First of all, thanks for maintaining this AWESOME game! I love it so much I'm in danger of getting RSI
Here's some ideas I had for improving the UI a bit...(As Mark Twain once said: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one" - sorry if this is a bit wordy)
Single Player Skirmish - Set-up screen
Would it be possible to make it remember my previous settings? Specifically:
- Player colour - either last colour used (preferred option) or a setting in main Options
- Building availability
- Other settings, eg. map, whether there are scavengers, locked teams, etc.
Menus, pagination
Would it be possible to increase the number of columns shown in research and construct menus? That would result in fewer pages to scroll through.
Why not show page numbers, in boxes, rather than those fiddly little pill-shaped buttons? This would mean the buttons are always same size, and more importantly it would be more conventional UI for pagination. When I first started playing the game I had no idea what the little pill-shaped buttons were, I thought they were just part of the visual design of the dialog or something, they don't look clickable or visually convey what they are meant to do.
And having < and > buttons to scroll though pages might be easier, especially if those buttons are in fixed positions (eg. they could be big vertical buttons either side of the list of items).
Fewer mouse actions when building same type of thing many times
Imagine building 50 VTOL rearming pads - you've got to do all of the following 50 times!
- Select an available engineer vehicle/cyborg (because I start building next pad while previous pads are still being constructed)
- Click the hammer button
- Click page 2 button (which is often very small, in many cases I miss it completely and end up clicking 'destroy' command)
- Click the VTOL pad icon
- Click on the map where i want the pad to go.
It would be great if I could hold down "Cmd" (or "Ctrl" on Windows) key when I first click on an item in the construct menu (eg. VTOL pad) to 'latch' that item. For example, Cmd + choose VTOL pad = allows me to keep building more VTOL pads without having to keep opening the construct menu. This would also be great when destroying lots of old defence buildings to make room for new buildings, I'd latch the destroy item.
To cancel the latch, press Esc (and a terminal message "Latch cleared" possibly shown to avoid possible confusion for people who were expecting the 'pause' menu to be shown, as you'd need to press Esc a second time in this scenario).
Some way to reduce time spent wading through all the items on construct menu...
Currently I spend a lot of time paging through the construct menu and then browsing the small icons trying to find the thing I'm looking for.
I've got a few favourite items (eg. howitzer, hellstorm, ripple rocket, etc) that I regularly build. Most of the other stuff I never use.
It would be great if I could somehow mark things that I use a lot as favourites - either in-game or from within the game options. Favourite items would get a little star on their button (or different background colour?) and always appear at the start of the list of construct options.
Vehicle designer
The panels on left (existing vehicles) and right (vehicle components) would really benefit from a few extra columns/rows IMHO.
For example, when I'm choosing what body to use it would be great if I saw all the bodies at the same time, rather than spread over 2 pages. Even better if they could be arranged by type - eg. top row would be the light body, next row medium body, then heavy body, and the body classes/colours would be in columns... so col 1 = white, col 2 = yellow, col 3 = green, col 4 = black, col 5 = red.
If it's not easy to display all bodies at same time, then what about having the most advanced bodies shown first? If I've just researched a new, more advanced, body it's more likely that I the next vehicle I design will use it. Particularly because I will have already designed vehicles that use the less advanced bodies.
When using the Dragon (multi-turret red) body, it would be great if there was an arrow button between the two turret buttons, so after selecting the first weapon I could just click that arrow to copy it in to the second weapon slot (rather than having to wade through the pages of weapons again).
The ability to save a vehicle configuration would also be most useful, as I tend to re-use the same configurations over and over again. Once saved, that vehicle configuration would automatically appear in future games, as soon as required items have been researched.
Campaign - cheats
Ok, I'm a n00b and I actually struggle on the campaign. Specifically at the start of the third campaign where I didn't realise that my last batch of evacuated troops would be my starting troops for campaign 3 (I was expecting all several batches of evacuated troops to be available, and had sent the most powerful units in the first batch). I had 2 VTOLs in my last batch = instant death for me.
So, I tried using cheats but the process feels unnecessarily cludgy. Many of them don't seem to work, possibly due to conflicts with my keyboard mappings. For example, I have space bar set to toggle console.
After pressing Shift+Backspace, maybe display a little icon somewhere - when it's clicked a set of applicable cheats are displayed as buttons/links. For example, if I've got units selected the clone cheat would be available, otherwise it would be hidden. Alternatively, when the icon is clicked, show a text box with OK/Cancel buttons - so it's obvious where to type in and the game doesn't get confused when keys pressed are mapped to some in-game function.
And in cheat mode, why not allow the timer to be clicked to toggle pause time? There's been loads of cases where I've been less than a minute from completing the mission but not quite made it back to the LZ in time = had to do whole mission again which was a bit depressing.
