There are a bunch of small interface fixes that would make the game so much easier to play and be far less work in programming terms than all the new abilities that we all want so badly.
- Keep the 'place' you are at in a scroll box, like the planets or colonies lists.
- Make [Enter] and [Escape] operate like the [OK] and [Cancel] buttons. This is Windows standard behavior but MM had to write all custom interface for the game for some unguessable reason.
- Make it possible to jettison a SELECTED amount of a given cargo type, rather than all or none of each type.
Oh, and let's add the ability to SCRAP stuff in a planet's cargo area so we can recover something from our obsolete WPs and troops.
- Add a "global weapons toggle" to the combat interface so you can turn ALL of the usable weapons of a ship/base/satgroup/ftrgroup on or off at once instead of having to scroll through them and click each one. This is a HUGE pain with large sat and ftr Groups!
- Seperate options for automatic movement and automatic targetting in combat so you can have one when you don't need both under manual control. This would save some work in combat, too.
- Allow formations to be turned ON or OFF without losing the settings. So, you could de-activate formations and fight a melee with a group of ships without getting your maneuvers screwed by automatic movement, then reactivate and move your ships to engage another group of ships or bases or a planet or whatever.
- Increased range for all weapons would be cool since mounts can make large base/WP weapons nearly as long ranged as missiles. Could a second row of 'boxes" be added and max range for seekers extended to 40? This might require major changes to combat code. But seekers are much less valuable now with direct-fire weapons able to approach their range.
Oh, at present there's a bug with the 20 range anyway. If you fill a weapon's reange out to 20 the Last box will be blank. I'm not able to figure out if this is a damage bug (the range 20 damage doesn't occur) or just a display bug. I only use the full range 20 with Plasma Missiles. There's a general problem with seekers at max range, too, and this confuses the issue. Guess I'll have to make a range 20 direct-fire weapon and test it.
Anyway, I'd expand the size of the combat box again if possible. Probably double the width/height (4 times the area) and then double weapon ranges as well. Then it would be much harder for "hit and run" tactics to be used with the proportion of ship speed to weapon range changed. You'd have to play in a much more 'naval' fashion, really committing your ships to take fire if you want to get into a fight.