triangles vs descriptive fleeticons

[skdiw]

We know what you mean. But to be clear, you are talking about fleet strength not size--a rather big difference and will cause trouble latter on if we misunderstood.

[miu]

We know what you mean. But to be clear, you are talking about fleet strength not size--a rather big difference and will cause trouble latter on if we misunderstood.

I think he means size, as amount of ships included in that fleet. At least for now as there is not yet a way to calculate strength of the fleet. I like it growing exponentially too, if we do it 4-based, it would be go like:
1-4, 5-16, 17-64, 65-256, 257+ . Anyway, when playable versions become available we will tune these to fit the gameplay by feedback.

.Miu

[skdiw]

So If I built a swarm of cheap fighters w/o weaponry it would have 5 dots. And if I built 1 Death Star armed to the teeth it would get 1 dot? What is the purpose of dots again? In the meantime you can just do fighter = 1 strength point, 1 corvette = 2 points, frigate = 4, battlecruiser = 8...change the numbers latter. Put dots on planets to indicate planetary defense capability.

I been in project management and from my experiences, it is better to do a good first run through rather than changing it latter on. A LOT of things goes wrong and a lot of excuses if it is defered. Just my suggestion to get things passed and go back only if it is necessary.

[miu]

Yes, you're right, that kind of power calculation model does work better and would be simple enough. It doesnt take in count technological differences, but the misreadings caused by this are mostly quite minor. And I know about implementing things well on first run, but as I dont know if different size classes of ships are in 0.1, my proposition is for the size-based pointing for now. If the size variations are in 0.1, of course that strenght model is better.
And yes, putting somekind of indication of planet's defensive capasity next to it's view in side panel is a good idea. Best place to do it is horisontal dotting next to planet's name. And as there is more space available, other symbols than plain dot's will look better.
.Miu

[Impaler]

I agree with you impaler.
When player selects race, he/she can choose flagpicture, color and starship style. Beforehand designed races have specified values on these ready, but player can change them if he/she wants.

[Tyreth]

I agree with you impaler.

Impaler agrees with himself? Reassuring, but also confusing

Wouldn't want you to disagree with yourself.

[miu]

My mistake. I'm very sorry Impaler. I must be very tired, better go to sleep for tonight.
I accidentally clicked edit-delete button when I had to click quote, as they are next to each other, ending destroying Impalers message as I edited it to my reply to him

Impaler suggested that each predefined empire should have their own color by default, but when player starts game he/she can change the color he/she plays.

Miu.

[Impaler]

Oppseeee, I was wondering why I couldn't find my original post and why I was agreeing with myself (I dont as Tyrth was wondering often Disagree with myself).

Let me rewrite the whole thing here for everyone too see.

I was wondering/asking if races would have a predefined Color much like the Factions of SMAC. Predefined colors are an excelent way to accentuate a races characteristics and draw out and emotional response from the player much like a coat of arms (Damn yellow Silicoids!), its a well know fact that every color carries with it an emotional atatchment (black = evil, red = violent, white = pure, Purple = Royalty).

But in SMAC their are always a small number of factions (7) and no custom factions (you can customize the original factions but not change their color). We will obviosly have more then 7 races in FO, I am hoping for someware around 24 "official" race with release though less is more likly. 24 is I think about the limit of distictive colors, anything more and you start to have trouble distingishing the Lavender guys from the Purple guys or the Magenta from the Pink.

Now what about custom made factions? Most people (me included) like to use our favorite color for our side, especialy a custom faction or our favorite pre-designed race. Yet we want to avoid a situation inwhich any 2 factions share the same color. We need a way around this problem whial still alowing customization and a strong color recognition of each race.

I would propose we do it like this. Give each "official" race a color but make it modifiable along with the other atributes of the race. The official races would not share any colors unless the player modifies them. When the player makes a custom race he also chosses their color along with all their other atributes. Their would no longer be a Color selection screen as in Moo1 or 2, color changing would be done through race editing/modifing and it would be the players responsibility too see that duplicate colors are avoided.

