UI Niggles

"3. No option to view other races movement within your LOS."

Sure, but you realize how annoying that would be once the game really gets going, esp. on gigantic maps? I can't really see the option being that valuable as people would turn it off once it takes a couple of minutes between their turns.

"6. When choosing a planet name your text is displayed in all upper-case, but the Wod on the Street field uses mixed case."

I have no idea what "the Wod on the Street field" is, but when entering the name for planets, ships, etc., case is present: lower case letters are shorter than upper case ones.

"15. When "SHIP built at X" displayed in GNN, Goto should go to the planet exterior, not the ship desin."

It'll do that if you right-click on the blue ship icon that drops down the right side of your screen.

"16. Right-click to launch a ship from GNN doesn't appear to be working/"

Right, well try the blue icons, not the report itself.

"19. Additional colony rally point screen should allow me to select colonises and point them at rally points.

20 Additional starship rally point screen should allow me to select starships/fleets and point them at rally points."

How would this be any different from the current rally point system?

"26. Was unable to find my logistics value without putting multiple ships in one space or guaging from research track. Likewise, I should be able to see the logistics of each ship when it is selected."

Yeah, that would be nice.

Note:- I'm not using the beta version

1. Unable to delete in-progress buildings by selecting them in their square as this does not select them in the build queue.

That would be nice. As it is you can't even click on the title in the build queue to select it ... you have to click to the right of the title words instead.

29. Buying a ship shouldn't cause it to then enter the build queue, the queue should resume what it was doing before once a ship is bought.

This would be good. This is how the buildings queue works?

Wod on the Street field

He means the "Word on the Street" comments from citizens ... in the planet menu ... details ...

8. A zoomed minimap doesn't move with the camera.

I find this annoying. The minimap should scroll with click and drag. And if the focus in the main screen changes to another ship then the minimap should change too? And speaking of the minimap the influence colours are always wrong in zoomed minimap, either they don't show or they partly show or they fully show (mental note, must prepare a screenshot).

19. Additional colony rally point screen should allow me to select colonises and point them at rally points. 20 Additional starship rally point screen should allow me to select starships/fleets and point them at rally points.

Maybe the ship was out of range of the rally point? I may have had this, I could select the first 3 rally points but never the fourth.

9. The screen corners don't allow you to scroll, unlike every other game in existence.

This was annoying at first until I got used to click and drag.

21. Colony screen in civ manager should display max possible population for each planet e.g. 1.6B/5B

'cos we're lazy and we don't want to work it out ourselves

22. Current research & time to completion not displayed on planet screen making effect of focus a matter of jumping in and out of the planet window.

minor annoyment here too.

31. Starbase upgrade screen should show all possible upgrade paths (the first upgrade from each) and grey out the ones currently unavailable while displaying the research required to unlock it.

this might be nice for newbies and peeps who don't read manuals

I agree on almost every single point here. Good list, and I'm glad someone took the time to lay it all out, and get our opinions heard.

"3. No option to view other races movement within your LOS." Sure, but you realize how annoying that would be once the game really gets going, esp. on gigantic maps? I can't really see the option being that valuable as people would turn it off once it takes a couple of minutes between their turns.

I find having to check every planet every turn in case a troop transport has turned up, more tedious. The minimap is less useful the larger the map gets. There's already an option to see your ships move, it seems equally logical to have one for enemy ships too. Obviously this wouldn't be to everyones taste and would need to be an option, just like viewing autopilot movement.

"6. When choosing a planet name your text is displayed in all upper-case, but the Wod on the Street field uses mixed case." I have no idea what "the Wod on the Street field" is, but when entering the name for planets, ships, etc., case is present: lower case letters are shorter than upper case ones.

Word on the Street on the planetary details screen. I've only renamed planets from here (and the, name your new colony screen) not the rename shortcut in the planets title bar, but I didn't see a difference between upper and lower case, so if it's there it's very subtle, where as in Word on the Street it's not subtle at all. Since there is a place where mixed case is used, mixed case should be more obvious in the naming of a planet.

"15. When "SHIP built at X" displayed in GNN, Goto should go to the planet exterior, not the ship desin." It'll do that if you right-click on the blue ship icon that drops down the right side of your screen.

