Not one expansion brad promised 2-3 while Paul promised 3-4 I won't let it go without at least three expansions even if four comes out unless they give me four for free because I paid for  at least three expansions.

I think that would clutter the list too much.

If they ever mentioned one they never gave a date. Also there are bigger fish to fry.

Be more specific, I can do it in 2.

Agreed, I'm having a hard time finding anomalies and uncolonized planets.

You mean like set all planets to use Governor X? They could add something in the Commands tab.

Hover the mouse over the colony's pop icon in the planet list. Perhaps they could have the pop number change color when it reaches the limit and add the pop limit to the Colonies tab.

Rhonin, too difficult to cut and paste and edit the quotes on my iPad, so I'll respond without doing so.

- Focus option on main planet list: that list already shows manufacturing, research, and wealth numbers. To focus, just click on one of those and it highlights, applies the focus, and updates the numbers. No more space needed. This isn't a deal breaker for me. Just seems ultimately logical, intuitive, and beneficial.

- I don't really design ships much, so not a big deal to me. Many have asked for it, the devs keep pushing it off, and there's a limit to one's tolerance of that.

- Click the "Rally point" tab, click "Create new rally point", click the location, click the shipyard, click "Rally point", find and select the rally point, click "done". Look how it's done in RTSs: click the base, right click the destination.

- Govern settings: Specifically I'm talking about the "Auto-upgrade" option, but it applies to all the settings. I end up having to change it for very colonization and successful invasion. Sometimes I forget and I have to correct it. It should remember my preferences.

- I am so over having to hover over stuff in order to see basic information (overflow, as another example). A color system would suffice (yellow at 85%, red at 100%). If there is concern the colors would be confusing to players, put a color legend in the hover tip. Hover once, then you know and don't have to hover again.

In any case, I'm not here to offer amateur solutions to UI design. That is how we got here in the first place. During the beta phase Paul repeatedly said the UI dev from Sorcery King was going to switch over to GalCiv3. Apparently that didn't happen because the UI didn't see any major improvements, but the news was quietly dropped and forgotten. That was a mistake.

I did. Holy moly, the page is telling me this is in the GalCiv forums, but the main page says Ashes. I think I corrected it.

Minus all the drama and emotion, as a long time fan with two bad carpal tunnels, I have to agree with the UI analysis.  At this point, I would prefer that this be the primary focus over any other gameplay function or feature.  If there are not ergonomics focused people on the utilities side of the house, then please do a full ergonomic consulting and then do a workover on the UI.  This covers visual aspects, mouse movement, click-count, and the whole list of human interaction with software issues out there, the things that make it actually inconvenient and painful for this old gamer and these wretchedly over-gamed wrists. 

(So much for no drama and emotion...)

Please, make me love the game even more by making the game love me and my hands.  Make it show it cares by making everything as easy and minimalist as it can be.   Hurt me with invasions all you want, but please don't hurt me with the game itself.

I don't think there is anything wrong with UI, what u gotta use a "hatchet". While i agree, it could use some additional love, some of the info is very hard to understand or find... but it not a serious issue, as far as i see it. Government and elections, or rather lack of them, as they where in Gal Civ 2, is the only thing i seem to be really missing from Gal Civ2. I dont design ships, so i cant speak much about that... I only wish where was more base ships to choose from. 

Invasion didn't bothered me ether... i always go for tech or influence victory, and I usually avoid most wars. 

I suppose it comes down, to what we expect of a game. I simply expect a nice sci-fi civ builder in space. It doesn't have to be a movie or some kind of VI.... If i wanted this to be more then a game, or a game of something else, i too, probably would think its horrible. However, i do not. As far as, Gal Civ III being a good 4x strategy game, im fairly satisfied.

The whack-a-mole analogy is a good one. That is exactly what is happening here. The UI was designed in bits and pieces by coders, not UI designers, and it shows. There isn't a cohesive UI design. Need a new capability? Add a new window, some hover tool tips, and a button. If they designed the UI from scratch, with the help of UI design experts, they could truly make the game shine. But they really can't do that because the game still doesn't have all the gameplay elements they wanted at release. 

This just dawned on me. GalCiv3 is like Star Wars Episode 1. It's okay because it's Star Wars, but you kinda cringe because there are so many bad parts.

Emm, how many clicks does it take to find which rally point the ships are sent to from a given shipyard?

