Request: Quality of life fixes

[screamingiraffe]

1. Descriptive text added to all items, approximately half the items in the game have no descriptive text.
2. Laser towers sticking to ships, especially if you're not moving which then causes all other Laser Towers being deployed to stop deploying and become stuck.
3. Laser towers the player is shooting are immune to damage, restarting the game seems to be the only remedy
4. Loss of control of the player's ship if a laser tower or any other object is closely behind the player's ship. Speed and direction controls are all disabled and the ship just continues to drift in the current heading for quite some time.
5. Station civilian criminals are often immune to damage, this happens perhaps 25% to 50% of the time, a random but common event.
6. AI enemy combatants do not flee from combat, every fight is 'to the death' - perhaps this is by design
7. When AI entities report a player's 'criminal' activity, the logs and/or voice-over do not inform the player where that activity took place or with which combatants. 'who, what, when, and where'
there's a minimal log entry that the event took place and there was a reputation reduction, but not much else. Pausing the game and searching everywhere is painful/not fun
8. An in-game tutorial for station and sector management would be great. How station modules work, how sector ownership works, the basics of station production, and lastly the mechanics of defending a station
currently you have to meta-game (learn from outside the game) for each of those since trial and error doesn't quite work out in the game. Building something as an experiment and then having to deconstruct it (blow it up, with no materials returned) is painful.

please note: none of the above are due to mods, no mods are being used.

[Nerwesta]

5. Station civilian criminals are often immune to damage, this happens perhaps 25% to 50% of the time, a random but common event.

This one is I think a bold bug staying there for far too long.
I was too lazy to make a proper topic so I'm hijacking yours, sorry in advance.

From my understandings, when the quest is fired upon, even though you don't see it I assume there is a hidden questline somewhere to do that task, it makes a radius around the station.
The hiccup here is where you go past that radius, the quest still looks active even though it's straight going to the bin for the game, hence the fact that civilian criminal is no longer hittable, it was spawned for the quest.

I noticed that a lot when I wander too fast near a station, only hearing someone yelling at me, going a sleek 180°to find that unkillable civilian because my interface said so.
A quick solution would be to cancel that event if the game detects it's no longer doable.

[Nanook]

@Nerwesta: It has nothing to do with a "quest", i.e., a mission. It can happen randomly with any enemy civilian traffic you encounter.

[Falcrack]

6. AI enemy combatants do not flee from combat, every fight is 'to the death' - perhaps this is by design

Not true, enemy ships can and do flee from battle at times when health is low enough. Just like your own ships so.etimes get the flee command, npc controlled ships do as well.

[PV_]

Not true, enemy ships can and do flee from battle at times when health is low enough. Just like your own ships so.etimes get the flee command, npc controlled ships do as well.

Carrier's fighters wing used for coordinate attack never retreat from what I recall.

[Nerwesta]

@Nerwesta: It has nothing to do with a "quest", i.e., a mission. It can happen randomly with any enemy civilian traffic you encounter.

You didn't understand my comment, did you ?
If the word quest is a problem, just replace it as an event, it doesn't change much on my point anyway.

[BitByte]

Not sure if civilian ship immune to shot have anything to do with "misplacement of visible object" what I have seen with Xenon ships sometimes when they arrive from gate (with version 5.10HF3).
You can take ship as target but aimpoint is totally elsewhere than the place of the ship. If you unselect target and shoot freely you can hit it. When it gets destroyed the wreck moves few kilometers backwards.

[Nanook]

@Nerwesta: It has nothing to do with a "quest", i.e., a mission. It can happen randomly with any enemy civilian traffic you encounter.

You didn't understand my comment, did you ?
If the word quest is a problem, just replace it as an event, it doesn't change much on my point anyway.

Fair enough. Your "event" must be the appearance of the enemy civilian, correct? The problem is, some, although not necessarily all**, of those enemy civilians may not be able to be hit immediately after they first appear. And as soon as one is not able to be hit, all the others are the same. If you do a save and reload, the old ones disappear and new ones appear and may be hit.

(**In some cases, the very first ones to appear after approaching a station and all subsequent ones can't be hit.)

[Nerwesta]

Exactly.
I didn't know that indeed from the intricacies of the game, good to read that.
I just merely started to think about the whole "event/quest" thingy because of my own experience, if you'd ask me I would produce something along those lines ( i.e an hidden quest to imitate a believable event ) and call it a day
Hence, why I do think the whole thing could be a forgotten bug, but you added some valuable information

[user1679]

I'm having the "immune to damage" problem with laser towers for a mission. But it looks like the shots are not even hitting in the first place.

I was in an Elite Sentinel when I picked up the mission, killed the first tower which turned the others hostile and I was unable to hit anything else. I brought in a L destroyer so I could shield tank and I noticed that when I was 5m away from the turret, my main weapon seemed to bounce all around, like dropping water into hot oil, but never actually hit the laser tower. On the bright side, I was able to relocate the 8 towers by sticking them to my ship like pocket lint sticks to gum, but that didn't give me a participation trophy.

