SE5 Interface Issues v1.74

hm... how about managing the ships inside the fleet? You have no way to do it, unless you are lucky to select just one ship alone from the whole ship (from the log or from the top menu)

another question... lack or supplies on vehicles... Is it related to overall among of supplies onboard? Is it related to usage supplies per turn? AFAIK, lack of supply icon is showed if you supplies reaches some minimal numeral value

Low supply icon is displayed when you have 1000 or fewer supplies (see Data\Settings.txt for moddable settings).

Text displayed in-system is horrifically rendered in 3d, rather than simply a 2d overlay. This makes it jaggy and scale poorly when zooming.

Top-down view is semi-useless because you cannot zoom out very far; most of the system is not shown on the screen even at the stock system size. There needs to be a moddable field for max viewing distance, as there is for the combat camera (Space Combat Maximum Zoom Out Distance).

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If it were at all possible, I'd love for the main list views to take advantage of higher screen resolutions by providing more room for columns.

Speaking of columns, I noticed that the custom layout columns have a fixed minimum width, even if it is not needed to be that big. The minimums will squeeze out that last wanted column or two. Having a sliding column sizer or even having a desired column width setting when the custom layout is created or edited would be great.

The planet tags are kinda useless at this point. If they are big enough to read anything, then they block too much of the screen. It would nice to be able to right-clcik on a small flag and have it popup as a large tag. Or just setting the mouse on it causing it to show big.

Also, ships and other units in space have the exact same tag as a planet. At least I haven't been able to tell them apart. Maybe having a red line or making the ship/unit tags oval instead of square.

And having to hunt down an enemy ship in one of my systems is a real pain. I know that darn destroyer in in there somewhere but the icon is so small I have to really hunt for it.

I'd still like to see a list of facilities in a system, both finished and in queue. I really love going into each queue to determine what I still need to place in queue for the system. But then, isn't this game is all about have to work hard to manage our empire? Personally, I perfer to spend more of my time blowing the other empires up and subjagating their populaces.

When designing a ship, it would be nice to see the accumated offense and defense scores, supply, cargo space, ship speed and stuff on the edit screen instead of having to create the build and then get to see what I ended up with. I think that SE4 used to do that.

The order of components in the ship edit screen in Balance Mod is much better than that of stock, but I'd still like to be able to customize the order to suit myself.. Is there a way to do that yet?

Ability to save custom lists and ship designs to a separate file.

glockgemini:
Use the edit button. Post spamming is bad etiquette.

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The System Modifiers list shows sector-wide effects. Worse, it seems to generally show them before showing System-wide effects, making the list nearly useless.

Additionally, in widescreen views, the System Modifiers list should be positioned relative to the left edge of the window. Currently (on 1680x1050), it displays about 200px from the left edge, blocking view of the system somewhat.

The Research screen could use a 'Set to amount for 1 turn completion.' I've suggested ctrl-clicking the arrows to use this functionality.

The colonies list lacks the 'Facilty Space Remaining' and 'Cargo Space Remaining' options from the construction queue list, along with a few other sections.

The systems list has no way to show intelligence or research production.

The various lists could make better use of the rather limited horizontal space by replacing the separate Min/Org/Rad production columns with a single condensed one, that lists vertically. The same could be done with Int/Res production, as well as construction rates.

The systems list's filter would probably be more effective with checkboxes for the different types of stellar objects, rather than picking only a single group to show.

Warp Point Names have a relatively useless 'Warp Point to' appended to the front. For longer system names, the text gets cut off.

Could it be possible to make objects, flags, etc. transparent when the cursor is pointed at sectors 'behind' the object, allowing the user to access things behind blockades without constantly rotating the view?

The research window shows all techs that have been unlocked, even when the tech has been maxed out. An option to hide these would be nice.

And... that's all I can think of for now. Sorry they aren't in a particularly sensible order.

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A project a day keeps the deadline away.

One thing that was brought up recently was to move the scrap facilities menu button.

You can see all that in the Design Statistics window (top left). Just click on the picture of the clipboard with the green arrow.

A "condensed view" for all cargo-related windows.

Enter queues by double-clicking on planets.

The quadrant minimap should differenciate between systems with an enemy presence and systems with an allied presence; the symbol for enemies could be a diagonal cross and the symbol for allies a plus; when both types are present either combine the symbols or give enemies higher priority.

