Queuing upgrades, items and structures for planets even when out of resources.

from Sins2 Forums

Devs please allow us an option to "queue up" Planet Upgrades & Items & Structures even when we don't have the resources for it, so that we can set up the entire planet as soon as we colonize it (and the game auto starts planet upgrade/item/structure when $ is available).

That way we can focus onto other things instead of waiting for the exact amount of resources to be available to purchase each individual upgrade/item/structure, or buying resources from the Market out of sheer frustration due to the UI blocking us for finishing queuing planet upgrades/items/structures.

Elaboration:

Today i tried playing a 1v1 game vs Hard AI on one of the smallest twenty planet maps available.

However after almost 20 minutes of countless mouse-clicking on the many planet upgrades, planet items, planet structures, researches and similar repetitive monotone actions (and being unable to queue up any of those without having resources) i just quit the match due to sheer frustration and boredom.

I spent the entire time just wrestling with the UI instead of enjoying the awesome looking spaceship battles.

And yes i am familiar with the various overview panels that show all the planets, but it is still something that has to be checked constantly due to the UI not allowing a "queue without resources available" feature.

I very much like the concept of Sins 2 economy, but the UI of Planetary upgrades/items/structures and research not allowing any queuing without having ALL the money available is horribly annoying, and the more planets a map has the worse this UI problem becomes.

Thanks for working on Sins 2!

sins ii feedback
5,284 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins2 Forums Top

Thanks for the suggestion - but how would you imagine this working?  If we let players queue up a ton of stuff and it immediately hits your income, you'll be blocked from building ships, etc. when you need to unless you then de-queue all the stuff you had just done. That's not a good play experience either.

Reply #2 from Sins2 Forums Top

Yeah, I’m trying to think through how we could make this feature intuitive and safe for a variety of players, ensuring that new players don’t accidentally tank their economy, while also preventing more experienced players from forgetting they’ve toggled it on and running into unexpected behavior later. It gets really niche really quick.

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Reply #3 from Sins2 Forums Top

Thanks for replying and working on this great game.

Some various suggestions from seeing similar QoLife features & auto-queue systems in other games:

  • queue takes needed resources only if the player has a solid/rich stockpile of resources (maybe customizable thresholds).
  • perhaps an option to visually show the queue (as little icons) so the player knows whats next to be funded.
  • button to globally pause and resume all queues, if funds are suddenly needed elsewhere.
  • some games even allow a player to mildly go into negative resources just so UI accepts the input (queue won't start until $ is ready).
  • a small non-intrusive popup/slide UI element in a corner asking for permission to proceed with queues (akin to the advisor in Tropico city builder games).
  • perhaps Planet development/items/structures & Research costs can be billed as "per second during progress" costs instead of "all instantly at the start"? (similar to Command & Conquer economy)

To be honest waiting for that 50 or 100 resource just to be able to click on an uncooperative UI element/button is really not fun, and having to use the expensive Market just because of such UI frustrations is in my humble opinion not a good thing.

Often it happens to me that i needed to buy a Planet item/development/structure (or research) but was missing 60ish resource and then something draws my immediate attention and i entirely forget the original plan, which then gets delayed for god knows how long.

If we had the option of queuing planet upgrades/items/structures & research regardless of resources we could:

  • set up the entire planet quickly and move onto more pressing matters & the amazing space battles.
  • avoid the UI struggles where we are missing a tiny bit of resources to start something for a Planet or Research.
  • comfortably queue an expensive research that is nested under other researches (that we dont have enough resources for right now).

Thank you very much for improving Sins 2!