Three small UI suggestions:

(1) The game already keeps track of the state of the additional game options (tech trading, minors, blind exploration), but not of the chosen victory conditions (they're always checked on game setup). It should keep track of these as well.

(2) When giving a name to a ship model while or after designing it, auto-erase the "new model" string that's in the box.

(3) When changing the name of a ship, planet or starbase on the other hand, don't auto-erase the old name because often enough it'll be a simple change or addition.

Thanks for reading and considering!

Thank you. The auto focus is so anoying if you are trying to do more than one thing or fight a war on many fronts.

Something else that I would like to see if that when you zoom to a colony from the colony management list. Is let me use the ESC key to return to the list and not to the options menu

One thing that is almost unusable in gigantic galaxies is the minimap. It would be nice to have an option to autocenter it to where the camera is. Please add this, as I have to zoom out and zoom in every time I want to center the minimap...

One thing that is almost unusable in gigantic galaxies is the minimap. It would be nice to have an option to autocenter it to where the camera is. Please add this, as I have to zoom out and zoom in every time I want to center the minimap...

I agree that the minimap is difficult to use in large maps, but there's one thing you can do: You can drag and drop the minimap location while pressing the middle mouse button (or the mouse wheel). This usually even fixes the influence zones that are often missing on the map when it is zoomed in.

Yes, please make the minimap a little less annoying.

All the other UI-changes sound great.

(2) When giving a name to a ship model while or after designing it, auto-erase the "new model" string that's in the box. (3) When changing the name of a ship, planet or starbase on the other hand, don't auto-erase the old name because often enough it'll be a simple change or addition.

If you highlight the "new model" string before typing it will autoerase - that way you can just position the cursor if you just want to add to the exisiting title.

On the main topic, I appreciate the attention on the UI. Since I generally play on the gigantic maps, I find the GC2 minimap too mini to be tactically useful, so the main map ends up doing double duty. I generally keep the main map zoomed all or most of the way out, and only zoom in when I need to see the details. Hence, everything is in icon form, and no planet names are visible. Aside from the issue of anomalies mentioned earlier, I also find it difficult to navigate to specific planets, or more precisely, to remember where each planet/star is. In GC1 I handled this by adding the sector coordinates to the various stars' names as I colonized them and then used the galaxy map to move the focus. In GC2, it's a PITA to have to count up/across when you want to name &/or find anything. How about displaying the co-ordinate system so things can be located without hunting?

I do admit that I haven't loaded the latest versions yet (just came off an outage - 2 months of working like you guys did getting ready for release )so if you have already addressed this, thanks.

setting the rally point from colony list is cool! A few more things to maybe make rally points easier/more useful:

a way of choosing rally points by type of ship being produced, so maybe check boxes for military, troop and constructors in governor screen so that any rally point changes apply only to planets making that type of ship

or, more options in the type of rally point dialogue, so you would have military rally points (with the usual standard\fleet\auto attack suboptions), constructor rally points, and troop rally points

if you have a few different rally points, a button to set all planets to nearest rally point.

with these, you could do something like this:

create a few military rally points near areas of war, with nearby troop rally points (but maybe a bit deeper in your territory), and create a few constuctor rallypoints on the starbases you are wanting to upgrade.

press a button on the governor screen to have planets producing the relevent type of ship set their rally points to the nearest rally point of the corresponding type.

dont know if this would require a lot of work, but It would save me for one lots of hassle gathering my forces and upgrading my starbases! and if it could update rally points automatically when you change the type of ship a planet is producing that would be even better!

hope this makes some sense

Mark

I have mentioned a couple of times that it would be nice if in the SHIPYARD you could select the part on the ship and it would jump to it in the select list at the left. For those items that are 1 used only, have it show up as greyed in the list, but highlighted. This would also help if someone wanted to place more of that item, wouldn't have to scroll for it.

Tech select screen a ZOOM for the tech tree window. There are times when it is a royal pain trying to decide which item to build. The tree does not need to be quite that large to be usefull.

Add the ability to add and/or change keystrokes for many of the functions. I personally would love to be able to use the "ALT" key with mouse click /scroll to ROTATE any of the 3D screens (maps and shipyard). Would beat the hell out of the "middle key cluedge" on my trackball that I am forced to currently use.

Improvements in the UI that I'd like to see would be:

--A way to see who has access to what trade goods, as well as who built what galactic achievements and super projects

--An option to disable the confirmation prompt for building starbase modules that have a monetary cost

--An auto-construct option that automatically sends a transport to the nearest starbase with available modules

--The option in a planet's ship construction screen to automatically set completed ships to any combination of movement automations, which would be great for things like building constructors that are already set to the previous suggestion

--A building queue for each planet's ship construction screen... Kind of a tall order, I guess, but sweet baby Jesus on a stick I'd love you guys for it. And if there already is one, and it's simply eluded me somehow, then I already love you guys for it, and I'm retarded.

