New empire tree mode to reduce clutter

Seen it , used it , went back to the old method.

what he said.

I dont see a reason for the new option. I cant see anything thats going on in my empire.

The empire tree is perfect to let me know which planet is under attack, where my fleets are and so on.

I havent used it so i dunno if its possible, but is it possible to have some selected planet/asteroid/sun to shown always?

Or maybe to remove some in the corrent empire tree. Like if i where to click the "caps lock" key i will then be able to remove some planets from it (maybe use ctrl key and mouse click to avoid mistakes), and when i click the "caps lock" key again, ill see it like normal.
So i can shift between the to modes at any time.

So it sounds like you both use the empire tree to figure out where things are happening, so old mode is probably better for you.

With the new mode, you have to rely more on the report windows to figure out what is going on around your empire, or zoom out. But you can get a little more control of what shows up in the empire tree.

For instance, if you want to keep any of your "important" planets in a hotkey group (I use 0), you can easily check what's happening at them by selecting them with the hotkey.

I went back to the old Empire Tree also. I would prefer if the Empire Tree just expanded automatically and moved to the top the current planet/control group I selected, and collapsed the rest that wasn't selected. That way what I'm dealing with currently is instantly available, but the rest is still easily accessible.

I still wish the silver scroll bar on the left side would be transparent... I find it very distracting.

to me its not distracting, its more like it doesnt fit in

Its distracting and also doesn't fit in! Exactly!

I use the old Empire tree, but with Icon Stacking and Show Hot Key Groups On. Orbited Planets/Allied Planets/Enemy Planets/Unowned Planets off.
And I keep around 3 groups on average hotkeyed.

I find that all the information I require is available either from zooming down to one planet, or from seeing where the AI requests help, pings, battles are from simply looking at the planets from a far out zoom.

We made the scrollbar track transparent by specific request. We can have a look at the full thing less instrusive if this is seen as a common annoyance. Currently it is consistent will all the menu options and other UI elements, so a change would need to work with these areas as well.

edit: out of curiosity, what screen res do you have? Does the bar 'hang'?

Sorry pdiddy - back to discussion on empire tree modes!

1680x1050

Yeah I see the scroll bar is transparent, but the Slider is at least 1/2 the screen hight, and SILVER. I should have said SLIDER.

I find the new cut down Empire tree to be much more usable than the old full tree, turning on that option was probably the first thing I did after the patch.

I just use it when I'm in combat to view the status of my ships and the enemy's ships, select groups of similar ships and sometimes target enemy fighters/bombers that can be hard to click.

I don't need to see my whole empire as I know what's going on from the messages I get and my key planets are all hot-keyed (0 and 9 usually). With everything showing it just looks too messy and takes up too much of the screen with pointless info. I think I'd rather have no Empire tree at all than the old version.

I find my self wanting to look at the info cards for my fleet and the enemy fleet more than anything else in a battle. It might be nice if you could always see the info card of your fleet in the bottom right of the screen when ever it's selected and your mouse is just over empty space. Also maybe you could see the enemy fleet's info card in the bottom left where the empire tree is. For getting a quick rundown of what's going on overall in a battle I find the info cards more intuitive.

Just suggesting a few other possible options. Maybe I'm alone in thinking this or need to play more to get used to it but the Empire tree really doesn't work that great for me at the moment.

Edit: While as I said I find the whole Tree a bit annoying I definitely agree that the slider doesn't fit right as it's too opaque. 1680*1050 resolution

Oh also I just noticed this in the feedback thread:

That's basically what I'm suggesting with being able to see the fleets info card when it's selected. Being able to select all the units of a certain type by clicking on their name in the info box would be great as well.

PS: The fact he mentions Homeworld is purely coincidental and has nothing to do with why I quoted this.

Hey Deionarra,

Thanks for testing out the new mode

Currently you can check your fleet status by hovering over the fleet number. If you have
"show hotkey groups" on in the empire tree, hovering over the number will show you the infocard for that fleet.

