A wishlist for SEIV 1.42

[Neo]

I just got this game about two weeks ago and I have been keeping a running list of ideas and suggestions and wishes:

1. When I give a ship a series of orders to travel through a string of systems, each time I click on something in a sytem the ship currently is not in, but is going to be, the Main Window jumps back to the sytem where the ship is, and then I need to manually click back to the sytem in the galaxy window to give the ship the next order in that system. I think it would be better if the window stayed on the system where I clicked. Also a possible enhancement to this would be to somehow add a live view of the orders list to the Ship Report window as you are giving them, with the ability to delete them in reverse order in case you got the Last order wrong (instead of having to delete the whole orders list and start over). This could be another tab in this window along with Detail, Comps, Cargo, and Ability. (Maybe this is already possible and I am just doing it wrong?)

2. In the System section of the Main Window, for planets with moons, the only way to see if any of the moons are inhabited is to click on each planet and see the moons displayed in the Objects list. A possible enhancement would be to slightly modify the use of the little "total planets and moons" number (I've never seen over 3) to the lower left of the planets with moons as so:
a. Instead of the number indicating the total planets AND moons, just use the number to indicate the number of moons. After all the main planet is obvious because it is displayed in the Main Window.
b. Then to indicate whether the moons are colonized, color the "moons" number the race color of the race that inhabits the moons
c. If there are two moons, and if they are inhabited by two different races, or if only one of the two are inhabited, then have two different color "1"s instead of the single "2" to show this (uninhabited color can still be white).
d. I've never seen more than two moons for a single planet, but if this is possible, this can still work for any number of moons.

3. When attacking a planet, and all the defensive ships and facilities on and around the planet have been destroyed, and you just want to blockade it, or you plan to invade it later but you didn't bring any troops along yet, it would be nice to have an order added to the Tactical Combat Window - Orders list called "Blockade" that would immediately end the combat without having to keep clicking the End Turn button until the 30 turns have elapsed. Along with this it would be nice to have the Blockade option immedately upon moving your ships into the grid with the planet (and it's moons, if any) in it in the Main System window, without having to go to the combat window at all, if there are no defensive ships or facilities there in the first place.

4. I think a little color coding could add some useful enhancements to the lists in the Colonies Window:
a. In the General list, you could color code:
i. Atmospheres - None:White, Hydrogen:Orange (or red), CO2:Green (or yellow), Methane:Purple, Oxygen:Blue, the same way the atmospheres tend to color the planets.
ii. The Conditions and the Mood could both be color coded in a Red-Yellow-Green bad to good progression to indicate that you might want to do something to improve them.
iii. The Population could be color coded to indicate whether the planet is at it max population (which is useful for deciding to transport some population off elsewhere to allow for more population growth). Or this might be better used on the Races list (see below)
b. in the Facilities list you could color code:
i. The Num could be color coded three ways: Green if the Num is less than the Max and less than the allowed number of facilities (or none) are currently in the construction queue (to indicate you need to add some to the queue); white (or maybe yellow) if Num is less than Max but the construction queue currently contains all the rest of the allowed facilities; or red if the Num equals or is greater than Max (to indicate you need to scrap some if you want to build).
c. The Cargo list you could color code:
i. The Space could be colored green if there is space available and no cargo is under construction, white (or yellow) if there is space available and cargo is under construction, or red if there is no space available
ii. Cargo items could be colored red if they are obsolete (so you might want to replace them), and some other color if they are captured items from another race.
d. In the Construction list you could color code:
i. For Time Remaining you could color the Never red, to make it easier to see (although you already can sort for it if you remember to).
e. The Races list as it exists is not very useful as far as I can tell. What would make it useful I think is to make it help you decide what populations to move to native atmospheres. So I would add an indicator of whether it the colony is domed or not here (like it is on the Status list) and also a column for the Max population.

5. You could also color code the different categories of items in the Turn Log (in addition to the filter buttons that are already there)

6. Make all lists stay at the place where you left them when you close the window and open them back up again, so you don't need to continually hunt for where you left off when you going down the list. Then add a double up arrow and a double down arrow to instantly go to the top or bottom of the list.

7. Make all list columns alternate sort ascending and sort descending on successive clicks (I think I already saw someone post this one before).

8. Have some way to save and load ship designs, according to what components you have researched. I always have basicly the same designs when I play the same races again, so this would save me from having to create the same ship designs over and over again. (Is this already possible?)

9. Have some way to manually switch the CD music track (that one dissonant chord song gets annoying during long turns, but I don't want to turn the music off altogether) or maybe even replace them with my own mp3s.

10. Have a fleet formation editor screen, where you can just drag and drop ships already in a fleet. The text file method is a little cryptic for me, and it doesn't allow you to position exact ships exactly how you want. I'm not sure how you could save formations and share them with this though. Could use a little more thought.

11. When entering combat, have unarmed fleet members a positioned a little bit apart from or behind the armed ones that are actually going to be doing the fighting, so I don't have to spend all that time untangling them so my formation can actually move.

That's all I can think of right now.