Oh yeah! That REALLY needs done! I hate nopt knowing if it's an ally or enemy until I click to view the system.

Column width resizing like others have mentioned.

The system modifiers list should be toggleable to be on/off.

Making minimizable the quadrant map, Command button panel, and object info panel to improve system useable real estate especially in top down view.

Warp Point Names have a relatively useless 'Warp Point to' appended to the front. For longer system names, the text gets cut off. (Thy Reaper)

Ability to save custom lists and ship designs to a separate file. (p3d)

Entering your password for the first time when creating your empire file - it is masked with stars. Entering your password to log in to a game - it is not masked; it appears in plaintext. This should be the other way around!!!

edit: Another annoyance - the red/green circles which appear over colonizable/breathable planets are placed slightly BEHIND the planets in 3D-space, making them rather ugly (and sometimes over the wrong planet!) when the system view is rotated. This positioning does make them appear "properly" (though I find that questionable) in the top-down view, but surely the positioning could be changed depending on the user's view of the map???

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The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

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Ah missed it. Thanks very much

Interesting, I had the same idea, and have been compiling a list for a month and a half... As soon as I'm done with my current PBW turns, I'm going to rewrite it and post here (as well as in the bug list).
I also thought it would be easier if there was a "final" list done somewhere on the wiki - and we could vote which feature is the most needed one.

In the ship design screen buttons to designate a design as escort or picket. When entering a fleet such designs would default to filling those slots first.

Also it would be nice if we could customize the order of items in the construction queue list. I hate scrolling down through rarely used items just to get to the good ones or to check if there is already a spaceport in the system.

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Just as we have next ship and next colony keys/buttons...a next base key would be great!

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You could still have the option of showing a specific resource even if there's a column that shows all of them.

Another thing that'd be great is being able to sort by race and/or planet icon. (domed, sattellite etc..)

It would be really nice to be able to obsolete unit so that you didn't have to scroll down through all the old ones whenever you wanted to build some new ones. While we're at it being able to upgrade units would be handy as well. I'm particularly thinking of WP's for this.
Another thing that would be handy is an easy way to determine the shield status of a ship after a battle. Knowing how far down it has been drawn in a previous combat would be helpful in deciding whether or not to start another one. Shield status can be easily seen once combat is entered, but that could be a little late . . .

You can obsolete unit designs. Set the filter to show un-obsoleted unit designs, and have at it.

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Yes, I hadn't thought of that. However, I also expected it would be in addition to, not as a replacement for, the current columns. So if you need to sort by a certain type, then you'll be able to.

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A project a day keeps the deadline away.

Yeah shield status would be great.

another thing that annoys me is that i can't look at ship status in the sector view.

nope only end of turn.

System Modifiers - list doesn't display System Robotoid Factory's mineral per cent value (at least when you have also System Mineral Scanner).

Wenla

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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

Capt. C, I was just editing System Mineral Scanner part (forgot first to mention it), but you was faster...

But System Modifiers list displays both values of System Robotoid Factory and System Eco-Farms/System Radioactives Collider? Are those stacked but Minerals not?

Wenla

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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

I (of course) believe you, but then I have to turn my interface error issue report around...

System Modifiers - list displays values of organics/radioactives from both System Robotoid Factory and System Eco-Farms/System Radioactives Collider, it should only display higher ones.

Wenla

P.S. now when I think about it, I have a feeling (but not any evidence for that) that it stacks organics and radioactives, but not minerals (I know, I know, this is not an inerface issue).

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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

Uh, I can see how to set ships to obsolete and filter them out but not units. Am I just missing it somewhere?

THere should be a filter called "non-obsolete units". It's normally between "Non-Obsolete ships" and "my ships".

When using Ctrl-V to send a ship to join a fleet, where that fleet has more than one task force a further window should prompt for the task force to join. It would save remembering to reorganise them a couple of turns later when they arrive.

Also perhaps there should be send to fleet options in the construction queue options screens. It could help both players and the AI.

And I'd like to make sure the old 'reorder build queues by dragging' request is not overlooked!

