Hello people. Just been back from playing a couple of games after the beta updates. I don't feel like talking about any of the balance issues, or the graphical or performance stuff, because it is blatantly obvious and it will get hammered out before release. What I think needs to be addressed, and affects the game in a more fundamental level is the UI design. As the game is now, it is very normal that you will play a game with hundreds of units and you will have to control them in multiple fronts. The problem lies in the fact that when there are so many units in the field, you have no option but to rely in the icons from the tactical view, which are clumsy and takes me away from the enjoyment of watching my little robots explode each other in battle, and you have no easy mean to control your army once your throw them at your enemy. The fact that there is no minimap also doesn't help(And no, Jon Mavor, it is not impossible, other games have done it before). Also, there is the fact that there are indeed keys for a lot of things, like selecting and building stuff on the fly. The problem is that they are so cryptic you will never memorize all of them without some major mental effort, and the game still lacks the capacity to intelligently select relevant units, having only keys to select all of them at once. Overall there is always a lot going on in the game, which is a good thing, the problem is that you will never be able to see or understand everything that just happened. Now, I do have some suggestions on how I would strive to overcome those issues. They are founded only in my gut feeling and but they are worth sharing if there is any chance they will help solve those problems. I would really like to hear your thoughts on them. First things first, I would implement the damn minimap already and get rid of the tactical view. All that you need to do is to take the already existing tactical view and place it on a semi-transparent sphere with parallel lines that moves accordingly to the player camera, just a bit zoomed out to show the whole planet. Due to the game's support to multiple monitors, that would really help to visually convey the information needed. Second, I would try making a more solid UI. Going with a minimalistic approach is a matter of aesthetic, but the aesthetic must serve the gameplay, and not the contrary. In that case having something bigger, maybe with sound cues when stuff happens in the map, and buttons to select units in the HUD itself, would certainly help. Having tooltips on how to use certain key commands would also help. Third, I think we could really use a smart grouping feature that would allow us to command huge hordes of units without having to select them with clumsy boxes. Having some kind of squad grouping would make it easier to control units, in a way that wouldn't hurt the feel of the game, but in turn enable more strategic play. Just make a box on the side of the hud where you can have all your squads shown, and you can just drag unit icons into them to make a squad, that would move, attack, and more importantly, be controlled, as a single unit. I say smart grouping because it could be really useful to be able to select units with one click in the are where they are closely grouped, and select them with boxes or ctrl clicks if you want to gather only part of them. Regardless of the implementation, I would strongly recommend some kind of squad management feature. Thanks to anyone that stuck through my thoughtful rant. I look forward to reading your opinions on the matter. P.S.: As a new user I can't post links, but I would invite anyone interested in a planetary minimap done properly to google about PixelFoundry's Blackspace. It is quite something.
This guy said nearly everything that I just posted about as well. • The MiniMap, or some sort of quick-select "Where the hell am I?" feature • A more comprehensive UI • Fast Unit Grouping/Selection These are some of the very same issues that I just walked away from a 5+ hour game session with. I am really hoping that the folks at Uber are taking a good long look at the Beta Forums to see that some of the same issues just keep popping up again and again. I want this game to succeed, and I want to know that I can't stop playing it. Uber, take our feedback in, work something out, and make me an addict.
Apparently you can set camera locations. I forget the hotkeys at the moment because I haven't started using them (I need to learn them in Starcraft as well) but they are there. As for quick unit selection, Ctrl+# to create the group, # to recall just like any other RTS in the last 10+ years. Tool tips are coming. Remember, this game just hit beta, so there is still a lot of work to go into it. Tool tips are not a huge gameplay priority compared with something like getting planet smashing working. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if tool tips don't make it into the game before November. As far as I am aware the UI is getting an overhaul. Sound cues are there, but more are coming (still early beta). Finally, if you want to watch little robots explode each other, feel free. While you do that I'll be sitting in a zoomed out view commanding my armies and building up my economy. I like the minimalist UI because it has the info I need and nothing extra so it doesn't get in the way of my view of the actual game area.
i agree in general with all of the above. the squad concept is excellent, and there's a lot of room in there for good stuff. it could be interesting to assign a factory to build new units into existing squads.