However, if I build 20 ships in a turn, which is easier, jumping to the ship from the GNN which has a complete listing of each build along with ship name and planet, along with other relevant news or from 20 identical icons which you have to mouse over each in turn to get the name? The real issue is I see no logical reason for Goto, in a message about completion of a ship at planet X, to go to the ship designer.

"15. When "SHIP built at X" displayed in GNN, Goto should go to the planet exterior, not the ship desin." It'll do that if you right-click on the blue ship icon that drops down the right side of your screen.

My mistake, though IMO it should include this functionality on the GNN, otherwise why include these announcements at all if it simply means I have to read them, then mouse over all the icons down the side afterwards gaining repeat information?

"19. Additional colony rally point screen should allow me to select colonises and point them at rally points. 20 Additional starship rally point screen should allow me to select starships/fleets and point them at rally points." How would this be any different from the current rally point system?

I think you are mis-understanding which screen I am referring to. In the civilisation manager you have a screen (governor?) which has Starship Rally Points and Colony Rally Points. These screens allow you to direct all ships travelling to rally point X to divert to Y, and for all colonies sending ships to X to send them to Y instead. I would like a central management system which allowed me to do this on a per-ship per-colony basis, without having to flick around the map finding each one in turn. Allowing for multiple selections would allow you to setup a rally points and with a quick select and click allocate a swath of planets which currently have no rally point, to this new rally point.

The game also, AFAIK, lacks a way for me to see one one screen who is currently heading to rally point X and which colonies are sending ships there.

29. Buying a ship shouldn't cause it to then enter the build queue, the queue should resume what it was doing before once a ship is bought. This would be good. This is how the buildings queue works?

Say I tell my planet to build warships, but then I have an influx of cash and want to push out a constructor quickly for a nearby starbase. If I buy the constructor my queue now changes to build constructors, meaning that if I buy a ship I then have to go back to that planet and change what it's doing, even though the time difference between building and buying means you'll often use them for different kinds of ships.

On the other hand, having to manually buy a ship each time can also be a pain and having a buy queue would be nice.

9. The screen corners don't allow you to scroll, unlike every other game in existence. This was annoying at first until I got used to click and drag.

Well, firstly it's very anti-newbie and totally out of whack with every other game since... well... ever. Secondly, click and drag can be irritating in the extreme as you need to keep grabbing the screen. Not to mention that you really don't want to click unless you have to. With a higher allowable maximum scroll speed scrolling using arrow keys or map edge would be much easier than click and drag or trying to figure out where on the minimap is that bit you're trying to find.

21. Colony screen in civ manager should display max possible population for each planet e.g. 1.6B/5B 'cos we're lazy and we don't want to work it out ourselves

Imagine that rather than seeing the total value of your fleet attack you saw (2+2+8+6+3+2)*1.10

That's what they're asking you to do with max population per planet. Aren't computers supposed to make calculations easier?

31. Starbase upgrade screen should show all possible upgrade paths (the first upgrade from each) and grey out the ones currently unavailable while displaying the research required to unlock it. this might be nice for newbies and peeps who don't read manuals

Well, apart from the fact that all information should be available to me in-game, Stardock have always talked about the loss of CDs. Well, what about the loss of manuals? Constantly changing the window to view the electronic manual isn't overly practical, and if I have to keep fetching the manual to check Starbase tables then how is that different to requiring the CD?

I would like to see an in-game solution.

I'd like to add another to my list:

37. Ships in the ship designer should display their movement before and AFTER bonuses. All too often I design a move 3 ship only to find that it's really a move 4 with my bonuses, but certain bonuses are so vague you won't know (like the one which says "This affects large ships like colony ships and transports, and ships of SIMILIAR SIZE... WTF is that then??). It would be handy to see the same thing for fire and armour bonuses, with the true value displayed in () next to the base value.

I see this as another instance where I am having to recall bonuses and perform calculations when the game should be doing this for me, then telling me where its number came from.

38. The difficulty setting is reset to Normal every time you hit another campaign mission. It should remember your setting.

39. Remove the AOE display from mining starbases as it is irrelevant.

40. Deleting a building from the build queue removes focus from the queue rather than the next building being selected. This makes mass deletions a nightmare.

