Interface "bugs" (and now improvements)

This patch has me noticing a number of interface issues, primarily UI. It feels like a step backwards, but some of these may pre-date this patch and I simply haven't noticed.

I thought it would be useful to collate them here.

1. The toggle music hotkey doesn't work during spawn selection.
2. The toggle music selection is forgotten between the main menu and starting a game.
3. Commands made in the orbital layer are not visible anywhere.
4. Orbital radars do not appear to display a radar radius.
5. The ping command is not visible until a unit is selected.
6. Selecting all land combat units selects the commander.
7. Pressing the select commander hotkey selects all commanders, but in the previous patch this had changed to select only your own commander. I felt the previous patch was a better reflection of how shared armies is typically played and helped avoid cock-ups.
8. Select all units of type X hotkeys selects units on every planet even though there is no situation where you would want to do this.
9. Friends interface often doesn't display friends as online even though they are.

Please add any you have uncovered.

Great stuff

I listed some on the tracker namely: (not so much UI but ehh)

• reconnect to wrong game is back ....again
• move command gets stuck to mouse and build bar won't appear anymore and no more orders can be issued

1. That's a hotbuild2 bug I need to fix try without mods first.

The icons for spawn 5 and 6 look almost identical.

Game list defaults to showing all games, both in progress and in lobby. Otherwise known as the worst default ever.

Commander range shows naval/AA and not ground fire cannon range.

Switching between planets sometimes doesn't work with the quick switch.

Linking gates sometimes doesn't work.

Astraeus transport loading needs more feedback.

These all things really piss me off, lost a game recently because I was stuck on one planet while trying to switch to another, my commander just died while I couldn't interact with anything.

These are both very irritating, especially when I'm trying to ping somewhere that I don't have a friendly unit.

Silly Uber, this is too much clicking!

• Smashing UI needs work.
• Pings should show to your allies without shared army.
• If you have the planet menu open (upper right) and the planet list is long enough to reach the command bar if you click a command Icon it will select the planet instead.
• Game lobby drop down "Game State" should default to "In Lobby".
• Game lobby Game list should be sortable by column headings.

If I might just say, phrases like "needs more feedback" and "needs work" are not useful criticisms.

The same game which tells me I average around 55apm in a 1v1 is telling me I averaged 122 in a 6 way FFA that ran for 50min.

Nope.

PA Stats, which typically reports 20-30 APM higher, tells me it was an average of 58, which sounds far more realistic for the slower paced FFA.

http://www.pastats.com/chart?gameId=185761

Friends interface doesn't seem to accurately represent the online/offline status of friends. In previous builds I could see people online, but their green icon would eventually turn grey, though they'd still be in the online section and actually be online. In this build people are online are often kept in the offline area with a grey icon. Anyone else seen this?

Replay system could do with the starting time/date on the matches - possibly also the system name.

I think it's because of the way apm is calculated using ingame time instead of real life time. So in your ffa with unit spam?, the ingame time will slow down (probably by 2x it looks like), and so you effectively performed twice as many actions per ingame minute.

There is also difference in way pastats and PA calculate apm. I have a suspicion that PA actually calculates EAPM, not APM. Or some actions are not registered as actions in PA but are on pastats. Sometimes it can end up with differences as huge as 100 apm between the two.

- It would be nice if the UI showed whether planets in the system will naturally collide with each other or not, and what time they will do so.
- Radar/weapon range circle not showing up unless the radar or PD is completely built.
- Moon craters showing white blueprints that indicate buildings are able to be built there. But then are not allowed.
- Factories should show whether the entrance ramp spaces are blocking a metal point or not
- Should not be able to place blueprints ontop of each other. Sometimes you can place things like pgens really close but not overlapping with something, it'll come up white as accepted, but then fail to build because it was actually too close. Or was this intentional to reduce server load when checking for valid build placements?
- UI sometimes won't accept patrol routes if you set them too fast. The units end up just standing there.
- Friends list maybe shouldnt be stored only locally. That is, wiping your PA appdata folder shouldn't reset your friends list
- Easy and intuitive way to add players you see in lobby or ingame onto your friends list. Like, right click on their name, add friend etc.
- Sometimes when box selecting, it will select both fabbers and combat units, instead of one or the other.

Smashing UI needs more work:

• Some planets via the smashing interface aren't targetable from solar system view. If you click one that it and hit "," to cycle through planets you can target it anyway (which I don't believe to be a bug just an incomplete feature in the picking planet UI)
• When you are selecting where the planet will hit you should see a radius of how big the crater will be.
• There should be a way to tell a planet to move to orbit instead of having to click Annihilate and then cancel it later.
• As someone else mention there should be notes about if a planet will collide with another in the UI some how. It would also be nice if those collision were listed in the solar system view along with a count down until they happen.

As this topic appears to be expanding to include UI improvements, let me just say the spectator panels needs to show dynamic alliances in effect. It's such a huge part of the game type to be missing for casters.

From the figures I've seen I think you're right on both counts.

You sure you're not holding shift?

Yea, like with just one clean box select, no shift. It's very rare though and i don't know how to reliably reproduce it.

Perhaps it's just natural behaviour..? The box select determines what to select based on numbers of units within the selection box. If there are more fabbers it selects them, if there are more combat units then it goes for them. What happens if you drag a box over an area that contains an equal amount of both though (and its quite common to have a lot of fabbers in PA)? Then I guess you'd get both.

I've been saying for a long time I'd like a simple toggle to filter the various layers of combat, as once you have alot of stuff selection gets tricky. Fabbers only would be one of the options, as well as filters for ground combat, air untis and orbital.

I don't think Uber will do it but I'm curious to know if you could manipulate the selection behaviour with a mod?

A means to filter passworded games would be very handy. Also, if the game could remember my lobby filters that'd be nice.