feedback on 0.4.4 r8050

[Revlot]

EDIT:
You want it clearer than mud, eh? Ok. A minor re-write.

I am currently trying to break this stable build in as many ways possible so that I can understand better exactly how the game engine works. So in the future I will be able to spot truly unique bugs when I encounter them. And it's fun too, something else to do with the game other than win. I am adding to this top post as I encounter new-to-me things, so do check back later if this thread interests you.

As it is currently. Starting a single player game I am unable to select the AI species I play against, in a multi-player game I can select the race of the AI. And the drop down galaxy parameter settings for multiplayer, galaxy age, size, shape, ect, all have a left-right slider on the bottom of the pull-down menu when it is not needed. Happens in multiple new game setups. The single player set-up remembers my last choices and the multi-player setup has to be re-chosen every time.

Random seed values can be negative, or at least using the '-' key before the seed alters the value, and it is possible to generate game with not even a '0' in the field - just a blank space. Can use any 'Real Word' as a seed.

The first AI message in the message window on turn one;
AI_1: Cabal Empire (beginner)
"Ave, Human, morituri te salutant!"

On turn one I can abandon my homeworld and scrap all my ships and have nothing but an outpost on my homeworld?

If AI doesn't know where I am at the start, then how can I communicate with it to make peace on turn 1? Do I know that somewhere off in that distance is another race? Why don't I see a highly translucent color blob in the direction of their space? 'Somewhere over here there be monsters'.

It's great that supply lines turn purple when the queue needs attention, would be better if the effect centered around systems needing attention only, perhaps one color for empty, another for full queue, and another for eminent idleness. I play the color green, so I guess that makes my supply lines turn purple, noticed in a screen-shot of somebody playing yellow and their supply-lines turned blue.

The turn button should change to red for the last player making their move to let them know that everybody else has done their turn and are waiting on them to finish.

On turn #1 there are two windows open, messages and empires. The messages window should have tabs for; game-system info, player info, and all the info that it currently gives. So that I can see just my diplomacy and not all the system maintenance messages.

To send a ship somewhere I have to left-click to select the ship I want, then left-click to select a system to look at, and then right-click to select the destination system. Instead of right-clicking on the destination, it would be nice to be able to left-click on a planet in the planets list of a system to send a colony/outpost ship directly to land on that planet/asteroids.

I made two basic large hull designs with 3 ground troop pods each. One with a colony pod, and the other with an outpost as the core module. Only 1 ground troop deploys on planet when the colony/outpost is made. Where did the other two ground troops go? Did they die? Did they get shipped home?

When selecting a tech from the tech tree, a double-click adds to queue, if I don't like It's completion time - then without moving my mouse away from the just added tech, another double-click should remove the tech from the queue.

ACK! The production button lays an unmovable systems window mid screen, right where I want the map to be. I wanna be able to move it out of the way back to the right where it is when I left-click on a system.
EDIT 1: A new game and suddenly the systems window is all the way to the right, although the 'Producible items at planet' window had it's tabs for 'buildings', 'ships', 'available', and 'unavailable' blanked out but still selectable even though they had no text. A re-boot of my machine corrected this.
It's conceivable it was just some weird fluke bug, but without a savegame file or relevant screenshots you don't really have any chance to figure out the situation, next time I will get one of those.
EDIT 2: 'Producible items at planet' tab texts have their font fixed to the center of a large tab spacing, and when the window is re-sized and the tabs become smaller - the text does not move with the window and gets obscured by the tab to the right overlapping the text of the tab on the left. So the tabs appear to be blank.

The systems window needs tabs for; all systems explored (just like it is now), systems with outposts (so I can find planets to upgrade to colonies faster), systems with colonies (so I can scan quickly for a particular colony), and empty systems that have something to place outpost/colony on.

All windows need a half-size button, yes I want the data, no I don't want to sacrifice screen space for it. Surly there is a way for a simple icon-based display to relate basic needed information.
Edit: Got into menu; options; UI tab scroll half-way down; queue widths; reduced to '200'. Much better. I suppose that it's my monitor. I'm using an HDMI cable to attach a 40 inch flat-screen TV to my computer and I sit about two feet away from it, so EVERYTHING is huge. I'm at 1776x1000@24 resolution.