41. The rename planet option should position the cursor in the text field rather than making me click there.

42. If you cancel a starbase upgrade the constructor is positioned on the starbase square. If you misclicked or change your mind, you now need to move the constructor off and back onto the starbase. There should be an upgrade option when they share a space.

43. Selected ships autopilot line should highlight on the minimap.

44. Once you hit advanced espionage the text suggests you need spend no more money, so why not automatically remove my funding from it rather than make me go do it?

45. Allow me to queue buildings for squares which I am currently (or have queued up) terraforming.

46. Queue build list build time should show the actual build time of a ship, as well as the "starting from scratch" time.

As far as buying ships - are you doing this in the Colony Management window? You can click on the ship that is building in the far right column and it brings up the Build/Buy ship window - you don't have to go to each planet individually. You can manage all your shipyards right in one screen.

As for a lot of the rest, Beta v3 is now out - I'm sure it will have some changes and fixes.

It doesn't seem like it, but I'll keep the list going . Since some of thesse (like number five) are potential bugs, I'm moving it to the bugs forum.

47. When you select a race all racial abilities should use a different colour or be marked in some way, that way you know what you're getting (since the rest is entirely configurable).

Fully agreed to the above 47 and add some more


48. When renaming ships, the old name should be
editable, for now its being deleted whatever you insert.

48a An option in ship upgrade screen that makes the name of the
upgraded ship become the class name of the upgrade would be fine.
Very useful espacially when upgrading all ships of a class.

49. When upgrading a ship design (while not removing components)
the components of that ship displayed in the upper middle
should show their name by mouseover or somewhere else (lower left ?)

Ok, I'll field these as best I can.
1 and 2: No idea. Be more picky with what you build.
3. Yes, it automatically shows ship movements. What's the problem?
4. What do you mean change the speed? the ships have to use all their moves to end the turn.
5. Of course, you're still saving customrace0.config what did you expect?
6. True.
7. Right click a ship does launch it. So, what do you want from planet right click?
8. Annoying that one.
9. There was a very good reason for this, which I forget.
10. Since it can bug them game trying to turn when ship movement is not gone, I'd have thought it helpful.
11. Well obviously, what else would it do?
12. What's the problem here? It's useful to see if you're in an enemy military area or not.. Mining bases have no actual AoE anyway, empire wide.
13. Just read the manual.
14. Why? you set the autopilot. If you want to be alert, move it manually, or click the option "Follow autopilot movement" and keep track of it.
15. The news is about the ship not the planet.
16. No, GNN is a news broadcast. The message in the bottom is easier to use.
17. No experience with this.
18. Nope, don't know this.
19. Just use a normal rally point.
20. Ditto.
21. Matter of opinion.
22. Focus, for me, is usually a financial issue. One planet rarely affects you're entire nation, unless you're on a small map.
23. Because the workers haven't been paid yet
24. Galciv is better than most games. Just close the window, it's one click. You can't be that lazy if you've written this list.
25. What do you mean ships control window movement?
26. You can. Itys logistics 8 etc. It's hull size, just memorise the 6 ship logistic information.
27. Again, what? I can stop auto rotation easy. Just hold the right mouse button, I do that anyway to get a better look.
28. No. That's the point of obsoleting them, so you never look at them again and they don't take up space. Want to see them again? don't obsolete.
29. Erm, it doesn't put it in the build queue, it buys it outright without changing the queue (If you use the buy button, not go into the actual ship build menu)
30. Well, if it auto updated, people would complain about it doing so.
31. No, you have to figure some things out yourself. Part of the game, learning what to do.
32. Now THAT is annoying. I agree, shouldn't do that. I fleeted them for a purpose.
33. Wrong. I've done it and seen the AI do it.
34. Men. Planetary defense, not ship bonus.
35. True.
36. You already said this. No they shouldn't. It would be annoying to have even more numbers floating around, it's better (and more fun) to get the feel of things like this instinctively.

Aaaand I'm spent.

1. Unable to delete in-progress buildings by selecting them in their square as this does not select them in the build queue.

