Me too.

Fluff numbers are interesting, dont get rid of them. I'd be happy with the gameplay numbers being more prominent, but that's the extent of it. 

I might be the minority her, but i think color coding planets by quality should be done like Item quality in RPG games.

Grey - Trash - 0

White - Regular - 0-4

Green - Good - 5-9

Blue - Superior - 10-14

Purple - EPIC - 15+

For me green is associated with good enough, while blue color reminds me of earth and since its a 10 it will match, and because of WoW and other clones purple will forever be imprinted in my head as nothing short of AMAZING, just like when in GC2 my scout ship uncovers a purpler start with planets that when my eyes go $$.

DON@T GET RID OF THE B + BC WHATEVER YOU DO!!!!!

I really like the B for Billion of people in GalCiv.

Why?

Because it highlights how ludicrously insane (awesome) planetary invasions are in this game.

That's right, just cram a couple billion suicidal maniacs in tin can spaceships. Nuke the surface of the target planet with some handy asteroids or whatever flood the whole ball to soften them up. Then drop all those crazies, Starship troopers style, to finish the job. 

At the end of the week we nuked everything and a dozen billion people died killing each others.

Business as usual in the world of GalCiv.

Yep. You rest better at night after sending billions into a new Klendathu!

( And that illustrates the roleplaying aspect of it. To know that number is to connect to it. )

I'm not against fluff but that is one of those UI foibles that needed fixing. You can add the BC stuff else where, but keep the main UI clean of those kinds of nonsensical nomenclature that doesn't convey useful information to the player

Well, because this whole "fluff number" thread is really fun, I decided to make a poll about it.

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=530d5079e4b0bec4ad7a7870

Well I went to the site, and that question just seems easily miss interpreted... "Do you like fluff numbers?" On polling such a question, I recommend that we see these numbers in action. I do not have a large screen, I play games on and so my resolution is rather limited (large enough for fun, but not large enough to want to remove UI space).

The option to include or dis-include the values and such seems to be really an immersion question. By leaving planet scales by using 14B, where B stands for billion, couldn't it be entirely conceivable that a planet that can support 14 billion Terrans could support 50 billion Thalans (or some other species). By not directly showing the "fluff" numbers but an abstract planet classification (which I suspect would be done in reality anyway), we could include different types of fluff numbers depending on race as demonstrated in the tool-tips. Leaving the game data the same, but the fluff data can be race specific (and I wouldn't want to relearn a unique UI from species to species). I would like to also see these classification numbers to identify a range of population, somewhere on the lines of 500 - 700 million people are living on this planet. Range of data makes it more plausible due to sampling error (speaking from an immersion point of view). In summary... fluff numbers not on map, but in tool-tips.

I would like to see the population somewhere. It doesn't have to be everywhere. It could be on the colony screen. The only thing I could think the population change might affect is the colony rush. This does seem kind of petty. This does not really affect game play like shutting off planet trading. 

I agree this is not worth an option. As far as options I say the more the merrier when they are meaningful. I for one shut off a lot of options at the beginning of the game off. Meaning that since I don't like a lot of default settings these were for me.I'm in  support of not making this an option. I don't think that is worth the setting, but making this a page somewhere is not a bad idea.

I'm in support of keeping the game editor that came with Galactic civilizations 2 ultimate edition only expanding it every way possible.

This whole "optional menu" thing got out of proportion faster than a supernova. Lets not go there again. He he.

For me personally. Not having these numbers in the game proper, would make the game a more sterile and distant experience. Tooltips or not.

I like to bond with the game, to feel the little people included. Those that aren't really there, but in your mind! Just to make that clear.

BC might end up being called bitcoins instead of billion credits

I'm not suggesting g we get rid of fluff data.  I'm saying it should be presented in the tooltip.

Traditionally, tooltips have been used to help explain how game features work.

In that sense they serve as an additional layer. To give advice and help, and provide information. Yes.

However.

Should things that create immersion, be moved out into an auxiliary layer where it might be harder to notice? Is that not to distance the user from the information, since you will have to actively seek it? Is that not a way to downplay immersion, by placing the data into a secondary layer otherwise connected with metagaming concepts? Should immersion really be considered metagaming, and not a main feature of the game proper?

For that is what it looks like, when moved away like this.

Moved, not removed.

For the record, I have zero issues with your planned change Frogboy, this discussion was too one sided to stay quiet.

Fate,

My complaints (and compliments):

- I know this is the alpha and the UI will likely go through great changes, but I would also like it 'bottom' oriented, possibly because Gal Civ 2 was like that. The UI also seems very 2 dimensional and would like it to 'pop' more.