As an elite founder it pains me to say that the rants in this thread are valid. I had hopes that this game, by now would've approached its potential to be even better than the great GalCiv2 TOA is, but sadly there's a long way to go. The UI in this game needs to be lots better and TOA's UI clearly is better. I could write all day about things to improve this game but will try to keep this post from being too long.

I will note that it is ambitious and difficult to try to balance a game of this magnitude that can be played on map that basically are tiny or enormous and can be played with just a few planets or hundreds.

Game improvement here can start with UI improvement. It takes too many clicks to do most things. We can learn from some UI things in RTS games. Hmmm...Stardock does make some RTS games.

I should be able to click on a shipyard and then right click on the map and have my newly built ships go to that spot... PERIOD and just like in most RTS! This will also compensate for the fact that unlike in TOA one cannot specify what side of the shipyard the ship comes out of unless a RP is set.

What about hotkeys, why aren't there hotkeys to build basic buildings? How nice it would to take my mouse and click on a tile and then use my left hand to push one letter on my keyboard and insert a building into the queue. This would save several clicks.  etc etc.

More later .. neilkaz ..

I'm just going to put this out there.

I've been pretty happy with GC3.  SD has generally produced evolving products and this is what I expected.  GC3 has generally met all of my expectations and has been a blast to plug around with.  There are definitely elements that can be both refined and expanded upon - but the degree of either of these really isn't expectation-breaking for me.  I've probably logged just under 100h on GC3 (most of which was in the past 3 weeks when I finally had a chance to sit down with it), I think the only other games that I've logged more hours this year were League of Legends, Pillars of Eternity and possibly Wasteland 2 - so GC3 is in good company in this respect.  There have been many valid points about GC3 edges that need to be smoothed out, but none of them have really been experience-breaking for me...

Just saying...

Problem is you haven't addressed these issues and the fact that many of them are simple is why so many people are frustrated.  I used to think it was because there wasn't enough people working on the game, just one man and his dog, but we're 5 patches and over 7 months down the line and it's more than that.  It's as if Stardock just doesn't get that a good UI is integral to peoples enjoyment of a game like this, it's not been a priority at all when it should have been a key focus.

Anyone who watched or participated in Fridays stream would have picked up on UI issues being a common theme of shared frustration with the game... except perhaps Paul and there it would seem lies the problem.

If Gal Civ 3 was a house Stardock's response to it having termites has been modernizing the kitchen and buying patio furniture, you need to sort out the big issues or people will move elsewhere.

Just to add my 2 cents here.

While I largely agree with the OP I do want to point out that people can look at the change logs since release and see that massive amounts of non-bug fix type features have been added to the game since release. And this is a game that has received very good reviews and is pretty well liked overall.

I only mention that because sometimes I feel like we spend all this time making pretty significant, free new features into the game and only days after release it's just "Yea, but why didn't you do X?"

And the answer is simple: What bothers one person a lot may not bother another person much at all.  For example, the  ship design system not having pieces take a % of the hull size bothers me a lot.  But I rarely see people posting about that so I haven't pushed it.  Only recently have others seem to notice that not having that system leads to really exploitive ships (infinite sensor range and insane movement).  In other words, what is a big deal to one person is not a big deal to another.

I also resent someone suggesting they're a "Beta tester" or that the game is like a house with termites. I don't expect people to be thanking us after every update. You're our customers and we enjoy supporting and improving our games.  But don't think for a minute that I"ll tolerate being shit on either (I'm not directing that at Eviator, I love his feedback and asked Paul to respond specifically because I think Eviator makes a lot of good point).

In short: I agree with Eviator, the UI stuff should be addressed faster imo, but some of you need an attitude adjustment. GalCiv III is already an excellent game. Today. Over the past 6 months the game has received a tremendous about of free support in the form of major updates based on player feedback.  We will continue to improve and enhance the game as well.  Posts like Eviator's are helpful (I didn't find it ranty) because it provides clear, actionable, feedback on areas that would objectively make the game better.

Frogboy I appreciate the response. I hope I have made it clear that the UI concerns in my OP are just the tip top of the iceberg, just the things that I remembered from my most recent game. To me these things hint at a larger UI design issue that I personally don't think can be patched here and there to fix. The UI was built in pieces as new gameplay mechanics were added, and it feels like patchwork in many places. I'm recommending a complete overhaul, which would hopefully address all of the inconsistencies and annoyances by making the UI designed around the gameplay mechanics and ergonomics.