Actually it does select the item in the queue. To delete a in-progress building, click it once on the map, then click the X in the top-right of the build queue. This will remove it from the build queue. If it was a building being upgraded, you can then click on the map again, then click decomission in the building list on the right.
Works for me
But there are some building you can't remove, such as wonders, etc.

1 and 2: No idea. Be more picky with what you build.

Because humans never make mistakes, and the galaxy never changes in a way that requires you to rethink and refocus your planets. Oh wait...

Simply put, you will want to delete things, and deleting things should be as easy as possible, and since there's a key on the keyboard (and since the mouse can't be in two places at once this is faster) dedicated to deleting... It's simply making the UI easier to use by using functions which do X in all windows apps and ensuring they do so in yours too.

Frankly, DEL should destroy ships, decommission buildings, etc.

3. Yes, it automatically shows ship movements. What's the problem?

Not on my game it doesn't. I never see enemy ships move. Perhaps it only shows moves that start and end in your LOS? Either way, I've had troop transports turn up outside my planets which I was never shown.

4. What do you mean change the speed? the ships have to use all their moves to end the turn.

The real-time speed, not movement squares.

5. Of course, you're still saving customrace0.config what did you expect?

For the campaign to have no effect on the sandbox. They should be completely seperate.

7. Right click a ship does launch it. So, what do you want from planet right click?

Anything but nothing. Details. Rename. A context menu...

10. Since it can bug them game trying to turn when ship movement is not gone, I'd have thought it helpful.

It's annoying beyond belief. I spend my last movement point on a battle and once it ends I am whisked away with no idea of the status of my ships and unable to setup an autopilot move for them unless I drag myself back over there.

11. Well obviously, what else would it do?

It would not centre on it. Obviously. Auto centring means that every time I click a ship I have to:

a) Wait for the screen to centre

Re-orientate myself

c) Drag the screen back to the square I wanted to move to or zoom out.

The question is, why would I want to centre on a ship I haven't centred myself on? I don't click a ship and then decide what to do with it, I decide where I need a ship, find one and then select it, but now it moves the screen from my viewing of LOCATION and SHIP to SHIP and LOCATION is somewhere off screen.

12. What's the problem here? It's useful to see if you're in an enemy military area or not.. Mining bases have no actual AoE anyway, empire wide.

I don't think you understood my post.

13. Just read the manual.

I don't think you understand the basis of UI design. Not to mention that Brad has said time and time again you shouldn't need to CD. Well, what does that help if I need the manual for everything?

[14. Why? you set the autopilot. If you want to be alert, move it manually, or click the option "Follow autopilot movement" and keep track of it.

Because if my sensor range is 2 but my move is 4, finding out there's an enemy in the FOW at the END of their move is no use because they'll probably be dead the next turn, or the enemy ship will burn by. If my ship moves two of four spaces and spots an enemy ship, I want to be given the chance to act, not watch my ship fly by. So, what you're left with is moving your ships one space at a time... very tedious.

15. The news is about the ship not the planet.

Exactly, it's about the ship, not the design, and so it should take me to the ship, not the design.

16. No, GNN is a news broadcast. The message in the bottom is easier to use.

Five ships were built in a turn, all five are displayed on one GNN page with names and planets. Down the right are five featureless icons which I must mouse over to read.

Which is easier? If I have to do everything through the icons, why display the events in the GNN in the first place?

19. Just use a normal rally point. 20. Ditto.

Please read the whole thread, you don't understand what I'm asking for.

21. Matter of opinion.

Perhaps then the logistics count should show:

5 / Basic Logistics

Is that better? No, because it asks me to do a calculation the PC can do faster. If the PC can do it faster and just as well as me, I shouldn't need to do it. I shouldn't need to delve further into the game to aquire information that it can put right there.

22. Focus, for me, is usually a financial issue. One planet rarely affects you're entire nation, unless you're on a small map.

And since small maps are equally as well represented as large maps...

23. Because the workers haven't been paid yet

No, it's because the time doesn't update until you click the planet AGAIN even though it's already selected. Only then does the correct time, according to adjusted sldiers, display.

24. Galciv is better than most games. Just close the window, it's one click. You can't be that lazy if you've written this list.

Again, you don't really understand the basis of good UI design. When you're as fast with a mouse and keyboard as me, you don't want to be limited to a single tool. The mouse is very clumsy compared to the keyboard when it comes to managing menus, especially as Close happens to lurk right next to End Turn.

