In a battle:
Escape should have confirmation.
Escape could be “go straight to main menu. ignore stats” instead of just being ‘concede’ as it seems it is now.
All methods of exiting a battle should give the option to return to deployment… with what you just deployed loaded. it seems (though i’ve not tested) that currently what’s default-loaded is the save called “deployed”, which isn’t the same as what just fought? Currently, the only fast way to return seems to be to lose. any other (including looking at stats) seems to only go back to main menu. at which point you need to click battle, wait for the menu to draw, pick your fight and re-load a deployment. painful
It’d be nice (for me) if it was possible to homeworld-style zoom by holding down both mouse buttons and moving up/down.
Clicking in the minimap does an instant focus to that location, but I hold down the button then and expect it to continue following.
Continuously clicking/pressing “fast forward” does nothing, but still gives the interface-did-something click.
Possibly not possible, but in some fights - the maximum zoomout feels small and cramped. is it possible to keep zooming out until the entire battlefield is in shot? [obviously with huge reductions in detail!]
Using cursors to pan around chould have acceleration if you want to pan a long way?
In Deploy:
While dragging ships onto the field, could modifier keys enable the placement of 5/10 ships at a time? (no no, i’m not really fielding 99% frigate fleets worth 70,000… honest)
Sort the ship picker by class (or as the user wants)
Devise some sort of symbolic summary of a ship. maybe a shield circle that’s brightness is relative to shield strength, the ship sillohette is shaded according to armour, and a weapon icon depicting the most prevalent type of weapon? it’s very hard to pick ships if you have several.
Double-click should place a ship? in a less than perfect location possibly
Load/Save deployment - it’d be nice if it remembered what you last picked rather than just defaulting to the first in the alphabet
Orders:
Shortcuts like escort/protect/formate shouldn’t have to be confirmed.
The confirmation window always appears on the far right - exactly where the order window doesn’t start… makes for a huge number of clicks to set things up.
Build screen:
It’d be nice if you could preset the default orders this ship will deploy with.
Change Hull Type - the ‘click left/right to cycle’ interface feels clunky. could you display all available hulls (sorted by displacement ideally) and have their info below … much like in fact the module select.
After changing hull type, the ship class name remains the same. could that be cleared? [or defaulted. clearing is nicer i think as it makes the player assign a name]
Main Menu:
‘Online’ … doesn’t belong at this level i’d say. it should be in options, maybe at main level until you fill it in… i’ve clicked it a few times thinking it was challenge ;/
‘Back/Main Menu’ button at many levels - often ‘main menu’ means back a level.
Not 100% sure. but… fleet hq:
if you unlock a fighter module, then click on a cruiser module - everything in the description updates except the ‘fighter module’ bit. click around and everything else works fine, it’s just that first click i think. (ran out of honour, so i can’t doublecheck)
In the battle screen for the first battle while popups are appearing… it seems in memory that the event popups happen like this:
frigate destroyed
popup appears
close popup
screen focuses on event
could there be a big red circle or similar around the event being described - while the popup is up. (ie focus the screen before the popup locks things down)?
Return should almost always ‘ok’ a popup. certainly escape should
Suggestion: some way of transfering player status between machines - possibly via the online menu? [status being mission unlocks and equipment unlocks]
I’ll second the first post (especially the Change Hull Type one). Also in the deployment window seeing the class of a ship (in the list of available designs) without hovering (in other words all the time) would be nice, since the ships are rather difficult to identify from plain silhouettes. Of course some summary of the ship like snowdrift suggested would be nice but just seeing a name would help a lot.
hotkey for “deploy last ship at cursor position and select it… please”
cut&paste… seriously - i’m building anti-fighter groups consisting of a frigate, and 2/3 escorting fighter groups. … i want 4-5 of these groups. it’d be very nice to be able to create one group, then cut&paste to copy it.
default orders… omg - please! every single offensive ship prettymuch i go through and add “co-op” and “vulture”
default orders per-design would be very nice. having to fix up the default ranges on every new deployment wears thin after a while… especially if you forget until you’re at the end of a fight and wondering why your ships simply won’t fire. (800 range for 700 range weapons. they just sat there, and a single computer ship whittled them down from 10-1 to 0-1 :[ )
Deplyment screen:
(bug/niggle)
hovering over the ship picker - popups seem to be frame rate timed rather than real-time™… on this computer it takes 3-4 seconds for the popup to appear.
(suggestion)
hover over a ship in the ship picker, press F1 (or any functionkey).
‘F1’ appears in text over that ship icon.
pressing ‘F1’ while the cursor is over the deployment area causes that ship to be created, placed at the mouse and selected.
(obviously, replaced ‘F1’ with any of the function keys. i normally use about 4 ships in a fleet - repeatedly that is. this’d make it much easier) [can you tell i once had RSI due to overuse of a mouse? :)]
the mouse is obviously polled. this means it can (especially when under lag as previously described) miss mousedown or mouseup.
particularly bad when trying to double-click class select - the mouse is often then in drag-select mode when trying to set an order.
… and couldn’t find it! It was hidden, if I hadn’t seen the scroll bar at the bottom, I never woulda found it.
Man, when a new race unlocks, make sure I see it first thing! it should have a gold glow around it, with ‘New race unlocked!’ to boost the gratification level of getting that new thing!
I know, I’m just throwing them out when I find them.
Put a glow on, highlight, the currently selected ship in the deployment screen. When designing ships, it’s easier to swap out modules in the same hull. I wind up having 4-5 hulls that look the same. A border around the currently selected ship would help me find the same ship again. Same for the module select screen, make the currently selected module stand out somehow.
(What’s really needed is a way to make duplicates of an already selected ship. Then the highlight wouldn’t be needed. Same for the modules. If they were sorted by type, and looked different enough from one another, a highlight would be less important. I really think those module icons need some work. Making the mouseover text come up quickly as you did is a good first step. The Mk1 - II - III icons need to be color coded so that I rapidly learn that white is Mk I, green is Mk II, and gold is Mk III, across the board. The weapon icons need work too, I think. An effort was made to add color to differentiate between them, but it’s not enough to really make them stand out from one another, and the rocket launchers are all sharing the same icon it seems. Make the color more pronounced, is my suggestion. Make the body of the turret the main color, and leave the stripe colorless, reverse the colors. Another idea would be to use different shapes for the different kinds of turrets. I dunno, square turrets for launchers, round for laser, octagonal for plasma, rectangle for blaster, triangle for PD/anti fighter, etc etc. So much of finding the module you want is seeing what you DON’T want and eliminating that. Different shapes and enhanced colors (and sorting) would really help that screen.)
