Sure. Those custom challenges are cool and all, but what about those of us with OCD who cannot STAND not being able to get the slider to 100 pilots, or exactly 50k budget, or EXACTLY 3000 map size!? If possible, make a text box in addition to sliders, in fact: Do that all over the place. Allow us to type the numbers instead of just use sliders.
Its a tiny suggestion, but I feel that if we can make our maps exactly size 3000 and such, it will feel more professional.
Seconded, with enthusiasm!
And make the myriad of “ok” buttons in hull selection, ship design, and ship orders mapped to keyboard “return” input, I beg you! At present if you have a ship with more than about 13 weapons you can NEVER assign battle orders on a per-target-hull-class, because the “ok” button vanishes from the bottom of the screen… you’re trapped, with force-quitting the game as the sole way out. This cries out for improvement.
Giving more keyboard control about the entire interface would be welcome.
Also, when designing ships; it would be awesome to simply click on a component from the list, then to be able to click on component spots in the ship being designed, and fill it in that way. For instance, if I want 8 of a certain weapon, just a single click on the weapon type in the list, then single clicks on 8 separate hard points in the actual design. Then, there would be no click and drag for each and every component.
The same could probably go for the deployment screen; if all ship types were automatically set to ‘mass deploy’ as the default, that would be great… just click on the ship type, then start deploying with more clicks.
Being able to set the default fighter squadron size would be cool, or even setting all ship types up as squadrons, and letting the player set the number of ships per squadron, say from 1 to 20.
As it is, if someone wants to have fighter squadrons which are 5 ships apiece, they have to customize each and every squadron purchased; from 16 to 5.
Setting all ship types - fighter, frigate, cruiser - to squadron, then having pre-defined amounts in each squadron; this would help give each player more individuality in how their forces are built out. Some players would field the traditional, 16-fighter squadron, and other players might go for 7, 8, or 10, etc. Some cruisers would be deployed singly, and others in groups of 5 or 6 or whatever.
Anything to speed up the setting, and increase the customizeability of all of the game the parameters; would be welcome.
Having numerical fields in addition to sliders, and being able to tab through them would be great.
Apparently my tiny suggestion has expanded to streamlining the interface by adding keyboard shortcuts throughout.
I think it would be welcome and keyboard shortcuts for a lot of stuff would certainly make the game a lot more fun, and adding keyboard shortcuts like that would (I think) be an easy tweak… Or at least I hope so…
I’d like to “bump” this topic to keep it in view. Other players as well as myself have commented in this thread’s earlier posts about aggravating user interface flaws in GSB.
Way back when I was creating the Alliance “Shark Queen” dreadnaught I was unpleasantly surprised to find that any ship with about 13 weapons or more CANNOT be issued combat orders because the ‘ok’ acknowledgement button is still not mapped to the keyboard ‘return’ key. The list cheerfully expands vertically to run out of the window but you can never issue orders if the cursor can no longer reach the button and hitting ‘enter’ has no effect.
I find this utterly maddening because without the ability to issue detailed range and priority orders, it reduces larger starships to stupid heaps of guns lacking any tactical subtlety for defense or offense. I’ve temporarily halted my dreadnaught design efforts for that very reason. One of the chief joys of GSB is setting the so-called “rules of engagement” to govern the actions of my fleet. If larger modded starships are denied participation due to user-hostile flaws in the UI, it tends to seriously sour my gaming experience.
The continued presence of such unfriendly obstacles in the UI is a substantial as well as needless annoyance, and I request that those bundled issues be given official attention for patching.
Agreed, at least on the OCD score. It rankles me ever so slightly that I can’t set some ranges to the proper multiple of 50, and I have to settle for an engagement distance of either 149 or 151. Grrr.
I won’t go so far as to beg, but I do agree that my reflex action of hitting the Enter key, developed from years of using all kinds of software that recognizes it, would be nice to use on GSB. 
I will second this, if only because apparently my aim when dragging and dropping leaves a bit to be desired. It’s not uncommon for me to miss a hardpoint by just enough to fail to swap out the component I was working on, and occasionally I have saved and exited the design screen before I register that I didn’t hear the equipping sound effect.
I don’t know that I like the notion of being able to accidentally deploy a dozen ships because I haven’t been paying attention to what I’ve clicked; then again I’m a right-click menu addict from years of AutoCad so maybe I’m not the best judge.
I do like the ability to deploy everything in groups though, not just fighters. I make skirmisher frigates that I routinely deploy in “task forces” of anywhere from 4 to 12, and although Mass Deploy works pretty well for that, it would be nice to save a default squadron size along with the ship design’s default orders. Maybe a button like the Save Orders button that says Save Squadron.
I’d like to see a Cliffski comment on this. I hate it that I can’t set some weapons to their exact optimal engagement range. Something that is especially important for fighters. If we can’t type it, at least allow us to use the arrow keys for fine tuning adjustments.
And we still can’t use the delete key to delete text!!!
nomations for this … +1
lol yea that text would be GREAT! range IS a rather annoying problem … yet i wonder what happens if you set the range for more than what hte guns can shoot … simply chase the enemy?
also +1
as i recall, cliff fixed that in… d’oh! i can’t remember which patch, but now there’s not thousands of options for a single weapon. so if you put 14 cruiser lasers on something, there would only be one bar that says "Cruiser Laser x14’
Strongly agree with the text boxes idea.
49 and 51 pilots versus 50 took me longer than necessary. >_<
I agree with this one. I don’t need squadrons of 16 fighters usually.
As to how far the use interface should accommodate modded ships with lot’s of hard points, might be open to debate. Having OK buttons linked to the Enter key would still be a nice improvement.