Postby PrivateHudson » Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:33 am
Being a huge fan of MoO 2, I stumbled upon SiS recently and bought it instantly. Now, having played some hours, I dare to bring forward a few suggestions. Sorry if some already were proposed, as it's impossible to read all these threads.
- I miss "turns left" number on productions in colony list and, to a lesser degree, queued items. Graphic indicator is nice, but how far exactly is that "mostly done" factory or battlecruiser? It could be dozens of turns away. The number would help to determine what colony is in need of credit intervention, as well as better plan fleet operations. The feature is present in virtually any TBS.
- Speaking of credit interventions, it would be useful to have a visual clue on colony list which productions are within buyout reach of the current treasury. If I remember correctly, MoO 2 had this.
- Colony list could display not only current, but also max pop. Something like 10/12 instead of just 10, or proportionally filled planet disc. Might help with migration planning.
- An excellent shortcut from Endless Space: Alt+click adds production item to top of queue, shifting all other items further. By the way, it took me a while to understand how to queue and unqueue items, worth adding hint text like "Left-click an item to change current production to it, right-click to queue, Shift-click to design". Or at least write it in the manual.
- I've already seen suggestions to expand functions of the colony list. I understand it's against rule "Don't turn a game into spreadsheet", but additional, vastly expanded version of colony/planet list could be actually very convenient for experienced emperor. I discovered the power of such lists in Space Empires 5. Turned on by a hotkey (say, F2), color-coded, possessing customizable columns, filters, sorting, pop-ups for detailed info not fitting into a single line, even its own minimap, ability to go to system, planet, colony, or build queue, or to issue orders directly, such spreadsheet could become player's control center once colony count steps over what can fit in on-screen colony list.
- Speaking of hotkeys, I advocate the maximum possible doubling of UI functions with keyboard. Modern UIs mostly neglect it, but, I suppose, a large portion of SiS players are old-timers hardened by games like SMAC.
SiS is already a gem, and IMHO it has potential to become one of the best space 4X TBSes, a proper successor for giants of the past. Thank you, Ashdar Games!
P.S. Please, don't add multiplayer.