Ship selection is a little difficult to do

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Sheldar
Space Floater
Posts: 38
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2006 9:28 pm

Ship selection is a little difficult to do

#1 Post by Sheldar »

Sorry if this has already been discussed but the v0.3 ship controls leave some to be desired. The biggest suggestion I have here is that when controlling a larger empire I had to be constantly zooming in and out on the stars to be able to control the ships. Specifically when sending a ship from my home system to a distant system to colonize I had to:
- open likely systems and see what planets were available
- zoom in on home planet to select fleet
- zoom out and select the target system again

This is hampered by double checking to ensure I have the right system and fleet.

This is hampered because the system window is on the right and the fleet window is on the left. This allows me to see the whole screens worth of stars (mostly) but restricts the ability to move the map around.

Suggested Solution:
1) When a system is selected pop up a fleet tables on the left.
2) When a system is selected have a fleet icon in the systems top-bar (summary bar) that when selected will pop up the fleet tables on the left.
3) Make the precision of selecting the fleet less specific.
4) Allow for a box to be dragged around multiple systems and select the fleets in them.

Note: Option 4 would benefit from an additional change to the fleet tables on the left. Suggestion: Pull-down to allow fleets to be sorted. Possible options might be "mine", "mine and allies", "allies", "enemies", "not-mine", and "all". This would remain default from selection to selection so the user can leave their "most used" option as the default.

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eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Ship selection is a little difficult to do

#2 Post by eleazar »

It is too hard to select the fleet while zoomed out.
The primary solution is to keep to shrink the fleet icon less, so it's a clickable target.
Sheldar wrote:Suggested Solution:
1) When a system is selected pop up a fleet tables on the left.
2) When a system is selected have a fleet icon in the systems top-bar (summary bar) that when selected will pop up the fleet tables on the left.
3) Make the precision of selecting the fleet less specific.
4) Allow for a box to be dragged around multiple systems and select the fleets in them.
1) Um, you can put the fleet window where-ever you want it, and it will remember that location next time it's called up.

2) I'd like to see that too.

4) that might be useful, but more important would be the ability to shift-click to add/subtract fleets from the selection.

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