Are UI improvements coming?

I was hoping with the official release we'd get a nicer UI. But the UI is still basically non-existent. It's extremely difficult to manage everything that's going on to the point of being practically unplayable. This was ok in beta, since it wasn't done yet, but having no UI in a released game is kind of a joke. Are there plans to patch in a better UI?

No UI?

The UI has gotten substantially better since beta, and while improvements are obviously wanted and are indeed possible.

It's quite the stretch to say the current UI makes the game unplayable.

Really? To me it looks pretty much the same as when I started playing beta like a year ago.

Wut, the Ui is fine I don't see ANYTHING wrong with it.

What exactly are your concerns with the UI? What aspects are making the game unplayable?

I think the angle OP may be coming from is that compared to a lot of other RTS games, PA's UI is quite minimal. It's certainly not unplayable, but there's less of it intruding onto the screen space than in other games. I've actually found it refreshing not to have a quarter of the lower screen taken up by a taskbar.

OP, what are you trying to manage that the UI doesn't allow you to?

We don't need to go all out here, a simple side by side comparison of beta UI and current UI should suffice.

I'd like to see UI responsiveness improve across the board, it's not so much an issue with the ingame ui, but the main menu suffers from some pretty heavy delay.

This has to be a joke. Back in early builds it was terrible. Now i love it. Very minimal but does everything you need it to do. I use alot of keyboard shortcuts, but when i dont the UI looks and functions nice. Serious night and day diff from alpha/beta.

Either your playing on a toaster or you need glasses.

What are your issues with the UI? That would make it easier to understand your point.

I'm quite fine with the ui. If i had to critizise something, it's a small thing like the 'stretched out' unit commands on the right. Just feels impractical to me, i'd prefer a small rectangle box to a bar.
And ofc the hotkeys, which aren't very useful. Haven't yet try that hotkey-mod, though.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/interface-bugs-and-now-improvements.62420/page-2#post-970271

All these issues are still there, and the list is not exhaustive.

I'd really like to have the feature from SupCom where we were able to move structures that are queued for construction that a fabber hasn't started constructing yet.

At least one of those has been fixed/changed (ages ago), some I don't believe are an issue or are specific to your setup, and many are personal preference.

So while some are valid, "All these issues are still there" is clearly false.

I confirm that all of them are still there.

Not sure the one supposed to be fixed, but it's not.

Also it was a quick list on top of my head, the UI thread of last year still apply. And so I'm agreeing with the OP : while it's more robust now, it's still as bad as the beta UI ergonomically-wise..

ie. on top of my head : It's impossible to know where a teleporter output is located.

Given one is caused by you using a mod (which you even state as much), I'm not sure how you can say this.

Fixed/Changed:

• The orange pingy-thingy when you do nothing but de-select an unit is still there. Ping command Moved to the bottom bar, many builds ago. Unless you're talking about clicking in empty space, which is a personal preference thing at best.
  
• Displaying orders with shift isn't clear at all. Updated recently.
  
• Possibly fixed: When zooming out in galactic view, zooming in while hovering another planet area should zoom into that planet, not the one you went from.
• Possibly fixed recently: There should be a notification when someone is going to another planet and you can detect it in some way.

Not an issue:

• The camera is still spinning crazily near the poles. Sounds like you have pole lock on, so you're experiencing Gimbal lock, an unavoidable side-effect.
  
• I'm not color blind, but I'm unable to distinguish armies by color. I don't know why exactly, maybe it's not dominant enough inside the icons? This is followed by you saying you were using a Unit Icon mod.

Personal preference:

• Points 3, 4, 7, 9, 14.

Then it should be in the preferences? The game is already cluttered with informations, having an additional entirely useless one should be something you could remove.

It's still very much unclear. ie. the relay point of factory is almost invisible, as well as the path. Overall, when zoomed out (when you play on several planets, it's all the time), you can't see ****.
Worst : sometimes, pressing shift isn't doing anything (seems to happen unless everything is unselected, but I have to confirm this).

There is real disconnection between the game supposed to be "large scale" while the whole UI not working well zoomed out.

I confirm that it isn't fixed at all. If the planet is centered, it kind of work, but not by hovering. Also sometimes it does work, sometimes not, making the feature unreliable, and so useless/broken.

Either it's not fixed, or the message isn't clear/visible enough. I think there should be some visual indicator of the importance of the event.
ie. I don't care much that the mex I've targeted is destroyed (I don't suffer from Alzheimer yet).

When attacking on a large scale (something that the game is supposed to handle perfectly), it's spamming things like that all the time.

And worst, it's displaying with the same level of information that if my commander is attacked.

That's your personal opinion. I consider them very big issues for a large-scale game, and your opinion is not worth more than mine. You can disagree, but you can't say these are not issues for me.

They are solutions for that. Or more specifically in PA case, solution that avoid the problem if you are not going over the pole.
Actually, it shouldn't happen at all because you are NOT going over the pole (that's the point of pole lock), that's why I consider it a bug.
I can prototype a camera that does a correct movement in a 3d software if you don't believe me.

It wasn't very clear. I obviously tried without any icon mod first, and that point occurs with the vanilla ones.

All decisions are personal preference if you come to this argument.
The point is that with the current personal preference, problems on large scale may occur. And PA is supposed to be play on a BIG scale.
Ie. point 7, 9 and 14.

You can't seriously say that the cluster-**** the orbital layer looks like is a personal preference and shouldn't be fixed.
If you really do, I propose you a game of "where is Charlie?". I do some screenshots, and you point me where some important buildings are on it.

Sadly I couldn't time you, but unless you can achieve the challenge under 5 seconds, it's a problem.

No, it's not unavoidable : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/camera-control.64032/

For one thing, if I assign a group of units a hotkey, the UI is not updated to display that group. A lot of RTSs have this, where once you assign a group, a box will show on an area of the screen showing that '1' has been assigned to some group of units. When all those units die, it goes away. It usually also shows you how many units are in the group and has an icon of one of the units in the group (usually the most common unit in the group). This is useful for knowing the state of your army at a glance.

There is also no good way of seeing how close some units are to making it to their destination planet without going all the way out to galaxy view to babys-- err check on their progress every minute.

Building a radar should at least give you a minimap of the planet with the radar on it. I thought Uber broke and said they agreed that there should be a minimap. What happened to that? No minimap makes it very difficult to move around the map. I'm used to being able to instantly jump all over the map using a minimap. Movement around the map is slow and cumbersome now.

The orbital layer is still tough to manage. I'm not sure what would be a good solution here. Maybe have ground units be 30% transparent at the orbital layer and don't allow box selecting to bleed to the layer below?

It'd also be super useful to be able to see idle constructors at a glance.

For a game that's supposed to be macro focused, the UI forces a ton a micro.

That's what pip is for. idle constructors is f hotkey

A lot of the issue with the server browser seeming slow might be related to this: PA#4081