Player Features and Ideas Discussion

first of, i apologize for the dryness of the post. i know my texts are hard on readers... i just can't write technical proposals differently. maybe some kind soul will rewrite this proposal in an improved form, fit for human consumption?

current situation: it takes a minimum 5 clicks to define a resource route; 120 clicks for each storage unit/launch pad to define the t1 resource routes for a factory planet with 12 t1->t2 factories (basically, your average t1->t4 factory planet); that makes 480 clicks per planet (720 if you've got cc lvl 5 and go for a whole week of supplies), 2400 - 4320 per character, 7200 - 12960 per account; just for the t1 resource routes. so, either you a) diversify, only running some of your planets according to market situation, b) do this again every time the market changes, or c) give up on planetary interaction.

goals: simplify the setup and maintainance of factory planets, and possibly the "core" aspects of resource gathering planets; general quality of life improvents related to planetary interaction

proposed changes:




creating routes:

• seperate panel on storage units/launch pads when creating a route, instead of reusing the "inventory" panell; that allows us to not to have to scroll down the inventory if there's more than 5 different resources we want to route. also, please keep the currently selected resource selected when creating a route that way
• highlight which processors already receive the currently selected resource from this or any sources (different colors)
• additional button: route this resource to all viable targets
• additional button: route all resources to all viable targets
• additional key-press modifier: route current resource also to click target
• when creating a route that has the same source, destination and resource: increase the original route amount instead of adding a new route; also: cap at max resource usage (if i need 40 units per cycle, it makes no sense to accidentally supply 80 units from the same source due to setup misclicks/brainfarts)

planetary templates:
a template would be linked to a planet type, so barren templates could not be used on temperate planets. it would consist of: command center level; all installations (using their names, assuming they are unique per player and planet) and links, with relative positions to the command center. link levels for each link.

• new command center button: "save as template"
• new command center button: "build from template"
-- shows list of templates for this planet type only
-- this button would raze all current installations which not match the id and position stored in the template, and try to build all installations saved in the template

• new colony property: "current template"
• additionaly installations do not break a template
• warning when an action is performed which would break the template (delete a link/installation; upgrading a link would not break the template)

planetary schematics:
a schematic would depend on a template, it contains all the routing and production information for all the installations in the template

• new command center button: "save schematic"
• new command center button: "load schematic"
-- this button would delete all outgoing routes of all installations in the template
-- this button would also clear all productions from the processors in the template
-- this button would then set all productions according to the stored planetary schematic, and add all routes according to the planetary schematic.
--- on insufficient routing capacity, a warning sound is played and a warning dialog pops up

inventory:
new "split stacks" dialog for splitting multiple stacks (all selected):

• options "total volume", "specific amount per stack", "percentage per stack", "from template" (on the last one, something like the "buy multiple" dialog would be awesome for creating templates)
-- goal here: i keep x runs per planet in a container; i want to resupply a planet, i need to split each stack seperately to the required amount and put it into a can; say 12 resources for 5 planets, we have 60 splits on which i have to input the amount, which is annoying even with copy&paste

customs office:

• increase cargo capacity to 67500 m^3 (epithal level 5 cargo capacity)
• new button "import max": import the maximum amount of resources possible, using the sorting in the left box for determining which items will be selected
• additional "expedite" option, so it wouldn't be neccessary to go to planet mode for that; also, that combobox for the launchpad could be improved upon while you're at it. maybe something like: http://imgur.com/0VFmBz3

had another idea for the "split stacks" dialog i suggested:

additional option "split into x equal shares" (creates an additional stack for the parts that could not be added into the equal shares... basically, the "modulo" stack)

subcategories for that option could be: "by amount", "by total value", and "by total volume", where the total value and total volume option would consider the whole stack at once, not the indiviually selected items

would be nice if we could add containers into the dialog into which these resulting stacks would be added

I didn't read this wall of text, but I agree with the general gist of the idea: make it easier to build colonies by improving the UI. I actually made a post earlier about this.

Currently, there is sort of a perverse benefit to the inefficiencies of the interface in that it provides a barrier to entry for casual PI wannabes, which means clicking spreadsheet-toting psychoes like me make more money. Its like you have to be level V in *Patience* and level V in *Excel*. You have to be pretty hard core to sit there for an hour carefully clicking to make a 20-factory colony or to convert it to a new output. I don't know how many clicks it is exactly to change the schematic on a 20-factory colony but it is probably around 400-500 clicks or something crazy like that.

Just to distill some of the big issues:

* there is an extremely annoying 3D icon that appears over facilities when you click on them; get rid of it

* when you click a facility, the dialog box always appears in the default (small) size, doh. So basically when you, say change to a new schematic, you end up resizing the dialog box 20 times, its just crazy annoying; when a person resizes a dialog box, LEAVE IT THAT WAY

* you cannot do the same action for multiple factories; so for example, you cannot select 3 production facilities and set their outputs to a storage facility. You have to select each one individually and the dialog box resets each time. Setting up inputs is even more annoying.

Also this

I'd appreciate some extractor head templates. For example a button to open 7 heads in close-packed hexagon. And a simple way to select, rotate and group-move those heads.

thanks everyone for the feedback! you have posted some very nice additions, i like them :)


i agree, it annoys me as well, but i doubt ccp will just remove some 3d art and "reduce" the pi to just circles. what i could imagine them doing is an option in the graphics settings: "pi structures" with the options: "show selected", "show none", "show all"






the variable nature of the extractors (at least when i tried them back in the day) annoyed me too much, so i don't use them and am not really qualified to make suggestions there. however, what you describe sounds to me like something similar to the sensor probe interface. would something like that cover your needs, or would you require additional functionality?


oh yes! this would be awesome! even if it'd cost as much as the original unit for every increment, that'd help a lot. although i'd prefer the "storage facility" costs&benefits as upgrade to the launch pad, as the basic launch facilities are already available, i could live with the full launch pad costs as well.

i also would enjoy something similar on factories - a level 2 factory using twice the cpu & powergrid, consuming twice the input materials, and producing twice the output... but are less clicky.