Colony build queue information design philosophy question

[Calin]

Hi guys,

Long time lurker, first time poster. First off, I'm a huge 4x fan (PC mainly) and I love how many original twists on standard 4x mechanics this game has. I was reading a thread about the unpredictable nature of population arrival from whatever canonical source y'all have. I don't like the lack of control over predicting population increase using turns as a unit of time, but I get why that's not a feature, and I'm ok with it after further review. It's tense, and makes the game feel like an organic empire. Politics are amazing, kudos on a huge tech tree that doesn't feel tacked on.

However...and again, long time 4x player. I don't understand your philosophy on colony upgrade information display, which is why I finally made an account to ask the question directly. I think I'm one of the last posts on the touch arcade forums, and figured I'd try here.

As it stands, touching/clicking the colony display button pops up a nice list, which for some reason only says how many things a colony is building. Not what, or how many turns are left. In order to access that info, I need to touch/click

1. a specific planet

2. the projects button

3. the "all" button

This is literally my ONLY frustration with this game. 3 tacticle interface actions, where most 4x games have only 1. I'm not a coder, I'm a lawyer, so I honestly don't know how much work this would take, but I've been playing 4x games for almost 25 years now, and I'm incredibly curious as to why this is the way you guys chose to display this information.

Please don't get me wrong, this is a criticism, but one I'm more intrested in learning why the feature is as it is, not so much a request to change it. I know there's been a lot of discussion on here on this issue, but I've never read a post that speaks to why you chose this design philosophy, or if it's possible to change it.

Love your games, insanely stoked about Star Traders RPG 2, it looks fantastic. Thanks a lot.

Calin

[fallen]

Calin - thank you for the feedback. Fixing this has been on our list for a long time, so thanks for pushing it back up in priority again.

I hope you'll leave a review on Steam! We sure need 'em!

[Calin]

fallen,

Thanks for the speedy answer, came in while I was setting up the notification settings. I'm playing on the ipad currently and I try to leave reviews for that, so I'm going to do that now for the new version. I'll keep reading your forums here and try to throw my two cents in whenever I can, y'all got a good community here. Happy to hear this isn't something that's gonna remain as is. By the way, also wanted to say I'm impressed by how fair you and your brother's IAPs are. I'm from the DOS era where game demos were a thing, and I bought this game specifically because I could try it. After that, y'all got my money on every other cosmetic and content add on.

[fallen]

@calin - thank you very much for the support. I am glad that you enjoy our "responsible IAP" standards - we try to set a high bar. We love playing our games, so we try not to do anything that we would not enjoy if we picked up someone else's game.

Keep tossing in suggestions, we're very active developer's so you are likely to see your fixes in action.

Thanks for the reviews on iOS! I mentioned a Steam review because you mentioned you play 4X on PC, and I assumed that meant you were playing 4X on PC. Either way - thanks for sharing your feedback, it is one of the best ways to get the word out!

[anrdaemon]

I think we've touched it in the startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/11218/colony-summary-screen-build-improvement and startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/11224/colony-summary-screen-build-queue
Feel free to add whatever we've missed!