My Two Biggest Interface Requests

Previewing the forces definately is something that i think needs to be added.

how about when you click on a sector that has multiple units and click on the construction que butten it will automatically go to the applicable unit with the quickest construction times. instead of having to select the unit before hand

How about consistantly (in all menues) hitting the enter button makes the highlighted button press.

SEV, more than a feeling.

I concur with 1

3 > When a ship/planet is selected, available cargo space / total cargo space is displayed. That way, I can know whether or not I can load the ship before moving it.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

4) When a new tech level is learned (Research Center for example), all facilities in a construction queue upgrade to the lastest one.

It's so frustrating to have to go in and redo all of the queues. I don't want auto-upgrades or anything like that, just for the old version to go away and be replaced with the new version.

Ditto when I obsolete a ship/unit design. It's OBSOLETE! I don't want to build it any more.

It would be quite simple...
* New Facility Available
-> Dialog - You currently have 22 Research Centers in construction queues, would you like to change these to the latest designs? Y/N
-> Dialog - You currently have 58 Research Centers in existence, would you like to upgrade these to Research Center XX? Y/N

The "Upgrade All" button will do this for at least facilities that are queued. It's harder to program this for ships/units because they are not just "higher levels" of tech like a facility, but actually distinct items and don't contain a direct reference to a predecessor design. Also, since players don't always use the same naming conventions for upgrades or one design per design type, there's no hard and fast rule that could be used with design names/types. Now I suppose a variable could be introduced for a design that would contain the design id of it's predecessor if the "update" button is used to create the design. Otherwise it would return 0 and would not affected by the "Upgrade All" button.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Ok, here's another two:

1. How about saving layouts for use in future games? I have to remake the same custom layout I like EVERYTIME in the colony screen.

2. Because one layout is not enough to evaluate things properly more custom layouts are needed - but access is not fast enough through menus, it certainly would have been much better with one-click using single buttons to immediately change the arrangement of the huge array of data back and forth in a flash.

The colony and the fleet screen certainly need this. I hope such improvements exist in a "to do list" with relatively high priority.

More wishes:
1. In the overview map, provide an option for color-coding which races have colonies in a system (not only enemy/allies and not having the same code for "presence of ships" and "colonies")
2. Scale the overview map to the size of the quadrant, i.e. always use the full space, even if the quadrant is small
3. Put all order buttons on the screen (at the edges in order not to make them too cumbersome), i.e. get rid of the multi-layered structure of order buttons (why do I have to click twice if I want to give a "repeat" or "cancel" order?)
4. Allow the summary reports (planets, colonies, construction queues, etc.) to become wider in order for us to see more details at a glance
5. In the 3D view, allow to block the image from "circleing" while still allowing for zooming and horizontal shifts

Aside from the fact that "Upgrade All" will change EVERYTHING currently in the queue and upgrade EVERYTHING currently built.

Perhaps, I just finished pumping up some Space Yards and want to selectively upgrade those...but I'm also working on Research Facilities, but don't want to upgrade those yet. Gotta do it by hand.

As for design upgrades, if done properly the game should track things when you push the "upgrade" button. of course, that's assuming a bunch. It just a simple linked list.

I would love to be able to scrap a facility or some cargo and add a new one(s) to the queue from the same general window. Right now its about 9 clicks and a slide to do it.

God Yesssss id pay $20 for an expantion just for that ability alone.

id also like a scrap all function for both ships and facilitys empire wide. having to chase down those old turd frigats i sent everywhere in the beging game and scrap them because my tech outpaced the upgrade range by a wide enough margin that i cant upgrade any of them now is a pain not to mention units that cant be upgraded anyhow. and so is ripping out all the AMPs one at a time after they have done their work, or any of the other enviroment improvment facilitys.

if they would move/add the scrap cargo button to the planet build que screen, and allow mulitple planets to be selected for scraping orders (like you can for build orders) that would take care of the facilitys question. ships/units i would immagin would be a bit tricky given that you cant actualy scrap a unit without a space yard present. im not sure why that part of the game was made so complicated in the first place. i can see requiring a space yard for upgrades. but to just destroy a ship or unit shouldnt require one and does anyone really care about the resources you get back from scraping as opposed to self destructing? not that self destruct does much good for units. especialy sats. why have a self destruct modual for a sat that doesnt work?

anyhow those two would be my choice for top UI changes given my style of play.

You can do these with Save Game Setup and Save Empire.

i would like to see the name of the planet, the construction icons and the empire flag at the same time. at the moment if you have the icons turned on it will sit on top of the planet name, unless you set the icon to small or zoomed right out you will not be able to read the name. how about either put the planet name on the below the planet and the icon+flags above it.

I would just like to find all my ships! With 40+ ships scattered across 12+ systems it becomes a logistical nightmare to keep track of who is where at any given time. Now, I know that I could make use of my ministers but I consider them to to be kinda stupid so I fired them all.

This dovetails nicely into another request for a revamping of fleets. My God, as it is right now I am never entirely sure of how many fleets I actually have, where each one is or what ships are in each one. Invariably I end up trolling around the various systems I control clicking on fleet icons just to find out what is there. Sometimes(more often than I care to admit)I find ships in locations that I forgot were even there.

If ships=needles and systems=straw then we have one heck of a big haystack to sort through.

