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System Overview screen http://bote2.square7.ch/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3634	Page 1 of 1

Author:	Iceman [ 07 Jul 2010, 15:49 ]
Post subject:	System Overview screen
Something every game in the genre should have. Two or three tabs, to switch the display in the same screen: Colonized Systems : Shows all your colonized systems, with details like pop, habitability, planetary and system specials, output of all types of production, shipyard and ship under construction, defenses, etc. Colonizable\Uncolonized Systems : Shows all explored but uncolonized systems, with details like max pop, habitability, planetary and system specials, star type and planet types, etc. The ability to dispatch a colony ship (already built or actually giving the build order and move order once it is built) from this screen would be great; maybe it could also display the distance to the nearest colony (with a shipyard) too. Minor Race systems : Shows all systems inhabited by minors, with the relevant details. With the usual filters, of course. Screen togglable by a hotkey.

Author:	mstrobel [ 07 Jul 2010, 16:25 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Yes, this is something that's on the "to do" list but hasn't received much attention. Aside from the points you mentioned, it could also display the status of the production queue(s) on controlled colonies. The idea for dispatching colony ships is an interesting one; I believe MoO3 had something similar. If you feel up to it, maybe you'd like to do some prototyping? If you can throw together some initial mockups, gather some feedback, and refine the designs until people seem generally happy with them, we could probably get this worked into the game sooner rather than later.

Author:	Iceman [ 07 Jul 2010, 16:50 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Ok, I´ll get on it. I´ll try to make better mockups this time, with more time spent on it And yeah, a couple of games had the colony ship feature. LE:I marked the systems that had a colony ship en route too, so that you knew which ones were taken care of already. One other thing that could be shown in the screen, is if the colony´s pop is your own race´s, or a subjugated one.

Author:	Iceman [ 07 Jul 2010, 17:21 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Quote: Minor Race systems : Shows all systems inhabited by minors, with the relevant details. Thinking about it, we could make this a sort of "Intel" type of screen, Foreign Systems or something, and show all visited systems that belong to anyone else, including other empires: System \| Owner..... \| Relations \| Population \| Defenses \| Turn of Report ------------------------------------------------------------------ * Sol____Federation__Alliance____100\250_____###________15 It should probably discriminate population type, for Minor systems controlled by empires: 100\250 (Humans)

Author:	mstrobel [ 07 Jul 2010, 18:38 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Those are good points. For foreign systems, we could hide or mask unknown stats and "gray out" stats which are out of date. If you have an alliance (or perhaps affiliation-level) treaty with another civilization, then you would always have accurate information about their colonies' population, defenses, etc. If you don't, then you would only have information that your spies had recovered or that your ships had acquired by passing through the system. In the former case, a successful espionage mission might provide continuously up-to-date intelligence during a window of several turns, after which the updates would cease, and the intelligence would gradually become unreliable. In the latter case, the intelligence would cease to update once your ships left the system.

Author:	Iceman [ 07 Jul 2010, 19:11 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Sounds good. You´ll need a diplo action like Remove Ships from our System though And several "tones" in how to request while at it - Ask Politely, Demand, and possibly something in between Some slightly related things: - defenses haven´t been fully defined yet - the Raw Materials issue hasn´t been cleared up yet - Intelligence is going to be changed - Personnel was scrapped - Terraforming is not defined Not sure if they´ll be changed for the next release though.

