I have a suggestion about radar. All radars an the planet could work like network. If enemy unit is in range of any radar you will get notification somewhere on the screen. It would be particularly helpfull in battle where will be multiple planets. For example you will have 3 planets captured and when someone will try to invade and your radar will detect them you will be notified even you will be watching another planet. Also there could be an option after how many units are detected you want to be notified. If that would be implemented i think that there will be no need for minimap because after you will be notified you will just zoom out and see where enemy is.
Sounds like a notification system to me. The problem I will have with such systems is that I tend to miss those notification. That's my personal preferences however, I know that some other people like notifications. Also the main problem with the overview and the minimap is that you can't just zoom out to see everything when you have multiple planets to look at. There is just no angle you can see everything from.
Maybe a little sound? Possibly the narrator saying something like, 'Planet under attack' or vice versa when you are invading, 'Planetary Invasion Commencing'. That would be awesome.
That's what SC2 has. Definitely not a bad system, but personally I never used it much and still played not totally bad. Doesnt matter, I just start ignoring these things. The only warning I was ever able to react properly to was "commander under attack" in FA. It was the only warning the game plays, so it was easy to make it out. A few warnings are good. But only for very important things. Asteroid incoming! Commander under attack! Nuke launched! Things that are really important. Some enemy units appearing on radar are not that important. In a good game the radar should spot enemies all the time, no point in being flooded with warnings. EDIT: My personal feeling might also be related to the fact that I often hear loud music while I play.
A good solution to this would be to have largish notification boxes pop up on the side of the screen and only go away once you click on them, thereby explicitly acknowledging receipt. There could even be a configuration option for which events get a notification, sound, both, or neither.
I like the way ZK does notifications. https://code.google.com/p/zero-k/wiki/Interface (see: #8) So besides a notification text and sound you could also add some functionality like double-clicking an "under attack" notification and the camera centering on the units under attack.
I never played much ZK and one of the things that made me go nuts when I tried it for a bit was those annoying notifications in the chatwindow I could not disable (I was probably just blind when I searched for the option). There were just way too many notifications and the chatwindow was constantly filled with random text I did not care about, since I noticed all those things by myself anyway. @ralith: If they do not disappear after a while the while fill up the whole screen. My feeling is that I don't want to deal with notifications, I want to deal with the game itself. I think my main reason for not liking these systems is that they usually don't tell me anything I don't notice by myself. Sure that's just my wishful thinking and I do miss some happenings, but I would just as much miss some of the notifications. I guess I am just a person who never liked these systems xD But sure, the possibility to i.e. switch the view to center on a recent event is good. Being able to configure stuff like this would basically make it possible for everyone to have the notifications he wants.
A Notificationsystem,hm? Well a "Commander under Attack" "Nuke launched detected", "Asteroid in collisioncourse" would be as a soundfile enough those are messages you want to react to. Everything else as a text? Nah the problem with Text is it has a tendecy to spam. I just need to think about Distant Worlds after a while it can get annoying as hell because of the scale. Personally i wouldnt use Text, all saying pictures would be enough, that keeps the chat clear, lets say you a have part in the UI that will send "Notification card" not big one with a symbol for different "low priority messages" with cooldowns we dont want to get spammed because of a long battle. So one thing would be to have those notifications cards only pop up when the events connected to them are happening on a planet you currently arent looking. You dont need to click them, they will vanish after a short amount of time. But when you do click them you will autmatically get a strategic view of the situation. I hate "zoom on events" that are to close to the event so you cant see "the big picture" of the situation. Bad thing about that is primarly the UI will get a bit bigger. You could either seperate the UI into different categorize or think about two UIs for the normal view and the strategic zoom. I think, we go with a standard notification ala SupCom until we see battle on different planets happening and the lack of "battle informations" before we can think about a good system for it.
Atm it beeps for me. its so annoying in the long run to hear that constant beep. Especially consindering how long the range of the advanced radar is, so you will be hearing that annoying beep all game long i dont like that at all. Maybe reduce radar range, and make it toggle option with the beeps on the radar building or only beep when you are watching it zoomed out or something.
