Visual Glitch: There is a faint dark vertical line to the right of “LINE” on the title screen. imgur.com/kNbAcKD
“Slot” feels like a weird term. If it’s auto industry term, go for it. But otherwise, maybe “station,” “stage,” or “task?”
When autosaving, something not quite as flashing would be nice. The sudden appearance and disappearance of the logo looks like a glitch. Maybe a small “Saving” window that pops up, and when done (and control returned to the player) fades away.
The initial zoom is too close. I had no idea what I was seeing. For a bit I figured I might need to wait for it to finish loading the map. Eventually I figured out I needed to zoom out.
The small factory floor is super busy. I’d like some markings indicating where the “real” tiles are. The medium factory floor does this pretty well.
When zoomed out to summary mode (where slots are entirely replaced with blocks of color), I’d like it to be even more schematic-like. Replace the floor texture with a subtle grid. Replace the conveyor belts with a big black/yellow arrow pattern. Perhaps render the resource conveyors as blue lines on the floor, perhaps with a glow so they stand out when zoomed out. Also, it would be nice if the slot stockpiles were highlighted.
I found it frustrating that I couldn’t drag around the windows. I sometimes wanted to keep an eye on things while monitoring progress in a window. Relatedly, I wish the financials screen didn’t dim the screen and was draggable so I could keep an eye on that.
If I select a slot or conveyor, then select demolish, I’m in simultaneous demolish/construct mode, which seems weird.
The arrows on the conveyor belts aren’t as clear as I’d like. They’re particular ambiguous when zoomed out, or when partially concealed by resource conveyors or slot elements (like the large paint room).
Specific warnings for nonsense layouts would be helpful. Over my time (original release and most recent) I’ve ran into backward conveyor belts, backward slots, disconnected conveyor belts and in one case getting the slots out of order. “Waiting for line” wasn’t as helpful as I’d hope.
This may be my ignorance of auto manufacture, but it seems like some slots could be reordered. Perhaps install the engine before having a body. And painting definitely seems like it could be delayed until as late as just before QA.
I find something about the resource conveyors visually noisy, making it a bit hard to see what’s going on and where the are. Shadows on the ground might help.
Visual glitch: Install a paint room going from SW to NE. Run a resource conveyor line NW to SE, right across the front, through the space the paint room’s stockpile is. The resource conveyor line, the red part, is partially behind the paint room. imgur.com/Oht7ycf
It feels weird that when I click to place a slot, all of the pieces disappear, then drop in. Perhaps don’t show the pieces when in placement mode, just an outline, perhaps also highlighting where the stockpile is.
I found it surprising that I don’t get a “you spent money” bubble when buying slots.
It’s a bit weird that the “you spent money” bubbles never fade away; they keep moving upward. I was surprised at one point to zoom out and see a bunch still sliding upward.
I wish the game started paused.
I expect Esc to dismiss the list-of-available-slots window.
I can click on the same car over and over (after moving the mouse a bit), opening more and more windows. I’d expect instead for the existing window to be pushed to the top, and perhaps flashed to emphasize it.
When I click on a car, it would be nice to see the status. If it’s being worked on, essentially the same dual progress bars shown in the slot’s display. Otherwise, “Moving” or “Waiting to move” along with “Next Stage: Paint” or whatever.
(I haven’t tried this since the original release:) The small map seems like it’s harder than the medium map; the budget doesn’t have a lot beyond just building a minimal line. That’s surprising since it’s the first map in the list.
I would dig being able to see the Expenses chart as a line graph (% of budget over time) in addition to a pie chart.
I keep reading the checkbox backward. I expect the white filled one to be not-selected, and the solid black one to be selected. A traditional checkmark or X might clarify things a great deal.
It would be nice to be able to rotate the world in increments of 90 degrees. I think of production lines as pushing away from me/the camera, so if I decide I want to go from back to front, it feels off.
A key to toggle between pause and last speed would be nice. I’d expect spacebar to be the default.
A little progress bar below/behind the microscope icon showing research progress would be nice. Similarly, perhaps a “!” icon in the corner if there is no active research, but I have at least one research slot.
