"Smarter" Pop-up notifications

[taset]

Every once in a while I decide to treat the crew really well (spam the Entertain and Round Of Spice buttons) and of course the first mate starts yelling at me some advice. The bad thing is he will constantly give you notifications about the thing he has told you about forever, so by the time I am done treating my crew, I have to wait like a minute or two for the notifications to actually go away.

My suggestion: (I thought of this one as I was typing)

Allow your crew members to give you notifications the first time you are about to do something stupid, but after that maybe just leave an image of them at the top of the screen with a notification indicator on them.
Similar to how the officers appear at the main Urban menu, place their pictures at the top part of the screen, under the "Time" and back button bar, but above the regular menu. Simply have a small images of your three officers, and every time they want to say something put an exclamation mark over them to show that they want to tell you something.

I hope this makes sense to you, what I am envisioning seems pretty cool to me.


Love the game!

[Cory Trese]

Great suggestions, thanks for joining the forum and posting.

We'll keep them in mind when we re-write the notification system.

Right now we're using an Android OS feature provided by Google.

We are using all the features it provides, but it is lacking in several respects.

Queued notifications and a notification log are both things they do not have right now.

If they add them in Android 5.x we may use that or we will end up building our own from scratch.

Either way, we'll keep your suggested requirements in mind.

Thanks,

Cory

[taset]

Jun 11, 2013 17:25:59 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Great suggestions, thanks for joining the forum and posting.

We'll keep them in mind when we re-write the notification system.

Right now we're using an Android OS feature provided by Google.

We are using all the features it provides, but it is lacking in several respects.

Queued notifications and a notification log are both things they do not have right now.

If they add them in Android 5.x we may use that or we will end up building our own from scratch.

Either way, we'll keep your suggested requirements in mind.

Thanks,

Cory

I don't quite know if a "Queue" system would be desirable for their notifications, because reading the same notification 50 or 60 times doesn't seem that appealing. Whatever you end up doing, good luck! And, thanks for the quick response.

[slayernz]

Also, one of the biggest causes of large stacks of notifications is button mashing. If you're treating your crew with spice or entertainment, don't mash the buttons. You're throwing good money after bad.
Usually the benefit of 1x Spice or Entertainment means +1 Morale. However, you can only get your morale up to 7 via this method, so don't waste your money. Your crew won't get happier with you - they'll just have splitting headaches the next day.

[athios]

Not related to spice halls, but I do run into notification stacking problem with long-term blockading/spying. I'd had notifications lasting for so long that they kept coming until after I landed on the planet, sold all my records and refueled, checked rumors and took off again. :-P

Another annoying thing is that the popups actually block the bridge text stating amount of fuel/luxuries remaining (especially with more than 2 wars going on).

[xdesperado]

I've actually had Spy Battle notifications stacked so deep that they not only blocked screens in game, but also blocked my screen when switching to a different app like my web browser or when trying to answer an incoming call.

Having to wait for them to clear in game is a minor annoyance, but having them continue to take up my screen when I switch to another app is a major issue.

[slayernz]

Since the game uses standard Android notifications, there is no easy way for Cory to fix the problem barring creating a brand new in-game notification system. As a workaround, you can turn off those notifications in the Options menu when you are planning on an extended blockade/surveillance campaign. It's a little bit of an extra step, but allows you to not have notification stacks. You always know when you are planning on doing a blockade campaign, and because blockade notifications are also tied to officer notifications, you want to be able to turn them back on once you've finished your activities.

How do you get to the options menu very quickly?
In space, press the "Menu" button, select "More" then "Options".
Scroll down to the "Game Notifications" section and check the "Hide Operation Notifications".

If you're in the middle of a blockade/surveillance activity, simply select "Status", then "Ship" then "Options" and then do as above.

[athios]

Jun 15, 2013 2:41:14 GMT -5 slayernz said:

As a workaround, you can turn off those notifications in the Options menu when you are planning on an extended blockade/surveillance campaign.

I've thought of doing that, with the drawback being that you wouldn't know if the war ended halfway through your operations (of course, you could argue that we wouldn't know anyway since the popups are delayed)

[slayernz]

You're pretty safe doing a blockade or surveillance as even if the conflict ends, it's uncommon to do sustained blockades for more than say 100 - 150 turns, so it could mean you have maybe 40 - 50 turns of no XP and rep benefit. If you do have a ship with a whopping big WF storage, then it is on you to check your conflicts every 30-40 mashes.

Another thing you can do is check the conflicts that appear at the bottom of every encounter. you'll most likely bump into ships of the faction you are blockading or spying on, so you'll see if they are still in a Solar or Spy war.

[xdesperado]

slayernz my Hyper Freighter I outfitted for Spy Battles had 225 cargo plus W-F tank. The move from Gamma-Javat II to nearest Cadar sector where I conducted most of my spying, only took 1 W-F because of low crew and my high pilot and decent intemidate skills.
(This is on insane mind you, a lower difficulty might have been free to move.)
With the advanced sails and omni-stealth encounters were very very rare. 1 or 2 in the 225-230 turns it took me to create a full hold of records.

Making sure the Spy Battles were still going was important to me so didn't want to outright kill the pop ups. But the duration of each was a bit long in my opinion. Perhaps if possible an option to make them shorter in duration would be good.

I know some of the other notifications have an option for making them shorter/quicker.