Well actually I'd say more in a precise and less precise way. The Icons give you an at a glance idea of the planets relative production in each category. the numbers give you precise amounts, and a graphic representation is always a nice UI element.

Good question I hope it doesn't mean that but would be good to know how they will accomidate more if not.

A fair question as I say I think the general idea of the icons is to give you a quick visual read on how much of each the planet is producing relativley, they could do this other ways. Part of the reason I'm sure is that if they just had numbers it would make the screen look a bit like an excel accounting spreadsheet which does put some peopel off.

I think this is a pretty good idea.

I think most the buildings are still placeholders ported straight from GC2 at the moment so they are likley to change. But I would point out the buildings are only representative not to scale, etc.

As I say I see the colony screen as a sort of big screen augmented reality display I'm being shown as leader.

I like the lack of useless hexes in the map. Don't distract my eyes with useless lines!

I like the configuration of the screen except that I don't see why such a big space for the manufacturing/research/economics. It also seems to lack access to details like orbital defenses, extra planetary details,... stuff?

Edit: USA's (real's world) surface is just 1/3 of Africa. Just saying.

What is the purple building in eastern North America? I was assuming it was the capitol, but multiple people have commented that there is no capitol on the map.

Colonial Hospital, is the purple building cutting through the middle east of the US.

Building I can't place is in central america, but I know that's not the Capital as it's in the build que.

You're right, I knew that I just mistyped, thanks for the correction.  corrected my previous post.

However, I did frequently get several planets into the 30's and 40's without cheating, my best record with the planet quality double random event was 62, that was a great game Even with that being said, a planet quality 30 shouldn't fill up the majority of the planet half should be right which would put it at 60 max which is still more than the current max by far.

I personally don't like the monochromatic portion of the image, especially over the oceans - it just looks like there's nothing at all there, and that the continents are just kind of floating in space, especially since the monochromatic portions are somewhat transparent. I feel that having the hex grid show only on the improvable tiles is sufficient for showing where you can and cannot build things, though I suppose a highlighting option wouldn't be terrible.

I count 13 tiles shown; the planet class is 15. Unless you're suddenly counting planet traits as part of the planet class, there's something wrong with this picture, especially since I have no idea where the other two tiles are. Are those extra tiles available through terraforming? If so, why do they show up in the listed planet quality? When choosing what planet to colonize, my primary concern isn't how good it can eventually become, but rather how good it is right now, and I'd be seriously disappointed to colonize a Class 16 world and find only 7 tiles available immediately upon colonization.

Unless tax rates are back, I don't know that I like approval being around. Without a variable tax rate, it's just a bar that says you must build this many entertainment facilities on this planet in order for it to be useful to you, especially if elections come back.

Without the box displaying information about the selected tile, how am I to determine where the tiles with an inherent bonus are (e.g. 'mountainous' +1 to wealth structures, or 'grasslands' +1 to population)? Do I now need to click around everywhere with each type of improvement to see where the bonus tiles are, are the tile-type bonuses gone, or do they get their own little icons now?

I tend to agree with the others who have said that the 1/5/10/50 set of icons is a bit awkward. If you want to do something like that, might I suggest making it 1/5/25/125, so you'll always have 0-4 of any specific size of icon at once? Or the 1/10/100 set that others have suggested, for 0-9 icons of a given size? I realize that it's the same pattern as the symbol set for Roman numerals, but I don't really think that it works well here.

I also feel that unless each category is given a grouping under the 'all' tab, it's a bit odd to separate out the projects like you've done. I don't see any evidence that there are separate 'ships' and 'improvements' blocks, yet having those separated would be as useful for the 'all' tab as having the projects separated out as they are.

As a side note:

Anyone who questions the rationale behind the Founder's Program should be sent to this thread.  This is exactly the reason we wanted the Founder's program.  Great stuff guys!

Note to everyone, the missing Capital is just a mistake in the mock-up, we are not removing it.

I cannot overstate how much I hate the monochromatic unusable tiles. I loathe them. While this isn't a deal breaker, this will piss me off to no end.

Sometimes, Form > Function

This is one of those instances

I suppose people will always like different things. And that's fine.

I really feel that this information needs to be present on the map itself, not hidden behind a tool-tip or on the selected tile details. In the absence of a significant production bonus from colonization events, it's important for me to know at a glance that the tiles of a given world favor wealth and population over manufacturing, or something like that. How this shows up isn't terribly important (but please don't make me judge by the line weight of the tile border), but it needs to be something that I can see at a glance rather than via inspection of each tile.

Take Civ II as an example - you know at a glance what an area is good for before you ever consider improving the area. That city in the hills is strong on production and not quite terrible on food, the city next to all the mountains is okay at production but has next to no food, the city in the plains has lots of food and a little production, and the city in the grasslands has lots of food but little production. You know what you'll get by claiming a portion of the map just by looking at the map, and importantly each tile type is visually distinct from the other types - you're never going to mistake plains for hills or forests for grasslands (though you might miss a bit of grassland nestled in amongst a group of hills). In GCIII, you have no idea what you'll be getting by building improvements until you click around or wait for tool-tips to pop up, yet knowing where the bonuses are is important for planning out where to put your improvements for best effect, both during the construction process and after. If it's color-coded (e.g. blue tiles give research bonuses, red tiles give manufacturing bonuses, green tiles do nothing), or if there's an icon representing the bonus, then I at least know that there's something special about the tile even if I don't know what, and I don't have to inspect each and every tile on each and every planet to find out where the special stuff is and what's special about it.

I don't like playing a game with black and white "displays". Its basically saying "don't enjoy looking at anything else but what we want you and have fun playing our game were bland totally colorless screens are complemented with the rainbow that is is the production wheel."

I honestly don't even think this is a really what SD has planned. They may have just dimmed the display to show us how useable tiles are now illuminated by green. I hope that is the case or I have to modd more stuff. :'-(

DARCA.

Perhaps we could take a middle route. 

Make the planet screen immersive and colourful, yes that would be nice. But I want to be able to look at the important tiles in the world more easily and know that I can build on them and what I should build on them should be easy to build. I agree with joeball123 that it needs to intuitive. In Civ games you know that should probably build a farm on a plain, but you could just as easily build a mine to customise your city. 

Perhaps we could make the tiles that are buildable a bit larger than the rest, or make them 'pop-out' a bit, either all the time or when you hover the mouse over them. Also make the outlines heavier so that they will be easier to see. I think that would make them more distinctive than the rest of the tiles, getting the best from both worlds.

EDIT: fixes