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Strategic layer ship selection suggestion/request

Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 1:16 am
by Colt374
Hi. I've been unable to find any discussion on this topic so thought I'd raise it. I'm finding it very difficult to select multiple ships in a fleet when the fleet grows very large. As below :

Screenshot (20)a.jpg
Screenshot (20)a.jpg (775.13 KiB) Viewed 10306 times

As the fleet gets larger, the ships get smaller in the ship selection panel, but the size of the icons that appear when hovering over the ship stays the same. As such it is very difficult to select lots of multiple ships without accidentally clicking on one of the icons. It's very frustrating to have gone through the process of carefully selecting a large number of ships while avoiding the hover icons, and then accidentally clicking one of those icons so you lose all the selections you just made and have to do it all over again.

This is most especially prevalent when trying to select transports due to them having three hover icons that cover a large portion of the ship, like in the image below. :

Ship selection snip.jpg
Ship selection snip.jpg (446.52 KiB) Viewed 10306 times

I don't know if this may be related to scaling due to high resolution/dpi on my monitor, but if it was I'd hate to have to change to a lower resolution just to work around this issue. Anyone else experiencing this?

So assuming this is affecting everyone, could I suggest/request that the same ship selection shortcuts that we have during tactical battles also be implemented in the strategic ship selection panel? The only thing I can find to interact with multiple ships is to right click, which just selects all ships in the fleet. The most useful functionality I believe would be to click and drag to select ships, and the double-click to select all ships of the same class.

Cheers,
Colt

Re: Strategic layer ship selection suggestion/request

Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 1:59 am
by Arioch
It's mainly an issue with the fleet sizes; the display doesn't scroll, so it has to size the icons to fit all of the ships into the space available. The UI really isn't designed to handle 100+ ship fleets.

I'm not sure double-click would work very well due to the fast-clicking that is normally done to select and deselect ships, but a drag or shift-drag bandbox selection might be an option.

Re: Strategic layer ship selection suggestion/request

Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 10:46 am
by zolobolo
Yeah, this seems like laaate game: turn 456 (I almost never make it till 250) dont think this is a balanced common occurence :)
My guess is that the council vote has been won and the AI has been surpassed by a couple of maginutes at this point in fleet power - if not I would love to see/fight them :)

Still: a reporting technique of filtering might help: this could be implemented via buttons representing various types of ships/hulls. Non-combatant, ghull size, whatnot. They would not change the selection in any way, but filter the pane for what is visible to the layer. Think of toggle buttons on maps to ship various info.

Re: Strategic layer ship selection suggestion/request

Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:52 am
by PrivateHudson
Another option that may help is contracted view where stacks of identical ships are represented by single icon with count and [+] on it. I suggested this a while ago in the suggestions thread.

Re: Strategic layer ship selection suggestion/request

Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2019 7:00 pm
by Arioch
PrivateHudson wrote:Another option that may help is contracted view where stacks of identical ships are represented by single icon with count and [+] on it. I suggested this a while ago in the suggestions thread.

Presenting multiple ships as a single icon removes the ability to select individual ships, or to display individual ship states such as damage.

Re: Strategic layer ship selection suggestion/request

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:34 am
by PrivateHudson
Arioch wrote:
PrivateHudson wrote:Another option that may help is contracted view where stacks of identical ships are represented by single icon with count and [+] on it. I suggested this a while ago in the suggestions thread.

Presenting multiple ships as a single icon removes the ability to select individual ships, or to display individual ship states such as damage.

True. To select individual ships, user has to expand the stack first by clicking on [+]. Regarding damage, either treat damaged ships as not identical, or the same as with selection.

Re: Strategic layer ship selection suggestion/request

Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 10:02 am
by Colt374
Arioch wrote:It's mainly an issue with the fleet sizes; the display doesn't scroll, so it has to size the icons to fit all of the ships into the space available. The UI really isn't designed to handle 100+ ship fleets.

I'm not sure double-click would work very well due to the fast-clicking that is normally done to select and deselect ships, but a drag or shift-drag bandbox selection might be an option.


Yes you're right, it is only a major issue once the fleet gets past a certain size. However this is a common occurrence in large map sizes. But even with small fleets it can be annoying to have to select each ship individually. So thank you for considering the drag option, as it's something I've hoped for since the game first came out and would be much more useful than a double-click.