Empire Window Clutter: A Solution...

Planets are currently grouped by star. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your suggestion?

Ah... what I mean is tabs in the style of something like what firefox uses (and now IE). Right now they are grouped by star, yes, but in a 'root tree' fashion. I was wondering maybe having an option to group stars by using tabs instead of 'root trees'. This would minimize the chances of scrolling when there are too many stars (i.e. with more than one star 'expanded' from its root, it'll cause scrollbars to appear because the empire window is so big.

In other words, when you want to view a different star's planets, you'd select a different tab instead of move down (or scroll if there are a lot of stars) to select a different star.

Hopefully that makes more sense

I agree with Sponge that there's definetly possiblities in making the empire bar a little bit easier to keep track of.

Sponge means to have a "Tabbed" view, solar systems each have their own tab, seperate window, so that you can only see the planets in the empire window for the solar system you selected. That would make the list of planets shorter and will give us a better overview.

It would make sense since the distances between solar systems is rather long, so there's no need to really see two or more in the same list. Ships take time to travel so there's no rush.

So all we got to do to see the planets of another solar system is to click on another tab with its name.


It sounds good to me, but that would have a second scroll bar since all the name tabs of solar systems wont fit on the empire bar. Not sure how that would work, BUT, if it's a big game, it would make things easier.

I sorta like the root tree fashion...

yeah but you also like rusty spoons...

figures.

i like pie if that helps...

I think that the ability to resort the planets would help this a lot. You could have a section at the top where you put your planets of interest. Places where fighting is occurring, where you have shipyards and such, where the enemy is likely to show up, etc. This way you won't have to scroll all over the place looking for planets that you look at often. All the planets that don't matter much would just go down to the bottom of the list where you won't have to look at them.

I think that the planet list is actually pretty useless considering all you have to do is zoom out and you can see all of your planets. It would be nice to have it in a separate menu, but i dont really find myself using it all that often. and it tends to get in the way when i have 1k worth of ships all on one planet.

I think you guys will probably prefer the new empire tree mode in the patch if you are into narrowing the selection of what appears on the left (btw are you using the filters? r u stacking?). Eetmorsqrls, for my style of play, I rely on the empire tree to manage all my combat, building, and fleet movements - I prefer not to zoom out as much as possible - basically only to see relative positions of planets, but once I have a mental map its much more convienent to use the tree. However, even everyone here plays a different way.

but my way is the only one that matters

Do you mean the stack/group unit button on the top left? If so, it is useful once all offensive units are gone, otherwise, unstacking allows for focusing fire on a specific unit


Hmm.. I was thinking maybe the tabs could stack on multiple levels to prevent a scrollbar from appearing (ala firefox/IE).


I actually find myself having to do this in situations where there's just too many stars and planets on the empire window. It's nice to have two ways of choosing planets.


I look forward to trying this new empire tree mode

An interesting thought, but it sounds to me like it'd quickly fall apart in large games (too many stars to fit tabs for in the width of the empire tree).

Hmm...

Another use (a compromise maybe ) could be to have tabs to switch between owned planets, team planets (other than yours), enemy planets, and neutral planets.