Questions, Tweaks, And General 'Stuff'
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GalCiv2 Forums
GalCiv2 Forums
First off, I have to congratulate you guys on (overall) a well executed game, both in fun factor and staying power. I have to admit that when I played Galciv 1, I was rather unimpressed due to the lack of polish and generally poor execution (apologies if that seems harsh, but it's my honest opinion), so I was a little hesitant to try out Galciv 2. Thankfully, my hesitation was (for the most part) unwarranted
That said, I have a few questions that I'm hoping someone could answer.
1. Is there some way to spy on minor races? I don't see any way to allocate any espionage spending on them, and when I try to observe/view their planets, I'm told I need to allocate resources to gain any intel.
2. Is Auto-Survey bugged or something? I don't mean in the sense that they can apparently see anomalies that are still hidden by the FOW, but rather I notice that they will often (but not always) ignore the meteor anomalies completely. Also, more often than not, I notice that if you have more than one survey ship, they'll often go after anomalies that are farther away than ones which are right next to them if another survey ship has already been assigned to survey the anomaly. I realize this is by design, but there really should be a little more optimization here (ie. insert all closest routes per ship, then sort on range, then assign based on range), rather than simply going down a list of ships and picking the closest per ship in the list.
3. Why can I see the universe in the minimap which I haven't discovered? What I mean is, I can see all star systems as well as which empires are where, even though I haven't uncovered them via exploration. I assume this is intentional?
4. Is there ANY way to change the arrow key functionality to scroll the map rather than move units? I know it's a longshot, but I can't imagine a more backwards control scheme. Clicking on the minimap is a poor substitute interim solution, as the problem is, the way the controls are laid out right now, the player is forced to do FAR too much mousing, and believe it or not, puts enough strain on my wrist and forearm that it's actually noticeable. Granted, I probably play in longer sessions than many (8+ hours at a time), but Galciv2 is one of the few games where I've found my wrist and forearm actually getting fatigued due to the amount of mousing I'm forced to do. Now, I realize that many like the ability to move units with the arrow keys, so I'm wondering if there's something stopping you from using both the keypad and the arrow keys as seperate control items? It seems to me that using the keypad to move units and the arrow keys to scroll would be an ideal compromise here. Please?
5. I noticed that the recent pre-patch info post has indicated the devs feel tooltips aren't great and I'd just like to ask that if you're looking into altering tooltip behaviour, please, PLEASE, PLEASE implement user activated tooltips. In other words, disable tooltips unless the player holds down say CTRL or something. I can't tell you just how much tooltips annoy and aggravate me (and many others I think), and so far, only one (yes, 1) game engine in history has ever gotten it right by giving the control to the player rather than annoying them to hell and back constantly.
6. Is there some way to pan/tilt the view without using the mouse? I find it strange that you can zoom in/out with the +/- keys but you cannot pan/tilt with any keys. The mouse functionality is fine, but honestly, at least for me, it's one of those things that gets used so infrequently, and doesn't need to have such immediacy that a keyboard input level would serve better, especially for those of us who prefer using the middle mouse button for other functionality.
7. The manual states that using ESC or ENTER in various pop-ups and menus will take you out of that screen, but what actually happens is the ESC menu comes up always or ends your turn. I didn't see any mention of this behaviour in the recent patch post, so I'm hoping it's among the various UI tweaks the devs are working on?
8. Is there some way to get Automove units to move in that turn, rather than manually moving them, or waiting for them to move the following turn?
9. Would you (the devs) consider using drop down lists instead of slider choices? Again, it's excessive clicking and mousing that's at the heart of this query, as well as preferring a precise selection process over a forced linear pan and scan mentality.
10. Is there some way to change production focus without having to go down to the planet production view? Quite often I find I need to change focus on multiple planets for a short period (often when a new tech allows me to upgrade projects and such), but the only way to do so is to drill down to each planet, change the focus, then go to the next planet, which just isn't very practical when you have 60+ planets that you need to deal with. I thought that this could be achieved via a governor or something, but unless I'm missing the obvious, I don't see anything like this. Ideally something in the Civlization Manager or even planet-list view. And speaking of which, would it be possible simply to click on the entire production pane rather than the little icon to select that production focus?
11. Another minor UI tweak request, but when you move something up or down in the production queue, on lower resolutions you don't see much more than 3 or 4 lines of text and the window resets so you can't see the new position of the item in the queue. It would be nice if the window itself didn't change without player intervention in some way (ala scrolling).
12. And yet another small UI request, but could the arrow keys be used to move between planets while in the planet production view? All the clicking and mousing necessary for large empires makes it a REAL pain to manage this way.
There are a few other tweaks and requests that I could make, but I think most of them (as well as some I've posted here) have already been mentioned in the small tweaks thread, so I'll forgo posting them as well.
Apologies for such a long-ish post and thanks in advance for any help with the above.
Jebus