When playing both BM 1.14 and Stock 1.74, after 5 or more turns or whenever I encounter another race, whichever comes first, the combat simulator begins to glitch. When I get to the combat simulator setup screen the ships are either blank or striped with a pink line. After choosing a few ships to fight combat starts. Once it has begun glitches become immediately apparent as ships begin to move erratically. When weapons are fired their graphics freeze and soon the game itself simply crashes. Another problem that occurs concerns the scores. When the comparisons screen is accessed the game crashes immediately and has to be restarted. Any help with these problems would be greatly appreciated.

When using Ctrl-V to send a ship to join a fleet, where that fleet has more than one task force a further window should prompt for the task force to join. It would save remembering to reorganise them a couple of turns later when they arrive.

Also perhaps there should be send to fleet options in the construction queue options screens. It could help both players and the AI.

And I'd like to make sure the old 'reorder build queues by dragging' request is not overlooked!

When using Ctrl-V to send a ship to join a fleet, where that fleet has more than one task force a further window should prompt for the task force to join. It would save remembering to reorganise them a couple of turns later when they arrive.

Also perhaps there should be send to fleet options in the construction queue options screens. It could help both players and the AI.

And I'd like to make sure the old 'reorder build queues by dragging' request is not overlooked!

1. I agree that consolidation views for units and/or facilities is a big one. This includes:
- Colonies List screen
- Ships List screen
- Cargo tab on planets and/or ships
- Planetary scrap cargo screen

2. On Ships List screen
- Need a Rename ship button. Way too many clicks to rename a number of ships.
- Need an column for system location for individual ships. Listing the system coordinates is not very useful IMO. This is especially needed for managing frieghters and mining ships.
- Abiility to list just fleets/and or task forces in a distinct list.

3. On Colonies List screen:
- Need a scrap cargo button.

4. On Research screen
- Option to hide research areas that have been completed.

5. On Fleet Transfer screen:
- Need to make the fleet managment area bigger or the ship icons smaller.
- Ships in task forces should be ordered by ship type.

6. On Construction Queues:
- In the Queue Settings there is a Automatic Moveto option. It would be cool if that could work.

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I forgot a big one for me. In tactical combat there needs to be an easier way to select specific fleets and task groups. The only ways I've found were to select individual ships or use the select box. The problem with the select box is that it is slow and if your units and enemy units are mixed together you usually end up selecting the enemy units instead.
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"Don't Panic"

The "Confirm end of Turn" message says there are ships without orders remaining, which includes stationary construction ships presently busy building something.
Could there be an option to where it doesn't count construction ships that are busy building something?
It gets annoying when there are a lot of busy construction ships around, in having to hit the previous/next ship buttons a lot to see if there is something other than busy construction ships with movement remaining to see if there is some other ship without orders/movement remaining.

Another odd little idea that is not really needed, but could be helpful/handy in a few small ways.
In the Create Design screen, it would be nice if there was an 'update' type option, either when editing a previously made design that didn't get built yet, or as an option when selecting a design that has not been built yet.
Basically bring all the components up to date on a not yet built design without simply 'upgrading' to a new design and having to then obsolete the old/original one.

Skip construction/repaired ships: check your Empire options. It's all there.
The "stop at every location once" checkbox doesn't seem to be working though...

We need one for skipping ships that are being repaired. Skipping ships that are constructing stuff is great, but it's kinda annoying how it insists on stopping at ships that are in spacedock for repairs.

I'm going to say it again...It would be great if a next base key/button was included, so that we can find construction bases that are not building...When you have a large number of bases 300+ it can get very slow looking through all of the groups...Yes I know you can check in the construction window but that often doesn´t help me when I need to see exactly where the bases are in the system view.

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I'll try that next weekend (my current game is going on at my country home). Back in next week.

Wenla
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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

Double post

I'm sure that some of these have been mentioned but I'll let my voice be heard as well. If anyone knows ways to accomplish any of these or a setting I'm missing I would appreciate knowing about it

Build Queues:

-There are a few stats that are available in the colonies window that are not available in the construction queues windows the most notable for me is the min/rad/org stats for the colony. I would like to be able to sort my build queues by mineral value, organic value, etc…

-As far as I can tell there is no way to delete saved build queues, by the end of the game it is rather tedious to have to wade through them, they should be deletable. It would also help if they could just be updated so that they include the most recent version of facilities

-The ability to automatically replace facility, sometimes I want to replace a particular type of facility with a new type, the most notable would be the temporal space yard replacing the normal space yard. The ability to select multiple queues and say replace facilities of type X with facilities of type Y would be nice. The behavior should be that type X facilities are only scraped as necessary to make room for type Y facilities and not scraped all at once.

