Thanks! If I remember correctly, I literally made that post 2 minutes before the new dev blog came out explaining the new mechanics

Most of my concerns has been posted before, only to give a +1 to @Kweel_Nakashyn comments (specially the one asking for more clarification) and about economy screen, what I would like to see is relevant info regarding best placement for trading companies HQ/subsidiaries.

About your last proposal of planet scan, I think this can be very cool in terms of lore and graphics, but ATM doesn't gives us any new info (may be it become important as more pop / planet features are included), and IMO Amplitude should focus their efforts in more important issues, and leave it for latter updates when they have only to polish the game.

IMO Amplitude should focus their efforts in more important issues, and leave it for latter updates when they have only to polish the game.

+1

To me, one of the things I'd be looking for in a System Management scan view is how my population is contributing to the political situation in the empire and how I can intervene to make it more like my desired state. 

For example, (and this will fit it with the dev's idea of zooming it to get a new level of detail on information), you'll have systems and how they voted in the last election, a stacked bar underneath each system. If I see that a particular system voted ecologists when I really needed pacifist support, I can zoom in to investigate. This gives me a planet-by-planet view with populations and how they voted. Next level is where I can see all my decisions that led to a particular population on this particular planet voting the way they did. It could be implemented as a sort of planetary news ticker with events, like building queues, diplomatic actions, etc, show up with their corresponding effects on my population's political affinity.

Honestly I've only used the economy scan for setting up the trade routes. It would be neat if there was some interactivity involved.

I don't have any specific suggestions for improving the scan screens myself, but I'm liking what the folk here are suggesting.

a looking forward to the next update.

Like to comment on scan view.

First off I think scan view needs to be more interactive and have a strong theme.  To this end it ought to be linked to the espionage system.  Allow player to pick other empires to compare and see relevant stats and predictive expansion of compared empire.  reveal other players listening posts and military strongholds.  Detailed scans are directly linked to your espionage infiltration level of compared empire.

I would like to see this system placed in the espionage component of the game.  It would really shine here as it is such a natural fit for displaying clandestine useful information.  It could show all infiltration effects and options.  Hero's embedded in other empires.  Planet or specific system output again based on infiltration level.  A global comparison of empires.  Some of this could be in game researchable techs that are not part of the common tech tree.  Espionage in endless legend works so well as a game mechanic and scan view needs to reflect this in various levels of detail that has meaning to players.  It would also make scan view an essential component instead of a afterthought that is struggling to find a place in the game.

Lets look at it a different way.

Is the current information useful.  No it is supportive of what is already shown elsewhere.  It will quickly become redundant in its present form.

In an age of excess meaningless information game designers need to avoid this pitfall.  Linking scan view to exploration and espionage will resolve all issues and give depth to the game, a win win in my book.

The tech tree looks good and functional.  Will comment after I have played the upcoming update.  

The combat scan view is a great step up from what it was, but I still have no idea what the 2 bars on either side of a unit's health are supposed to represent, or why they keep going up and down...

The ship labels are now displaying damage taken (with misses, shield damage reduction, and hull plating) on the left side gauge, and damage inflicted (with misses, shield damage reduction and hull plating) on the right side gauge. The shield gauge now surrounds the HP gauge.

mezmorki wrote:

I think the problem is that the dev's have said that these scan views are intended (by design or by limitation) to be NON-INTERACTIVE.  And that's the problem.

Take the System List (empire screen Asuzu is talking about).  What if ALL the information and functionality of that screen was instead arrange geographically as the economic scan.  Then it would actually be pretty useful.  It could be then be the interface for doing stuff like moving population between systems (which is sort of half implemented right now in the system list BTW).    You could "sort" the different outputs (e.g. Dust production) and it would highlight systems different based on their dust yields. 

I've always felt that 4X games miss an opportunity to present data spatially and geolocated - and resort to tables and charts far to often.  If location matters, as it often does, then information should be presented and made usable in spatial format. 

 A perfect example is this:  Say I want to build a bunch of ships and get them to the front line.  In looking at a table, I might see that my homeworld has the highest production value and so I'd build the ships there (three turns to make a ship).  But what I'm not seeing, since there is no connection to geography, is that it takes 4 of movement to get the ships from my homeworld to the front.  I'm better off building ships at a lower production world (say it takes five turns) but one closer to the front where it takes only one turn to get into engagement range.  A simple example, but seeing the information in its spatial context is useful - if you can interact with it.

Maybe I'm saying all this because my day job involves a lot of spatial informatics :)

Agree love that kind of stuff, sadly it also would require more work and i suspect they do not have the resources.

WimeSTone wrote:

A thing I would really love to see is building queue scan (aka Industry scan), where you can see:

• industry breakdown - how much Industry each system produces and it's Industry production rank;
• 3 last orders for each system;
• Dust buyout cost for each action;
• how much buyout is in % of your current empire Dust - on hover only;
• eastimate number of turns required to get buyout cost back - on hover only.

