Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine changes |

This thread is for minor tweaks to the interface, not for a wish list of additional features, nor for revamping the gaming engine. There are other discussions for those topics.
I want to thank all of the designers, developers, coders, and others who were involved with the creation of Space Empires. SeV is my first exposure to this wonderful computer game. We other players ought to be grateful they even read our posts, take action on what can be reasonably done and makes sense with new patches, and had the foresight to make the game easily mod-able for those who desire to do so.
Let me begin:
I love using hot-keys and being able to enter/change information in various ways and have as many switch-on/off-able memory helpers as possible especially when learning. So in no particular well-thought out order...
I’d like to be able to...
1. ...use the ENTER key on every screen just like clicking the OK button. For example when naming a ship, click OK or hit ENTER to accept the ship name.
2. ...change the attack/defense strategy of a single ship without adding it to a new fleet (I have not figured out any other way).
3. ...toggle on/off button descriptions for inactive buttons. That would surely help the noobies like me pick up the game more quickly instead of having to wait until the button is usable to see it’s description. I’m sure they’re described in the manual, however seeing what it does even if I can’t use it just helps my memory.
4. ...toggle on/off skip a particular ship with remaining movement for a single turn (not like the sentry order which is indefinite) when cycling through my ships.
5. ...view the layout of the fleet formations when selecting a fleet formation.
6. When copying/editing a vehicle, I’d like to have the old name appear for changing when I select SET DESIGN NAME.
7. When making/modifying a strategy the RETREAT SETTINGS and RETREAT WHEN are not changeable. Selecting a different setting does not overwrite the default.
I haven't seen a discussion just on the interface. I'm interested to see what you other members think about these interfacial tweak or others.
Tweaks aside, it’s a great game.

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
A few suggestions/notes:
7. This is fixed for the next patch.
8. The double click behavior could be an option.
Otherwise I agree with all of the above suggestions.
9. The Empire Flags should stack, rather than appearing behind each other, and a line should be drawn from the flag to the center of the associated hex.
10. Any layout that has mineral, organics, and radioactives production headers, there should be an additional M/O/R header, to condense all three columns into one. There also need to be research, intel, and R/I headers.
11. The ship count indicators on the quadrant map are too small to easily distinguish from one another. They should be a bit bigger.
-----
Space for rent - please contact owner

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
Interface eh?
Does a map that shows empire boundries count? I mean at least re-enabling the Ally/Enemy's colonys listing...
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
um it would be nice if there was some way to speed up the loading before starting the actuall multiplayer/ single player game.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
8. When double clicking on an already highlighted hex that contains a planet plus other stuff, it would be cool if the planet be selected by default. Or perhaps that double clicking on a hex always selects the first object in the list.
A lot of great ideas in the thread, I particularly like this one. The hexes I select the most are the ones that usually have multiple items. It would be a great time saver.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
2. Strategy can be set when creating a ship.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
14. A button to filter out Systems To Avoid in the colonizable planets window (like in SE:IV).
15. The option to view your fleets as single units in the ships window (also like SE:IV).
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
I would prefer to be able to select planets in the construction window by clicking the name, instead of having to click the little circle/squares. Currently clicking the name simply highlights it but really does not select it.
Or at least the option to do this.
Thanks,
Javaslinger
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
I want to see more general orders during fleet combat.
All those nitpicking orders are useless in this kind of scaled warfare.
ALL forward , ALL engage , ALL retreat etc
Would make a world of diffrence.
Janster
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
13. Add a "Next Construction Queue" or "Go to constructon queue of next planet" button -- perhaps simply enabling the main-map button (delete/insert) on the construction screen.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
Suggestions for improvement to the interface:
1. When adding items to be built over time SEV does not increment as you develop new technology. i.e. if I setup multiple builds with Monolith Facility 5 and develop Monolith facility 6 I keep building Monolith facilities 5.
2. In this same vain if I setup a “Fill form list” the system does not increment as I research higher levels. This makes this facility worthless.
3. There are several places where I can design the reports I want. I can save a name but each time I start a game I need to reinput my preferences. It would be nice to carry those from game to game.
4. At the end of turn it would be nice if it listed ships with movement left separately from ships in Fleets. After a short time in a game that ships with no movement statistic becomes meaningless as most of my ships are in Fleets.
5. Ability to save our own default fleet formation across games.
6. Make the ‘ship/fleet status icon’ the same size as the ‘colony status Icon size’.
7. To restate an earlier request it would be very helpful if ships in fleets did not show up separately in the ‘ship list’ window. I believe it was that way in SEIV so it was probably changed due to requests. An option would be nice. This would solve two problems. 1) It would be much easier to find fleets and their locations. 2) The ship list becomes very slow to load after I exceed 130 ships. If ships in fleets did not show, so did not need to be indexed, it would display much faster.
8. Adding Monolith to the ‘Colony Type’ window.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
1. Selecting upgrade facilities in the construction menu give repeats of upgrades. Especially mineral extractors. Also, the currently cued facilities that are disired to be built do not upgrade immediately and upgrade needs to be selected twice.
2. In the log menu it would be helpful to treat upgrades like new construction builds. When multiple facilities of the same type are built it says this many have been built. For upgrades it lists each one separately which makes the logs needlessly long.
3.Removing medical center and space port from the mineral extractors list on the contruction menu and add them to population support or give them their own section.
4.There is an extra facility that should be removed in the log for upgrades so there is no more Facility facility displayed.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
Skip sentry'd fleets.

