[Beta Feedback] UI flow suggestions

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Space Battles
1

Hello there!

I just preordered the game yesterday, and I must say, it’s goood fun so far! Now here are a few things I’ve noticed that will make the UI easier and less bothersome to use:

  • Minimize mouse clicks: Right now, for example if I want to issue an Escort order, I have to click 1. Add Order, 2. click Escort, 3. click Ok, 4. click Set Target, 5. click on the target ship, and 6. click Ok. That’s a lot of clicks, 6 if I can still count, for a very simple process. On top of that, it’s not even possible to confirm “Ok” in all those dialog boxes by just hitting Enter. What about this instead?

image
GSB-ui-mockup1.jpg506×512 63.2 KB

How it could work: All possible orders are listed in the (currently mostly empty) list on the left side. By default, all except the “Attack…” orders are inactive (=greyed out). If you want to add an order, you 1. select a ship and 2. click on the greyed out order, activating it. If there are additional options, as in case of the Escort or Protect orders, a window opens (for example on the side, as it does now), or a simple prompt with the words “Select ship to escort/protect”, and with just one more click, you select the target. That would reduce the six clicks needed above to just two, an immense improvement if you ask me.

  • Enable keyboard users: As mentioned above, most dialog boxes cannot be operated without the mouse. By nature, keyboard input is faster than locating a click target and clicking it with the mouse. It would help the UI a lot if obvious choices as in [Yes]/[No]-prompts could be selected by pressing Enter/Esc, for example. Also, keyboard navigation for the lists in the ship designer would be helpful… having to hover over a module to see which type it is, then click the individual module to see its stats is pretty clumsy. If the game worked with (not sure if this is the right terminology) focus areas, as in, click in a field and then be able to navigate it with the keyboard (or as an analogue, hover over an area and be able to scroll it via mousewheel, which e.g. doesn’t work for the ship design list in the deployment screen). There should be some more thought put into this stuff :slight_smile:

That’s all the UI stuff I can think of off the top of my head, hope the feedback is appreciated!

2

I like the idea of have the most common orders already displayed and keeping the add order button for special orders (to keep the list small).
Alternatively for escort orders you could simply select the ship, click and drag the escort order over to the ship you want to escort saving you more clicks.

Also, as nicely illustrated on your screen shot, static text should not have to trail off into “…” Make them smaller or put in a bigger box.

3

I like that. Click-click-click for my standard trio of Co-op, Vulture and Keep Moving would be much nicer than the current Move-click-long move-click-move-click-long move for each one.

4

I was pondering this same issue, and I came upon the idea of default orders. When in the ship design screen, would it be possible to have a window where you can set up a default set of orders for that class of ship, so that whenever you place it on the deployment screen it already has a customized set? I find myself wasting a lot of time changing the orders on my specialized ships before every mission, and any way to speed that up would be welcome.

5

I agree, that would be very handy.

Another point that I’ve come across is that the process of naming things, be it deployments or ships.

  1. It does not seem to use windows’ regional settings / IME or whatever you call it. I’m using a German keyboard layout, and whenever I press y, I get a z instead. Not to mention that all the special characters are on completely different keys…
  2. I cannot shift+select parts of the text to replace it
  3. I cannot ctrl+backspace to delete entire words
  4. I cannot use the delete key at all

That’s just off the top of my head.