Author:	mstrobel [ 07 Jul 2010, 19:25 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
.Iceman wrote: Sounds good. You´ll need a diplo action like Remove Ships from our System though And several "tones" in how to request while at it - Ask Politely, Demand, and possibly something in between Yeah, I kinda figured we'd have at least a general "keep your ugly-ass ships out of our space" message; even BotF had something like that, though they could only be sent by AI players. I figure this sort of thing will fall under the category of 'warning' messages that you can send to other civilizations. It's not really a demand per se because it's generally intrinsic to whatever treaty (or lack thereof) you have with that civilization. .Iceman wrote: - defenses haven´t been fully defined yet Started working on that last week, and I'm not terribly happy with it. We may need to break this out into a new discussion. .Iceman wrote: the Raw Materials issue hasn´t been cleared up yet You'll have to remind me about this one. I'm sure there were problems I had with raw materials, but I can't recall exactly what those issues were. .Iceman wrote: Intelligence is going to be changed Right, and my comments above were based on the new system. Basically, you could send spies on 'general' espionage missions, which (upon successful completion) would provide the player with continuous intelligence about one or more foreign systems/fleets for some number of turns. Maybe they managed to break into the enemy's defense mainframe or bribe an apathetic bureaucrat to funnel some information their way . .Iceman wrote: Personnel was scrapped I went back and took care of this a few days ago. All references to 'personnel' or 'officers' are gone, and they are no longer considered during construction. Ships still have a 'crew size' stat, but it's purely for show. How the ships get staffed and the crews maintained are left to the imagination of the player .

Author:	Iceman [ 07 Jul 2010, 19:34 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Defenses : ok, a new discussion sounds good Raw Materials: the discussion was if all systems should have them, or only those with the system special. Because of the % bonuses, and if mine type structures should have the pre-req Intelligence : yeah, I understood. I meant if it still would have any effect on the game, like increasing intel mission success chances or something like that Personnel : ok, all of these points were about the screens, if I should take them into consideration or not I added Terraforming later, at the same time you posted.

Author:

Iceman [ 08 Jul 2010, 16:33 ]

Post subject:

Re: System Overview screen

Ok, here's what I had in mind for the screen.
I'm on vacation, and working on my father's laptop, so I don't have the game with me. I hate working on laptops. The images aren't very good. There's some smudging in the tooltips, but I don't want to redo this. It's just a sample. Colors are just placeholders, they should follow the race's UI color (this was supposed to be the Feds, I then switched to Klingon).

I added a new expansion button (the same as in the fleet deployment panel) in the system panel, to open/close the system overview screen, which completely replaces the starmap.
The system panel shows the currently selected system, for reference and more info (less info on the screen).

The table entries are not complete, it's just a sample. The production types don't have an icon, not sure what's better - icon or text. The icons I ripped from the manual and some screenshots, and some off the net.

System names are color-coded according to the system's morale level, and a tooltip will discriminate that level.
Population of other races is displayed in gray, to stand out. A tooltip shows the growth rate in the system.
Tooltips for the various production types could show number and level of facilities.
Tooltip for production could show the full queue, text only. Right-clicking production could speed up production - as per the future implementation of this feature.
Tooltip for shipbuilding could show full queue(s) - not sure how to display multiple docks...
Tooltip for Defenses could discriminate defense types and power.
Tooltip for Trade Routes could specify target system/race.
Fleets shows #fleets/#ships, total. Tooltip could specify fleets names.

Attachments:

File comment: System Overview screen

SysOvw.JPG [ 35.57 KiB | Viewed 8976 times ]

File comment: UI with System Overview screen open

SysOvwUI.JPG [ 60.06 KiB | Viewed 8976 times ]

Author:	mstrobel [ 08 Jul 2010, 18:24 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Not a bad start. It's a bit sterile, though, much like the rest of the Supremacy UI. I've been wanting to improve the fidelity of certain views. Instead of a strict, old-school table, we could enrich each row a bit. There's no need to stick to the "one row of n columns" design. We could pretty it up a bit and do something like this: Attachment: system_overview.png [ 167.67 KiB \| Viewed 8967 times ]

Author:	Iceman [ 08 Jul 2010, 19:57 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Oooh, it looks slick. The old-school format though has the advantage of not repeating the icons in each row. With a lot of systems, it'll probably look repetitive and detracting? Too many elements, too many colors, a lot to take in / sort through?

Author:	mstrobel [ 08 Jul 2010, 20:45 ]
Post subject:	Re: System Overview screen
Maybe. There are ways to make it seem less repetitive and cluttered. We can hide elements that aren't relevant to a system (don't show dilithium if there's no dilithium in the system). We can also split the info into master/detail views, and only show the detail view for the selected system.

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