-Selecting SY queues can be slow when selecting 10s or 100s:
The ability to Shift select space yard queues, i.e. select one, scroll down, hold shift and click another and therefore select all SY in-between would prevent a lot of clicking. A Select All / Select none option would be nice as well

-It would also be convenient when looking at a SY Queue if the reorder options were on the main page, rather than going into a separate window to do it.
The same can be said of the SY settings: Repeat/Emergency/Move To/Queue on hold

-Ability to "obsolete facilities" so that rarely used, or never used facilities can be removed from the Facilities list.

Fleet Transfer:

-Fleet transfer screen I find managing fleets to be one of the most tedious parts of the game. In a large game fleets of hundreds of ships are not uncommon, and it is extremely hard to tell what vehicles are in a given fleet. I would suggest:

-In the fleet transfer window the list of ships should be collapsible into their assigned task force. The list of task forces should be collapsible into their assigned fleet.

-When collapsed (and probably expanded too) the fleet or task force should have a condensed list showing how many ships of each class are in the fleet. If I want to make sure there are 3 mine sweepers in a fleet of several hundred ships it can be a real pain.

- When expanded the ships need to be ordered in some way that makes sense, at least by class, or preferably by some user defined method like the ship list.

Log

-Condensed log option, I'd like to be able to have the events condensed by type so rather than reading 23 log entries saying that a research facility was built at such and such a place, just have one entry saying 23 research facilities built, another saying 5 warp points opened etc… For ships built I’d prefer to have one entry per class of ship, so if I built 7 Bradley class destroyers and 3 deathstars then there would be 2 entries. Note that I don’t want this to replace the existing itemized, log, just be an option.

Combat simulator

-Save/load a scenario for combat simulator. If you are testing a design to perform in a particular scenario, you may test it 5 or 10 times tweaking away. Sometimes the scenario may include a lot of different vehicles, it would be very nice to be able to just save the scenario, rather than individually select each ship each time.

-Finding the appropriate enemy designs in the simulator can be a nightmare. They need to be organized / sortable and or filterable by: race/ class of vehicle/ tech level/ seen recently. The ability to obsolete them, so that they no longer show on the list would also be convenient

Research

-Ability to hide completed research areas
Ctr click to have a research area completed in 1 turn

The Sector Map

- At the very least allow Multiselecting units/ships on the map (rectangle drag, and shift selecting would be nice.)

- Additionally the ability to organize a collection of selected ships at a particular point. The best example I can think of is select a bunch of fighters and click on a point at have them form a ring around it. Or some other formations may be possible bases on the formations file. The vehicles should come back to this spot at the end of every turn unless there are still enemy’s in the sector.

- Ability to organize units in simple pattern around a particular point. Make them come back to this point at the end of the turn if there is no combat in the sector

Misc:

- The cargo all cargo lists need to be condensed

- Move the system modifiers list to the left for widescreen displays

- Ability to scrap all facilities of particular type, this could be done in SEIV a single step to have all of a single type of facility scraped in an empire.

- Savable custom lists and designs

Filters – The filters would be a lot more effective and useful if they were Boolean check boxes, for example a single box for the space yard ability could select for only with space yard, or only without space yard, or be blank.

Ability to sort planet list showing colonizable planets that exist in your claimed territory, or not in non-foreign territory. It would make finding overlooked planets to colonize a lot easier

Easy way to identify how much a system is producing - min/rad/org/research/intel
It could be posted right under the name of the system on the main screen. A quick easy way to monitor production in the system.

Ability to use large quadrant map while playing. I use a 24 inch display, and have lots of screen real-estate for the quadrant map; it would be nice to enlarge it while playing.

Retrofit / scrap - make the boxes bigger, allow organization by class not name, and allow shift selecting like I suggested for the build queues

That option is already available in the Empire Options section to a certain extent. It can skip ships that are damaged, although not ones that are damaged but being repaired.

Log: collapsed by system/planet/day would be nice too

In the Planets List, if you select the Value layout and Asteroids filter, all of the columns are blank.

Please, make the tips disappear after a few seconds... they are useful, but can become SO annoying...

Maybe you just need to change them to display the names only, and not just the description?

