The New "Prototype Feedback" in the Vault!

... Why?  It's kinda pointless.

This is your complaint on pre-alpha material?

Without having the image at hand to reference, I can't be 100% sure... but bluntly, I *like* having those details obvious.  I turn them on whenever I can.

Actually, I love getting rid of those.  As useful as units are in some cases, the game really should get rid of them.

Neater :3

...Isn't our job as fans (and testers/founders) to complain? You can never complain too much or too loudly.

If you look at the picture, it's a fairly thick blue line that has no business being in that part of town. It sticks out a bit too much and it'll probably get mugged by thicker, darker lines. 

Why? 

I think I found the file you were looking at... and the sector lines need to be two or three times as clear!

Lay off the mead man, it's waaaayyyyy too opaque and thick. Imagine seeing it up close, it'd be taking up a good quarter of a parsec.

Wow, this conversation could be really badly misinterpreted really quickly.

Aren't the sector deliminators statically sized -- they don't change in width as you zoom in / out?

Edit:

Looks like they do gain a bit of something, but that may just be a culture boundry...

.......

That's the best news I've heard all day! Man, I'm an idiot.

Still, sector lines must die horrific, screaming deaths.

I agree with the notion that the "fluff" numbers introduce a certain "roleplaying" or "immersion" element. As stated above.

Even if they don't actually further the understanding or progress of the game in a practical sense, it makes the world seem more alive. Making the game mechanically more sterile in order to promote the more pertinent flow and function of actual progression, is of course the visually cognitive correct thing to do, but it also create somewhat of an environmental drought, if we consider that the game world is an illusion in the first place.

One man's clutter, is another man's collection of nuggets, even if such an extra layer should produce superfluous and impractical non-interactive values, it creates a dimension of depth, thus adding to the illusion of an operating universe, even if you are unable to put the numbers into direct and meaningful action. Abstraction is well and good, but it is also speaks to you from a distance. Sometimes you need to dive in there, and just believe there is something more going on, call it a moment of suspended disbelief.

Short version: Please allow for a little smoke and mirrors.  

I also agree that this was the most interesting thing we have seen yet.

Regarding fluff numbers.  I would rather that the fluff be in a tooltip while keeping the numbers on the screen just numbers.

For example, I would LOVE to have a system where we are free to have the population of a planet be given the number 9 and have that correspond to say 12.3 billion as "fluff". THEN we could have our own sci-fi scale on things like that (for instance, 1 could be 25,000, 2 could be 1 million, 3 could be 40 million, etc.).  Game wise, I'd rather keep the game data sepaerate from the fluff data.  

Personally I definitely prefer the numbers to have units of measurements beside them, It really help knowing immediately what you are looking at when you are gazing at a screen full of numbers. Please at least keep it as an option in the display settings or something, I do not mind if they are Off by default, as long as they can be turned back on. 

I suppose this is a bit what happened when Microsoft decided to hide file type extensions by default. "Bah this is just techno babble"

When I install a fresh windows, the first thing I do is uncheck " Hide extension of known file types " in the folder view settings.

The tooltips. Of course. That sounds like a creative way of implementing that fabled extra layer of irrational data, we fleshlings still long for. If it can be done, it would be most pleasing.

Being the old fashioned grump, I also agree with the above poster. They could at least be optionally displayed. Since these new ways of conveying information easily comes out as "second rate".

I red something about removing units of measurements and i completely disagree. I feel that they ad a level of depth, and represent the magnitude of your empire knowing that you have 10k billion credits or that you just loaded an armada of dropships with billions of soldiers and most of them are about to die in some planetary scale warfare is awesome!!!

Also i saw a screenshot (not in the PDF) where there is planetary ADJACENCY BONUSES(woohoo) i had this suggestion from the early days, can we get some more info on how that works? 

After perusing the document twice now, I'm largely impressed by what I see, Also happy that in most cases, Brad's ideas are in line with my own for where improvements can be made.

I know this is early stuff, but I don't know what's planned, so I'm just giving my two cents on what I see! 
With that in mind, I'd like to offer some feedback of my own.
Having not seen the game's menus "in action", I can only base my judgement on the static images.
In my opinion, the menus and UI looks great as a whole, however, I feel that "boxing" areas of text within these screens would be a large improvement.

Specifically using the Planet Screen image as an example. Where "Prairie Land" and the text below are displayed could be made appealing and visually concrete by placing the text in a darker "box", instantly drawing the distinction, visually, where different information belongs a little more keenly than just a separator bar. 
As it appears at the moment, there is no real "variance" in the screen elements and it's all one slightly opaque colour with words on it causing everything just seems to "float" around on the colour. Blocking out the text in those sections (where it says hyperion shipyard and such as well) will just add a little more "pop" to the UI, not to mention make reading whatever information you are trying to get much easier.
(Another example is the racial select screen. The areas for the Race description, abilities and technologies would look "stronger" if they were presented in a dark/black box. Admittedly, still with some visual flair.)

Likewise with the build queue entries, having the individual items be a complete "box" and made to stand out among the backdrop a little more would serve to make identifying the progress/built times much quicker and easier.
I also find the boxes for each item being "open" as they are now, conflicts with all the other elements of the UI being relatively hard lined with full, closed, shapes.
 

