Here, more or less in order, is my wishlist for improvements in the user interface. I’m not talking about balance changes or new races or suchlike.
1. Global saved deployments
The two most time-consuming tasks as a player are designing ships and setting up deployments. Once I design a ship, I can use it in any challenge. If I need to tweak it, I can start with a design I already have. This is a good thing. If I had to start from scratch to design every ship each time I picked a challenge with a different map I would not be happy about that.
Deployments however, are stored separately for each map. If I have a deployment carefully set up for one particular map and then a different challenge has a slightly different map, then I have to start setting up the deployment from scratch.
In any map I would like to be able to load in any saved deployment from any other map.
2. Default orders for each ship design
Any particular dsigned ship will have the same orders given to it most of the times it is used in any challenges. I would like the option to specify seperate default orders for each ship design so that I don’t have to keep repeating this each time I use it .
3. Hidden Deployments
I would like the option, when I set up a challenge, to have the deployment hidden until the battle starts. The same way as the expert level in the starter battles that are built-in.
4. Stats in challenge list
The list of challenges shows the challenger, the taunt, the map, the race the number of victories and the difficulty rating. I would like the list of challenges to also show the number of pilots, the budget, the mapsize and an indicator whether or there are supply limits. I would also like these to be sortable categories.
5. Clickable selection of a sublist in the challenges list
I would like to be able to click on a name, mapname, etc. in the challenge list and have it show a list of just the challenges that match that criterion. For example, if I see a challenge by mrblitz on the list, I would like to be able to click on his name and have it show a list of just those challenges by him.
6. Option to hide background
On the list of graphical options that can be omitted such as contrails or Fancy beam lasers, I would like to be able to disable the background jpg on the battle maps. It sometimes makes it hard to see what is going on.
7. Clear deployment
Sometimes I just want to start over. Sometimes I start the deployment and there are leftover ships from a previous deployment that are off the map and can’t be grabbed at all. I would like some simple and easy way to just clear the whole deployment and start over.
8. Select All
I would like some easy way, like Ctrl-A to select all the ships in a deployment.
9. Deploy group
I would like to be able to deploy a specified number of a particular unit. For example, I might want to deploy a group of 10 squadrons of rocket-fighter-alphas. Rather than going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click in a multi deploy.
10. Slider/keyboard entry
Anywhere there is a slider to select a number, I would like the option to be able to simply type in the number instead.