Ideas for UI improvement
 

For such a detailed game like SEIV, a perfect user interface gives a really big boost to the players' experience over a merely good interface. I'd like to start off with a few suggestions here.

1) In the ships-to-fleets assignment window (applies to other windows too), there is no point having the lists jump back to the top after selecting an item. Take my current game for example, I recalled all of my ships back to base and as a result there are 200+ ships orbiting over the same planet. I was trying to reassign them into fleets and I had to pain-stakingly keep scrolling down the ships list because there are 20 or so ships at the top of the list that I wanted to leave alone, and the list kept jumping back to the top every time I selected a ship.

2)There should be a greater control over the transfer/launch/recovery of cargos. The current "all or nothing" system is just not good enough.

3)Introduce some sort of a "condensed view" for fleets. Most of the time I'm more interested in what's in a fleet rather than the full list of ship names.

Re: Ideas for UI improvement
 

My pet pieve: the scroll bars.

Sure the arrows work like scroll bars should, but in normal Windows apps when you click on the gap between the bar and the arrow, it basically does a "Page Down". In SEIV, it does a "go to the spot on the list approximately where you've clicked." Drives me nuts.

Also when clicking and dragging the scroll bar, it does a big jump when you first click and hold instead of just starting to scroll from where it was showing.

Re: Ideas for UI improvement
 

I want a sort option for reports and all info windows.

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Inter arma silent leges

Re: Ideas for UI improvement
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I want a sort option for reports and all info windows.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Just press on the column labels! http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Actually the data could be even better presented if the user can define HOW it is sorted. For example when I want to distribute my empire's population to improve efficiency I would want to sort my planets by races AND THEN sort these again by the number of population. Perhaps MM could think about using choose-boxes like a browser.

Re: Ideas for UI improvement
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Just press on the column labels!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Not all the columns work that way, and some of them have very odd concepts of "sorting". (F5) Colonies/Facilities is the first that comes to mind; I've never been able to figure out what logic it orders the Facilities column by.

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Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Ideas for UI improvement
 

The sorting definitely can be improved, but you can do some powerful things with it in its current condition.

My example is the Colonizable Planets window. I'm always trying to figure out the best planets to send my ships to.
If you want to sort by any column heading, just click on it. The only ones that are weird are the first two columns. The first column is "picture", but when you click on it, it sorts by planet SIZE. The second column sorts by the name, basically grouping by system. There is no way to sort by the planet TYPE (rock, ice, gas) if you have the ability to colonize both.

You CAN do a secondary sort, however. If you want to see the highest-resource planets grouped by atmosphere, click on the Resouce column FIRST, then click on the atmosphere column.

What I'd REALLY like in this window is a way to exclude systems. If I've been through a populated system and then left, I remember what the planets were like but I can't "remember" where the enemy/ally colonies are. Therefore my list is cluttered with "colonizable" planets from enemy/ally systems that I know are really not colonizable.

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-MegaTrain-
Athlon 1.3 GHz running at 1.6 GHz on an iWill KK266

Re: Ideas for UI improvement
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MegaTrain:
What I'd REALLY like in this window is a way to exclude systems. If I've been through a populated system and then left, I remember what the planets were like but I can't "remember" where the enemy/ally colonies are. Therefore my list is cluttered with "colonizable" planets from enemy/ally systems that I know are really not colonizable.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You can do this with the "Systems to avoid" button. You set the systems to avoid in the empire window and turn on the button in the planet window.

Rollo

Re: Ideas for UI improvement
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rollo:
You can do this with the "Systems to avoid" button. You set the systems to avoid in the empire window and turn on the button in the planet window.

Rollo<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Doh, you're right. I though I had tried this, but apparently not. Thanks!