My Beta Feedback

Beta Feedback 062605

This is the first feedback for me sense beta 2.

First, things that are "still" an issue for me:

- Still no way to lock a ship design "as" you are designing it. Removal of an extra part by accident still kills whatever modules placed on it. Having to re-do it is a pain.

- Still no way to determine the actual ship sensor range "as" you build it. Nor is their any way to determine what rank of sensors has what range before you even select it.

- Still no size requirements listed for Colony Containers or Troop Containers in ship build menu… These and sensors are the only 3 I have found like this…

- Still no way to increase or decrease the mouse speed in game… Or the mouse scroll speed…

- The main menu is still way to dark… It is sometimes "impossible" to find an anomaly or similarly dark item in the map unless you zoom out to tactical view… Very annoying.
(I even set all options for background density to max in hopes of making the background more bright)

- Still no way to "hotkey" out of a menu screen to the main map… Setting the ESC key as the default "EXIT" key will help a lot.

- Still no way to determine what ship is "auto-piloting" to what spot on the main map… This can be extremely frustrating when you have multiple ships heading to the same general vicinity.

- Still no way to select a ship to see its condition, without automatically canceling its previous orders! (most frustrating with autopilot!) At times you can have so many ships on the map that this can be crippling! I can not possibly keep track of where I had every singe one of my ships headed at one time, while trying to take inventory of each ones condition, stats, or whatever reason I may have to select it in the main map. If this is an un-fixable flaw in the movement mechanic then "PLEASE" add a mouse over options or something that allows me to see such details "without" having to cancel the ships previous orders in the process.

- There are still many social research topics that have no real indication as to what researching them will give you in return.

Some things that are or could be bugs:

- The next turn button disappearing has gotten worse for me in (.21[b].003) then in (.20). I also noticed that when the next turn button disappears, I can no longer "ALT+TAB" to desktop. And Task Manager shows the game as ‘not responding"

- The Military – Social – Research sliders in the empire screen only work properly when "dragging" the actual indicator. If I try to click on the incremental arrows the thing goes bonkers.

Some suggestions that would help me enjoy the game:

- It would seem that the ship design screen is the last screen that still has the action buttons so spread out in the UI that it is a pain to scroll back and forth, back and forth, between the buttons, just to design, name, and begin building the ship in question… The UI here needs to be streamlined. Possibly by moving all the "Save" "Name" "Done" and similar UI buttons to the same corner of the window?!? Or are you intentionally trying to give me carpel tunnel syndrome?

- Adding the ability to "SAVE" and "LOAD" a ship design to and from a file that is accessible in any subsequent games would be nice… Instead of forcing me to completely re-design my ships from scratch every single time!

- Add common abbreviations for the values in the Treasury and Population indicators in the corner of the screen. Instead of 20352…. Put 203.5K or similar… Also adding a mouse over that shows the full total would be nice.

- Allow idle factories to build toward general social goals. Such as "Trade Goods" (to increase over all trade profit to that system) or "Luxuries" (to increase over all happiness in that planet) etc… Otherwise factories just sit idle.

- (I am not sure if there are any plans to do so… however) It would be nice to allow us to terraform "segments" of colonized planets through soil treatments and other techs that will increase the "planet quality" 1 plot at a time. Possibly even basing the time required on the current quality of the planet and the terrain segment being terraformed. Higher quality planets will have less space unusable and thus take more time to add a new tile, where as low quality planets have more space unusable and thus require less time to free up a new tile. Etc…

More to come…

P.S.
It is looking very good in spite of what I have posted. Please keep up the good work.

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The main menu is still way to dark… It is sometimes "impossible" to find an anomaly or similarly dark item in the map unless you zoom out to tactical view… Very annoying.

Have you tried adjusting the brightness from under the video options?

Still no way to "hotkey" out of a menu screen to the main map… Setting the ESC key as the default "EXIT" key will help a lot.

Which menu screens are you referring to? Like the planet window?

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- Still no way to determine what ship is "auto-piloting" to what spot on the main map… This can be extremely frustrating when you have multiple ships heading to the same general vicinity.

The ship context window will list the destination of a ship on autopilot.

Still no way to select a ship to see its condition, without automatically canceling its previous orders! (most frustrating with autopilot!)

Selecting a ship doesn't cancel auto-pilot orders.

- The next turn button disappearing has gotten worse for me in (.21[b].003) then in (.20). I also noticed that when the next turn button disappears, I can no longer "ALT+TAB" to desktop. And Task Manager shows the game as ‘not responding"

Does hitting the find button or clicking on your ships that are on autopilot break it out of being stuck?

- The Military – Social – Research sliders in the empire screen only work properly when "dragging" the actual indicator. If I try to click on the incremental arrows the thing goes bonkers

This should be better in the next update.

This is a planned feature.

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