First off just wanted to say this is a fantastic implementation of a very cool game.
It's a big improvement for usability over the physical game, especially for learning how to play from scratch (which is what i did).
I have a few suggestions for improving the UI, from the perspective of someone new to the module and the game itself.
I'm sure some of these you've already thought about, but hopefully there's something useful here.
-Stacked Ships: It can be a little hard to notice the stacked ships at first, or later in the game when you have a lot of different units. It makes a huge difference in game, but it's hard to see without mousing over. The only indication that they are stacked is the small (x) number below the unit name.
Maybe some way of showing another rectangle chit underneath for groups of 2 or more ships? Or some other more obvious indicator for the token, so you can see them when you're looking at everything.
-Barren Planets: Another thing that was hard to tell on the the first game or two. Because the worlds are colorized only slightly, the difference between the more desaturated barren planets and the normal ones can be hard to tell apart, especially for some colors like Yellow.
Perhaps a secondary icon or text element on the planet could help this? Nothing major, just a small QoL improvement.
-Use MS pipeline action: It took me about half my first game with the advanced rules to figure out how to use the MS pipelines, because I just didn't think to look for an action first before moving the ship. I have a feeling I won't be alone here. It makes sense but it's not the most intuitive thing.
This is a tough one, and I'm not sure what could be done here really to help here. Maybe 'Use MS Pipeline' could be a toggle on/off for the ship, instead of an action, defaulting to on?
That way if players move their ships along the pipelines it will use them and speed them along as normal, without any extra input?>
-MS Pipeline Tokens: Another MS Pipeline QoL issue. The way normal ships are full saturation before moving, and then dimmed when they've moved is a great way to see what ships you still have that yet to use, but the MS Pipelines confuse that, because they will always look 'unused' unless they've moved, or a ship has used them this turn.
I think it would be great if we could toggle them as 'Not Moving' or similar, and have some other way of marking them as 'used' when they get used by another ship. This way the pipelines don't always show as an unused unit for most of the game.
Some Civ style games do this with 'Guarding' statuses on units so that they don't show up in the 'next unit' queue, and that could be a similar solution for this.
-Auto Drop-off Minerals: A small quality of life issue, but it would be great to optionally allow mining ships to automatically drop off their minerals on the first friendly colony they come to, saving the user from having to double click or manually unload.
-Selection Animations: The selection animations around the hexes are a little slow right now, specifically the 'fade away' part of the animation after you've stopped selecting the space. It's not a big deal when using a touch device, but with the mouse it can make reading the states a little trickier.
If the animation on fade out was 2-3x faster, i think it would help with readability.
-Hidden Ships: It's a little hard to tell which ships you have are exposed to the enemy, compared to hidden, since as far as I know the only way to tell is to mouseover them.
It obviously doesn't matter for colony ships or miners, but for combat ships that have fought an enemy and haven't gone back to visit a colony, their status as being revealed is very important for the player.
I think just a little special treatment of the token could fix this, maybe a red border around the tokens for revealed combat ships?
-Tactics Phase Visibility: Since the combat happens in different phases for the Tactics levels (A-E), it would be helpful to see on the main combat board the active tactics phase. Of course it's visible in the text bar on top, but mostly what you're paying attention to is the combat board, and I believe it would be useful for new players to better see this active phase.
Maybe just as simple as recoloring that active phase letter, or maybe putting a column highlight on the board under the ships.
Again, a huge thanks for creating this implementation! Great stuff!
It's a big improvement for usability over the physical game, especially for learning how to play from scratch (which is what i did).
I have a few suggestions for improving the UI, from the perspective of someone new to the module and the game itself.
I'm sure some of these you've already thought about, but hopefully there's something useful here.
-Stacked Ships: It can be a little hard to notice the stacked ships at first, or later in the game when you have a lot of different units. It makes a huge difference in game, but it's hard to see without mousing over. The only indication that they are stacked is the small (x) number below the unit name.
Maybe some way of showing another rectangle chit underneath for groups of 2 or more ships? Or some other more obvious indicator for the token, so you can see them when you're looking at everything.
-Barren Planets: Another thing that was hard to tell on the the first game or two. Because the worlds are colorized only slightly, the difference between the more desaturated barren planets and the normal ones can be hard to tell apart, especially for some colors like Yellow.
Perhaps a secondary icon or text element on the planet could help this? Nothing major, just a small QoL improvement.
-Use MS pipeline action: It took me about half my first game with the advanced rules to figure out how to use the MS pipelines, because I just didn't think to look for an action first before moving the ship. I have a feeling I won't be alone here. It makes sense but it's not the most intuitive thing.
This is a tough one, and I'm not sure what could be done here really to help here. Maybe 'Use MS Pipeline' could be a toggle on/off for the ship, instead of an action, defaulting to on?
That way if players move their ships along the pipelines it will use them and speed them along as normal, without any extra input?>
-MS Pipeline Tokens: Another MS Pipeline QoL issue. The way normal ships are full saturation before moving, and then dimmed when they've moved is a great way to see what ships you still have that yet to use, but the MS Pipelines confuse that, because they will always look 'unused' unless they've moved, or a ship has used them this turn.
I think it would be great if we could toggle them as 'Not Moving' or similar, and have some other way of marking them as 'used' when they get used by another ship. This way the pipelines don't always show as an unused unit for most of the game.
Some Civ style games do this with 'Guarding' statuses on units so that they don't show up in the 'next unit' queue, and that could be a similar solution for this.
-Auto Drop-off Minerals: A small quality of life issue, but it would be great to optionally allow mining ships to automatically drop off their minerals on the first friendly colony they come to, saving the user from having to double click or manually unload.
-Selection Animations: The selection animations around the hexes are a little slow right now, specifically the 'fade away' part of the animation after you've stopped selecting the space. It's not a big deal when using a touch device, but with the mouse it can make reading the states a little trickier.
If the animation on fade out was 2-3x faster, i think it would help with readability.
-Hidden Ships: It's a little hard to tell which ships you have are exposed to the enemy, compared to hidden, since as far as I know the only way to tell is to mouseover them.
It obviously doesn't matter for colony ships or miners, but for combat ships that have fought an enemy and haven't gone back to visit a colony, their status as being revealed is very important for the player.
I think just a little special treatment of the token could fix this, maybe a red border around the tokens for revealed combat ships?
-Tactics Phase Visibility: Since the combat happens in different phases for the Tactics levels (A-E), it would be helpful to see on the main combat board the active tactics phase. Of course it's visible in the text bar on top, but mostly what you're paying attention to is the combat board, and I believe it would be useful for new players to better see this active phase.
Maybe just as simple as recoloring that active phase letter, or maybe putting a column highlight on the board under the ships.
Again, a huge thanks for creating this implementation! Great stuff!
