I've spent about 20 hours playing the UI of Galactic Civilizations, and have come to the conclusion that the UI has beat me--it has successfully kept me from playing the game underneath it. The collection of major and minor annoyances and UI quirks as manifested in the current version have kept me from feeling like I'm playing a game, despite many efforts to try to work around and/or ignore them. I have high hopes that these issues may be addressed in future patches, but until then, I just can't play GalCiv.

I've listed my major issues below. Most of them could be addressed by adding tool-tip and/or clickable context-sensitive help to the UI; doing so would go a loooong way in making the UI more palatable. If there are ways of addressing any of the issues below with the current GalCiv UI, I would appreciate any suggestions...I really really want to be able to play GalCiv!

In rough order of decreasing annoyance, the issues I've found are:

* Cannot get details on technologies while in diplomacy screen.

* Cannot tell what projects, ships, etc., that result from techs do from tech screen, or the planet details screen.

* Cannot get details on projects, ships, etc., from planet view (F7) without selecting the alternatives, which changes what's being built.

* Cannot get details on what already-built trade goods do, either yours or those built by others.

* Cannot see trade routes on mini-map, or main map.

* It is possible to launch colony ships w/out ever getting the dialog to load them, resulting in an empty ship with no way to load it, and no indication that you've done something wrong.

* Mini-map views are always at least several keystrokes/mouse clicks away when they need to be visible at all times. For example, when adding to a starbase or building on a planet, its location with respect to everything else is important, yet is not easy to see w/out several clicks.

* Very few screens have any sort of useful tool-tip or other methods to get more information about what's going on. IMO, every single field, icon, UI component, and displayed bit of information should have tool-tip help.

* The 3-way money allocation sliders are highly cumbersome for what they do, and don't present what they're doing very well. A triangular selector would be a lot more obvious, I think--it would immediately show that you're dividing up allocation between three fields.

* Quantity selection sliders in the game are very unpleasant to use. At a minimum, it should be possible to type in a quantity directly instead of having to click hundreds of times.

* There is no way to see what's contributing toward the total income and expenses of your empire, or of a given planet. For example, it would be nice to know how many of a given type of building you have, empire-wide, and to get a quick breakdown of all costs associated with a specific planet.

* There is no way to jump directly to a planet that has completed one project if its governor has automatically started another one.

* The planet list window (F2) only shows 7 planets at a time, and is cumbersome to use to sort displays (many clicks to change what the sort field is).

* It is very hard to tell who owns starbases on the main map window. The colored shading on the starbases is very subtle, especially between dark green and dark blue, at least on every monitor and set of lighting conditions, contrast, etc., that I've tried. An option to make the ownership more obvious would be helpful.

* There is no legend for the tactical screen, nor can anything on it be selected or interrogated. Even basic tool-tip info about what the cursor is hovering over would be a big improvement.

* There is no way to get a list of all know planets in the galaxy, or all uncolonized ones, or all owned by a certain race, etc.

* There is no legend for the meaning of the miniature icons next to ships in the ship list (F3), or for the icons next to planets in the main window.

* Some things that can be clicked on give no visible indication that they can (e.g., clicking "Military Projects" or "Social Projects" in the planet view window to see details of the current project in that category), and others that look like they can be clicked on cannot be (e.g., some of the widgets in the Economics window, the button-shaped empty outlines in the Diplomacy window)

* There are numerous issues with focus that cause confusion. For example, I have had one ship selected (I think!) and right-clicking caused a different one to move. I have had the "Do you want to upgrade this starbase?" dialog pop up while looking at the research screen, and I have no idea why it did, or where the starbase was.

* Launching ships is a multi-step process. If I see that a new ship has been built (from the start-of-turn summary), and auto-launch isn't enabled for the corresponding planet, I have to hunt down the non-launched ship in the ship list and then click on it, then click the "launch" button, or double-click on it (which can be bad if I'm just trying to select it to get more info, not send it into space). If I have auto-launch enabled, and the ship is a transport/colony ship, I have to hunt down the planet to see its details before I can make an informed decision as to how to load it.

* There are no per-planet planetary build queues. Having the governor build queues directly accessable from the per-planet planet view/build menu can create the impression that the per-governor queue is per-planet, when it isn't.

* At one point, the UI style changed for no apparent reason, and there wasn't any way to change it back. The UI style should be an option from main menu.

* There is no information about the options in the main menu. Tool-tip or other forms of help information would be useful.

* The mini-map zoom factor box in the upper-right corner is always active, even when the mini-map is not visible.

I would be happy to discuss any of the above in more detail, and/or to provide more suggestions if desired.

-Torinak