That sometimes gets annoying too.

O_o?

Marhawkman - I found it; thanks! I don't suppose you have a good solution for finding a ship's shield strength after combat? It's really a bummer to go into a second round of combat in a turn and discover that all the enemy ships are pouring fire into the one ship of yours that has had its shields depleted in the last round. Of course you could always turn tail and run, but the Harmonious Hegemony's battle protocol doesn't permit that!

Combat simulator

Automatically setup a combat simulation based on the information you have. For example i want to attack a planet and know most of the ships involved. So i would like to make a "as accurat as possible" simulation. Means replace unknown ships with older ones or ships of similar values. Also the planet should be selected based on such a similartity (size).
It would be a great help if you could simply select a sector and assing a simulated combat with on of your current fleets.

List layouts

It would be great if you could save them not only for a game but for all games. I for example use a certain layout to have an overview of my ships (status orders and so on) it is quiet tiresom to set this up every time T_T .

I only see an option to set the delay, but when they appear they will not disappear...

Phew, here it is:

- Bring back "Queue settings options" (except maybe the waypoints one) to the "Set Construction Queue Window", like in SE4
- Use more progress and health bars: for supplies, ordnance, IN COMBAT (you can't read superposed numbers!), for construction (current and projected for the next turn in construction queues), current ressources/max ressources, cargo...
- Slower scroll speed for the sector objects menu (bottom center of the main screen). Being able to expand it to more than 4x2 would be great too.
- Status icons should be displayed on each object in this screen if there's enough place for them.
- Add an indicator to show the consumption of each ressource: three green arrows pointing to the top if increasing and the max will soon be reached, one red down arrow if losing the ressource but at a slow rate, 3 red = soon banckupt...
- One click to build an item
- Trade Screen : double-click on a specific item to add it.
- ship controls (range...) in placement/sector view
- available in the sector repair & supply-ordnance/total supply & ordnance indicator
- from colony list => Q to open construction queue (allow to select several colonies). In general, most of the controls and shortcuts from the main screen should be available on the specific comparaison screens too, like the scrap items screen...
- supply warning when ship too far from ressuply, not depending on it's current supply amount
- doubleclick on report to go to the concerned screen - for ALL reports (for instance ship designs)
- multiple ship selection in replay & sector view(bandbox)
- seeing how you routinely handle fleets of 50+ ships in SEV, the fleet manager has to be a LOT better than that: you should have a fullscreen fleet manager with drag&drop support, and (schematized) ship placement, a bit like what you can see when you go to the task formations help, but a LOT more detailed.
- open several screens at the same time using shortcuts
- keyboard shortcuts for specific item report tabs
- repeat build, emergency and hold queue status icons
- Warn the player if a research should be completed on the next turn.
- Make the cheat code menu work like a simple calculator and appear regardless of what is the top window. You could also type goto SystemName, PlanetName/SectorName or Fleet/ShipName and it would bring you there and select the object.
- An option to force sentry - even when the ship has no fuel or enemies are present
- An option to auto-rename ships to current class name + ordered number
- "Pass turn" order - ship doesn't appear in the next ship "list" anymore this turn
- make warp point size work
- An option to autodistribute supplies/ordnance from the planet, or a designed supply ship/base/sat group each turn (even when there's no supply depot on the planet and the ship to ressuplay was already there this turn.
- For simultaneous games : the ships that will not spend all their movement points next turn should be in the next ship list (except those with sentry orders)
- delete/change/upgrade construction lists
- upgrade all queues from the ship design screen
- when upgrading a specific design, it should also upgrade the "repeat build" list. - "Display/change repeat build list" button in construction queue
- split/merge fleets order that would take into account the task forces present in the fleets (and an option to merge task forces or keep them separate)
- clear multiple queues
- Several orders don't work when selecting multiple ships (sometimes ships in a fleet): repeat orders, use emergency components...
It is VERY annoying to have to activate these components one ship at a time when you have 50+ ships. I propose these components to be removed from the game (as they are pretty powerful, especially with a construction yard in the fleet) until this problem is fixed.
- keyboard shortcuts in fleet management screen : set escort E, picket P, core C, TF leader T...
- new design type : trade ship
- give entire fleets and unit groups to other players
- class planets by number of races (that's how it's done actually) OR total population
- be able to choose a random empire for the player in quick game and new game
- waypoints: they should indicate the system/sector they are currently se to, and the name of the planet if there's currently one in the sector
- (auto?)obsolete/find enemy designs / filter designs by player
- distance measurement tool
- "show all ship movement lines" option
- While SEV is minimised, your ships won't move trough any warp points. This should be fixed.
- You should have an option to not to display ship movements at the start of your turn
