Streamlining the UI for moving ships around

from Stardock Forums
I am a relative newbie to GalCiv; I ordered it a couple of months ago but had no time to play until recently. I am a great fan and student of 4X TBS games though...

Now that I started playing it, some rather straightforward UI improvements immediately come to mind (I am sorry if they have been mentioned before: I could not find a search option in this forum)

1. A list of explored planets for colonization. Every other space strategy game has it!

2. Very often, yon want to send all (or almost all) newly built ships to a particular front line. (This is what they call "vectoring" in Warlords.). With the current interface, this becomes particularly tedious:
too many clicks and screen changes to launch each ship, and you have to do them one-by-one. A simple suggestion: allow launching and moving ships *without leaving the ship list*. That is, you click on a docked ship in the list, then click on the map where you want to send it... It a population /troop loading dialog has to appear, it could appear right there!

There are other small improvements that could save clicks here or there. What do you people think?

3. One last comment: I wanted to play GalCiv on a Tablet PC (that is, without a keyboard) It works great, except for one place: during planetary invasion, you have to press space... Could we add a little button to that dialog as well? That would go a very long way for me!

Thanks!

354 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Hey Obb...I'm gonna rattle off some quick answers before i get to work (YOu'd be suprised how much there's still to do even after goin' gold).

1. Yeah, it's been asked for, so once we figure out a clean way to slip it into the game, I'm sure you'll be finding it in an upcoming update.

2. YES, the is an excelent idea...click on a button in the SL and you can use the minimap to navigate your ships. We'll have to determine the most simple yet obvious way to put this in the UI...but a more precice way to send ships is definatly on our lists.

3. hehe Yeah, that should be work-able. I can see how that would be frustrating ;)

Thanks for the Suggestions!
ScottT
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, the button is on the planet list, but you can also bring up the tactical map by hitting F9. You can't make ships leave orbit from there yet, but that will be in one of the updates.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, I am afraid that trying to launch ships from the fleet list simply leads to buggy behavior (at least in the current beta we are playing with). You press the small blue arrow, the target appears in the center of the screen; next turn, the ships are listed as "moving", and the arrows appear on the mini-map. In fact, however, those ships never leave orbit...

Cari, did yon mean "planet list" or "ship list"? I tried to hit F9 from the ship list, but with no effect. (BTW, seeing where each ship from the list is on a mini-map would be great!, right now all we have is coordinates, so we have to visualize this ourselves). And if you meant "planet list", I am not sure I follow yon, I was talking about launching and sending into action ships just built this turn.

Thanks
-Obb
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
'I tried to hit F9 from the ship list, but with no effect.'

F9 from anywhere you can see the main map should work, ship list included. This was added in the gamma, though, if I'm not mistaken, so you might not see it until the release date.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Just a reminder, the F9 stuff and other enhanced UI features were not in the beta. Some of you are talking about features that are not available in the beta which is what obb has.

~SDC~