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
@litcube if a ship is sentried (or a fleet) the next ship should skip over them, but the problem with this is they become un-sentried if there are any other ships/units in the system. So if you place a fleet on the wormhole to your system, but you can see other ships/planets you cannot sentry any of your units.
EDIT: Sorry I misread, you want to skip sentried fleets, yeah that would be nice.
The option I found that is nice is "skip ships in fleets" This is under the empire options menu and now when i press next ship, I never have to cycle through my stack of 1 movement ships.

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
Some more ideas:
- new order : hold ground for x (10?) turns : don't show in "next ship list" even if there are enemys nearby.
- option to treat fleets as single ships using the "next ship" order.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
I would like the 'Go To' option including in the construction window. As it in in the colonies list, etc...
Javaslinger

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
I don't actually use the feature, since I tend to have few enough fleets that I can manually track them, but there is a next/previous fleet button. If you go to empire options and choose the option that skips ship in fleets for the n/p ship button, this should be the functionality you want.
-----
Space for rent - please contact owner

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
The problem is that after cycling through 30 ships or so, I often forget to cycle through fleets and end the turn without moving them... Also I make some fleets only to change the ship's strategy.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
The ability to order all ships of one class at the same time.
Examples
All CA Marauder MK III upgrade to CA Marauder MK IV
All FG Lily MK XXI scrap
All BB Avenger MK IX go to Planet Boromir X
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
Be able to designate one's own custom ship types in game, the same way one can with colony types.
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
A button that would let you update all ships in que, provided they had an earlier roman numeral with the same name. This could go beneath the make obsolete button.
And an undo feature would be handy when altering strategies. The buttons that 'change all' are downright dangerous.
A chase command would be good in combat - but I can make do with ram most of the time.

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
My suggestion, easy.
Make it like SE IV, but with 3-d.
SEIV interface was perfect, the best interface ever done for a strategic space game. Throwing the ideas in it away was sheer madness.
All that is done before the naked stars is remembered
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
22. Don’t show ship components that can’t be selected, e.g. mine sweepers or planetary bombardment for freighters. (If you know how to make those work on a freighter message me.)
Seems as though the cat is out of the bag Pirate xoxxoxo! Now where is that fleet headed to would be the question of the moment...
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
You can place mine sweepers and napalm on freighters and use them fine... why should they be hidden?
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
When an event is reported, highlight the system it happened in on the galaxy map.
Fix Dyson spheres so you can see the owners flag and ship counter.
Borders, why was this not implemented in SEV? I want to see a border map like SEIV with colours for each empire.
"Genius is Simplicity" chris connors
"To win without fighting is best" sun tsu
those who think they know everything are annoying to those of us who do

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
an unoriginal signature
Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
The traditional way of handling this is to have 3 options:
-Sentry: as we have now.
-Sleep: do not show up in notifications/next ship list again until sleep mode is turned off.
-Done: do not show up in the notifications/next ship list this turn. This was the original #4 if I'm reading it right.
I would love to see the last two orders added, especially "done." I don't suppose that could be modded in?
I'd also like to request another change:
-Move the tooltip that appears when mousing over list entries on the Planets, Construction Queues, and Systems screen to the lower right, as it is on the Ships and Colonies screen. The current placement in the upper right blocks a significant chunk of the quadrant map.

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
pirate, you just like... replied 5 times in a row... was that really necessary?
I'm still not understanding the problem you are having with freighters and sweeping mine fields.
Mine sweeping components count as cargo components in BM, so you can fill up a freighter with these, then order it to move onto an existing minefield to sweep.
-----
an se5a is a ww1 fighter, it is also a car.

Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
How about a 'select all' option for the construction que list? it gets to be a pain after a while selecting over a hundred planets little check boxes to add a new recon satellite or weapons platform to their construction que.. a select all button would make that go much faster.
also, in the unit design screen, a button to scrap an entire class of ship/unit would also be very helpful. like when you just built those new satelites, and you want to get rid of the obsolete ones all at once. great for mines and weapons platforms too




Re: Tweaks to the Interface / Not a wish list of gaming engine c
I agree with every point you made! I'd like to add:
8. When double clicking on an already highlighted hex that contains a planet plus other stuff, it would be cool if the planet be selected by default. Or perhaps that double clicking on a hex always selects the first object in the list.