UI Usability

[mangalores]

Hi, just returned to Xenonauts after a long hiatus (after trying out the Longwar mod and still being less than impressed with anything but the tactics map reducing the game to a skirmish mode).

I like how things progressed but I wonder if there are still plans to improve the UI? My main gripe is that particularly soldier management is very fiddly and annoying, particularly if you want to cycle through roughly a platoon worth of men at some point so everyone gains XP.

In various places you need more clicks than really needed. These are just minor things but they are where most of my time is spent so I find that these are areas that really should do with improvements. I'm not sure it's on your radar but I just thought to give the feedback. Ponder, read or burn it to your heart's content.

1) Role assignment for soldiers takes three clicks when it should only take two (or incidently one click and a hover menu)

2) Similarily assigning role equipment should take one click, not a menu

3) Roles should be changeable in the soldier lists, maybe highlight soldiers who have a role but lack equipment

4) Assigning soldiers to the dropship is fiddly as hell in the soldier list, particularly with a scrollbar you jump back up out of position after selection, and sometimes it doesn't work right. This is the most important thing to train all your soldiers equally, particularly with wounded, role specialization etc. I really want to easily switch soldiers. Not sure if the checkboxes are planned for bulk actions (e.g. assign all selected soldiers to a dropshop). Would be nice.

5) The equipment screen only does it marginally better but lacks the stats concerning the soldiers capabilties.

6) The soldier list has no indication of how many soldiers you actually have (or I missed it). At best there should be a bar with green (combat ready), yellow (wounded but combat ready) and red (hospitalized) bar with a total number to show you how fit your unit is. But something you know if you need more back up would be nice.

7) Interceptors returning from mission have indication of refueling and rearming in the details screen but no message when they are actually combat ready again. This can be annoying in the heat of battle of a wave attack where squadrons have to sortie back out as quickly as possible. At worst a popup indicating combat readiness would be nice.

8) The team placement screen is pretty well hidden and gets completely reset when you switch teams making it kind of annoying to use.

Nothing of it is game breaking but there are places where I would like a more polished UI and better accessibility to do stuff.

Otherwise I like the new pace of combat missions and the aliens show more signs of being lively than last year.

Thanks for your hard work and the nostalgia I get playing this...

[axiar]

I come to search someone addressing this and you did it... is anyone working/worked on this???? please!

[bonds0097]

This is good feedback. I'll be watching this thread and it would be great if others added their UI-specific concerns. Changes like this will likely be gradually rolled out with the Community Edition releases.

[Foehammer343]

Can someone put back in the ability to drag and drop soldiers around in the dropship view? As in dragging someone over an occupied space will switch the two. And you can move tanks around without having to unassign the entire squad.

Another UI issue would be how the 'build new base' and 'launch interceptors' buttons are just white text. Could it be possible to have them be in a grey or white oval ish shape to help them stand out.

[axiar]

Can someone put back in the ability to drag and drop soldiers around in the dropship view? As in dragging someone over an occupied space will switch the two. And you can move tanks around without having to unassign the entire squad.

Another UI issue would be how the 'build new base' and 'launch interceptors' buttons are just white text. Could it be possible to have them be in a grey or white oval ish shape to help them stand out.

UPVOTE THIS TOO!

here my personal list (if this get to the community release, IM BUYING IT AGAIN!! haha):

(marked with "!" for me should really be implemented ingame)

! terrible odd window possitioning (especially soldiers managment) STATED

! aircrafts status on geoscape STATED

! drag n drops to assign soldiers STATED

! interceptor launch+set new target is odd as hell, if you dont assign them to anything they just take off to wherever they want to (!?!?)

instead: big button launch interceptor (as stated by foehammer) > directly to choose target/flypath

! INFO, this games needs to provide more info on screens!:

-on storage, theres no way to know the TOTAL amount of items (equipped items are not displayed... sigh)

-on workshop, material requeriment doesnt tell you how much will it need from hoy many you have (ex. should be something like, PLASMA RIFLE req: 5/50 alenium, 10/85 alien alloys)

-on soldier equipment the same, it only states hoy many are LEFT, not how many you have in total (ex. only adding a "/x" besides to the total... LASER RIFLE, beneath it, 2/4 -2 in use of 4-)

aaaand... I have more to put! will be back

[agris]

This is good feedback. I'll be watching this thread and it would be great if others added their UI-specific concerns. Changes like this will likely be gradually rolled out with the Community Edition releases.

I'll add my two shillings:

All items equipped on a soldier and in their inventory during GC should have the same detailed tooltips as the unequipped items in the soldier equip screen. That means a description, damage, accuracy, firing modes, etc. Right now, during GC, the best we get is "Pistol" "Rifle" etc, and none of the crunchy technical details. Additionally, all item tooltips should specify the item weight! Currently, I don't think any of them do (that is, the detailed tooltips in the soldier equip screen).

Another improvement for soldier management on dropships: add a way to remap the hotkey number of a given xenonaut assigned to a dropship. Currently, the only way to do this is un-assign all the soldiers and reassigning them in the desired numerical order. It would help the flow of GC to know that I've setup my soldiers so 1 - 3 are assault, 4 to 6 riflemen, 7 MG and 8 medic (for example). As an implementation suggestion, if you could change the game so that in the dropship layout menu, once a soldier is selected (or maybe the mouse hovers over them), the player hits CTL + # to reassigns them to that #. This request arisen periodically but so far, no luck.

EDIT: A more feasible and elegant solution to reordering soldiers is dragging their portraits to the desired position in the bottom row of portraits shown in the dropship layout screen. Right now soldier position (numerical) has no impact on the position of those portraits. Instead, make it so that portrait order follows 1 to 16, left to right. Then, let players just drag portraits to change numerical ordering.

My last shilling (ok, so it was 3) is also dropship related and builds on another post. Using a popup menu similar to soldier roles and set equipment as default / set default equipment / change role / add new role; it would be beneficial to have user-defined soldier placement on the dropship based on soldier role, with each of those placement templates saveable. Therefore I could setup an "Assault" dropship template using 3 assaults in the front, 2 riflemen by 1 door, a medic by the other, and rocketeers in the center. As I move soldier positions on the dropship, I can select "set positions/roles as default" or "set default positions for dropship role", with dropship role being 'Assault' as mentioned previously. You would need all the correct soldier roles already assigned to the dropshop for this to work, but I think it would go a long way in making the process of changing dropship layout less tedious.

Anyway, I don't know how difficult these are, but I appreciate your willingness to take suggestions bonds0097.

EDIT: a UI issue with column sorting of soldiers in the base http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10797-Xenonauts-Community-Edition-discussion?p=129559#post129559

Edited July 21, 2014 by agris