I just played (and purchased) the game because of the free weekend on Steam. Played through an entire campaign in SP (actually about 1 and a third, as I started one, got used to what I was doing, and started over), and my biggest annoyance has to be the interface in planetary systems (and the small interface in galaxy view, but I will touch on that later).



Someone please inform me if any of this has been posted so far, touched on, whatever. I read through the "tracked" list and didn't see anything specifically about it, except for one mention of UI scale.



Inside the planetary system screen:



1) The lower UI elements are scaled poorly for late game use. When I have 20-30+ choices for system improvements, the list is unwieldy at best.



Potential change:



Instead of having an area with just rows and rows of icons, condense the improvements to their overall benefit (as each grouping already has a color tab in the corner) and give me an expandable list. Absolutely do not take me to another screen. So instead of just a scrollable block of icons, I would have a limited number of choices, one for each individual FIDS, Purple happiness, War improvements, General System improvements (e.g. Satellites), and so on.



So instead of having every industrial improvement listed separately, I would click on "Industry" which would expand and show me my industrial improvements I can make. If I click on the "Science" button, I see my science improvement possibilities, and so on.



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1a) Similarly, changing the existing improvements side of the UI to be expandable in the same way would also make it more usable.



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2) The queue could also stand to be expandable so I can see the full list without having to scroll, as well as making it easier to re-order without having to scroll. In the late game, when I may have five or six things queued up, it gets frustrating to manage.



A minor UIX complaint: The "Infinite" options (Industry to Dust / Industry to Science) should always be forced to the bottom of the queue.



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3) Moon Status. This has been touched on in other threads I believe, but this should be pretty easy to add. In the list of things about the planet, simply adding a line, "Moon: Unexplored/Empty/Wonder".



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4) UI width vs. depth. It is a bit annoying to go from the planetary system screen to the individual planet screen when there are so few options for individual planets. If there were more options than simply "Colonize, Exploit, Anomaly, Terraform, Moon" I could understand the depth, but as it stands, 1-4 (maybe 5?) options is not a good reason for depth in the UI. If there are more options for individual planets planned, then this is more forgivable. Note: I say 1-4 because you can not have all five choices listed at once. Once a planet is colonized, the colonize button goes away, and is replaced by Exploit (always available), Anomaly (sometimes), Terraform (usually available, after tech), Moon (sometimes available). I don't know if a planet can have both a fixable anomaly AND a wonder, if so, then the total number of choices possible would be five, otherwise four at most.



Possible change: In conjunction with #1 above, the "Improvements" list on the left could have branching choices for the respective planets as well.



So the player expands the improvements list, and has a number of choices:



1 for each planet in the system, with its 1-4 or 5 choices, then Food, Ind, Sci, Dust, Happy, War, etc. each expandable with the respective choices.



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4a) Related to the individual planets, the in game universe can terraform a wide variety of planets, clear up any number of anomalies, and yet they cannot fix an anomaly before colonizing it? Also, why can't I check the moon of uncolonized planets? I would accept not receiving any bonuses for found structures if the planet under the moon is not colonized, but I should be able to check it before having people on the planet, possibly make it cost more to check uncolonized planets moons?



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5) Is there a difference between 1 turn remaining (after buying out an item) and 1 turn remaining (and I can still "buy out")? If there is, it should be made more clear, such as changing the bought out item to a 0, rather than a 1; and if there isn't, then the player should not be able to "buy out" something that will be completed the subsequent turn anyway.



The only thing I can think of with this is that bought out items absolutely will be completed the subsequent turn, no matter how many there are, and items that still have 1 turn remaining, but can be bought out will not be completed the subsequent turn if other items got moved ahead of them. If this is the case then the bought out items should have their number changed to a "0" to quickly identify them as being bought out. The buyout button can be grayed out for other reasons, so this isn't a good visual indicator.



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Lastly, as this is related to system UI, I will include it, but it would be nice if single clicking a star system in galaxy view did not go straight to the planetary system. Sometimes I just want a quick check on what the system is doing, or I want to access the hangar, and clicking on the tiny little indicator to get to the hangar is annoying. Double click the star system to go deeper.

ES has a top-notch UI for a game. Though not perfect. They emphasize "pretty" over "functional" a bit more than i would like.

StaticFrenetic wrote:
1) The lower UI elements are scaled poorly for late game use. When I have 20-30+ choices for system improvements, the list is unwieldy at best.

Yeah, and it doesn't take advantage of huge screens.

StaticFrenetic wrote:
A minor UIX complaint: The "Infinite" options (Industry to Dust / Industry to Science) should always be forced to the bottom of the queue.

For a simple thing that would be a huge improvement.

StaticFrenetic wrote:
4a) Related to the individual planets, the in game universe can terraform a wide variety of planets, clear up any number of anomalies, and yet they cannot fix an anomaly before colonizing it? Also, why can't I check the moon of uncolonized planets? I would accept not receiving any bonuses for found structures if the planet under the moon is not colonized, but I should be able to check it before having people on the planet, possibly make it cost more to check uncolonized planets moons?

That's a good gameplay design at work. If you could open all the presents at once --i mean check all the moons for temples--, that wouldn't provide nearly as much fun throughout the game.

I like the idea for changing the UI a bit, would bring some ease to my sore eyes.

eleazzaar wrote:
ES has a top-notch UI for a game. Though not perfect. They emphasize "pretty" over "functional" a bit more than i would like.

UI should always stress functionality before beauty. While ES's is good, there are too many times where options are deeper than they should be. I could go through every screen and give suggestions as to how they could be improved for usability and user experience.

eleazzaar wrote:


That's a good gameplay design at work. If you could open all the presents at once --i mean check all the moons for temples--, that wouldn't provide nearly as much fun throughout the game.

I don't know if you misunderstood me? I only mean in systems where you have colonized, so you already have a presence in the system. I definitely feel there should be a time/cost penalty for doing so, and the player should certainly not gain the benefit of any temple unless the planet under it is colonized. Plus, it could change the way a player develops a particular system, instead of having to gamble on finding out if the moon over an absolute crap planet is worthless, they can find out earlier, and develop their system accordingly. Similarly, if they find out that a crap planet has a good temple, it can force them to colonize/develop an otherwise crap planet.

While we're adding proposals to systems, I'd like to add my own couple of changes, only minor things, but...



On the galaxy map, when a system has reached it's current max population, change the colour of the pop number from white to a pale yellow.



And on a planet that you've developed and clicked on, like you do to reduce abnormality, or moon scan, or change exploitation, add a button that lets us see the impact the improvements are having on the population. Like, if I had, say, the basic Industry exploitation on a Tundra planet, along with the first Industry building, it would show Base Industry from Pop, 2 in this case, I think + 1 (from Exploitation) + 1 (first Industry building) = 4.



Second one was a bit wordy. If you want me to rewrite it, let me know.