- I don't know if I like the thickness of the travel lines of the ships. It is nice to see where they are going and how many turns, but Gal Civ 2's and even SOSE's were better. I like thin (maybe animated) clean and crisp lines. I don't want to get lost in a lot of junk when I have 20 ships all moving around the screen. The minimap should have thicker lines and a toggle to turn those on and off, but not the main viewer.

- Adjacency bonuses will make placing improvements MUCH more interesting. I don't know how well it is balanced, but you could get some fairly bad planets if the tiles are randomly placed. Will the tiles match the land underneath? Will there be researches for water based improvements (likely, but I like to ask anyway!)?

- Research screen looks very empty. The old one had pictures, tabs, text boxes, and buttons galore. I really like the complicated-ness of it. I am also wondering if we can see progression (with all the techs connected)? I would like to see what paths I can take and have taken. I don't want to go back to Gal Civ 1 and not be able to see a progression, just a list of techs.

- Planetary defenses will also make the game much more interesting. Bombing? Improved defenses for orbiting ships? Invasion screens?

I can't think on much else now, but I'll let it fester and maybe once I can better grasp this awesomeness I'll write some more!

Keep up the good work! For a year out, you guys have a ton of work finished!

Edit: Also, what is skMatte_fullzoom.jpg? Is this a still frame of a cut scene from the campaign?? AMAZING. Or is it a picture of a mega event? If the rest of the UI and game lives up to this picture, it will be one for the record books.

To answer my own question, I found that the PlanetScreen-alpha01 in the vault clearly shows a "Defense System" that looks awfully like a gun pointed toward the sky. Can you say PLANETARY DEFENSES?

That's the Arcean Space Cannon from GalCiv 2. The devs are probably using the old icons as placeholders until the new ones are ready.

I'm a bit late to the conversation, but I vote to keep the fluff numbers/text onscreen: Not only because it's fun and meaningful (more than a plain number), but it also presents an 'anchor' point, to say. It makes splitting the information into more easily digestible parts in my mind and you get what you need faster. Which is the whole point of a UI and the data presented.

Better than just a bunch of numbers thrown in a column!

Overall, it all looks pretty amazing.

On fluffy numbers - I like them as they are now and think stripping off the meaningful suffixes would be a bad move.  If you have a pane summarizing a planet with all kinds of different numbers it's nice to see the suffixes to help you quickly differentiate between the values.

If I'm looking for my population and glancing at that panel, I just need to look for "10b" because my brain knows the only number in that vacintiy with a "b" after it is the population.  I'm not reading the rest of the panel to see that the line I'm looking at says "population".  Strip off that "b" and now I DO have to look for specific labels to sift out generic values from a list of generic numbers.

Anyways...looks great and a brutal tease.

First in my opinion I think any colony would have less colonists than the home planet. This population should be fewer than the home planet with the same benefits. For instance the recommended population cap would be 20 billion lets say instead that the recommended colony population would be 2 billion instead.  I also think that extreme planets should probably have a population limitation. Different extreme planets would have different population limits. I also think that different factions get different bonuses and penalties. To make this fair whatever bonus or penalty he would incur on one planet that faction wound incur the opposite on another planet type.This is my opinion on numbers. At least this is really not an issue with false numbers.I guess this is not a popular opinion. I also think this is a minor issue.

After I probably caused negative feedback. I didn't like the fact that the tiles were plain unless you looked them up in the manual. I would like to see a nice picture maybe in the tool tip or when they highlight it with a mouse. Maybe different random pictures for each resource. I would like to see the description in the tool tip not just in the manual.

Yes, because we talk about PLANETS! To conquer a house, you need a squad. To conquer a village, you need a company and so forth.

To conquer a planet, you need insane amount of gun wielding troops with insane amount of support.

If we look at WW2, 100+ million troopers in total and war was fought on rather small part of one planet.

Never hated anything as much as minimalistic approach in games with interstellar scope.

Quoting Tergon, reply 72

Yes, because we talk about PLANETS! To conquer a house, you need a squad. To conquer a village, you need a company and so forth.

To conquer a planet, you need insane amount of gun wielding troops with insane amount of support.

If we look at WW2, 100+ million troopers in total and war was fought on rather small part of one planet.

 

Never hated anything as much as minimalistic approach in games with interstellar scope.

 

I totaly agree with you on this, I hate things that are out of proportion, this tends to happen alot in games as understandably (especially with old games) it would take alot of processing power and work ect to have realistic battles.

 That's why I like things like Warhammer 40k It's on such an epic scale!

If the armies are wildly disproportionate in power, you don't need as many. The US conquered Iraq without a huge number of troops because they had so much better equipment and organization. Course, they had serious problems with civil unrest afterward. 

Totaly agree too