t land on 750.
  15. When selecting an attack range, it’s possible to click on a weapon and the attack range will automatically set to that weapon’s max range. That’s a really useful feature, but what would be more useful would be for it to bear in mind the rearmost one of that weapon’s position relative to the centrepoint of the ship. So if, for instance, ship A had one weapon B 20 units in front of its centrepoint, and one 20 units behind, and the range of weapon B was 800, selecting weapon B while choosing the attack range would cause A to attack at range 780, allowing the rear instance of weapon B to attack.

Thanks very much for taking the time, and I hope it’s been a successful launch.

I’ll second having humorous module descriptions. Hopefully the current lack of descriptions is only because it’s a work-in-progress.

And on the subject of flavor, it would be nice to have race-specific comms chatter during battles. I know if I ever migrate the Collective over to GSB2, that’s something I’d like to do.