Challenge

The endless games have a lot of lovely complexity, leading to constantly changing plans - an exciting challenge which keeps us coming back for more.


When a plan is foiled by a change of circumstance or simply not having been a very good idea in the first place, that is great - another obstacle to overcome.


When a plan is foiled because the player forgot something, that is less great, leading to frustrating "if only"s. Nothing is learned or otherwise gained - the play experience is just annoying.


Yes, the player could just keep a notepad around for this, but then that argument could be made for just about any suggested quality of life improvements.


Endless games can be quite long - in particular you would commonly stretch single player games over multiple days or weeks, significantly increasing the likelihood of details being forgotten.


If you do a search for on "Reminder" in the ideas system, you should find quite a few requests for concrete instances of reminders - all of which could be covered by a more generic system as outlined here.


Data

Reminders exist in two configurations:

  1. Turn# + player-entered message
  2. Turn# + event + optional player-entered message


Effect

When arriving at the turn# for a given reminder, it is popped up as any other event, presented as a reminder, optionally displaying the source event, optionally displaying any player-entered message.


Creation

The base event UI gains an additional "remind" toggle, which creates or removes a reminder for that event. Re-using the design language of the "view" toggle in the combat UI, setting the "remind" toggle takes effect once the event UI is dismissed by interactive choice or the other dismiss / accept buttons.


Toggling "remind" exposes an editable turn# field defaulting to current turn+1 with +/-10 buttons - similar to what is used in the trade & negotiations UI. Additionally a "message" / "..." / pencil-icon button leads to entering a custom reminder message.


Choosing "remind" on a reminder event creates a new reminder, with the added & stacked information of when the reminder was last fired.


Reminders not associated with events could be created from the Quests and Events UI.


Evolution

The Quests and Events UI would also be a natural place to display an overview of past and present reminders - for review and editing.


While events are a great start for reminders, a lot more things may be useful to reference in reminders. For example:

  • Systems
    • Reminder creation from system manager UI
    • Optionally tied to production output thresholds or production queue changes
  • Fleets
    • Reminder creation from fleet selection UI
    • Optionally tied to arrival at current movement target / failure to reach it
  • Research
    • Reminder creation from research UI
    • Optionally tied to completion of a tech or its becoming available
  • Market
    • Reminder creation from marketplace screen
    • Optionally tied to price developments
  • Trade & Resources
    • Reminder creation from trade & resources screen
    • Optionally tied to thresholds on accumulated resources or production
  • Diplomacy
    • Reminder creation from diplomacy UI
    • Optionally tied to thresholds on total pressure or pressure trends

Surely there are a lot more oppotunities and these are likely not the best opportunities available. However events and custom reminders would be a really good place to start and should make a good base for evaulating next steps (if any).