- share emergency medical care should be net to share supply and repair, not at the bottom on the trade list where nobody ever looks
- before starting a combat the game should show you the forces in presence. You should also be able to "auto-resolve" the combat (like for the Ai factions between themselves)
- "combat ended" should go away after a while (with an option to not to show it at all or indefinitely)
- you should be able to claim/unclaim a system at will, like in SE4. Color/icon coding should be also more descriptive (allies? enemies and allies? only enemies?)
- the information displayed in the bottom center of the screen could be more useful
- when you receive a response message to one you've sent, you should be able t see what message you sent in the first place.
- being able to take control of (a bit like strategic points in dawn of war) and name warp points
- a log warning when an important (defined by you) costruction queue item is ready
- drag'n'drop reordering for various screens
- Filter out planets with colonizable ships en route
- filter out colonisable planets in enemy/systems to avoid
- fleet management screen: select multiple ships
- make facs until complete planet / make x turns of units (emergency/slow build) / ctrl+click to % for complete a research in 1 turn.
- items under construction should show all the items built on the next turn +1.
- esc and enter should work how they are supposed to and where they are supposed to, for instance esc should always close the screen on top (big image not working), esc should brign you back to the main view when in sector view (it opens the game menu instead).
- show supply usage per movement point - number of turns or hexes the ship can go without ressuply in several screens. Movement ine should turn red if the ship is going further than what supply and regenerating components allow it.
- automatically calculate and display the consumpion rate of the ordnance and supply per second of firing.
- galaxy creation - generate map only
- research screen - class items by progress,etc...
- the design is hiding design statistics in 1024*768, it should be a little bit more on the right
- some of the lists do not remember the position you were in the list when you closed it: for instance the objects list in the main screen bottom center.
- autolaunch when built and send to waypoint order for fighters and drones
- next/previous button and keyboard shortcut in the planet/construction screen
- orders changed intel - do not indicate to the affected player which ship orders were changed (or only after the ship has executed those orders), otherwise it's an only annoying at most intel project.
- planets screen: goto ship en route button
- all AI design names from all mods available for all players to use (without having to copy them in the main Data/Designnames folder)
- You should not be able to see enemy ship names when selecting that ship - or you should be able to see enemy ship names even when the whole sector is selected, but not in between like it is now! It would be interesting to have an option not to see the enemy ship design name until scouted via combat or long range scanners.
- add design types / design names lists / colony types in game and save lists
- being able to minimize/maximize all sublists (like all oxygen planets for instance)
- clear construction queue items should not clear the item currently built (unless you shift/ctrl+click or something like that)
- display the day at which the combat happened in simultaneous games
- more treaty options - no offensive intel allowed / no intel allowed at all / no tech trading allowed except with my empire...
- net ressources visible from all (useful) screens, it would include ALL costs like retrofitting, scrapping, conversion...
- Log: important warnings, like SHIP HAS NOT BEEN RETROFIT in bold and caps.
- Shift + click to add 5 SEPARATE items
- Ctrl + click to add items just after the currently built item
- Keyboard shortcut to set emergency (with confirmation box when reverting to slow mode) / repeat / waypoints in construction queue screen.
- ship location (system) field in ships list
- log: when built: at which location in the system (and planet if there's one in the sector)
- show system names button remembering previous settings (all - none - your settings)
- skewed follow display setting: center the ship on VISIBLE field not the "available" one, the GUI takes 1/3 of the space in 1024*768, and due to perspective, you only see somethingl like 10% of what is in your direction from the ship compared to what's behind.
- rework the system top view to be more useful?
- ships list: an option to filter out bases
- feature: any number input in the construction queues screen would be considered as changing the default number (you wouldn't have to click on the field first - when clicked on the field it should automatically select the current number)
- keyboard shortcuts working in the log: especially page up/down
- make the vehicle design report 1 case wider (10 instead of 9) for easier counting. Even better would be ho have an option for a condensed view.
- show fleet strenght in the map: number or other method, it becomes annoying when you have 20+ ships (and that's usually only an early game attack fleet!)
- "show all queues in this sector/system" order
- sensors should use even numbers for scan power, cloak odd numbers, to avoid any confusion of which one is the strongest when they have the same value. Fiind another word to avoid confusion between Sensors scanning and Long Range Scanners scanning.
- launch units when [codition] in combat
- empire reports screen should be consistant with the information you receive (in-game, or via intel, etc...). A graph detailing the progression would be nice.
- combat settings (F5-F6-F7-F8-F9) ON/OFF status should be saved for each mod
- ability to tweak max combat zoom and combat zoom speed
- Ctrl-click on a component to auto-place it on the ship

