UI suggestions

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MrScoot
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2023 10:33 am

UI suggestions

Post by MrScoot »

Hi folks!

Been playing the game intensively recently and I love it! I have a few suggestions that could make the game more enjoyable from a UI persepective.
I'm probably not the first one to mention these, but since searching forums is a ui issue on it's own, I'm just going to blurb out my ideas.

- Select Research Screen (council and global) Give a small indicator of all the types of projects (space, material etc.) and an indicator how many are being researched. (I find myself trying to optimize but I keep having to switch screens to get this information
- Org Marketplace: Add a small list of filterable icons on the left of the org market which works as a search filter. (Currently having huuuuge mining deficits and checking the market for that icon every week, it would be great if that can be made easier) (also add a filter for orgs you can't ever use)
- Counciler overview, stats: At hover over, show how much is added by orgs and augments. (Using a lot of admin orgs that I can get rid of, but I keep needing to calculate manually how much my admin overflow is) (the hover over of the research bonus is a great example on how this is done well!)
- News messages: Click on a news message to focus on the location / event (whenever I click a counciler's 'hey, go get this org', I need to find the opponent's council member and check out what they have)
- Base manager: Allow some module filters like power, mining, research, only current size colony building, only buildings in colony (to specialize)
- Base manager: Allow the fission reactor to be made obsolete, the fusion seems to be better in every way and now the fission is cluttering the ui
- Base manager: Allow for sorting on space/ground colony in the colony list on the left. (I keep going to space when I want to update my mining planets, I know you can see it based on the inverted icon, but still)
- Base manager: Allow for a planning phase, which will place the blueprints of the building and show the number of resources it will cost to build and maintain. Once you are happy with it, press built and it gets updated.
- When going from space to a hab, if there are planetry filters on the hab list, change the filter to be on that planet. (I go to one of my mercury bases, but then still see the mars list)
nooblar
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2023 5:37 pm

Re: UI suggestions

Post by nooblar »

Some nice ideas here. Agreed that the base manager needs some work. I just finished my first playthrough and had a few QOL/UI ideas myself, figured I would just plonk them on the end of your post if you don't mind :).

Apologies if there are some user settings that already address this stuff that I just haven't dug into :/. Edit: Also apologies, I see some of these in the patch notes already haha.

Base Manager:
- I like the warnings when you place a module which you won't have power for, but it would be nice if the manager also showed the total power generation, power generation in construction, total power usage, and total usage in construction. Something like 1000(1200)/1100(1100) to show that you currently have 100 surplus but will have 100 deficit when construction is complete, for example. edit: I guess this is already shown in the mouse over at top center, but I just didn't understand what I was looking at, as my eye was always drawn to the left :|
- I think the radiation impact on construction cost needs to be even more obvious. Maybe color-code the radiation levels - 1-2x cost white as currently, 2-3x yellow, 3-4x orange, >4x red - and also show a big radiation hazard icon somewhere in the base manager and when you hover over the cost of a building? I kind of built a full ring hab in low jupiter orbit for antimatter farming and lost ~1-2 decades of metal stockpiles without noticing the 8x cost... some rails to prevent that would be nice.
-Agreed on obsoleting modules.
-Agreed on sorting modules. Also, maybe sorting to only show a specific tier of module? (oop, this is in patchnotes)

General Flow of game:
- Personal preference but I think focus camera on councilor at mission phase should be off by default. I found this super annoying when I was puttering in a menu or in space and was yanked to earth, and didn't find this setting for a long time :/.
- I dislike how some interrupts (such as war declared) only have pause options, and not continue. I don't care that HF declared war on Ethiopia for the nth time, let me hit enter to continue at full speed.
- When multiple ships complete construction, I want to go to each one, assign an order (merge or transfer), then go to the next. Currently, I have a big stack of pop ups that get in the way of assigning orders. Not sure the best way to handle this - maybe a very slight delay between the pop ups such that if I hit 'continue' the next one pops up and I can keep clicking through, but if I hit pause the next notification does not pop up until I unpause? (oop, this is in patchnotes)
- Some events (wildfire, climate impact, panic,etc.) become very pointless in the late game when they cost a trivial amount to address relative to my total stockpiles. It's not a decision or interesting gameplay, I just click the same option every time as fast as I can. Maybe just stop these events once their impact is <1/100th of my stockpile? Or let me pick an automatic response to re-occurring events?
- Some events I just don't want to pause for at all after a certain point (STO defense completion for example). Let me mute them.
- Late game (2045-2050+) mission phase becomes a drag, I am just advising and occasionally securing interests or doing a stabilize/public campaign while I wait for fleets to get places and do stuff at speed 5. Some more automation would be nice. Or maybe a second slowing of the mission phases? But depending on how the game goes the 'end game' might not occur at the same time, so that may not be practical.

