Are there going to be improvements made to the research and planet screen w.r.t. better tooltips? I downloaded the v1.1 beta and I couldn't see any changes in those areas, and glancing throug the changelog there doesn't appear to be any relevant changes in this regard. There was a post on the front page shortly after 1.0 was release stating that stardock knew it's tooltips "sucked" and they were going to improve them, so I didn't post about the lack of tooltips. Because of the obscurity of the game mechanics, which better tooltip would help, I have not played the game and patiently awaited v1.1. I have been keeping tabs on the website from time to time though, and I'm becoming worried about the lack of mention of any tooltip improvments in the beta change logs.
Some specific tooltips I had hoped for are :
1) Tooltips for planet productions. Where to all those shields,hammers and flasks come from? I've read some posts detailing this, but in game there is nothing that tells you this. These leads to a disconnet between what resources your gathering/generation and a real usuable value. For instance if I create a starbase on a research node I get a +x bonus to research, but I have no idea what the number means. How many extra research points am I getting from that? Is it increasing my research points directly, if so how much? Is it just increasing the flasks on a planet, if so how much is it?
2) Tooltip for almost every technology. I research mouse over a minaturization tech and it tells me I gives me +x minaturization. What does that mean? Is +x and addative value or a percentage modifier. How is that going to change the stats of my ship components. (Is there anywhere I can see my current minaturization value?) I assumed this would modifiy my ship components size down (how much I have no idea), but someone on IRC said they though it increased hull size instead. In either case I have no idea what this technology does for me in terms of building my ships. Another case is Advanced hulls. If you click on advanced hulls it tells you you get "MEDIUM", "MEDIUM" and "MEDIUM" under ship component. I'm guessing this means you can build medium hulls ships, but its hardly clear from the description itself. I'd like a tooltip that says this technology will allow you to build hulls with x spaces.
I'm not trying to bitch here, I like stardock and I really want to like galciv2. I can best sum it up with a quote I told a friend who I was trying to give an assessment of the game too. "I get the sense that the game has some really good game mechanics, but those mechanics are totally obscured behind the interface. It's almost impossible to figure how how researching technology or gathering resources affects your empire in any concret way."
-Mark