[CulunTse]

We have very different understandings of what constitutes "quality of life". However, I appreciate your concise listing and thorough descriptions.
Please allow me to add my own smallish UI QoL requests in the same style.

• ship "transfer crew" UI: limit the slider to the minimum of ship capacity and available crew.
  If I am transferring crew from my 219-service-crew training mammoth builder, to a 43-service crew Crane miner, I want the slider to max out at 43 in the Crane direction, 219 in the Mammoth. Currently, dragging the slider all the way results in an attempted "219 into crane" transfer, which (correctly) blocks the OK button and adds a red warning text about "exceeding capacity".
  When doing a few transfers for a batch of fresh mining ships, I want to quickly, sloppily drag all the way, not fiddle until I hit the exact pixel that is "43 transferred".
• Make the numpad-enter also work for number entry.
  Too often I am typing in a storage allocation, ware transfer or whatever on my numpad (which I also use a lot in my day job), and hit numpad-enter to complete it. However, the game only responds to the "normal" enter key.
  I'd like if the numpad enter was an alias for the other Enter-key.
• a "clear all" button on map filters.
  When I switch activities from planning a handful of trades for some station, to, for example planning for another station/production, or hunting SCA plunderers, I have often built up a ware filter list of 4 to 8 wares. I'd like to dismiss all 8 filters with one click, rather than clicking the X one each filter individually.
  Icon could be a trashcan or a simple X.
• large-capacity "crew storage area" on the phq. I care about my people, so whenever one of my gate fleets warns they are under heavy attack, I try to manually intervene. At the very least, if a ship is about to be destroyed by overwhelming forces, I try to transfer out the service crew and the captain ("head to the escape pods!"). However, I struggle where to evacuate them to. Ever since I got my own equipment dock running, all my S, M and L shops (working on XL) have been running at 100% service crew, to maximise ship combined skill. So I never have nearby ships with available spots.
  I currently have two shuyaku docked at PHQ (one for service crew, one for pilots-stores-as-service-crew. A third for marines will be built soon)
  I want my PHQ to be a valid destination for them, instead of my "partykeller shuyaku".
  The terraforming "group trainees" don't work, since I always have those full up too.
  So, really a "role" on the PHQ so that, ideally in a *single* transfer crew transaction, evacuate all the service crew, marines, and pilot. (currently the pilot requires a comm > "work somewhere else for me". )
  I could understand if this was limited by workforce capacity, it's worth an extra few L homes for me.
  I the ideal case, but I know that would be a difficult feature, I could fill newly constructed ships directly from this evacuee-pool, rather than with the 0-star newbs my PHQ-shipyard supplies otherwise.

[chew-ie]

Good list @CulunTse - I especially like the numpad one, as well as the crew-transfer improvement.

Crew capacity modules would be awesome - maybe having those would finally allow to mass-move crew from ships to stations.

[Darkhan]

#7 definitely for me. Reputation lost and I have no idea what / where, just which faction..
Scanning all sectors in hope of finding where is very frustrating.

I'd like to add to that list:
- Basic automated banking.. We have spaceships but no automated bank transfers ??
Currently using a mod to do this, but would be nice if it was part of the basic game.
- Better station budgeting.. Make budgets based on Buy, thus giving us the option to not have "managers" budget for every item if the buy amount is set low. I usually set those I manufacture to 1.

[Nanook]

...ship "transfer crew" UI: limit the slider to the minimum of ship capacity and available crew.
If I am transferring crew from my 219-service-crew training mammoth builder, to a 43-service crew Crane miner, I want the slider to max out at 43 in the Crane direction, 219 in the Mammoth....

This won't work for me. Sometimes I'm transferring similar numbers of crew between ships (both ships may already be full), maybe new recruit marines for veterans or better. It's convenient to let the slider go past the max allowed by the receiving ship then transferring the others back to that ship. I don't really see the problem with the current system. Unless you're "sloppily" dragging the cursor. But then, that's on you.

[GCU Grey Area]

...ship "transfer crew" UI: limit the slider to the minimum of ship capacity and available crew.
If I am transferring crew from my 219-service-crew training mammoth builder, to a 43-service crew Crane miner, I want the slider to max out at 43 in the Crane direction, 219 in the Mammoth....

This won't work for me. Sometimes I'm transferring similar numbers of crew between ships (both ships may already be full), maybe new recruit marines for veterans or better. It's convenient to let the slider go past the max allowed by the receiving ship then transferring the others back to that ship. I don't really see the problem with the current system. Unless you're "sloppily" dragging the cursor. But then, that's on you.

Agree with Nanook. That would certainly NOT be a 'quality of life fix' for me. Quite the opposite in fact. Currently whenever I get a new warship I send it to one of my build ships & swap inexperienced crew aboard the warship for experts from the builder. If the crew sliders were locked so I could only transfer a full crew to an empty ship it would needlessly complicate matters. Would have to arrange an entirely separate crew transfer to bring fresh crew to the builder for training, doubling the amount of time & effort it takes to perform crew transfers, as well as requiring an additional ship just to transport them from the shipyard to the builder.

