I found it a bit odd that there are two methods (and locations) for colonization. I understand that the colonization button when zoomed into a planet represents in system colonization and that the one on the fleet represents the colony ship, but I'm not quite sure why the planet level buttons are unavailable when I have a colony ship in system. If, instead of it being an "error" to try that approach, I would prefer if it would say "You do not yet control this system" and then continue with "select a colony ship to colonize with" if such ships were in system.



It was really the only thing that I got confused by in my first game, my experience with other space empire builders (all the way back Reach for the Stars on the C64 in the 80s) had me quickly and easily navigating the game. I'm impressed by the UI that has been produced here and thus find this one point of confusion to be one of the few exceptions to things being exactly where I guessed, even having only skimmed the tutorial screens.

The planet level buttons are for system colonization (when you have at least one colony in the system you can colonize other planets without a ship)

Yeah, I got that: "I understand that the colonization button when zoomed into a planet represents in-system colonization and that the one on the fleet represents the colony ship".



My point was simply that I found it confusing the error message "you don't control this system (yet)" to be confusing, as if "control" was different from using a colony ship to colonize a planet. If it instead allowed you to pick a ship to start a new colony, I would not have been confused by the UI. Considering that at no other point was I confused (even just skimming the "tutorial" lightly), this was odd to me.



To start a system's colonization you need to choose two things: a colony ship to colonize and a planet to land on. As it stands, only one "path" actually works for: starting with the fleet level. Not critical, just an oddity in an otherwise incredibly intuitive UI.