Dear Developers

Here are some suggestions for tweaks to the game based on
playing many single-person games here in beautiful N. San
Diego County.  

Most of these are trivial, but one in particular (number 5)
is of high interest to me because it happens throughout a
game and can be very annoying.  

I admit to not having read the forum extensively and it may
be that these have all been reported or requested before, or
had objections raised.  If so, I apologize.

These are all mostly low level.  I am sure I will have
other questions or suggestions once I have played multi-user
or in some way encountered diplomacy, etc.

Thank you again for your time and consideration.

1. It is hard to distinguish technologies that are available
for research from those that are already completed.  It would
be nice if there was a color or graphic device (outline?) that
distinguished the two visually from each other.

2. It is possible to set a rally point to be a ship (and possibly
other things).  I think I have accidentally set a rally point to
be a trade ship several times without noticing, which results
in my ships going willfully all over the place.  If it wasn't
annoying it would be funny.  It would be nice to be able to
turn off this feature (i.e. rally points can only be points in
space, such as near a planet).

3. It would be nice to be able to set a standing order to retreat
if shields are reduced to some percentage (such as 10%).  Generally
speaking, I would always want a ship of any class to have the time
to jump to a neutral world and recover rather than be destroyed.  

4. The visual display of ships that are damaged (ie have shields
less than 100%) is a little non-specific.  Perhaps it could ramp
the saturation of red (or something) to show various levels of
damage.  Right now all I can tell is that a ship has been damaged
(or its shields have been) which is very different from having
sheilds almost gone.  For that I have to hold the cursor to the
ship and turn my head for the proper display.

5. Because the fleet sidebar moves all over the place, it takes
a lot of skill to select anything in it, without it changing and
causing a wrong selection.  It would be nice to reduce this
problem somewhat, perhaps one could use the shift/control/whatever
key and it would not update until one released it.  This is a
major problem over the course of a game, particularly as things
get complicated.

6. It would be nice to have a "group scuttle" feature.  Right now
if you select a group of ships and hit the scuttle button, it will
scuttle only the first ship and ignore the others.

7. It would be nice if the scuttle button was bigger.

8. It would be nice of the (advent) voice did not announce that you
have lost a capital ship when you in fact scuttled it deliberately.

9. It would be nice if the voice announced *which* capital ship
was damaged or destroyed.  It would be nice if it announced where
or in some way showed you.  In fact, it would be nice in general
if the voice was more specific about planets, ie announce the name
of a planet as it was found, or its type (ie asteroid, desert, ice
volcano, etc).   There are not so many planet names that one could
not record them all and insert that in the proper place in a sentence.

Thanks again.
MW