[Feedback] List of Potential Quality of Life Improvements (Updated 12/7/2018)

[Zippo342]

I must ask, how are better controls/rebindable controls/more control options, not Quality of Life? Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it doesn't help people. Plus they said they are trying to see if they can do it.

[dreamer2008]

Small suggestion: transport everything related to empire management, ship and weapon balancing, from Litcube's Universe into X4 . Also, add some massive smart enemies to have an end goal to use those empire tools against, like the OCV and Phanon Corp.

[CaptObvious]

Add the ability for construction drones to pull from the station's storage instead of the build storage for modifying existing stations.

[Grimmrog]

manual docking with a mk2 docking computer feels rather non mandatory, all you do is to fly averagley where the landingpad is and it does the rest.

i just wish there were a right click and requets dockign in the map, because I prefer to fly my ship with the mouse. but doing so right clciking on targets during flight keeps the mouse turning enabled and then goign down int he context menu turns the ship.

So maybe an option would be great that allows us to turn off mouse control when we right click for a context menu. I don't really want to manually change this by shift space everytime I wanna use a context menu.

[Arretu]

Not this far in the game yet. Can you take a couple screenshots to show me this problem (logistics one)?

Had a think, and I'm not sure the problem itself can be screenshotted, but here you go.

Here you can see both the horizontal and vertical scroll bars. While the vertical bar is analogue (I can move it up and down, and stop at any position even if that cuts the bottom off of some content) the horizontal bar is digital (locks to "steps" of scrolling) and with a Tier 2 production chain (a -> b -> c) can only be positioned as shown. It feels strange and unintuitive. I realise this is by no means a major issue.

It's kinda hard to screenshot something which is to do with the ergonomics of the UI.

edit: And while we're at it, all graphs should autoselect all station products by default. Searching through that list sucks.

[furirkeeper]

Updated the list! Couple responses below.

[Tedium] I think the configurable options when a ship is asked to drop its wares could use an option to simply "ignore" the request. The ship would then just continue what it was doing and not slow down or do something else that require your immediate attention (useful for fast but defenceless ships).

Does this happen a lot? Describe the situation for me, because I believe there is already an "ignore" option under behaviors.

It happened to me quite a lot during the first hours of gameplay when there were still bandits in the sectors.
The alternative to ignore does not exist when asked to drop its cargo (I think it exists for when the ship finds an abandoned ship).
Currently the alternatives are: Attack / Comply / Escape / Wait (at least for version 1.10, but I don't think this has changed).
Naturally I do not want to comply, Wait does not sound like a good idea.
I tried the escape option, but that resulted in the ship cancelling its trade orders.
So, the only option left is "Attack" which will result in two orders added to the top of the order queue "Attack" and "Flee".
The trade ship (small trader) is weak and defenceless, so attacking will cause it to be destroyed.
So every time it was asked to drop its wares it started attacking, and every time I have to go into the order queue and remove the attack and flee orders so that the ship will continue on its trade route.
I think the best option for a weak tradeship to survive is to simply ignore the request to drop its wares and speed on to deliver them, trying to evade will only make it take longer to reach a dock and increase the risk of being destroyed (even more so since the path-finding is not always what you would like, but that is a different topic).

I most definitely hope that some mechanic in game will make the bandits re-appear on trade routes in the future since I think it adds a layer to the game, then this will be even more important.

[Zealoth]

Updated the list! Couple responses below.

[Tedium] I think the configurable options when a ship is asked to drop its wares could use an option to simply "ignore" the request. The ship would then just continue what it was doing and not slow down or do something else that require your immediate attention (useful for fast but defenceless ships).

Does this happen a lot? Describe the situation for me, because I believe there is already an "ignore" option under behaviors.

Ability to restrict just buying or just selling of intermediate wares. Right now you either both buy and sell or not trade.

And my genius 3star station manager happily buys everything he can get his hands on even though the station itself is producing way more of every intermediate ware - so it would be nice to keep just selling on, to get rid of an eventual build-up...

Seems like an annoying problem! Could you take a screenshot for me for where this function would appear and describe how it might appear?

You can already restrict trading with other factions in the logical overview when you use the drop down menu for a ware. It should be split up, just like settings for automatic prices for buying and selling

Pic related

Show

[delilah wild]

Excellent and comprehensive post. Thank you.

A word on the map. Egosoft would do well to hire a cartographer trained in geography and GIS. A senior grad student out of geography would do. Note that it most likely needs to be a geographer because other GIS programs (e.g., out of natural resources) do not teach spatial data, map design, and aesthetic principles with rigour.

Making such a hire would help them apply principles geographers have learned over a millennia for making a good digital map, with proper scale, legend, symbolism, colours, overlays, dialogue windows, information boxes, popup behaviour, and so forth.

One example. Currently the information boxes are large, persistent, overlapping, and thus detracting from the information they were meant to convey. Part of this is a poorly conceived digital map where all information is on one map, there are no overlays (simply filters), unnecessary information (e.g., visual models of stations) clutter the map, inconsistent UI metaphors abound, the user has little control over the auto-display of information, and the info boxes themselves are egregiously designed.

