Where's the gaming fun, otherwise? Or even, the key strategic knowledge of such occurances when it does or should matter *indirectly*.
I think you're kind of missing the point here.
In service to gameplay, graphics must convey information. In Pac-Man for example, the graphics tell you the location of your avatar, where you can go, where the available pellets are, where the Ghosts are, and where the power pellets are. They may be plain, but they are clear and distinct about the nature of the gameworld.
The problem with the non-icon view isn't that it isn't plain. It is that it
doesn't tell you anything useful! On icon view, I can instantly tell whether a planet is habitable or dead (except for PQ < 4), and so on.
The graphical view
could convey this information. It would not be difficult to make the graphical view a
lot clearer about where things are. It could be done without damaging the artistic merits of it. It is not an either/or thing; you do not have to sacrifice beauty for clarity.
But the simply fact is that StarDock did not make the graphical view convey this information clearly. It obfuscates the gameplay and interferes with the player's ability to know what things are. It's the equivalent of playing Pac-Man, except half the screen is blotted out unless you stand in a certain spot that reveals it, then the other half is blotted out.
The simple fact is this; if SD had not made the icon view at all, I would have stopped playing the game. It is simply too tedious for me without having vital game information immediately available. Incidentally, this is the reason why I don't play Civilization IV: it's simply too hard to look at a square and know what it is.
