Yes, the zoom out feature is good, but if you want your focus on something else, like your main fleet that is about to attack one of my planets which have a my main fleet, you would be there all the time.
But at the same time someone else is about to attack on of your planets, you would need to know who it is, where it comes from, and how large the incomming fleet is.

So if you were able to just click a small icon at that planet and see the phase lanes connected to it, you will see where its comming from and how large a force it is.



Ahh i see what you mean, its because you think it will be showable for every planet? well i think it should be clickable for each planet.

If you click it on 2 planets it should connect to just those 2, and show if the rute is between other another planet.
Like in the first image, if i would go from my capital planet to the yellows planet, it will take me 3 jumps to reach it.
So i get an idea what rute my fleet is gonna go.

I don't remember names very well either.

I use the infocards very often. I love the fact that you can left and right click on the cards on the lower left to cycle forwards and backwards between entries that are displayed on the right.

Inbound attackers - I'll click if I'm unsure of the system it's headed to (composition of the defense) and to see what I'm being attacked with.

Capital ship xp level gained - All the time! I may have multiple battles taking place and/or training recently built capital ships. This makes it easy to go directly to that ship to select the upgrades w/o having to search for it.

There are some other messages I'll pay attention to. Bounty messages I ignore.

I would like it if there was some visual indicator that the research queue is empty. I'll queue up what I can afford and kind of forget about it. Maybe if the button was highlighted, glowed softly or had a soft pulsating glow. Or maybe a giant exclamation mark in the lower right corner that when clicked flashed "Your research queue is empty, you big dummy!".

I use the info cards for some things but not for others.
I like using the cards when I get the message that "Our forces are under attack" or "Our planet is under siege". Like Multianna, I also have a problem keeping up with the planet names since they change every new game. The info cards are absolutely needed for me in those situations. The flashing-icon-over-the-planet/fleet idea would help in this situation as well.

I don't use the other cards too much unless I totally missed a message somewhere. I don't think that I have ever used the one that displays research messages because I usually see the status as I am choosing what to research next.
I also haven't used the one that displays diplomacy messages because the diplomacy screen shows me the current status of things.

I am not sure that I like the idea of having the phase lanes show up in the empire tree. I would agree with Danome. They would be awfully confusing to me in a larger game with multiple connections to every planet. I prefer to zoom out real quick using the system/planet toggle and see whats going on in the lanes. Of course, that isn't too effective if the event is in a system that you are not currently focused on.

It took me a while to realize that those icons were notifying me of new messages - so much happens that they really got lost, never clicked on them when I was busy playing. What's wrong with the approach from Gal Civ II? Stacking icons up the right side of the screen - mouseover to show details. Have them expire after 10 sec, or when full. Click brings you directly to the planet / ship the alert is referring to, maybe even into camera follow mode if it's a ship! Which I really don't use for anything right now.

One thing that is confusing though... you speak about some sort of warning when ship initiate a jump toward your planet? I've never seen any indication that enemyies were on their way to my planet, only notifications when they have arrived. And they don't show up while in phase jump like my own ships do, so what were you talking about?

have you researched PSIDAR?

Never use it. To irritating with the jumping.

If there is an attack (an actual attack, not just scouts jumping in) I zoom all the way out and zoom to wherever it is happening. This is very important on larger maps, because I want to know where it is happening. If I click on those buttons, I just jump somewhere with no idea of the larger picture.

I really would like it, if there was an option to just show planets in the planet tree where enemy ships are. I.e. show all my planets where enemy ships are located and ships of mine / a colony of mine is located, sorted so, that the planet with the most enemy ships (most likely the most endangered place) is on top or (which should be toggable) that the plant with most of my ships is on top and then the other planets in subsequent order.

But only planets that have enemy ships and ships of mine.

This would allow me to not have it cluttered and thus useless. Doesn't force to number all those important planets, ie. annoying micromanagement. It would make it possible for me to view all battles and enemy ships in my view at once. Since this is what I'm concerned about, what the enemy is doing and not really about the rest.

For bigger pictures I can always zoom out all the way, for an overview. But for multiple battles it would be immensely helpful.

Aha! Apparently not.

phase space interruption detecting and ranging?