I was also thinking about setting up a wiki page for all the suggestions (it would be easier to manage than an enormous suggestions topic), and a permanent voting site where Aaron (and modders) could see what players want the most.

The background music rarely changes during the game. Normally, the same tune plays over, and over, and over, and over... The only ways I know of that force a change of the background music are to either save the game OR enter combat. It would be nice if the game would create a random playlist from the songs in "Main Songs", play through that list, then create another random playlist.

Reference my post in [http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/5922#comment-42528]

And here are the results:

Starting conditions: both System Robotoid Factories and resource specific, system wide boosters used

Starting values (resource income):
- minerals 4.269 kT
- organics 4.735 kT
- radioactives 4.756 kT

Changes:
- construction queues put on hold (no new/upgraded resource facilities)
- removed all System Robotoid Factories (lower boost value)
- new turn (actually also several ones but results didn't changed)

New values:
- minerals 4.268 kT
- organics 4.277 kT
- radioactives 4.289 kT

Conclusions (IMHO): when using both System Robotoid Factory and Organics and/or Radioactives (BUT NOT MINERALS) system wide production boost facilities both values, not only lower ones, are included/displayed on System Modifiers - list AND both production boost values are also added to the production values (incomes).

Wenla
---
Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

I'd like to see some minimap enhancement. Being able to flag the different systems would be nice. Like displaying which system is a black hole, which one is a nebula, which one is empty, etc.

I'd like a 'has supply depot' icon at worlds. (Just like the 'has shipyard').

~Myrath

There's an issue with displaying abilities like this one:

Ability 1 Type                                  := Component - Is Armor Type
Ability 1 Description                           := Provides [%Amount1%] protection.
Ability 1 Scope                                 := Space Object
Ability 1 Range Formula                         := 0
Ability 1 Amount 1 Formula                      := "Normal Armor"
Ability 1 Amount 2 Formula                      := 0

The ability description comes out as "Provides 1 protection" - presumably since Normal Armor is entry 1 in ShieldAndArmorTypes.txt? It should display the name of the armor type, just like I typed it right there in the formula: "Provides Normal Armor protection"

~~~
The floating Eee zaps you with an anti-proton beam! You are paralyzed! --more--

Seriously that's what we need, a Space Empires themed roguelike!

I presume you have a reason, but it escapes me... If the value you want to substitute is a constant string, why bother with the substitution?

Convenience... suppose you want another component that provides some other type of armor protection; you don't have to edit it in two places when you copy the component, or if you change the name of the armor type, you don't have to change it in two places.

Though there might be some practical usage for this actually... you COULD put a string concatenation formula in there to have each level of armor get its own armor type

~~~
The floating Eee zaps you with an anti-proton beam! You are paralyzed! --more--

Seriously that's what we need, a Space Empires themed roguelike!

In the colony list there is NO option for production capability.

You CANNOT tell that planet A builds 1,000 units of resources per turn, and planet B builds at 6,000 per turn.

There should be the option two have all order buttons directly on the GUI instead of having to click twice to come to the right one (like "repeat order", "scrap facility", etc). For people with small screens, the current setup could be maintained as an option, but if you have a screen and graphic card large enough to support high resolutions, the current system is a bit annoying.

You could take the buttons for "move contsruction item up" and move construction item down" etc... and make them a row of buttons in the space they currently occupy.