Why not just use the Next/Prev Ship and Next/Prev Fleet buttons to toggle through all of your units? I'm playing a largish game with over 200+ ships spread over 40 systems and that's how I manage. Yes, it can be tedious, but the key to reducing the number of orders for moves, let's say, is to set far off destinations. Don't just hop from one warp-point to the next. Set a planet in a systems which is closest to where you want that unit to be. Works for me.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

a comment on the logistical nightmare of ship-finding:

ANY ship assigned to a fleet should not appear anymore in the next/previous ship, it's really annoying - to go further it shouldn't appear in the ship list either OR it should appear with a -FleetAlpha- or whatever next to it's name and in the bottom of the list.

Not that it matters until the ultra fast Strategic Combat patch is released. The "No Tactical Combat" option doesn't work either. I only play single player so actually getting involved in tactical combat is tantamount to cheating.

There are a bunch a toggles for the next ship/fleet in Empire options that allow you to customize things like stop in location once or skip ships in fleets etc.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

BTW there is a setting so ships in fleets do not appaer in next/previous ship.

Keeping track of where everyone is going really isn't that hard. I usually have some paper on my desk that I track units (especially fleets) by using little miniatures. The next and previous buttons are great too, especially when you set it to skip ships that don't have orders.

Interface wise, it's a pain in the ass when your homework is defended by 300+ sattellites built at different generations, plus 45 colony ships (ready to deploy when you find a new system) plus the home guard fleet, plus the gateway space stations. Want to build something? You have to find where the planet icon is buried or right click. It would be great if you could double click a planet and it would bring up the queue, along with the afformentioned scrap feature.

It would also be cool if we could design colony's in a can. A new planet gets a colony ship a menu pops up...imagine if you select "mining colony" and it knows what you want on the planet. _or_ make it so when you get on the planet for the first time, the queue pops up rather than waiting until all of the auto-moving ships finish transit at the start of a turn. Makes my life easier to say the very least, especially when you launch those 45 colony ships (see above) at the same time, try remembering what planet you made the capitol

"Light travels faster than sound, that's why people seem bright until you hear them."

You can get close to a couple of these requests with a bit of experimenting.

As Kwok and Grumble mention above, going to Empire Options and selecting "Prev/Next Buttons skip ships in fleets" is a good thing to be doing to stay on top of your ships' orders.

Keeping track of huge masses of ships I find easiest via the Ships list screen, with a custom layout consisting of Ship Image, Ship Class, Ship Fleet Name, Damage, Movement, Orders. I use Ship Class rather than name since the Class gets updated and the Name does not during retrofitting. Sorted by Fleet this list gives a pretty good overview of what state a large force of ships is in. Man, I wish these Custom Lists could be saved to a file!

Regarding the Colony in a Can request, if you enable the Planetary Construction Minister in the Empire Options, the planet will auto build facilities according to its designated Colony Type if you leave the queue empty. As you might expect it's not as efficient as taking care of it manually... from my experience the minister will add just one facility at a time, even if more than one could be built within a turn, and choices of building may not coincide with what you desire (such as excessive Resupply Depots within a system, or storage facilities when you want as many extractors as possible. Still, if you are blitzing out with 45 colony ships at once, you may find this useful!

I think there's an argument to compile some of the control tips into a central list. The controls are very open ended there are several controls which are only found by the sharp eye! A couple of weeks ago I saw for the first time that the Construction Queue Options window could be scrolled, and that options for "Automatically send ships built to way point" buttons were underneath Emergency Build and Pause Construction!!!

In theory, retrofit and scrap ministers could take care of some of the above points too - but I haven't experimented with these at all since I'm afraid to give the AI that level of control over my attack forces!

I would also strongly support the already-mentioned additions to the game to improve the Situational Awareness of all players, human or AI. The "retain last sensor view of colonies and static defences" and the "make the quadrant map expand to full screen, and add colour coding for empire ownership". I'd also like the possibility of manual claiming of systems like SEIV, and ideally some relationship between this and diplomacy - but I can live without those.

In the short term, I am looking forward to (among other things) the combat speed improvement to turn processing and minimisable full screen mode due in the forthcoming patch!

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"There are a bunch a toggles for the next ship/fleet in Empire options that allow you to customize things like stop in location once or skip ships in fleets etc."
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Thanks, I thought this didn't work because obviously after enabling it I loaded a game remaining with the impression that it was enabled...

I totally agree with "retain last sensor view of colonies" and the "colour coding for empire ownership" - major improvements.

aye and better filters for it. id like to see that turn report shrunk down, do you really need a giant banner for each and every thing reported? and at a minimum i want to be able to filter every class of report out and leave the rest. IE i want to filter out just the facility build reports, or just the combat reports. the combat reports are the WORST since it takes 12 pages of scrolling to get past the list of 2487 fighters that each side used across 9 battles.

ive found that most things in the game need beter filters, or just to combine screens. why is there a planet listing AND a colony listing AND a build listing? with the right filters they could be combined into one and be alot more valuable.

not a huge problem for me mind you, its just something id do different if i was making the game is all. sure would save 200 mouse clicks to get at the area you want.

you can compress the turn report by clikcing on the bar above the pictures column which cycles it through large picture, small picture no picture it does help to some extent