On info boxes in particular, multiples of the same symbol are used, instead of a single symbol with numbers. Information that might be better displayed using one symbol with a number is instead splatter over a large space using poorly chosen images and colours.

An example of how this can be don right is found in Endless Space.

Kudos to Egosoft for envisioning how spatial information of this sort will improve the X-Universe. Now what is needed is a cartographer to help them take the next step.

[Perahoky]

I think the whole maps needs another color theme.
Currently there is almost no color, everything is so dark und difficult to distinguish.

For example colors as in X3 or something similar, a blue theme...

Borders at the menus on the left would help too.

[Starman01]

Sorry, i haven't read the entire thread, but one thing (for me nearly the most important) is that something must be done about the "beeping-Sound" for the station dataleaks. It's pure torture and agony.

It's ok if you are happy to find a good placed one, a few seconds is ok... But today for the third time in a short time i encountered bad placed, and two complete buggy ones(inside the station hull, unreachable even with spacesuit)...While I was circling around the position, desperatly trying to find the litte "§"%§/", i had the game 15+ minutes beeping inside my ear. It's like a psychological experiment, i started to feel rage and finally quit

The crackling sound is bad enough, but the beeping is unacceptable. Maybe it would be better if it just wouldn't be that loud. Another solution would be to keep the cracking sound, but remove the beeping and give some Hud-Info for it, just like a distance meter (no vector, just distance) or a percent value for the signal strength... That would be so great, and I know I'm not the only one. For the moment, i think i will forfeit the dataleaks, just not worth the pain

[Perahoky]

A list of potential QOL and UX improvements I would recommend as an expert of two decades on the subject. Feel free to reply with your own suggestions and I will update this list as I continue to play as well.

quoted just for notification

i think we should move the trade filter overview to the bottom right corner and get rid of all other boxes

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nwicz ... Z-tAjzF3lC

#edit: and increase the ware filter count to 10 or endless instead of 5
i hate limits

[HellR1der]

hello. here's some feedback.
-xenon p and k are weakest in their classes, should be redesigned completely
-teleportation is too imba, should be only for player property
-button needed for returning marines to their homebase after boarding. i've returned 30+ of them manually one by one, and that was the most tedious thing i've done last month.
-same for ship behaviour tab, should be able to set default behaviour for few selected ships simultaneously(like select 5 miners and set automine for them all in 5 clicks)
-boarding doesn't affect relations with target owner faction. checked with scale pact destroyer near station in silent witness.
-how xenon are supposed to build stations and ships if they have no high-tech production, builders, and transport ships?
-"gravity" effect between 2 m sized ships looks strange. rly.
some building problems:
-module selection cant be cancelled. u should place it and delete after that
-module orientation mouse controls is terrible. add pls button controls for axial movement and rotation

thanks for attention

ps: i didnt build too much, so last two complaints may be irrelevant. add more info into ingame building guide then pls.

[Thraksor]

I just want to add my desire to see this added to the game:

Allow combination buttons for binds on joysticks

Pretty much impossible to play this like I would like to on my HOTAS without using two button combos. I use a variation of this in Elite: Dangerous and it works great even though my HOTAS only has 5 axes, one POV hat and 12 buttons. I have voice attack and can use that to pick up the slack for the remaining commands that I can't fit onto the HOTAS using 2-button combos, but there's just so many things that should be on the trigger group and POV hat using shift buttons that can't be currently because it won't accept a 2-button (or button + hat direction) combo.

[Darius Sanguna]

Personally i'd love to see the total production of a station, so for example if you got a station that produces food rations from ice it would be very useful to see how much surplus of the intermediate products you have, without doing all the math, adding and substracting the production of each module individually, since that gets quite tedious the more production modules you got.

[furirkeeper]

I don't know which category this falls under, but here goes:

When assigning fighter escorts to my traders with the default escort order the fighter becomes a subordinate to the trader ship.
The fighter flies in formation with the trader ship between trades (or at least that is what you would expect, but really doesn't work).
When the trader docks with the stations the fighter ship stops outside of the station.

The really annoying thing is that when the fighter do that it contacts you by radio saying that it is "ready and awaiting orders".
It does this for every station the trader docks at and as you might expect with a bunch of traders you will basically hear this all the time, super annoying.
Also the most natural thing would be, since the fighter is a subordinate to the trader, that the fighter would report this to the trader ship and not to you.

[morbideth]

I would really like it if it didn't change the guidance/mission target when accepting a new mission iff there is already a guidance target set. I frequently grab more missions as I fly past them on the way to do a mission and having it change the autopilot every single time drives me nuts.

[Darius Sanguna]

Mass renaming should also be a thing, renaming a fleet of 20+ fighters after a production run is quite tedious

[XUniCez]

Button/Hotkey that toggles Auto-roll ON/OFF while in-game rather the through the setting/game settings menu.
I dont like playing with auto-roll on.

OR just a button/hoykey that aligns the player ship parallel to the default radar/ global map plane when in 1st person view(in-game).

Didn't see this thread before I made/posted my request which can be found here.
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=406929

[KillZ0n3]

Completly endorsed. Those QoL would be a very welcome addition to the game!.

Kudos mate.

[Pind]

Hey guys, will be updating the list with all your comments soon! Pre-holiday work crunch