[xevioso]

Here are some specific must-haves. These are things that I think would really work for the game. They would not be too hard to implement and would increase the realism and usability of the game tremendously.

1) Movable and closable windows. This is absolutly the most important thing from a UI perspective. I have two monitors and I would love to be able to move windows and keep them open on my second monitor. But even for the vast majority of people, making windows movable and maybe resizable would be very helpful. That way you could have more than one window open at a time.

2) Rotating planets. Please make the window in which the planet that you are looking at be much larger, and ideally the planet would rotate. This is not hard from a coding standpoint; many games do this. This would would make the game very realistic, expecially since much of the game focuses on planetary resources.

3) More random planetary information. I like the idea of viewing a planet and having a host of information available about the planet available, even if 90% of it is not useful from a gaming perspective. It makes it very realistic. There is a current trend among graphic designers to put lots of random, meaningless technical information in a design; this makes it look more realistic in some people's minds. I would love to see weather, climate, flora and fauna types, magnetic field strength, day and year info, tilt, albedo, % water or land, mineral makeup, density, and so on, even if the ONLY thing useful is what we already currently use. This is random information that could be put into a txt field...and if displayed properly, would be very very cool, and make each planet more discernable from its neighbors. It would also be nice to do this for stars or other astronomical objects.

4) More customizable useless information. I would like to be able to name generals and individual ministers, and also preferably star systems. If I capture a system, why the heck can't I rename it? More importantly, I would love to be able to name a general of a fleet, or a captain of a ship. This makes me grow more attached to a particular ship or fleet, and makes me care more about what happens to General XXX of task force XXX rather than merely task force Alpha Beta or whatever. In the best world, you could transfer individual generals (say, only one general per fleet) across fleets, giving them better attack capabilities. As it stands now, the game is very impersonal. That is normally fine, but adding SOME SMALL element of individual personalization to the game other than the name of the emperor would make the game that much cooler. Even though most people would not use these features, making them available for the micromanagers among us would be great. What would Star Wars be without Vader and Luke?

5) If I could have anything other than the detachable windows, it would be a true 3d environment from a galactic perspective. I don't mean just 3d ships and such, but a 3d galactic environment with a freaking Z axis. Maybe they are planning on doing this for the game already, so slap me already, but if not, PLEASE look at Homeworld and how they did their Z axis...it's very cool. I know other games do this as well. This would be great.

Well, maybe these items have already been said. Sorry for the long post. I hope I'm taken seriously.

--Jeremy