Whats so bad about the UI????

[Q]

I disagree Kwok.
Auto complete makes a ship as defined by the AI design instructions. That may be completely different from what I want.
What Atrocities proposed is a completely human design just more efficiently made. I am still convinced that the exact location of a component is rarely relevant for the outcome of a combat therefore to specify the prefered location (inner/outer hull/front/rear/sides) for each component would absolutely be sufficient for most cases IMO.

[Atrocities]

Thank you CK for giving us a more detailed statement. I however have to agree with Q. While it would be great to use the auto design, it lacks the ability to allow the player to add his own components. Components should be added at a single click.

Also the downward scrolling of the component list just seems impracticle and combersome to use. Having more of the components listed across the entire window from left to right with arrors to move it would be a far better system than the current one.

Hell a Tab window or multiple choice Tabs filled with components would be better. Weapons, Combat Support, Required, Engines, Etc would go a long ways to improve the ship design UI. But that isn't going to happen so here we are.

If we must live with what we have, and the auto-design is it, then I guess having a good easy to use editor for setting up mulitple pre-designs would be the next best thing.

This way players can spend some time setting up their own design for use with the auto-design feature of the game.

But still having pre-specified slots for components would be the better choice overall as Q described above.

[Captain Kwok]

Don't get me wrong I wasn't criticizing AT's suggestion and of course it would help - I was just saying that auto complete is sometimes not a bad alternative in the meantime.

[Captain Kwok]

A tab is more-or-less equivalent to the current right-click filter in terms of time. More important is a logical order of components by default!

Moving the mount option to the right side and yes maybe even making it a pop-up instead (I know, I know) might be ok as it would provide space for 5-6 more components.

There are already system functions for spreading out each component that the AI adds, so it's not really too hard to add AT's idea as a double-click functionality.

[eddieballgame]

Why am I always in the minority on these "major issues". Now that I have a good feel of the UI, I have NO complaints. Hell, I liked MOO3's UI (patched, of course).

[Atrocities]

eddieballgame said:
Why am I always in the minority on these "major issues". Now that I have a good feel of the UI, I have NO complaints. Hell, I liked MOO3's UI (patched, of course).

As the minority here you hereby appointed Minority Leader.

[Raapys]

Uhuh, I thought MoO3's UI, at least the major parts of it, was ingenius. I still don't like SE V's UI very much though. SE IV's was just about perfect.

[Atrocities]

OT: Moo3 had a lot of unutilized protential. It was a game that should have been a hell of a lot better than it turned out to be. To "me" the UI had fuzzy fonts, was combersome to use, and lacked intuitiviness. It was more frustrating than useful and that seriously hurt the game IMHO.

I really didn't play much of Moo3 after about a week. While many have grown to love the game and some have even improved it, I haven't played it in years. I really wish I could have gotten to play this game, but honestly I just could not get into it.

I look back on Moo3 with sincere regret. Here was a game that I wanted, that I waited for, and that I shelled out $60.00 buck for. I was really angry at the time both at the developers, and at the publishers. (But more so at the developers.)

I think many game developers learned a very valuable lesson from the whole moo3 incident. (Well not VUG, Tribes Vengence was a solid single player game but had astonishingly cheat riddled multiplayer coupled with insanely bad game play design, two things which were key elements to the games failure.)

Aaron, I am sure, took notice of what happened with MOO3 and has done everything he can do to develope a solid game. SE V, even with its current flaws, is a surprisingly damn good game right out of the box and patched to current version.

As a one man development team, he himself, and Otus, his games have consitantly been addictive time consuming life destroyers.

While I would have gladdly paid another $40.00 or more for a FIXED version of MOO3, or waited another year for it to be released as the game it should have been, I can understand the need to get money coming in after so many years of development.

BOT:

With some work the UI in SE V can be made very functional and intuative. I am sure that as time passes many things will happen with the UI. I look forward to the time that I can start a game of SE V and instinctively use the UI without becoming frustrated and angry. I want to look back at these days and feel good about how the game has improved over time.

I figure that after most of the bugs have been delt with, Aaron will begin to work on the UI. So having a good idea of the improvements that are needed wouldn't hurt their chances of becoming part of the game.

So the more we talk about it, the better the chance that we will come up with some good ideas.