Whats so bad about the UI????

[Hugh Manatee]

ok first some OT BS:

Ok, this is what we mean when we talk about hostility toward anyone who complains. We were having a calm, rational, objective discussion of issues, and then Hugh chimes in with personal attacks.
How is this justified? Why is this violation of forum rules tolerated?

Reason #1 why I very rarely post in this forum anymore.
This, friends, is what I meant when I said before that I sense a growing hostility here toward those of us who politely voice complaints.

Who did I personally attack? What forum rule did I violate? Lastly I don't have to justify anything because it was meant as a crude joke to make a very valid point.... Seriously get a sense of humor people - Removed by Moderator - just because some forum trolls go blasting off on certain people or topics doesn't mean you have to lose all sense of humor, even if I was a bit crude, and maintain some sort of "Masterpiece Forum" stuck up ettiquet. For someone who "rampantly uses asterisks" I thought at least someone would get it and chuckle....


Now on topic, I say again, there is no reason short of being handicapped or having your "off" hand occupied by some other task such as self gratification or gorging onself while sedentary(some apparently on tea, scones or biscits instead of cheese powder coated, fried nummies), that you shouldn't play or work with both hands on a PC. Take Blender, people who first see it tend to call it one of the most bizar or "cumbersome" UIs ever, unabe to find menus or buttons for stuff unlike milkshape, anim8or, or others, till they get to know that you actually have to use both hands to use it well. Every manual and tutorial starts with "have one hand on the mouse the other on the keyboard", and it works. Stuff gets done faster in blender because of it's keyboard oriented interface. you can get to the stuff with the mouse if you have to, but the keyboard is faster. Once I learned this I started memorizing hotkeys for Civ2, Alpha Centauri, Guild Wars, SEIV, SE3, sim city, and now SEV, even FPS and flight sims. I'm telling you, stuff gets done faster with less movement of the wrists, less wear on the mouse, I don't have to hunt for icons buried in menus, info is imidiate and I can dismiss it imediately it's great. All because I'm willing to lift my left arm and reach about 2 feet in front of me. A printed list of the keys is not hard to come by and if you lack that, open the game windowed and put the list in the background. If you are capable, and don't want to lift your off arm out, then there's no excuse, you're whatever I described above. Stuborn, lazy, a "wanker" or some combo of both. I'm sorry if that's true, but it is, and if you took the good natured, if a little crude, jibe a little rough so be it, no apologies given. Play with both hands, always.

Also, atrocities I'm not sure what info the SEIV interface gave at a glance that wasn't already in a menu that the SEV doesn't, can you elaborate(IIRC they still show what facilities exist on the planets in the main system display right)? I recall the map SEIV being a bit bigger, clearer, sometimes I can't see if there are warps on an unexplored system in SEV's if I don't expand it, and I'm not sure how boarders or colors get marked but otherwise it's still functional.

[Atrocities]

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[Atrocities]

RCCCL said:
I agree with Raapys.

The UI is definately cumbersome, but it seems a minor issue compared to the other problems.

Right now the main issue with the game are the game bugs and thankfully Aaron is hard at work resolving them. Hopefully after the new year, and many if not all of the bugs have been addressed by updates, perhaps then Aaron can begin to address the UI and upgrade/enhance it.

The ship design system is indeed extremely time consuming and impraticle. A much more simplified system must be adopted and implamented.

I suggested a while back that a pre-designated slot system be implamented. This way a player need only click on a component to add it to the design. The game would automatically add that component to a pre-designated slot in the hull. The drag and drop system would still be present and usable, especially if you wanted to move something. But having pre-designated spots for everything would be far more efficient. Armor to the outside, weapons to the out side forward, other components like cargo, supply, and such fill up the center section, with spots in the center for the bridge, crew quarters, and such. Of course make this system completely moddable so players can adapt its use for mods and such.

[Q]

Atrocities said:
I suggested a while back that a pre-designated slot system be implamented. This way a player need only click on a component to add it to the design. The game would automatically add that component to a pre-designated slot in the hull. The drag and drop system would still be present and usable, especially if you wanted to move something. But having pre-designated spots for everything would be far more efficient. Armor to the outside, weapons to the out side forward, other components like cargo, supply, and such fill up the center section, with spots in the center for the bridge, crew quarters, and such. Of course make this system completely moddable so players can adapt its use for mods and such.

Excellent idea!

[AstralWanderer]

Atrocities said:
I suggested a while back that a pre-designated slot system be implamented. This way a player need only click on a component to add it to the design. The game would automatically add that component to a pre-designated slot in the hull. The drag and drop system would still be present and usable, especially if you wanted to move something. But having pre-designated spots for everything would be far more efficient. Armor to the outside, weapons to the out side forward, other components like cargo, supply, and such fill up the center section, with spots in the center for the bridge, crew quarters, and such.

The difficulty here is how you deal with items that could be inner or outer hull (or both) depending on design philosophy (shields, supply/ordnance units, religious totems, sensors). Component distribution between decks needs consideration. And this has to be done for every shipset.

Going OT a little, it would be nice to see component placement given more importance - for instance being able to specify weapon facing (which would in turn determine arc of fire - with special mounts, aka "turrets", capable of increasing this) and for Armour/Outer/Inner placement to vary by deck (top and bottom decks should have more A and O slots to account for their top/bottom facing with the middle deck having more I slots).

[Slick]

I think it is a great idea. For components that can be in multiple locations, priority should be inner to outer, finding the first available space. That way you could design the ship with the most vital components first and ending with least vital components. Sure, you'd still probably have to do some component movement manually, but AT's system would cut out a hellova lot of mouseclicks.

[Captain Kwok]

Auto-complete can work well for this purpose.

[Theonlystd]

The example that leaps off my head. Moving Population to a freighter.

I gotta find the tiny little button in the right hand corner for moving. That screen comes up. Wheres the handy move 1,10,100 from Se4?!??!?! Not there. I have to go down to the bottom and increase the unit count thingy or click 20bajillion times to add 10mil people to the ship. Maybe theres some key i can hold to make me add 10 in a click or something. But thats a step back. In se4 i click on 100 click on the population a couple times and the ships full and rdy to move.

And well things that are just lacking from the whole series. This is the 5th installment y cant i double click on a planet to bring up the que or something? Y do i still have to click on the plant then click on the que button

[Ragnarok-X]

A day ago news regarding the Optimus were released. It will feature only a black/white mode and will cost 1200 $ when it is being released, going down to 1000 $ later.

Anyone ?


Moving pop a pain, yeah.

[Raapys]

In this very off-topic thread I'd like to continue the trend: Doesn't anyone else find it a little strange that we're supposedly transporting millions of people in a smallish cargo ship? And that a recently established colony can pump out huge starships in a matter of 'months'?

Yeah, I know, mods and all. I'm just wondering, where did this idea come from originally? I mean, it's nowhere realistic that a year after we establish a colony on Mars we'll have millions of people there and build dozens of ships a year.

So that leaves the reason that it must have been done for gameplay. Which begs the question: would it really be so bad if the home colony continued to be the main base of operations for the entire game( except troop-occupied homeworlds taken from enemies)? MoO3 deals with this a little better, as it takes quite some time to actually get a colony operational( slow moving population, lots of things has to built on colonies ), and very long to make it production efficient. I wouldn't say it lowers the 'fun' of the game any, though.