Planet and Warp point names too big!

In the Data\ folder you'll see a file called "MainFonts.txt" that defines (all?) the fonts used in game. There's also a Fonts\ folder where you can see the ones provided with the game.

The section that is for the Planet headers starts at // GAME_FONT_SCREEN_DISPLAY_LARGE

Note also that changing this font will change the little numbers that are on the Empire Flag above each colony (i.e. 0 bases 1 ship 0 satellites), and also that whatever the font or size used, IMO the font smoothing seems a bit too strong (especially with WinXP ClearType enabled).

Make a backup, play around, enjoy.

I think you can change it under Empire Options. Might be part of choosing the small/medium/large empire flags. I'd have to check my copy of SE5, and I'm not in front of it right now...

I agree whole-heartedly. Between the giant size of the empire flags & other icons that represent what's on a planet, the giant size of the planet names, ship names, etc., put together with the attempts to stack all of them up in the exact same place on the screen makes them all pointless.
Here are my suggestions:
- Put planet names UNDER the planet, and ship names above.
- Make the fonts smaller!
- The combination of empire flag & other planet stats could definitely use some simplification. I'd be happy with a terse little string of statistics like 0-1-2-4 (similar to showing the ADM stats in Alpha Centauri or such) simply to remove the real-estate used up by all the overlapping icons.
- The empire flag could simply be a small prefix icon to the planet's name

For me, the game could be good, but I cannot convince myself of it because I can't get around all the GUI annoyances. I hope these are the next on the list to be corrected after these first rounds of crashing bugs are out of the way.