Fresh game. Land on planet. Hit "E". Intel map doesn't show the fuel range; this is the default for new games. Hit "W", and it shows fuel range. Hit ESC, then "E" again. Now it no longer shows fuel range. The setting didn't persist.
Settings like "show fuel range"
do persist if you change them by pressing "E" while flying around, but not if you change them by pressing "E" while landed at a planet.
The same seems true for any other intel map setting, like shift-clicking the "Exploration" tab: changes persist if you make them inflight, but not if you make them at a planet.
Another wrinkle: If, while planetside, you make changes in the intel map, and then hit "E" again, and
then hit ESC, the changes
do persist. I might almost imagine this could be a deliberate feature, but I see no reason to make it behave one way during flight and another way on a planet.
Maybe this is related to the following 0.98a release items:
- Intel
- Can press Ctrl-S to save current set of selected tags, and press Q to restore it
- Shift or Ctrl - Q will add the saved tags to the currently selected
- Works on intel screen only, not general to all tag displays
Maybe it's not supposed to persist the settings at all, unless you deliberately save them? Maybe the fact that it saves the changes when made inflight is considered the bug now? I would strongly recommend against making it that way,
unless you (a) add a visible button that does this saving, so a player who hasn't read the release notes will learn how to persist the settings; and (b) add some kind of feedback when Ctrl-S works (a noise and/or lighting up the new save button; perhaps the save button should in general be illuminated if and only if the saved settings equal the current settings). Otherwise, I expect lots of players to say "WTF, intel map settings don't persist now and I can't figure out how to fix it". (Somehow I didn't notice until this rc8 release the non-persistence of from-planet settings; I guess either I made all the changes inflight, or, upon noticing the changes disappeared between planet and inflight map checking, I simply shrugged and re-made the changes and forgot about it. That means I got by without learning Ctrl-S, and I suspect I'm typical in this.)
Also, is "E" intended to be a save key? Because it's acting like one. Seems like a decent choice, actually. Though it would also be decent for "reload the intel map, reverting to last saved settings", equivalent to hitting ESC followed by E.
Just to complete the discussion, while I'm on the subject, a thing that has always irritated me is how, if someone offers you e.g. a bounty at a bar, and it shows a minimap with a "Show Intel (E)" button, and you click it (or press "E", I forget), it brings up a fresh map with only the "New" mission category selected, and it
overwrites your preexisting intel map category selections, making me re-select them all and hope I didn't forget anything important. (This also happens if, when creating a map marker, you leave the "Open after creating" box checked.) Thus I've learned to never click on the minimap, and to uncheck "Open after creating".
So perhaps this non-persistence stuff is a side-effect of an over-broad fix for that? If you are fixing that, then I'll mention that, in my ideal world, my preexisting intel map settings would carry over to the bounty's map screen when I click on it (not necessarily before I click—seeing a nearly empty map is fine for the initial view—but definitely after clicking, because I want to see the destination alongside gates and other accepted missions, so the simplest policy is to let it be the full preexisting selection). Likewise for viewing a new map marker.
