General UI Grievances

[fallen]

@varis - sorry for the confusion! You can always hover over a button to see its functionality

[Klokinator]

Another suggestion, which mostly involves the UI.

You just decided to start a new game. You've made your captain, and now it's time to pick your map.

The problem?

Map creation is very clunky.

Issue 1: The map select screen gives basically no information.



When I look at this screen, tons of issues come to mind. Firstly, on the left side, all we get is a name and the number of quadrants. Once we click on the name, we also get information regarding the density, the map seed, and how many captains are using it.

What don't we get? A little minimap showing at least the positioning of the map nodes. Information on the factions present on the map. Information about which captains are using the map. Etc.

I've made a mockup of my own.



In this mockup, we can see the general shape of the map, along with options to click and see which captains are using it specifically, as well as what factions are on the map.

Yes, I know you can see how many of a faction are present on the map by going to the faction select screen when choosing maps, difficulty, etc, but it's a bit far removed and could stand to be here on the map screen.



My suggestion is merely to make this information visible when browsing the map screen.

...

Next, my thoughts on revising how we create the maps.

The way it works presently is we go to Create New Map...



We choose the quadrant number, density, and also have the option of inputting a map seed.



After that, we name the map and press Save Map to confirm our selection.

The problem is, once we return to the map screen, we have have a few issues. The first is that we have no idea what the map we just generated looks like, forcing us to actually start a captain file, enter the galaxy map screen, and look around.

However, if instead, we could generate a map on this screen here, over and over, and THEN name it, that would be superior.



A side issue caused by the current setup is that, if we have to name the map before we generate it, we can't give it a really fitting name. We should probably have the option to rename maps on the current setup at the minimum, so that way I can at least play a map, see how it overall feels, and give it a name like "Rychart's Domain" if it's heavily biased toward them or whatever.

Side thought: An optional 'description' box the player can fill out with additional information in the right pane would be cool. Just something to summarize their findings on the map.

That's it for this post. Cheers, and sorry if this was suggested already.

[Klokinator]

Random sidenote: Whenever starting a new game, if I have just created a new map, it ALWAYS places my starting sector on the far outside edge.



I'm not sure if this is intentional bias or I am just getting VERY unlucky, as it has happened 10 times in a row. The thing is, if I generate a map, choose a captain to play it, enter the game, exit and create a new captain, that new captain oftentimes starts out much closer to the middle.

Not sure if this is all just rng or there's some selection bias that tries to start the player at the outside edge.

[fallen]

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions! A map viewer disconnected from being in the game is on our long list, low priority.

[Cory Trese]

Aug 18, 2019 23:06:37 GMT -5 Klokinator said:

Random sidenote: Whenever starting a new game, if I have just created a new map, it ALWAYS places my starting sector on the far outside edge.

I'm not sure if this is intentional bias or I am just getting VERY unlucky, as it has happened 10 times in a row. The thing is, if I generate a map, choose a captain to play it, enter the game, exit and create a new captain, that new captain oftentimes starts out much closer to the middle.

Not sure if this is all just rng or there's some selection bias that tries to start the player at the outside edge.

Not intentional, just perception. Big random pools, human mind craves patterns

We already had a great design for the map viewer, if/when we are able to afford it will be awesome.

[Klokinator]

Looking forward to the eventual map creator update! I really thought the map generator always prioritized starting players at the edges. I've probably generated a hundred maps and I can't think of five times where it didn't.

...I should make an account here, lol.

Anyway, had another minor suggestion.



I think it would be nice to hover over any faction flag, on any screen, and see your rep and their details. There are several screens where you can't, like here where this contact offers me missions. I still have trouble telling all of the clans apart, especially since several flags are similar to other flags. I also can't see what my rep is with... Steel Song? I think the flag listed here is Steel Song.

Keep in mind I have 100 hours ingame. It's just hard to remember all the different factions. I think an update to changing some of their colors to be more distinct would help alot. Where them purple flags? Gold? Etc.

That's all for this post!

[fallen]

Thanks for the feedback! We do try to make flags have a tooltip wherever possible. We'll keep working to improve.

[Klokinator]

Very small suggestion, but important.

It would be nice if I could reorder each combat crewman's talents in battle, along with my ship's 30+ talents during ship combat.



Ex: I would put all the HP healing talents together, my attacks together, and my morale healing together as well.

I could be wrong, but it seems like each new talent you learn is slapped on the end of a character's talent bar, so theoretically I could uintrain each character and learn their talents in the order I want them changed... but man, that would be a big pain in the butt.

I'm not even certain how you'd accomplish this. Just let me drag and reposition them in any combat screen?

[daveal]

At least the crew combat icons are color coded, so I can find healing by looking for green, etc. The ship combat ones are just a graphical hodgepodge.  Color coding the ship combat ones would be a good start, and much simpler than storing a potentially different arrangement for each crew.

[Klokinator]

Aug 26, 2019 15:09:27 GMT -5 daveal said:

At least the crew combat icons are color coded, so I can find healing by looking for green, etc. The ship combat ones are just a graphical hodgepodge.  Color coding the ship combat ones would be a good start, and much simpler than storing a potentially different arrangement for each crew.

You bring up a good point, but even there, it's not correct. The crew combat colors aren't even uniform in their color coding. Look at only the screenshot I took above.



The middle skill here is an attack which inflicts poison. Yes, it's a different color from the healing skills to its right and left, but is it all that different? Not especially.

There's a rifle talent, which I forget the name of. It's also green and buffs the rifleman's attack and accuracy on a successful hit. It's nearly the same color as these healing skills.

Then there's a skill like this one, here:



It's an attack skill, but why is it purple? Because it requires Stealth Mode? Shouldn't all Stealth-Mode-Only attacks have the same color, then?

I agree with you, in that the color coding needs to be way more uniform. I hadn't even thought of that originally, but once you mentioned it, I completely agreed. When I have fifty ship talents, I always have to search, search, search to find the talents I want to use. I constantly get the skill which advances 1-2 positions, guaranteed, mixed up with the one that gives +10 move range and +15 escape.


Some uniformity would be awesome. If the devs have a list of every skill icon in the game, along with their effect, I could mock something up to help out on this front.

[daveal]

A mockup sounds cool. All the skill explanations and their icons are on the wiki, although a little bit of extraction would be needed to get them all in one place:

startraders.gamepedia.com/Quartermaster