Their are 4 senerios that I think are likly. A- Players plays official race with their original colors and all races are easily identified by color. B - The player plays a custom Race with their favorite color and uses a color that no official race uses. C - The player plays a custom race but wants it to use one of the colors that an official race uses, by modifing the official races color to something new they can now have their custom race use that color without confusion. D - They play an official race but wish to switch colors with another official race, by modifing the 2 official race the desired colors are displayed.

By avoiding random color distributions and giving the player maximum control of colorization we preserve the emotional color assosiation to the maximum extent possible.

[Daveybaby]

Just though i'd resurrect this thread to say:

w.r.t. fleet size via the magic of dots : IMO 5 levels of granularity is probably too few. You rpobably could do with at least 10 levels of exponential size increase to go from 1 to 1000+ ships.

Unfortunately 10 dots is too many. Its messy, and the human brain has trouble counting > 7 dots at a glance. Possibly you could use other shapes as well as just dots (or just use different coloured or different sized dots) in order to get more than 5 or 6 levels, in a kind of roman numerals-esque kind of system, e.g:

I = 1 ship
II = 2-4 ships
III = 5-9 ships
V = 10-19
VI = 20-49
VV = 50-99
X = 100-199
XV = 200-399
XX= 400-699
XXV= 700-999
XXX = 1000 and over

Where X, V and I wouldnt actually be displayed as roman numerals, but could be blobs of different shapes, sizes or colours. Alternatively, fill up your 5 dots first in one colour/size, then overfill with another colour/size for size 6-10.

i.e.
*----
**---
***--
****-
*****
X****
XX***
XXX**
XXXX*
XXXXX

Also, i think that you probably *shouldnt* use different shapes of icon to denote different races. Colour is capable of doing this perfectly well. Moo3 did this very very wrong - there werent enough distinct icon shapes available, and so it became impossible to tell at a glance if that insectoid fleet heading towards your home planet was one of your own fleets or that of a homicidal insectoid neighbour - they had to introduce coloured tags to the icons in a patch.

Instead use the icon shape to denote fleet mission (if such a thing exists) i.e. have different shapes for colony fleets, scout fleets, attack fleets defense fleets, system fleets, mothballed fleets etc etc (whatever fits into the game design).

[leiavoia]

for number of ships, i think it would be easier on all fronts to just use ship count numbers. It's a little more stark, but it does give the most information and doesn't need any mental decoding. If you have 18 ships, it's just a colored triangle with "18" inside it.

[utilae]

I agree.

[OrionGuardian]

Two things are important about this: Keep it clean and informative. I think a good way to do this is to do a "Fleet Tooltip". That is, keep the triangles, BUT when your cursor is over a triangle, a picture of the fleet in space would appear, for example, where the planet list is now (at the right of the universe screen when you click a system). And below this picture a small text would appear below giving the details, like 1 Doomstar, 4 Titans, 12 Battleships, etc. That way you could recognize the race instantly and its strenght, without cluttering the galaxy with lots of different icons. You could also make this "detailed fleet picture" static (until you click on a system or another fleet) when a user clicks it. Then maybe give the ships (if they're your own) orders in a drop down menu, instead of a bunch of floating windows as it is now.

[krum]

if the size of the dots represents the size of the fleet rather that the nuber of ships, it would seem more like you're looking at a radar, it seems like more useful information.

[Underling]

if the size of the dots represents the size of the fleet rather that the nuber of ships, it would seem more like you're looking at a radar, it seems like more useful information.

So are you refering to total hull size in a fleet? 12 hull 1 ships(size 12) are a smaller dot than 4 hull 6 (size 24) and a larger dot than 1 hull 8 (size ?

This approach could have some definate benefits.

[utilae]

Perhaps. But, if you have small, medium and large dots and you have not seen the small one yet, only the medium, how do you know it is the medium sized dot. It might be hard to judge based soley on size. After all can you accurately tell the difference between a 10mm dot and a 20mm dot. They could easily be confused in my opinion.