Wait... didn't someone suggest this already?

or just make two arrows, should be easier coding actually, and alot more compact. Also, how about the return of, when building units the option to

Build One Turns Worth

Once again - the ships and colonies windows get really unmanageably slow to load once you have more than a few dozen to deal with! Makes it hard to manage large or even medium sized empires Maybe it's just my preferred column layouts, but the music gets choppy and repeats in 5-second or so increments while loading the screens!

~~~
The floating Eee zaps you with an anti-proton beam! You are paralyzed! --more--

Seriously that's what we need, a Space Empires themed roguelike!

Help text positioning: Too often, the help text appears right over the minimap so that you can't see the location of the system for the object you're hovering over.

How about a select ship speed button in tactical combat.
Say I want a ship to follow me just inside my weapons range but outside of his. If my ship is faster, it can't really be done. Or even if I want the ship to catch up with mine then I increase my speed to match his, can't do it. Ships are either sitting still, going at full speed or trying to do right angle turns and losing all their speed while doing so.

i find annoying that when you scroll down a list with the mouse wheel, it scrolls the wrong number of records, thus skipping some items. it happens mostly in the ship components list.

i know it takes a lot of time/effort, but making a customizable interface for se6 would shut all of our whining.

Where to begin? There are many little tweaks the interface needs right now which would make the game a whole more interesting to play.

1) Making the filter options checkboxes and not selections.
2) Adding more filter options(so i can filter out enemy systems or systems with treaty restrictions. or even a distance from waypoint x would be handy for mid tech level starts)
3) More flags than just system to avoid
4) Being able to sort the log would be nice - or just filter the messages
5) Being able to update and delete building lists
6) Changing the lists from specific buildings to building types(ie top level reseach lab and not reseach lab level 3)
7) Actually being able to filter down to JUST fleets in the fleets screen(as opposed to lists of ships in fleets)
Being able to actually change settings that affect frame rates would be cool.
9) Expanding on the no tactical combat to now offer no combat screens whatsoever(half my time is wasted by pressing strategic to see my fighters chase a ship around - and then I have to wait for the combat log to be created. why is this so?)
10) Having an in game option to turn off combat replays.
11) Not showing the hellishly annoying ship movement at the start of the turn.
12) Having an in game auto-build option for colonies(I mean MOO3 managed it, why not SEV?)
13) Move the clear list button, sick of clicking on that when I am trying to arrange my queues.

Actually I think there are many more, but I have to go and remind myself of them.

I'd also like to see the orders listed for a planet.
A tooltip, where howering over the different status icons would give more info. E.g. listing how many mines/fighters are stored on the planet, what a shipyard is constructing, what is the composition of a fighter group etc.

I find the way the mouse moves around the screen to be very jumpy and slow. Perhaps an option to adjust the sensitivity of the mouse would be nice. If possible make the motion smoother as well.

And no this has nothing to do with my computer not being up to the job of rendering the game properly. That is not a problem.

Now there are effectively only three ranges of engagement: short, medium and long. I would suggest either adding more of them (preferably 5) or allowing players to adjust them during a game. It would make setting a suitable strategy much more flexible.

I'd like to see a possibility to add a "estimated total time" for construction queues. Simply add all the estimated times together might be enough.
There is often a case when your planet has one turn left in what it is currently building, but you don't know if there is something in queue after that. This would make it easy to find out.

Also, I would like for combat simulator to be able to define sides as attacker or defender (For example if you have separate withdraw commands you want to test).
And in combat simulator, allow defined side to come through a warppoint to simulate warp point defense.

I would see a Double Ring, Star, or some other identifier to designate the home system on the map view.

I think it would also be helpful to have different color rings (Green for colonized, Yellow for anomaly, Red for hazard) around systems to denote that you have colonized a planet in the system, etc.

I know it will never happen but I think it would be nice.

Hitting enter should be the same a pressing the highlighted button.

an active cursor should be present at the "amount" location in the construction queue, so that you can just type a number imediately for large builds.

Make the system modifiers text a pop down menu or a pull out tray.

when you press "move to" for a ship tell how many hexes away the cursor currently is.

in the design window, get rid of the filter button. have 3 toggle buttons to click on ships/units, obsolete/active, ours/enemies.

in the main construction queues window, a planet with a "move to waypoint" command should have the move to system blink when you click on that planet.

in the main construction queue should be a button to quickly select all planets, or a large group by highlighting.

the active ship cursor in the system window should blink, I've tried to mod this but couldn't.

in any of the windows have the font size adjust so that you can fit however many colums you want, or have a horizontal scroll bar.

SEV, more than a feeling.