I actually code and would love to help out, however, unless someone wants to grant me an honorary accredited BS in CS, the time to pitch in is likely 2.5 years away.
60 hour work weeks, and being a full-time student makes this programmer a dull boy. And pushing 50 doesn't help any of it! LOLSo my biggest issue so far, silly I know, but it bothers me, is that within 10 turns on my first game, my population dropped to zero, and I didn't know the game well enough yet to figure out how to recover. Nor could I understand what happened. So I started a new game. Somewhere after getting about 5 systems, happened again. Turns out "Evacuation System" wasn't a building like I thought, but something you initiate by building it. I mean I get it now, duh! I had supposed it was something you built that let you do the thing later if needed. Now I've played enough to realize unlike the original game there is no planet screen where you could go and make a building do something. So I get why it is the way it is. But the name is misleading. Evacuation System seems like a building, not an action. I think it should be renamed Evacuate System, and the Pedia article (and tooltip) need to clearly state what it does. WITHOUT having to then go to the Evacuation Plan Pedia article. Not even sure why that is split out like that, it should ALL be under the Evacuation System article.
So, in short, I think Evacuation System needs to be renamed to Evacuate System to be more clear about what it's doing, and the tooltip reworked to make it clear you're doing a thing, not building something for later. And condense the info from the two Pedia articles into one.
Why? Because I almost quit the game and would never have come back, over something that is available on your first turn and isn't explained well. Especially if you haven't played the game really. I didn't really understand the Pedia yet and was going 100% from the tooltip. I even came here and did google searches to try and figure this out, but only ran into old post about food.
If nothing else, just a few words to the end of the existing tooltip about if there is no suitable planet to move to, the population just dies. So if it happens, at least you have a way to figure out where you went wrong. Took me longer than I care to admit to realize I had to read a 2nd Pedia page to understand what this one thing did.
To you all, it likely seems silly and basic. But trust me, to someone new it doesn't make any sense. And I'd bet I'm not the only one who's done it. Just the only one who's bothered to post about it. And I only bothered because I figured it out and wanted to add a suggestion. Many people wouldn't for a free game they just started playing!
Or maybe I'm just an idiot.
