Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Thaago on October 24, 2014, 09:50:53 AM

Title: Merge Ship Buying/Selling with Commodities
Post by: Thaago on October 24, 2014, 09:50:53 AM
I think the ship buying/selling could be merged into a tab on the market screen. The ship buying already has a similar structure, with the same markets (standard, black, military) as the commodities, so I think this would be a minor change. The hotkey 'F' could still take the user to the ship buying/selling - it would just be a new tab.

Usually when I stop in at a station or planet, I check what weapons, commodities, and ships are for sale on all the markets. This is a little awkward because, while the buy/sell and sorting tabs in the fleet screen and market screen are hotkeyed, the various submarkets are not. That means a lot of clicking as I switch between markets, then do it over again.

Thoughts/feelings?
Title: Re: Merge Ship Buying/Selling with Commodities
Post by: Nanao-kun on October 24, 2014, 12:05:31 PM
But the Trade screen has 1-2-3-4 as hotkeys for each tab.
Title: Re: Merge Ship Buying/Selling with Commodities
Post by: Thaago on October 24, 2014, 12:40:14 PM
But the Trade screen has 1-2-3-4 as hotkeys for each tab.

Hmm, I'm not really understanding what you're getting at here. I'm just saying to add another tab, perhaps with a large indicator so people don't miss it. Do the numbers matter?
Title: Re: Merge Ship Buying/Selling with Commodities
Post by: ciago92 on October 24, 2014, 01:46:47 PM
By submarkets he means Open Market / Military / Black Market, not the all/supplies/weapons/commodities

I do think that we could add ships to the commodities market screen, and I would also think that the submarkets should have hotkeys as well
Title: Re: Merge Ship Buying/Selling with Commodities
Post by: TJJ on October 24, 2014, 02:23:50 PM
Ship hulls alongside weapons makes sense.

However IMO commodities should be presented on a separate screen, as commodity trading is best done with a completely different interface.
Title: Re: Merge Ship Buying/Selling with Commodities
Post by: Sundog on October 24, 2014, 02:25:17 PM
I think the awkwardness of switching between the commodity and ship trade screens should be addressed, but I don't think merging them is the best way to do it. It could probably be done in a way that would improve what we currently have, but that would take a LOT of work.

So what about this:
-Keep the same market selected when switching between ship and item screens
-Default to the 'buy' tab when trading ships, since we're just seeing what's on sale most of the time anyway

That should solve the same issue without resorting to a major UI overhaul.
Title: Re: Merge Ship Buying/Selling with Commodities
Post by: Thaago on October 24, 2014, 08:58:03 PM
I like the idea of defaulting to 'buy' when looking at ships - checking the inventory is probably 90% of the usage of the screen and that would save half of the user input.