The “slots” popup should have a small “X”. Or perhaps be attached to the buttons on the top so it looks like an active tab. Similarly, since it’s so large, cutting down on the grey borders a bit would be nice.
Some sort of UI scaling (to increase fonts and perhaps the mouse pointer) would be nice.
Showing the premium out to 2 places past the decimal point seems overkill. Also makes setting it feel needlessly fiddly. 1 place would probably be enough; maybe only half percents or even whole percents.
The abrupt narrowing when we go fro general conveyor belt to a station bugs me; an angled transition might visually smooth things.
I expect the Research Complete! dialog box to pause the game. Also, I’d expect a second button “Ignore.”
I spent a lot of time tearing my hair out trying to get supply stockpiles to work. The problem was that I was clicking on all of the spaces except the top one, which is the only one that does anything.
I found manually configuring the stockpile tedious. Possible improvements: Sort parts by slot. In addition to parts, let me select a slot; doing so is the equivalent to adding all of the parts the slot uses.
In the US, we call the bonnet the “hood”.
As I’m laying down conveyor belts, I keep accidentally opening windows for slots or vehicles, obscuring my action. The most commonly happens when I’m trying to fork a conveyor belt, which means I need to start on an existing space that may already have a car on it.
Potential additional information for Vehicle Details: Time spent at each step. Definitely big picture (Being Worked On/Waiting For Supplies/Waiting for Line). Maybe more specifics (Fit Bodyframe/Fit Roof/Fit Doors/Paint/etc)
Hitting Enter on the save game screen should save the game, assuming I’ve typed something.
I always like seeing more in-game information in the save game list. Date/time of save. Hours/Minutes played. Cash on hand. Maybe show a bigger screenshot of the factory for whichever one I’m hovering over. I’d expect the save and load screens to show the same information.
Save screen could use a “Cancel” button (besides Esc).
It would be nifty to be able to name my company. Put it on top of the financials page (“De Smet Lemonwerks, Inc. Financials”). Put it in the save game display.
I don’t associate the floppy disk icon with “load,” so I was confused by the load screen.
I’d like to be able to load a game by double clicking on an entry.
The load screen formats date/times as “28/1/2017 (DD-MM-YYYY) - 13:13” The DD-MM-YYYY seems spurious (unless you’re trying to tell Americans how to read a properly formatted date. 
) Using the user’s locale would be ideal.
If I have popups for Vehicles open when I return to the main screen, they’re still present. I suspect this is true when you lose as well (it was in the original release; haven’t lost yet this game.)
The two bars on the pause button seem kinda skinny.
The conveyor belts don’t look like conveyor belts, but sheets of metal. Animation may help. These may be realistic, but going with the stereotypical black rubber and rollers (perhaps with arrows on the rubber) might feel more right.
On that note, some sort of crash reporter might be useful.
The lack of walls blocking sections of factory I don’t own bugs me.
(I haven’t checked if this is still true; I ran into it in the original release:) I’d like to have the financials screen available on the “You Lose” screen so I can review my march toward bankruptcy.
The close (“X”) button for R&D isn’t all the way in the corner. I was disappointed I couldn’t just throw the mouse pointer into the corner and click to close it.
What are “hours” in the finances? Is it hours at speed 1? Relatedly, an in-game clock (just elapsed time?) might be handy to help appreciate the scale and active speed.
Research should have an ETA based on current research capacity.
Disable the “Choose” button on a slot if no upgrades are possible, either because they’re never possible, or all possible upgrades are installed.
For a slot’s stockpile in the slot information dialog, I’d like to always see all of the parts it uses, even if the current count is 0. Currently entries in that list bounce around as parts are used and added.
There are some unusual font rendering things. imgur.com/es0JBqm : “Even faster resource delivery” is too close to “Unlocked.” “x” in Next and “j” in Project are too far to the right.
I can’t have a T intersection where the singular exit is one of the sides. This thwarted my designs a few times, and seems inexplicable. imgur.com/46rhYXj (The real answer may be “design less awful production lines, but for now, this is what I’m trying to do.)
