Restrictions Display

[Geoff the Medio]

Regarding beginners, the bigger problem here is its not always obvious why you can't build a building. This is true for multiple restricted buildings, you unlock it, go to build it, and its just not there in the list of producible buildings.

There are tooltips for buildings that indicate why they aren't producible when the list has unavailable buildings shown. There is a reasonable complaint about policy restrictions not being displayed clearly, but I think it's not too difficult to find out why a building is producible...

[wobbly]

but I think it's not too difficult to find out why a building is producible...

Lets test how difficult:

example3.png (232.69 KiB) Viewed 1366 times

and this is assuming you know where to look. Note, I don't have a good suggested solution on how to make this easier.

[Geoff the Medio]

I'm not sure what you're testing. That's a screenshot of the list of unavailable buildings. They have tooltips that aren't visible in the screenshot.

[wobbly]

The screenshot is meant to get across how long the list actually is. I expanded it to full screen and it's still a fraction of the list. Often I don't find the correct entry because I look for 'R'egional Admin instead of 'I'mperial Regional Admin. 'T'ranslator instead of 'N'early universal translator etc. etc. I'm suggesting that, yes there is a way, but, in practice it's actually quite awkward to navigate and use.

[Oberlus]

The list of unavailable buildings is huge.
In the Policies window there are checkboxes to show/hide policies that are unavailable due to

• Unaffordable: Not enough IP to adopt it.
• Locked: The policy is not unlocked (needs to research certain tech or to adopt for one turn once in the game another policy)
• Restricted: The policy is restricted (needs another policy adopted since previous turn, can be de-adopted after getting the desired policy).

Let's have something similar for the unavailable buildings:

• Locked: The building is not unlocked (needs to research certain tech; or, if we get to this, needs to have adopted certain policy for at least one turn once during game).
• Restricted: The building is restricted (there is another building too close, can't be more than one in the empire, can't be more than one per species, requires another building already built or in the queue, requires a policy adopted, etc.).
• Colonies: Colony buildings deserve their own category.

[Ophiuchus]

Let's have something similar for the unavailable buildings:

• Locked: The building is not unlocked (needs to research certain tech; or, if we get to this, needs to have adopted certain policy for at least one turn once during game).
• Restricted: The building is restricted (there is another building too close, can't be more than one in the empire, can't be more than one per species, requires another building already built or in the queue, requires a policy adopted, etc.).
• Colonies: Colony buildings deserve their own category.

I think this is a good idea. For colony buildings we would need something like available here/available in empire/locked.

I guess the locked category will become pretty useless in endgame maybe. (Although one could use it as a "what do i still need to unlock" todo list)

If we switch restrictions to inflated costs, we would also need an "expensive here" category.

[LienRag]

Let's have something similar for the unavailable buildings:

• Locked: The building is not unlocked (needs to research certain tech; or, if we get to this, needs to have adopted certain policy for at least one turn once during game).
• Restricted: The building is restricted (there is another building too close, can't be more than one in the empire, can't be more than one per species, requires another building already built or in the queue, requires a policy adopted, etc.).
• Colonies: Colony buildings deserve their own category.

Something like that is indeed needed.
As Wobbly indicated, it's possible to find why a building is unavailable but it's always a chore, so I basically do it only when absolutely needed, not everytime it would be useful (which is what I would do if it was less of a PITA).