Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Elijah]

Wow.

Just Wow. It's so good. I didn't expect such a huge change.

I don't have a lot of constructive feedback atm, as I just started having a look at the new update (I'm doing the training). But I really love the new "e" interface. Such an amazing attention to details! Well done!

What do you think, fellow Starfarers?

[AxleMC131]

Agreed. Takes a little practice to get your head around the shortcut keys and order of operations when it comes to complex course-setting, but all together it's tidy, practical, customizable and user-friendly.

[Sy]

yus, i love it.

there are two little things that annoy me though:

1) lay-in-course not being the top/default option when clicking on an object that also has showable info. this is both because a simple click was how setting course was done in the old system, and because it is the default (and only) option on objects that don't have the option to show info.

2) i seems i can no longer set course for a random point on the map, only for objects. so if i want to go to a specific point (most often to maneuver around a sun to reach something on the other side) i have to steer manually for the entire journey to that point. would be nice if clicking on empty space on the map would also have the lay-in-course option. could just show as something generic like "waypoint" in the UI.

[nomadic_leader]

The UI is better than before.

I agree with sy about accidentally clicking on the planet info all the time.

Simply clicking on a planet does nothing. So why don't we have primary clicking set the course? Instead, primary click brings up... a contextual menu... that only has two choices.  If there are only two choices, probably you don't even need a context menu since you have two mouse buttons. But in case you want to add more, put primary click for the one people will use the most - set course.

Every operating system since the prophet Noah has had the SECONDARY click for contextual menus. But starsector subverts this paradigm for no apparent reason.

[nomadic_leader]

Also there's no way to cancel a laid in course from the map, as far as I can tell. If you primary click (and bring up the contextual menu, oddly enough) on the thing you have a course laid in to, it still just says "lay in course" there's no way to cancel it except by switching back to the campaign.

[Sy]

Simply clicking on a planet does nothing. So why don't we have primary clicking set the course?

since the top/default option is right under the cursor, that's already how it works. you don't have to hold the button down -> wait for the menu to appear -> select an option -> release the button. just do a normal click, that will immediately select the instantly appearing default option.

the benefit of doing it like this is that even as the player does a normal click, the available options will be visible for a split second. that's an easy way of showing new players that the contextual menu is a thing, and whether there are other options besides lay-in-course that might be worth taking a look at.

although i would still like shift, ctrl and/or alt as shortcuts to select options besides the default. once i know which 3 options are available when clicking on a star system, doing a shift-click or ctrl-click would be (slightly ^^) faster and more convenient than moving the cursor to a non-default option while holding down the button.

[Gothars]

2) i seems i can no longer set course for a random point on the map, only for objects. so if i want to go to a specific point (most often to maneuver around a sun to reach something on the other side) i have to steer manually for the entire journey to that point. would be nice if clicking on empty space on the map would also have the lay-in-course option. could just show as something generic like "waypoint" in the UI.

Yeah, I've been missing that, too. Especially to set course to an area where you had a sensor contact.

[Sy]

Yeah, I've been missing that, too. Especially to set course to an area where you had a sensor contact.

that too, yeah. though recent sensor contacts are at least not super far away (usually?).

two more uses:
1. going around a market that is either hostile or probably has some patrols waiting to scan you due to smuggling on your last visit.
2. heading to an area that has a good chance of harboring some derelicts but isn't a planet or jump point, like asteroid belts.

[nomadic_leader]

Simply clicking on a planet does nothing. So why don't we have primary clicking set the course?

since the top/default option is right under the cursor, that's already how it works. you don't have to hold the button down -> wait for the menu to appear -> select an option -> release the button. just do a normal click, that will immediately select the instantly appearing default option.

the benefit of doing it like this is that even as the player does a normal click, the available options will be visible for a split second. that's an easy way of showing new players that the contextual menu is a thing, and whether there are other options besides lay-in-course that might be worth taking a look at.

This seems a bit like a retroactive rationalization rather than actual good design. You have to consider the context of all other computing basically, which uses primary click to directly do the most common action, and secondary click to pull up a contextual menu. And anyway what happens is you primary click expecting the most obvious action (set cours) and it pulls up this unexpected contextual menu for just a second before you can actually read it, which is just confusing, and it dumps you into the stupid planet info screen that you didn't even want.

Why would you have primary click do NOTHING? Lay in course has such an obvious, good visual cue (the arrows leading to your destination) that it surely doesn't need to be accessed through a contextual menu to make clear what it's doing.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this feature is... not well implemented, to say the least. Can I say Illwinter School of UI Design?

[Sy]

the issue of lay-in-course not always being the default option is mostly unrelated to your complaint regarding primary click showing the menu for a moment. i quite dislike the former, as i mentioned, and i think Alex already said somewhere that he'll take a look at it. i think the latter is fine as-is though. i don't see how the menu is "confusing" if you already know what you're doing -- and if you don't, being shown that the context menu even exists is probably a good idea.

functionally, there is no difference between having the default option right under the cursor, and not showing the menu at all if the button isn't held down for 0.x seconds. both require only a single, normal click to use.