25. What do you mean ships control window movement?

The arrow keys move ships not the window, which is the opposite of pretty much every game ever. Ask yourself, what do you gain from this? Why would you want to control a ship through the arrow keys? But by allocating the screen to the arrows you can be moving around while still working with the mouse.

26. You can. Itys logistics 8 etc. It's hull size, just memorise the 6 ship logistic information.

Again, bad UI design, requiring me to

a) Refer to the manual

Assume the manual is up to date on logistics, which I believe as of the beta patches it no longer is.

A manual should be used for laying out rules, the UI is there to lay out data.

27. Again, what? I can stop auto rotation easy. Just hold the right mouse button, I do that anyway to get a better look.

Not really good on the fingers, that.

28. No. That's the point of obsoleting them, so you never look at them again and they don't take up space. Want to see them again? don't obsolete.

So, I am at war with an empire that uses missiles, so I no longer have use for my beam defences (or not much use), so I currently either:

a) Obsolete them and re-design them all when a beam empire comes along.

Clutter my ship window with them.

God help me should I mis-click, because then we have to re-design again.

Obsolete simply marks it with a flag, and there's no reason there couldn't be a tab for that. There are countless reasons to bring back ships you obsoleted.

29. Erm, it doesn't put it in the build queue, it buys it outright without changing the queue (If you use the buy button, not go into the actual ship build menu)

Click build ship then select a ship then buy ship. This ship is entered into the queue with a time of zero weeks and next turn is at the planet with its ship design now in the build queue.

30. Well, if it auto updated, people would complain about it doing so.

Why? The cursor currently lies to you, it says it is looking at square X, when in fact it is doing nothing of the sort and hasn't updated since you clicked square Y. There could be a stack of 50 ships on that square, and if you looked away while the ship moved you now need to re-select the square to check because the display at the bottom of the screen has been rendered meaningless by the ships movement.

[quote31. No, you have to figure some things out yourself. Part of the game, learning what to do.

No, it's not, it's all in the manual. This is another feature that makes a mockery of the no CD element of the game, because you need to lug the manual around to look up stuff like this.

33. Wrong. I've done it and seen the AI do it.

Of course the AI can do it, it makes calls to the relevant APIs. I don't see how you can do it, especially as I believe it was filed as a known issue. It might have been fixed in Beta 3, I haven't tried that yet.

34. Men. Planetary defense, not ship bonus.

Actually, I think the manual says it's a ship hit point bonus. This is my point, I have to check the manual... why doesn't the game use the same no nonsense description?

36. You already said this. No they shouldn't. It would be annoying to have even more numbers floating around, it's better (and more fun) to get the feel of things like this instinctively.

Actually, this is different from the previous one because this is the planet screen not the civilisation screen.

There's nothing instinctive about it, it's math based on food income. It's like displaying total fleet attack as an equation rather than a number, it's not fun it's annoying. Why tell me to work it out when the PC can do it faster and there's space to do so?

Testing bumpage for the benefit of another thread.

Here's a list of some minor issues i've come accros. I don't know if all of them qualify as bugs.

Icons around planets:
The little orange icon that is supposed to idicate work on a social project is sometimes missing. Mostly when a new tech has been researched and upgrades are started where the production queue was empty.
Simliar with militray prod. especially when using governors to update ship building from "nothing" to something. (icon will stay orange istead of turning green)

Building ships:
If you are building a ship on a planet you can replace (or decomission) the starport, but the ship will still be finished. (you cant build a new ship after that though) i realize this might be intended.

I have a ship design from an earlier game showing up in the build ship screen, but not in the shipyard. (very likely about nameing and deleting desings)

Ship selction:
When moving a ship on a square with other ships and creating a fleet, this fleet is will not be selected. Neither will any other ship that has movement points left. At this point i always have to manually select the next ship or the fleet to proceed.

When a ship completes auto move and the skip button appears, the ship is not always selected. i have to press tab or click on the ship to move it.

The skip button does not disappear after upgrading a starbase. (while the comp is calculating the turn.) In combination with the above point this is confusing, as i always try to find a ship to move.

