Playing large maps (usability issues)
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Stardock Forums
Hi,
For the last few days I have played a Crippling-Huge setup and it has been a lot of hard work. But not hard work in a good way. Don't get me wrong, I love Galciv and it has been a special favourite of mine since Galciv on OS/2. I feel that I need to vent a little. You are doing a great job, but I feel that some minor improvements would greatly benefit my gaming pleasure.
However, I find that I'm spending 90% of my time manually sending ships here and there, changing Rally point destinations, switching this and that and generally doing things that do not have much to do with strategy. It's quite tiresome. I am honestly impressed by the stamina displayed by people who are playing Gigantic maps.
How do you go about playing large maps? I played my second huge map since ever and even with Rally points it is still to much work for me. Small and medium maps seem to have the nicest mix of strategy and work for my part.
With and AI as competetive as Galciv and with all events and other goodies I want to spend my time pondering about my next move, not on manual labouring.
How do you play large maps? Perhaps I'm just going about it in the wrong way.
This is how I play:
(1) Governors of course. Not much to say there, I find Governos very helpful. However, I would like to be able to turn of the notification of things built as I do not want to be bothered with the info. Is there a way?
(2) This game I made heavy use of Rally Points. They did help a little compared to not having them. But they could use some improvements to be really useful. They should be movable. That would help a lot. Creating a new Rally point and then manually changing all ships and all planets to target the new one takes forever when you have a large number of planets and ships. It also feels very unnecessary.
The fleet creation did not seem to work correctly in 1.13.
Also it would be nice with an automatic "add to starbase feature" for which one could specify if the rallypoint should add cultural/military or economic modules to starbases. It is a lot of unnecessary work creating culture bombs or mining resources. The game should be able to take the best pic.
(3) Keyboard shortcuts for everything. It is difficult - if even possible to select things in most screens using just the keyboard. All lists should have a shortcut and should be navigateable using just the keyboard! Even better, you should be able to configure your own shortcuts.
(4) More global options along the lines of the military swap (which is excellent btw). Have all references to a rally point be switched for another. Global options for scrapping social improvements if they are not needed any longer. In my last game I conquered a lot of systems and hand to manually remove unwanted social improvements one by one. Ouch.
(5) A "get as much money as you can" button in the Diplomacy screen would be nice. Even better - a global "sell new researched tech to the following races at best price". Contacting all races and having to manually move the slider is also unnecessary work.
I look forward to the features in the expansion as much as the other guy but would happily pay $30 just to decrease the amount of manual clicking needed to play this game right. New races, new ships, new features is all well and exciting but I really wish that to reduce the time spent on just clicking, selecting, setting new destinations, etc, etc.
I would be very happy to find that I am working the game backwards but I do not think I am. More time could be spent playing rather than working. At least it would likely help my Galcivinduced carpal tunnel syndrome...
In any cast, please consider this as input for Galciv 2 and thanks for a very cool and entertaining game!
Best regards
Andreas
For the last few days I have played a Crippling-Huge setup and it has been a lot of hard work. But not hard work in a good way. Don't get me wrong, I love Galciv and it has been a special favourite of mine since Galciv on OS/2. I feel that I need to vent a little. You are doing a great job, but I feel that some minor improvements would greatly benefit my gaming pleasure.
However, I find that I'm spending 90% of my time manually sending ships here and there, changing Rally point destinations, switching this and that and generally doing things that do not have much to do with strategy. It's quite tiresome. I am honestly impressed by the stamina displayed by people who are playing Gigantic maps.
How do you go about playing large maps? I played my second huge map since ever and even with Rally points it is still to much work for me. Small and medium maps seem to have the nicest mix of strategy and work for my part.
With and AI as competetive as Galciv and with all events and other goodies I want to spend my time pondering about my next move, not on manual labouring.
How do you play large maps? Perhaps I'm just going about it in the wrong way.
This is how I play:
(1) Governors of course. Not much to say there, I find Governos very helpful. However, I would like to be able to turn of the notification of things built as I do not want to be bothered with the info. Is there a way?
(2) This game I made heavy use of Rally Points. They did help a little compared to not having them. But they could use some improvements to be really useful. They should be movable. That would help a lot. Creating a new Rally point and then manually changing all ships and all planets to target the new one takes forever when you have a large number of planets and ships. It also feels very unnecessary.
The fleet creation did not seem to work correctly in 1.13.
Also it would be nice with an automatic "add to starbase feature" for which one could specify if the rallypoint should add cultural/military or economic modules to starbases. It is a lot of unnecessary work creating culture bombs or mining resources. The game should be able to take the best pic.
(3) Keyboard shortcuts for everything. It is difficult - if even possible to select things in most screens using just the keyboard. All lists should have a shortcut and should be navigateable using just the keyboard! Even better, you should be able to configure your own shortcuts.
(4) More global options along the lines of the military swap (which is excellent btw). Have all references to a rally point be switched for another. Global options for scrapping social improvements if they are not needed any longer. In my last game I conquered a lot of systems and hand to manually remove unwanted social improvements one by one. Ouch.
(5) A "get as much money as you can" button in the Diplomacy screen would be nice. Even better - a global "sell new researched tech to the following races at best price". Contacting all races and having to manually move the slider is also unnecessary work.
I look forward to the features in the expansion as much as the other guy but would happily pay $30 just to decrease the amount of manual clicking needed to play this game right. New races, new ships, new features is all well and exciting but I really wish that to reduce the time spent on just clicking, selecting, setting new destinations, etc, etc.
I would be very happy to find that I am working the game backwards but I do not think I am. More time could be spent playing rather than working. At least it would likely help my Galcivinduced carpal tunnel syndrome...
In any cast, please consider this as input for Galciv 2 and thanks for a very cool and entertaining game!
Best regards
Andreas
