Whats so bad about the UI????

[AstralWanderer]

I'd add the following:

• Sluggish mouse cursor (especially painful during ship design).
• Hot-keys only exist for top level functions (none show for options within most dialogs) and SEV's "modeless" UI means you can't be sure which open window receives a keypress either (try naming a ship design using T during the tutorial for example).
• Many windows (ship design, colony details, planet/colony lists) would benefit from enlargement with higher screen resolutions.
• The right-click menu can have too many options and appear disorganised as a result - a radial menu could be one way around this.
• Switching between selectable items in a hex (ship, planet, warp point) is cumbersome - including an icon for each item type in place of the "go back" arrow would improve this.
• Presentation generally is wasteful of screen space - the headings (in gold) take up the same space as the data fields whether needed or not.
• The order box at bottom right requires too much mouse travel to use and takes up more space than needed (since many options are unavailable most of the time). Having it instead only appear alongside a selected item with only the valid options would both minimise travel and free up screen space.
• Replace the bars in the Weapons Report (the most useless graphical indicator I have ever come across) with line graphs for damage over distance and accuracy over distance.
• Every component/facility/weapon detail window should include a button linking to previous generations, making it easier to review the benefits gained from research.

Ship design would benefit from special attention:

• Remove the existing component menu (allowing for both ship statistics screens to be displayed instead) and instead have it appear as a floating menu alongside a selected A,I,O space (again minimising mouse travel).
• Add hotkeys for component selection, e.g. E could bring up a listing of available engines with a letter for each item. Assuming there are 26 or fewer possible choices this should work well, but more than 26 could be accommodated with numeric prefixes, 1A..1Z then 2A..2Z, etc.
• Use cursor keys to move around a ship level and changing decks (e.g. Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down to go up/down a deck).
• Add a hotkey for jumping to the next available A, O or I section.
• Add a "condensed" display along the bottom just showing the components added and their number (like that in SEIV) making it easier to review total component usage across all decks.