So after playing the game for a few (dozen) hours this weekend I came across a few personal issues that I think could be fixed with a few UI adjustments, some that might slightly change some gameplay options. I'll leave those here and see if you guys agree with them or not.
One of the things that new players may be the most confused about is why supply consumption keeps going up or down, which is tied with the with repairs/CR recovery of their ships. Alex has always advocated for the use of the stop repairs button so we can fine tune our consumption, but as it stand I feel things aren't as clear as they could be. Therefore, I thought up of small additions to the UI (I'm no artist so please bear with me):
In this first shot we can see my relatively small fleet being eaten alive by supplies consumption. I don't have any idea what can be causing that just from that screen besides the obvious CR bar. I can pause the game and go to the Refit screen to check things out there, but wouldn't it be better if I could simply glance the screen and have a much better idea of what was going on, without interrupting campaign gameplay? Thus, enter:
Most things are explained in the image, but the gist of it is to give players a good idea of what is going on (and handling it) without moving to the more detailed Refit screen and thus not interrupting gameplay. I realize the CR bar at the bottom left does a lot but I always felt it was lacking. I'm no UI designer and I'm sure a better job can be made in regards to the information being displayed, but I believe the stuff being show there is important and should be visible to players on all times during the campaign.
Secondly, when battling another fleet we are usually faced with this dialogue option:
It is probably a pet peeve but I have lost count of how many times I pressed 2 out of habit when I actually wanted to control another ship. So here I'd like to propose two solutions. Either:
A. Have an option for the game to always ask what ship you will pilot right on this screen, or
B. Allow the players to change the ship they want to pilot here:
On the deployment screen. If players are able to commandeer any ship during combat without consequence (for now?) then there should be no reason why we can't make that choice here prior to deployment. I'd suggest being able to change officers here too.
Finally, the gameplay change I mentioned earlier comes into play at the previous screen. Counters has always been a topic of discussion here and while I'm aware Alex isn't keen on hard counters, I feel that the Ship Variants feature is kinda wasted as you only really use them on stations and to make sure you actually have a backup of your settings if you end up losing your ship. So the idea is, why can't I change between variants right here on this screen?
Of course, granted that you are actually carrying the equipment required for that variant and that you are willing to take the CR hit for making changes to a ship outside a station (thus the need for something that can lessen that impact, maybe a support ship/skill?). The idea for this came from a game I was running a Medusa tuned for killing destroyers and capitals, but every other bounty I had to fight a carrier fleet and bouncing back and forth between my two variants, one being a PD platform and the other being an assassin, was tiring as I kept making selection mistakes. I ended up buying a second Medusa instead of refitting my only one.
Anyway that is all I have to say. Please share your thoughts.