Hey Stardock...Colony Management screen needs to show what's in orbit and the minimap.

Actually, upon further inspection I have noticed the "Ships in Orbit" window in the Starport when you click on "build ship".

How ever it stiil needs to have the minimap showing. Perhaps have the entire user interface panel showing.

-Wade

It would also be nice if renaming could take place from that screen

That screen should have as much capability as it can - say, everything but tiles. It needs focus buttons, rename, and other info like influence, etc.

I suggested once before a retractable panel (like the main interface) that gives you a miniature tilemap and minimap, so when it's open you could do everything including tile placement, and have a minimap. Then you could pretty much play the whole game from the colony screen, which would be optimal for late-game fifty-planet stuff. Tabbing through planet screens one-at-a-time is suboptimal.

Let me steal my post from this other thread (Link):

Yes, the planet and colony management UI definitely could use some improvement. It's not bad if you have only a few planets to manage, but in a game like my current one, in a huge galaxy where I have nearly 200+ planets to attend, it really needs some improvements.

Some improvements I'd love to see:
- On the colony management screen, *please* remember the currently selected planet and the position of the scroll bar and restore them when the screen is exited and then re-entered. If you're going down the list of planets to make a change on each one, you currently have to remember where you were on the list and scroll back down to it every time you leave the colony management screen. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it becomes painful if you need to keep flipping from the colony management screen to the planet screen and back dozens of times per turn, and every time you have to refind your position on the list.

- Speed up the time it takes to display the colony management screen. With ~200 planets, it takes 5-6 secs to come up *every* time. Again, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it becomes painful if you need to keep flipping from the colony management screen to the planet screen dozens of times per turn.

- On the colony management screen, show the focus setting for every planet and allow it to be changed from there. (Highlighting the approriate box the Mil/Soc/Res production columns with each planet's focus and allowing clicks there to change the focus would be perfect).

- There should be a way from both the planet and colony management screens to make the main view center on the selected planet. Owning many planets in a huge/gigantic galaxy, it's hard to remember where every system is located and it becomes a pain to have to search around the map for where, say, Wardell III is located. (If there's already a way to do this, I'd love to know it!)

- Being able to sort the planets by various columns on the colony management screen is very useful and is, for example, a great way to find all planets producing, say, Enhanced Factories and then maybe quick-buy them. It's be even more useful if the previous/next planet buttons on the planet management screen followed the same sort order. That way, you could sort the planets into groupins as you need, then select the first planet of interest, go to the planet management screen, and from there, just click next to get to the next planet in the list *as it is currently sorted*, without needing to go back to the colony management screen first.

- It'd be nice if the colony management screen at least showed if each planet had any ships in orbit (ie: a showing shield symbol), or even better, showed the number of ships, or even better than that, had a popup where you could view and launch ships without having to go back to the main map.

Lintman.Um... the Colony Management Screen is the "Planet Screen". You must be referring to that other screen that lists the values for all your planets.

-Wade

it's hard to remember where every system is located and it becomes a pain to have to search around the map for where, say, Wardell III is located. (If there's already a way to do this, I'd love to know it!)

On the planet/ship window just click once on a ship or planet.

-Wade

I agree that the Colony Management screen (planet screen) ,previous and next buttons, and the Planet/ Ship list should be in the same order when sorted on the Planet/Ship list.

-Wade

Lintman.Um... the Colony Management Screen is the "Planet Screen". You must be referring to that other screen that lists the values for all your planets.

I'm not sure what the offical names are, but what I'm calling the "planet screen" is the one that shows planet surface with all the tiles and improvements. What I called the "colony management screen" is the spreadsheet-like list of all colonies, viewable under the "colony" tab in the civilization manager. There is no other title to that particular screen, so calling it "colony manager" made sense to me.

On the planet/ship window just click once on a ship or planet.

As above, I don't mean that small planet/ship list; I know you can find a planet/ship from there. I'm talking about locating the planet on the main map from the planet (tile) screen and from the spreadsheet value screen, whatever you wish to call them.

Ok. I understand now.

The screen you're reffering to is the Colonies tab on the Civilization Manager screen.

-Wade