Scrolling in lists:
This has been mentioned elsewhere. i just like to add an observation i made.
in the shipyard you can chose to display only user ships. when you make one obsolete, the list will jump back to displaying all ships. But if you leave the shipyard while only user ships are displayed, the little build ship screen will do that as well. (This comes in handy when you don't want to see the useless coreships in the build list.)

Diplomacy:
When loading a game i sometimes get a civ trying to tell me something (the popup screen with the "speak to" and "close" buttons) but there is no text at all.

After loading a game i opened the diplo screen and the Drengin were selected in all tabs. That's nothing special except that they had surrenderd to me in an earlier session. After switching to another civ the Drengin were gone for good though.

Rally points:
New ships don't always go to the asigned rally point. This apears to happen randomly. some ships will have no problem at all and the next needs to be told what to do manually.
Sometimes ships forget their destination after a few turns and the autopilot needs a reboot or something. (only when automatically going to rally points.) i don't know who to reproduce this.

Hit Points:
The HP of fleets are not displayed correctly. I have a fleet of to transports (cargo hulls). Each has 1/1 HP but the display on the left side says the fleet has 3 HP while on the right (where the ships of the fleet are shown) each ship has 1 HP. For another fleet of 10 medium hull ships with 24 HP each the left side say the fleet has 370 HP. How does that happen and (more important) wich value is used in combat? (In a wild guess this might be a problem with military resources. Do they give a HP bonus?)

This might seem like nitpcking, but i just can't get used to those things. (as oposed to the ctd every couple of days.)

I agree with all the UI points. I'm as frustrated as anyone about the attitude toward UI design on these forums. Learning quirks and workarounds is what you do with bad UIs. A good UI is intuitive, consistent, and informative. The GC2 UI has problems, as much as I like the game.

Things like the autofocus-shift are mindbendingly frustrating. You move a ship around, say scouting, looking for things... then WHAM, you're looking at the other side of the map. Why? There's a TAB button for a reason. Why isn't this switchable? People have hated this since launch, and it'd be trivial to add an option.

Call me nuts, but for the 'ship x built' messages, 'goto' should actually 'goto' the ship that got built. Going to the design area should be relegated to left/right clicks... and in any case, the left/right click options should be displayed as buttons at the far end of the 'news' bar. As it stands, it's trial-and-error what sort of news item takes you where with which button.

The simplest suggestion I have for the UI is consistency. For example, they use a visually consistent 'name bar' throughout the game, for ships, fleets, planets et al. Why do they sometimes have 'rename' options and such, and other times not? Why is planet rename hidden in the back of a tertiary window, instead of on the name bar like everything else?

In the 'data' area of the map, why are the options available through buttons always different? Why is 'upgrade' a button on the main map for ships, but totally inaccessable for fleets? Here's a hint - put it on the info window. Allow right-click in fleets to open a menu with such options. It doesn't belong on the main screen.

Why is the planet/ship finder so poor? There should be a 'fleet screen', where you can initiate ship or class upgrades without having to find an example to hunt down the upgrade button for. I'd love to be able to manage fleets from a full-screen strategic map (don't anyone dare say I should zoom the map out - I want less clutter, strategic information, and the whole map regardless of size) where I can order fleets and manage ships without having to use the menus off the main screen.

Given Stardocks background, I wouldn't think these issues would be serious. However, we've had seven patches and the UI has barely been touched. The lack of right-click functionality on planets - even just to show a quick mouseover rundown of production - is a classic symptom of the confusing UI. I like the game, and I don't have problems using the UI - that does NOT mean it couldn't - and shouldn't - be better.

41. The rename planet option should position the cursor in the text field rather than making me click there.

This applies to a whole bunch of input prompts (another one that comes to mind is naming a new ship, which somebody else listed in another post about UI issues).

And #10 -- not automatically moving focus to the next ship -- is rapidly becoming my #1 wishlist item. I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally sent a fleet off to the middle of nowhere when the game automatically changed my selection and I didn't notice (if the ships or fleets are close together, it's easy to miss the little blue selection marker jumping away, particularly if your ship color is a similar blue...)

Marcathonas, did Stardock announce a job opening for apologist? Because I get the feeling you just submitted your resume.