Fixing the Horrid UI

[Suicide Junkie]

...a floating window which would appear alongside a selected unit which would only contain applicable buttons (reducing wasted space)
Do you know about the right click order menu? Select a unit, then right click (on the destination in case of remote actions) and select from the menu.

Also, try turning off the alpha sort (and use KwokStock if you aren't already). Instead of "Ion engines" being completely separate from "Quantum", things will look much more like a hardware catalog, and you won't even need the filters.

[AstralWanderer]

Suicide Junkie said:
Do you know about the right click order menu? Select a unit, then right click (on the destination in case of remote actions) and select from the menu.

Yes I do know - and as you are doubtless aware this menu is very large since it includes options relating to the system and planet (if applicable). It should be possible to left-click on a unit, move the cursor no more than 1-2cm onscreen before left-clicking on an order before selecting a destination (if necessary).

A radial menu (as used in Neverwinter Nights) would make a good choice here since (cascading) submenus could be handled quite easily.

[Suicide Junkie]

That there would be quite nice.
Changing the right click menu to a radial thing. Cargo orders to the right, move/attack at the top. Reports on the left. Stellar manip, retrofits, and miscellaneous at the bottom.

[Yimboli]

AstralWanderer said:
A radial menu (as used in Neverwinter Nights) would make a good choice here since (cascading) submenus could be handled quite easily.

Quite nice indeed. It seems too high of an expectation for a post-release game. My bet is we never see a design change to the right click menu. Plus I think we have bigger fish to fry.

[Wenin]

Atrocities said:
Here is an idea for improving at a glance the systems you have control over. Take a look at the attached image to see what I mean.

I noticed a condense check mark box at the bottom of the transfer screen to group items together.

[Baal]

Something that keeps me using shortcuts instead of the right click menu is that the right click menu is a mile long. Maybe have an options menu that lets you select the options you want to see in the right click menu a weed out the ones that you rarely/never use. This would make right clicking useful for me.

[bearclaw]

Ship Design screen not showing enough at a time
I have my screen set at a high resolution but still I can only see 5-6 components at a time. And the Mounts barely have enough space for all the options. What about mount-heavy mods? You'd have to scroll through a large list to find what you are looking for. And the right hand side of the ship design screen is difficult too. Instead of having such large 'buttons' for the items of the right, I think making them much smaller and taking up a much more compact space would allow for more room on the left hand side.

Perhaps if the right-hand side could be made smaller enough, then the mounts/components section could be in 2 rows, showing twice as many components/mounts.

The ship layout/component placement: I love that. Even though it only has a limited effect on your ships in the game (ie: decks don't matter), I love being able to design them as if they do. Engineering Deck, Command Deck, Armoury Deck.

[Suicide Junkie]

The design window is independent of screen rez. And the slot layout system is inherently bulky.
It would be nice to get more list space on high rez settings.

[dmm]

Most-needed UI fixes, IMHO, in order of importance:

#1: show what a planet is building in the info that first comes up when you click on a planet. Instead of "click, q, Esc" or "click, right-click, Esc" you should just have "click."

#2: a hotkey for facilities.

#3: a hotkey for cargo (planets or ships)

[Actually, I much prefer SEIV's 2D top-down UI (although I do like SEV's hexagon grid better than SEIV's square grid). I'd make THAT my #1, except I know that ain't gonna happen.]

[dmm]

#4: a way to dismiss Log items as you deal with them (along with a filter to show only non-dismissed items).