You can also select all the units of a certain type by holding alt and clicking on the ship icon - which is pretty easy if you are in selection-empire-tree mode. At the moment none of the infocards are interactive.

I share your feelings about the old empire tree mode, but everybody plays differently even here, so finding the best solution is tricky.

I haven't used the new mode but I personally would like to be able to manually manipulate the order in which planets/stars are shown in the display so that planets/stars/hotgroups I am interested in can be at the top while planets/stars/hotgoups that I am not interested in or can't do anything with can be at the bottom allowing me to have a command & control system that I can change based on the actions happening in the game. A good example of this is that in most of my games, my home world and the first couple planets I colonized become essentially useless as production points because they are so far behind the front lines, and are too well defended for an enemy or pirates to get to them meaning that they just take up space even when I collapse them so that I am just seeing the planet icon.

How about the following options:

Option 1:
I play another game totally unrealted to this called UFO:Afterlight. In that game you can turn on and off certain alerts, and change what you want to happend for each alert. Applying this technique to this game I came up with something like the follwing:


For each alert you would have several options like if you want it to be a verbal warning, just or just make the little Icon for its respective report flash or even if you want the target of the alert to appear in empire tree. So for example that whenver a planet come sunder attack I would get a verbal warning, the little icons in the lower right that log verious events would flash (well only the appropriate one) and the planet gets added to the empire tree. The only roadblock I ran into is how long they stay on the tree.

The solution I came up with is to have any unit or planet added to the tree that is not a currently selected unit appear with a check box next to it (or something like that). When you no longer need it over there, click the box and BOOM, all gone.

This lead me to another idea. What if you could add planets or units to the tree at will? They are still context sensitive like before, add a sun, and all the planets you know about appear below. These planets would also have checks, so if you own a bunch of planets in one system, click the star, add it to the tree, then expand it and remove whatever you don't want there.

This lead me to my final idea. Tabs. Lets stick a couple of tabs at the top of this new tree. Maybe like... 3-5. I could have a tab for each system, or one of planets I own and planets my ally owns. Or some of my enemies.

The goal of this overhaul is that with a tree such as this we could all make it however we wanted. Making it look like the default tree is as simple as adding all known stars, you get everything. Also if your resolution is crappy, having tabs keeps you from having to scroll, allowing you to view everything with a hotkey (yes the tabs should be hotkeyed   ) or 2 instead of clicking in scrolling.

I realize this might be a lot to code, but its the best solution I could come up with and the only one I think meets everyones requirements regardless of play style. Let me know what you think and suggestions and critisism are always welcome!

Edited because I needed to clarify some stuff in the beginning. Oh and dont turn this into a UFO: afterlight discussion, I just used it to try to illustrate my point (if your familiar with the game)

great idea, that is pretty much what I was trying to describe, i just didn't know how to say it as well

I find the two views to be useful in different situations. I think a toggle between the two in the game interface would be nice.

I also think, in general, more options would be useful. I would like to be able to select a few planets and have only those displayed. For instance, to agree with Daishzen, in the mid to late game, planets that are deep inside my boarders tend to be too far away from the front line to be producing many ships / to be attacked. I would like a way to be able to quickly glance at my front line planets only.

Novalith,

Your idea to have the alerts add the planets to the empire tree is actually quite close to how the alerts work in the new mode. As you click through the reports in the lower left, the relevant area shows up in the empire tree, have you played with this at all? The only difference is they are only there if you have the report selected (which I guess is the answer to when they get removed).

freejefflove,

You could glance at your front line planets easily if you have them in a hotkey group.

The empire tree reminds me of Mankind. Man that game had potential So messed up buggy and tedious thou.

aha. perfect. I understand your intention with the new mode now. Definitely a clean solution to the problem of the overly long list in the old mode. I like the ability to control which planets are displayed and to be able to use hot key groups to flip back and forth.

Hmm...

One idea: have the ability to quickly switch between the default empire window and the selection-based window.

*points to the idea of a "tabbed-ala firefox/IE 7" empire window* One tab could be for an entire overview of your empire, the other for your 'selected' units