I've been playing the game on and off for a while now, and have noticed some things that I find annoying that could be improved:

1. I was watching a combat and then got called away from my computer (I take care of an elderly mother who is not well). When I got back, not only was that combat resolved, but another one started and was resolved. A big pause button on the screen would prevent that from happening, or even better, at least have the option to pause before starting a new combat.



2. I was searching for the Cassimir effect technology because I knew that was the one that allowed wormhole travel. That didn't work. So I then tried searching on Wormhole, and that didn't work either, because 'wormhole' is not in the description. At that point I had no other option than to hunt for the tech by brute-force method, and eventually got frustrated and needed to search over the web to find it. The search function is great to have, but it would be better if you added a key word list to each tech that contains logical associations (because searching on a symbol just doesn't work). It would be even better if I could easily add to those key words and have those key words saved between games.



3. Ship movement is really easy to lost track of as the number of fleets you control increases. The screen for managing fleets is a bit lacking, and has misleading information on it. To make it more useful, I'd add the following:

a) a button to jump to the fleet you are examining

b) a flag which indicates that a fleet has no orders (note that currently it does show if a ship is at a planet, but that's misleading and not totally useful, because it includes ships that are in transit, as well as ships that are set to guard duty)

c) a flag which indicates that a fleet has a colonizer ship in it

d) a filter to only display ships with colonizers or ships with no orders



4. When you have ships selected on the main map, sometimes the ship select windows get stuck open. It would be better, in any case, to simply have a button to close those windows.



5. Similarly, when you are on the system screen, and trying to select a planet, clicking on the planet itself, or on the flashing 'no exploitation' button does not work at all, or works intermittently. That should be fixed.



6. I've mentioned this before, but more color-coding of technologies, etc. would be really really helpful to those of us who are somewhat visually impaired.



/edit

7. Also, occasionally there are options to build things that only have a cost and no (current) benefit (for example, improvements that only effect certain planet-types, when you haven't colonized that planet-type). If the option is something that may become useful at a later point, then the option ought to greyed out. If the option is something that can never ever be useful, then that option should not be listed at all. Included in this should be options that increase dust-income, but have a cost which is greater than amount which would be earned (either at current or maximum population -- preferably the former).



8. Furthermore, there should be some indication as to population growth rate.

Some of these suggestions have been made already. You could help more if you would look here if your suggestion already exists: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13096-updated-summary-of-suggestions-ideas



If it doesn't, make a thread for the new suggestions and post the link in the following thread, if it is something small then post it directly there: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13003-summary-of-suggestions-so-far-discussion

Haldurson wrote:
6. I've mentioned this before, but more color-coding of technologies, etc. would be really really helpful to those of us who are somewhat visually impaired.

With the alpha 2 a lot of new colors and shapes have been integrated into the research tree, I suppose that is what you wanted, right?

Haldurson wrote:
8. Furthermore, there should be some indication as to population growth rate.

There already is an indicator for this, you probably missed it. If you zoom into a system or look at the system menu you'll find a bar with the actual/possible population. Above that bar is a small number together with a red/green symbol indicating wether the population goes up or down, and how many turns till the next change.

KNC wrote:


With the alpha 2 a lot of new colors and shapes have been integrated into the research tree, I suppose that is what you wanted, right?

Not really -- I still don't see a lot of color there. Yes, the techs themselves are colored (green, blue and orange, and I do like that). But the actual icons for what those techs do are still quite cryptic and difficult to recognize. There's something that looks like a teardrop, something else that looks like a grenade, and several symbols that look different from one another but still just look like subtly different amorphous smudges.

Haldurson wrote:
Not really -- I still don't see a lot of color there. Yes, the techs themselves are colored (green, blue and orange, and I do like that). But the actual icons for what those techs do are still quite cryptic and difficult to recognize. There's something that looks like a teardrop, something else that looks like a grenade, and several symbols that look different from one another but still just look like subtly different amorphous smudges.

Now I see your point, not sure how the devs could improve that though, except maybe from gettting rid of the grenade symbol for sdace weapons all along, I'm not throwing grenades in space.

Do you have any specific ideas to improve that?

The grenade is certainly recognizable, whether it is appropriate is a slightly different question. There is a fine line in designing icons, between being interesting and being immediately recognizable. Can you look a little bit more, and point out specific icons (by referencing the tech name) which look like smudges? I am sure the dev team can improve them if we give specific feedback.