--The option to remove a ship component and all of the components attached to it (with confirmation, of course) in the ship designer

--Not resetting the ship designer's component list back to the start when you remove an item. It's annoying when I decide I really didn't want all those lights afterall, and have to click my way to the end of the list ten times.

--What'd be even better than the previous suggestion would be the ability to create component "groups" in the components list. You could then "expand" or "collapse" the groups to view or hide their components from the list; this not only allows for the component list to be shrunken down to more manageable sizes, but also keeps people sane by providing an order to the madness. The groups don't even have to be persistent (so no changes in the ship files), or affect how any of the components are manipulated (though adding in that kind of functionality would be great for a later update or expansion pack).

--I'd like an option to specify one ship design as the primary upgrade of another ship. The reason for having this is so that, when I obselete the core constructor, all the planets that were currently building constructors will automatically switch production to the improved design I made, instead of simply going idle (and wasting God-knows-how-much production). It's also not much fun to have to manually assign the new design to be built in each colony, especially when you're playing a gigantic map and have over 100 planets that were building the now-obselete design.

--In the ship construction and shipyard screens, it'd be nice if you could mouse over a ship and get a tooltip with the appropriate ship's full description.

--Lastly, I'd like to be able to access a list of all the ship designs I have made obselete, and restore any of the listed ship designs; such a feature would be a godsend when you accidentally obselete the wrong ship design.

Improvements in the UI that I'd like to see would be:

--A way to see who has access to what trade goods, as well as who built what galactic achievements and super projects

--An option to disable the confirmation prompt for building starbase modules that have a monetary cost

--An auto-construct option that automatically sends a transport to the nearest starbase with available modules

--The option in a planet's ship construction screen to automatically set completed ships to any combination of movement automations, which would be great for things like building constructors that are already set to the previous suggestion

--A building queue for each planet's ship construction screen... Kind of a tall order, I guess, but sweet baby Jesus on a stick I'd love you guys for it. And if there already is one, and it's simply eluded me somehow, then I already love you guys for it, and I'm retarded.

--The option to remove a ship component and all of the components attached to it (with confirmation, of course) in the ship designer

--Not resetting the ship designer's component list back to the start when you remove an item. It's annoying when I decide I really didn't want all those lights afterall, and have to click my way to the end of the list ten times.

--What'd be even better than the previous suggestion would be the ability to create component "groups" in the components list. You could then "expand" or "collapse" the groups to view or hide their components from the list; this not only allows for the component list to be shrunken down to more manageable sizes, but also keeps people sane by providing an order to the madness. The groups don't even have to be persistent (so no changes in the ship files), or affect how any of the components are manipulated (though adding in that kind of functionality would be great for a later update or expansion pack).

--I'd like an option to specify one ship design as the primary upgrade of another ship. The reason for having this is so that, when I obselete the core constructor, all the planets that were currently building constructors will automatically switch production to the improved design I made, instead of simply going idle (and wasting God-knows-how-much production). It's also not much fun to have to manually assign the new design to be built in each colony, especially when you're playing a gigantic map and have over 100 planets that were building the now-obselete design.

--In the ship construction and shipyard screens, it'd be nice if you could mouse over a ship and get a tooltip with the appropriate ship's full description.

--Lastly, I'd like to be able to access a list of all the ship designs I have made obselete, and restore any of the listed ship designs; such a feature would be a godsend when you accidentally obselete the wrong ship design.

The government screen still says that different governments gives a production and research bonus when they in fact don't. Should be a quick thing to fix.

--I'd like an option to specify one ship design as the primary upgrade of another ship. The reason for having this is so that, when I obselete the core constructor, all the planets that were currently building constructors will automatically switch production to the improved design I made, instead of simply going idle (and wasting God-knows-how-much production). It's also not much fun to have to manually assign the new design to be built in each colony, especially when you're playing a gigantic map and have over 100 planets that were building the now-obselete design.

When I update a design I am currrently building on my planets , my new updated design does show up instantly in the planet screen list.

It might do this only if I keep the ship name the same, I can't remember. Or maybe you have to obsolete the pld design, I can't remember.

But I think it is whenever you hit update the design after you have a old design selected.

It does not happen when you create a new ship.

using 1.11.029

A very small suggestion about land battles, could you make the laser and other sounds bit quieter? I don´t know how it is possible, but I tend to play with quite quiet sounds and the land battles are still booming loud. Weird

Amen. Land battles very loud. Please allow slider or tone down. Please. Pretty Please.....I'm begging ya......

Or just tell what the sounds are so I can find them or kill them or change them..

The government screen still says that different governments gives a production and research bonus when they in fact don't. Should be a quick thing to fix.

"...that's a clear glitch in the text display. As the designer and the one who implemented the code, I can assure you that the text description should not say that. I will see that that is changed." -- Avatar Frogboy (Stardock) Monday, March 06, 2006 2:07 AM

Yes that is a small thing but misleading anyways. Could this be fixed for 1.2 pretty please