Last chance for UI improvements ?

[Franky007]

As the game reach the end of it's life cycle, and because i know that i will play this game for years to come,
i think it would be great for the devs to do a last pass at improving the UI.
This would be a great way to end the Distant Worlds saga, and help earn it's place as a 4x classic.

Here are a list of small things that have been nagging me for a long time:

1) Minimap (bottom right of main screen)
Add a shortcut to hide ONLY the minimap (Shortcut T)

2) Expansion Planner
Program should remember the selection you have made on the two scroll lists (middle of screen) when you exit the Planner.
Double-click on a resource on the upper panel should set the filter on the bottom panel with that same resource.

3) Character screen
The mission text is truncated. Should display missions on 3 lines instead of 2 lines.
When selecting Steal Research mission, the target list could be color coded:
Yellow: you have researched 1%-33%
Orange: you have researched 33%-66%
Red: you have researched 66%-99%
Time to complete should be 1 year by default.

4) View Design
When selecting a component, the same component should be selected in the other panel when possible.

5) Ships and Bases
Program should remember the selection made with the top filter when you exit the screen.

6) Empire navigation tool
Because of a lack of filters, many of these lists become unusable.
Please add the following filters:
- Characters: Location (Ship/Base/Planet/All)
- Mining stations : Type (Gas/Mining/All), Range from Capital (2 sectors or less/ 2-5 sectors/ All)
- Military ships : Damage (Damaged/Undamaged/All)
- Potential colonies: Range from Capital (2 sectors or less/ 2-5 sectors/ All)
- Potential Mining stations: Type (Gas/Mining/Asteroids), Range from Capital (2 sectors or less/ 2-5 sectors/ All)
- Potential Research locations: Range from Capital (2 sectors or less/ 2-5 sectors/ All)
- Potential Resort locations: Range from Capital (2 sectors or less/ 2-5 sectors/ All)
- Special locations: Range from Capital (2 sectors or less/ 2-5 sectors/ All)

7) Galaxy map
Program should remember the selection made with the top filter when you exit the screen.

Thanks for listening.

[Spidey]

8) Galaxy Map - Ancient ruins overlay
Should show which of the ruins you have actually investigated and which ruins you know about but haven't investigated yet. As it is, the fastest way to investigate this is by doing full zoom in, then clicking on each of the ruin systems in the galaxy map and clicking on "goto", then clicking on the planet to see if the ruin is investigated. This is doable but slow and extremely boring to sit through.

9) Ship design
It should be possible to select "sort by build order". It should also be possible to modify build order directly instead of having to add and remove components. It you can't modify the build order list directly then make a macro that does the add-remove thing to change build order. Really, anything but forcing the users to click a gazilion times in order to group their directional thrusters with their main thrusters will do.

10) Ship design
Occasionally, when removing components, the selection will change to a different component

11) Ship design
The list of "most recent components" should be modifiable by the user

12) Research screen
It makes no sense that the research queue can only be modified by add and remove. The consequence is that if you want to change the next tech in line, you have to clear out the entire queue, pick the other tech, then redo the entire queue. That is a lot of pointless clicking.

13) Next idle ship - shotcut I
Currently this will also show you defense fleets under AI control as well as deployed resupply ships as well as scout ships with long range scanners on "strategic surveylance" jobs. It would be a lot more useful if one could do something to get these kinds of not-quite-idle ships off the list of idle ships so the list isn't hugely cluttered with 70+ items in it once you reach late game. It should help players find out what they need to do, not challenge their determination to iterate to the end.

14) Galaxy map overlay - explored systems
Really, this one is pointless as it is. There has to be more info. How about whether the entire system is explored or if it is partially explored?

15) Expansion window
It would be so lovely to have a filter to only show objects inside empire territory or empire colonization range. As it is, once you explore half the galaxy, the list is massively cluttered and clicking on each to find out exactly where it is relative to where you want to defend mines and colonies gets old eventually.

16) Expansion window
It would actually be quite nice to see some mention of the race on the various colony ships available. As it is, you have to look it up manually to make sure you're sending Kiadians rather than Atuuks to colonize new continentals. And it does matter somewhat whether or not you get that nifty 5% energy research bonus.

[Siddham]

Excellent suggestions all

Ship Design
As Spidey says...
When adding and removing items from a design the list can suddenly shift or resort itself and the selected item changes
thus you end up removing different items than you mean to
this is very frustrating
I often have to cancel and restart a design multiple times because of this

A ledger similar to that in the Europa Universalis games with appropriate filters & columns etc such as listed by Francoy above
would be a very useful organisational tool
and enjoyable for the player to get an overview of the different aspects of their empire in one place

[Franky007]

Maybe for Empire navigation tool
The 'range from Capital' filter should be replaced by this filter:
Territory (Friendly/Enemy/Neutral/All)

(But that would not work for Pirate!).

[ASHBERY76]

I want a fleet requisition option like in SD1.It is such a pain having to manually make and refill fleets.Takes ages.

[Shark7]

The one thing I'd like in the character screen is the ability to filter characters by type (similar to the ships screen). If you play a long game, you can end up with quite a few characters.

[Franky007]

elliotg, i think we all agree,
we want more filters, and we want these filters to be saved when we exit the screen...
[&o]

[Siddham]

Maybe I missunderstand Shark7, but you can filter characters by type...
I do it all the time

[Spidey]

No, you can sort the characters by type. A filter allows you to only see characters of a given type whereas sorting shows you all characters in a particular order.