[CulunTse]

... If the crew sliders were locked so I could only transfer a full crew to an empty ship it would needlessly complicate matters.

I should clarify my wording, because I have thought about exactly this problem too.

I mean the slider should be locked to ship static, maximum crew capacity, not to dynamic, unoccupied slots. (and also to the dynamically available crew pool on the other side, as is already the case)

Since there is never a situation you can have 44+ of any single crew-type in a 43-crew-capacity (+1 pilot) ship, why does the UI allow it?

I too order my ships with a full complement of rookies, and then do a swap out: rookies into the training-builder, specialists into the miner. This is one transfer crew "transaction" for me. (it's also the quickest way to get new trainees into the builders).



So if the Crane is full with 43 rookies, I want the specialist slider to stop at 43 specialists (and the able crewman slider too, and the 3 marine sliders).
So you could, in theory, have a transfer-Crew window that attempts to transfer in 6*43 crew into the Crane, which should get the current "this would exceed capacity" lockout.

There would be a brief moment when the transfer would be "miner gets 43 rookies + 43 specialists" (confirm button locked, as currently), but then I sloppy-drag the rookie slider into the builder, and it becomes a symmetric swap-out, thus unlocking the confirm-button.

What bugs me is the current inconsistency in slider directions behaviour: rookies-from-miner-to-builder you can just sloppily drag all the way to the screen edge, and it will cap at the available miner-rookies (43).
Specialists-from-builder-to-miner however, the same sloppy-drag results in 219-specialists, far exceeding the ships maximum 43 slots.

The sum of multiple experience-levels/available slots should not affect the slider caps. Such dynamic limit behavior would be annoying, unpredictable and confusing. You are right to not want this.
That calculation should be left to the current "capacity exceeded, button locked" mechanism.

Put differently: why does the slider-cap depend on the other ships available crew (regardless if that is 219, or 9), but not on the current ships total limit? (43) ,it should depend on both.

For those really wanting to go into the UI design quantitative science rabbit hole behind this:
The "sloppy drag" works faster due to a human biomechanic property described by "Fitt's law": human motor systems have a speed/accuracy tradeof, so you can make bigger, faster movements if the target is bigger. A "sloppy drag to somewhere beyond slider end" is a bigger target than "the exact pixel representing 43 crew".
More reading here: https://blog.codinghorror.com/fitts-law ... ite-width/

[Nanook]

I think you're being a bit too picky. How much effort is it, really, to simply stop when the slider gets where you want it? When you exceed a capacity, it turns red. Stop on red. Say you don't want to transfer the full capacity of your specialists, but only a few, leaving a few veterans on board to further train up. You still can't use the 'sloppy drag' here. You have to pay attention to the current levels.

I think what you're asking for would make it overly complex and confusing to many players (probably me included ). But then, I'm a bit more precision-oriented and don't like the computer/system making decisions for me.

And Fitt's Law doesn't really apply in this case. The number of crew moved is the 'distance', but there is no actual 'target'. Quoting from Wikipedia "Fitts's law is used to model the act of pointing, either by physically touching an object with a hand or finger, or virtually, by pointing to an object on a computer monitor using a pointing device."

[CulunTse]

I guess the amount of words I wrote indeed makes me look picky, though that wasn't my intent. Since I was already misunderstood once, I tried to explain my idea in two-three different modes, hoping that at least one of them cleared up the confusion.

I would like to stress this is at most a papercut for me during normal gaming, but it's also the kind of papercut that I'd submit a pull request for in my job or open source project.

Fitts' law applies in that "the end of the slider (and beyond)" is a special area, since it is easier to hit. Thus, it makes sense to use this easy area for a "significant" value.
"max amount of people on the other ship" is a good value in general, but it breaks down when the crew sizes are so different. I'm just saying that "max amount of people this ship will hold (or other ship available count, if less)" would be even better.

I should so warn that I was the kind of helpdesk employee that derived personal satisfaction from perfecting the motion of grabbing the headset from it's charger, sliding it onto my ear and hitting the answer-button on its earshell. After half a year, that was one motion, that I could finish before the second ring.
(so I have a bit of a perfectionist streak )

[Imperial Good]

6. AI enemy combatants do not flee from combat, every fight is 'to the death' - perhaps this is by design

This is likely by design since there is partial flee logic. If you shoot a S or M sized ship enough to lower their shields they will boost/fly away to try and recover their shields before turning around and resuming the fight. I suspect it would get quite annoying for the player that every ship they damage flies away, only to return and attack again a repair and a few minutes later.

Allowing such a flee to safety behaviour for player assets on the other hand...

[user1679]

Adding another: Allow selecting ships added by mods during custom game creation.

I know mods aren't loaded at this point so it may be more difficult than it's worth but just thought I'd throw it out anyway. Maybe during startup the game could check the extensions folder for any mods with size_s, size_m, size_l, size_xl folders in the assets folder and add a check labeled "include in custom gamestart" for those mods on the extensions screen.

Providing a checkbox would allow users to not include mods that do more than add ships if they wanted to.