I also prefer having a simple unit of measurement present on statistics. I know that GalCiv is a game, and calling up info on the fly is important, however, I never felt like having "BC" at the end of my currency ever detracted from this.
Plus it was always jarring from an immersion perspective to have small ships cost 21 "credits", I ended up just imagining the "BC" stood for "Billion Credits" and it immediately felt more natural to me (However, it did make the scientist finding 1bc on a table even somewhat odd in comparison).
Likewise for population,  I like knowing I have XXXXBillion people on a planet and I despised having minimal numbers in Sins of a Solar Empire. It just felt wrong and really impeded my immersion in the game at times.
It's not game breaking of course, but I always imagined myself as a Leader, pouring over data and information and directing the growth of his empire and dulling down info into black and white game mechanics can disturb this "fantasy".

Though that said, having full info-graphics and fluff tooltips ect sound awesome and I'm certain there's a happy medium somewhere between displaying pertinent gameplay information and immersive flavour text. I have every faith that the team will hit the nail on the head one way or another.

I also notice that Ships and buildings now form a single queue instead of separate manufacturing areas. Is this because alpha specific or is this how the system plans to operate now? 
Admittedly not sure how well this sits with me, but, like all things I will see I can put it into practice.
More details would be great! 

Galaxy Map looks superb!


I like the idea of a little numbered badge on the planet data displaying the quality of the world shifting colour from red to green indicating immediately how "good" a planet is for colonization. Perhaps also having unique colour "trim" associated for extreme weather worlds, or exceedingly high quality worlds (Green badge with a gold trim for Class 20 world or something?).

Everything else looks pretty great as it stands atm, my only niggle being that there's not enough visual distinction between UI elements and everything ends up looking the same (and to be honest, somewhat bland) as a result.

ill make a post tomorrow, in big multiplayer game right now. Looks good so far. 

That is what BC actually stood for, and that event was quite nonsensical due to that fact.

Wouldn't that lead to the population being more granular rather than a smoothly increasing amount GC2 had? If population lost the three digits behind the decimal, wouldn't that cut a few interesting choices during the colony rush? In GC2 we had the choice to use full colony ships (even multiple modules) or using a reduced load. The planets settled with reduced loads took much longer to reach full population, with consequences felt in the economy, influence generation, and even limited options for launching a secondary colony from that low-pop colony.

I think, I could live with that compromise.

However, I would prefer it, if the fluff would be kept. It makes the numbers more relateable, in my opinion. A population value of 9 wouldn't tell me anything at first glance. How much is that? Is it more than our current population on Earth? Less? Having to look up that it means 12.3b is just putting one more hurdle between me and the information I want.
Keeping the fluff would make me able to tell at a glance what the value means, while still providing the necessary game data.

The only thing I have on reducing numbers is does this affect the colony rush. One screen with the actual numbers while having symbolic number on the rest is fine. With current economics credits will look wrong.

Is there only one build Que now. I won't like that.

Are we researching more than one tech at once. That sounds good.

I like fancy names for techs.

The other stuff looks great.

The bonus's for adjacent buildings is all I can think about from that, that is going to be amazing!

Fate,

Very good observation.

My reaction to the single build que:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_ZANVFteU

For me, thje fluff numbers (and units) are quite important...they help immersion a lot and add sense of realism.

"Aah, what a big emperor I am, governing over 100 bil. people" etc.

Its funny coz when i had this idea from Xcom base building, and made an example of how it could apply to GalCiv ppl were mostly skeptical saying its would be to fiddly and what if they play on immense galaxy and have like 100 colonies they would have to optimize every single one.

In my opinion that's the way it has to be played. Even though in GC2 you could just place stuff on bonus tiles and then spam everything else in any random way, i on the other hand have always enjoyed building things in some orderly way. Its awesome to see that now it will will actually have some kind of impact and not just for fun or for people with neat freak disorder

Brad, I think the level of abstraction you are suggesting is only comfortable to a small percentage of us. I have seen school systems that help children cross the boundary between hard numbers and the abstraction of numbers at an early age, but my experience is that these systems are rarely used. I see this as one of the failings of our public school systems, but it does impact the feel most individuals will get from the game.

on page 9 under missing alpha elements 2)

we see a scout ship with a what looks like a flight path into unexplored space the question i have is; is that flight path zigzagging to avoid unseen obstacles or is it supposed to be the most direct path to its destination?

Feedback-

World Classes- Agree with colored numbers for planet quality, Class 0- black
"Barren/uninhabitable", Class 1-5 Red "Hostile-Poor", Class 6-10 Orange
"Below Average-Fair", Class 11-16 Yellow "Above Average-Good, Class 17+
Green "Excellent-Super".

Suns- The suns should be the biggest objects ie shouldn't see gas gaints bigger
than their parent star. (unless white dwarf)

Also down the road you can make sun come in classes that affect the game say
population growth on worlds, ship combat/ship systems, certain suns creates
resource rich worlds. (GC2 purple suns it seems like you would more often then
not find a super world), etc...

The starting survey ship starts with a random weapon system, in race creation
screen you can spend points to give it addtional abilities.

On point 14 pic on the Research Laboratory description make the"000" just a "0".