Autodesigner:
- It kinda sucks. I like designing my own ships, after I discovered skirmish mode to test, but maybe we need to have example/template designs made by a real human at a few different tech levels to help ease people into shipbuilding?
-Maybe let people access the designer outside of a saved game to look at and create skirmish mode ships with all techs?

Fleet combat:
-Let me pick a default formation for each fleet and save it. Picking from the drop down every time gets a bit tedious, and I found myself forgetting to pick a formation and then needing to save-scum quite often. (oop, this is in patchnotes)
- It would be nice if the formation could be changed on the engage/autoresolve screen instead of the initial bid screen, in case I forgot. Or, much more work, but a deployment phase on the map itself would prevent all of the above issues and allow for some more interesting/nuanced deployment.

Also a few thoughts on the Ayy's and endgame:
- Without any big AI changes, just forcing the aliens to use more uniform acceleration in their ship designs might make combat more challenging by merit of having all of the Ayy's engage you at once. Currently you kill the gunships, then the frigates, then the dreads as they all hit in different waves.
- Maybe give the aliens some ship classes late game with no human equivalent (besides mothership) which is a bit of a PITA? 8x nose slot 2x hull giant spinal weapons platform with very long range (>1000km?) and low turn rate? A very long range alien capital might work well if it could start shooting about the time their swarms of light ships engage.
- The final battle in the Oort was anticlimactic on Normal. I knew what I was flying into and I brought a big enough beat stick to bonk it. That may have just been me playing too conservatively - but I feel the fleet power victory condition as resistance discouraged me from attacking faster and risking a pyric victory in space and then not being able to hit the win button after successfully landing marines.
- Maybe reduce the total information given by Skywatch at longer distances until you get real ships (with science/signals int modules in range?)- only show rough numbers/classes/observed accelerations from a large distance, and leave a bit more surprise?
- Maybe give the aliens some unique defensive ship designs (higher accel & turn rate or armor, low dv) around their final base to cause a change of pace, something you are not used to fighting in previous battles? Maybe have them landed on the planet and hidden from skywatch in caves or something until revealed in an event popup so you don't know how many/what weapons/etc?


In general, I found the early game fighting for control on earth with limited resources fun, and the midgame fighting the aliens with lower tech super fun, but the end game felt like a bit of a slog just waiting for my fleet to make a series of 20-50 week transits and hit the win button and get the achievement. Maybe on my second playthrough I will play more aggressively and/or turn up the difficulty to try to avoid that.
Last edited by nooblar on Sat Apr 22, 2023 6:11 am, edited 6 times in total.
dasbootopoortunitea
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2023 6:48 am

Re: UI suggestions

Post by dasbootopoortunitea »

- It would be nice if the formation could be changed on the engage/autoresolve screen instead of the initial bid screen, in case I forgot.
I've had this exact thought! The initial bid screen is the wrong place to choose your formation, at stage the player needs to be thinking about strategic concerns like "how much fuel & delta-V can I afford to spend?" And, of course, there's no guarantee that combat will occur at all until the bids are in. We shouldn't be making tactical decisions like "what formation" until the battle is about to start.

I also second your concerns about alien AI & the anticlimactic final battle. There's a version of the combat AI that can pull off tactics like "mobile ships outflank & get shots on vulnerable side armor, dreadnoughts punish attempts to turn and fight the flankers," but what happens in the current build is effortless defeat-in-detail.
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