The game allows me to upgrade outposts to colonies on planets where the colony instantly get destroyed back down to an outpost, it needs a warning that upgrading that colony will fail.

The ship design window should allow me to drag-n-drop modules out of slots as well as in. If I change my mind I don't wanna start over for ships with many slots already filled.

I want to be able to land a troop ship to increase the number of ground troops on a colony/outpost.

It is unclear that once asteroid hull is researched that an asteroid processor built in the asteroid belt is also needed to produce asteroid hulls in the planet production queue.

I'm allowed to put an asteroid processor into the queue for a system with only an asteroid outpost present - and with no colony present it says it will never be built. It should be listed but grayed-out and therefore unselectable for being currently unbuildable.

The ship design build cost should slowly decrease. After I've made a hundred of any one ship design I should know what i'm doing, and it should cost ten percent less to build. One per cent cheaper per every 10 of that EXACT DESIGN built. Some limit imposed to prevent free ships, say not able to reduce the cost more than 25% over course of a game?

When selecting a new tech to put into the research queue, and I double-click on a locked tech - the game is nice enough to put both the locked tech AND it's pre-requisite tech into the queue for me. How nice.
EDIT: How interesting. I started a new game and on turn one double-clicked on the tech 'Mass Propulsion Specialization' to head towards Titanic Hull. Seven techs were dropped into the queue. Now I can at my leisure drop other needed techs in front of those already in the queue and still never loose track of my eventual goal of the ship hull.

Getting into the in-game colors I found this color chart useful for exact numbering my color choices.

I will of course delve deeper into the game, and these are just notes on my personal preferences, and I'm sure there are already good reasons why some things are the way they are. Feel free to tell me 'been-there-done-that' on anything I comment on. I know that I have an odd way of relating, so if I've failed to provide an adequate description - please ask for clarification.

[Dilvish]

Some of those make at least some sense to me, but I started hitting too many that didn't make sense to me. I don't have enough patience or time to read many things of the form "Should be X" when X doesn't make sense to me and there is no explanation of why you think X would be good/better. So I just stopped reading. Just an FYI, and I'm certainly not asking for long explanations.

[em3]

I'm not a dev, only a semi-regular forum user, so my replies might be incomplete or not entirely correct. Still, I hop I'm being helpful.

Random seed values can be negative, or at least using the '-' key before the seed alters the value, and it is possible to generate game with not even a '0' in the field - just a blank space. Can use any 'Real Word' as a seed.

Seed does not need to be a number, I guess.

If AI doesn't know where I am at the start, then how can I communicate with it to make peace on turn 1? Do I know that somewhere off in that distance is another race?

The diplomacy is practically non-existent. Do not read too much into it for now. In the future, I believe, the communication will be restricted by communication range or something.

The turn button should change to red for the last player making their move to let them know that everybody else has done their turn and are waiting on them to finish.

This is a good idea. I think it has been suggested already, but still.

I made two basic large hull designs with 3 ground troop pods each. One with a colony pod, and the other with an outpost as the core module. Only 1 ground troop deploys on planet when the colony/outpost is made. Where did the other two ground troops go? Did they die? Did they get shipped home?

I might be wrong on this, but I'm fairly sure that troop pods are only used during an invasion. They are wasted if the ship constructs a colony or an outpost instead. As you've already noted later:

I want to be able to land a troop ship to increase the number of ground troops on a colony/outpost.

The ship design build cost should slowly decrease. After I've made a hundred of any one ship design I should know what i'm doing, and it should cost ten percent less to build. One per cent cheaper per every 10 of that EXACT DESIGN built. Some limit imposed to prevent free ships, say not able to reduce the cost more than 25% over course of a game?

If you hadn't noticed yet, the build cost actually increases - this is added to simulate fleet upkeep cost. The more ships you have, the more resources have to go for maintenance instead of production. This is a controversial solution added to limit the number of ships in game. Nobody suggested a better way yet, though.

[Geoff the Medio]

...unmovable systems window mid screen, right where I want the map to be.... A new game and suddenly the systems window is all the way to the right...

Some parts of the layout don't respond to window resizes, but are fixed when they are initially arranged.

The ship design window should allow me to drag-n-drop modules out of slots as well as in.

Double click the part in the slot.

I...land a troop ship to increase the number of ground troops on a colony/outpost.

Probably not happening. Would allow (thus require) micromanagement of troop levels.