This will remove the need to check each 1-turn-to-finish-action system, sometimes those consecutive fast zooms make me dizzy

And more important - it will make early-mid game Dust investments easier to plan, as seeing multiple systems at once helps a lot.

I fully support an industrial overlay.   It'd be a beautiful way to cut down on some micromanagement.

I'm really looking forward to the planet scan. I think it should show various info that is interesting but doesn't necessarily affect the game, but is good for immersion, like diameter, temperature range, core etc.

It should definitely have game related benefits and info too though. Maybe if you scan a planet you get some kinda perk or tactic when fighting a ground battle there? Or maybe some resource bonus? Or something unique entirely? Who knows. Just trying to set my mind back to tv shows / movies when the scan a planet and what they were after.

The Scan view is a solution looking for a problem.

There. That's the issue with the scan view. Everything it does, other elements of the UI can do better or more efficiently. It's a gimmick right now, and keeping it non-interactive means unless you're working to present a lot of information efficiently and quickly to the player it will remain a gimmick, and a bad one. 

You're obfuscating and hiding information that could be quickly and easily gathered up in easy to read format by providing it as artistic grids and circles and whatnot, when in reality this stuff needs to be in easy to read numbers and details, when I hit the space bar, I expect everything graphical to turn abstract and for me to -at a glance- be able to rapidly assess everything that's relevant to that screen. So if it's the economy screen, tapping space should give me a quick breakdown of the numbers, incomes, expenditures, trade routes, etc. 

In combat, tapping space SHOULD NOT OVERLAY THE GODDAMN HP BARS OVER THE SHIPS, but instead drop down a UI over the action and provide a wire-frame view complete with ranges and information that is pertinent that helps me figure out what I can improve with my fleet.

Rather than trying to be flashy and go for the style and design aspects, focus on information density and being concise, provide what the player -needs- in the alternate view, all the "at a glance" info that will actively help them make better decisions. In the system view I don't WANT to know if a system is overpopulated as the single piece of info for that planet, I want to know breakdowns of what each citizen provides, so I can optimise the system output, with a sidebar indicator as to population density, and a breakdown of political alignments for the system. More rich information output and less wasted space.

^   Yes, what Hobbesian said.

Scan view needs more information told in an upfront manner, like what things mean when you mouse over them.

Hotslice wrote:

Here's the things I'd like to see in the Fleet Scan overlay:

Icons for all Ally/Enemy ships

Icons for Fleet status (Idle/Moving/Guarding/Sieging)

Icons for Damaged/Low Manpower

Icon indicating that our ships and enemy ships are present in the same system and we can initiate an Attack immediately

Additional toggle filter options on the side of the screen:

Show/hide Our/Ally/Enemy/All ships

Show/hide Idle/Moving/Guarding/Sieging/All ships

Show/hide Damaged/Low Manpower conditions

Show/hide movement paths and destinations

This would be beneficial.  Currently, I don't use Scan views (except in battle).

I would like a view that showed me things like what the poster said above. 

In a planetary scan view, I would like to see all: 

• Artifacts, Ruins, Curiosities, etc... that I have and have not explored.
  
• I would like to see positive and negative planetary effects, and those that I can act upon have a little icon next to it.
  

I want a series of summary screens to go to see all the actions I can/should be taking, rather than clicking all of my systems.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

IMO, the most important thing to do is to write a quickly & dirty tutorial to help people to understand those screens and release this in a quick & dirty patch asap, with any quick & dirty fix you could make this week.

Because only a few persons understood those screens, and you will not have many usefull feedback if people can't use those screens.

This is required for manpower too.

I think this is a very beneficial comment.

The purpose and value of these scan views is very unclear, which unfortunately speaks to broader issues about the lack of transparency in many of the game's mechanics.  The scan views seem like a way to make thing more transparent, but at the end of the day they just make things even more confusing.

So currently, the scan views are, IMHO, completely useless and add to confusion.  Let me discuss this by way of a specific example:

ECONOMIC SCAN & TRADE

The only current benefit of the economic scan is that it shows me some abstract reflection of where my trade routes are going.  Except that it doesn't actually tell me ANY useful information about how the locations of trade HQ's versus their subsidiaries work.  What's my earning potential here versus there?  No idea..  Moreover, once I have multiple trade corps going, all the lines stack on top of each other making it a completely useless diagram.

But this issue speaks to a greater problem, which is that the player has no idea how trade actually works.  There is no way to plan out where to build an HQ versus a subsidiary and have any knowledge about what the value of one location is over another, other than "bigger distant apart is better" (correct?).  

The problem is that not only doesn't the scan view give you more detailed information AFTER you've setup your trade route, the real utility of such a scan would be to help make a more informed decision in the first place.  But it doesn't help do that either.  Like I said - it's a useless feature and will continue to be useless until clarity is brought to how these mechanics are actually working.

This same disconnect in information occurs in other areas of the game as well.  For example, how your decisions trickle down to affect political parties.  Actions might increase/decrease party support - but players need to know how specifically this works BEFORE they take their action.  As it is, the political scan thin shows the history of what happened in a system but still doesn't provide any clarity about how it happened specifically, which the player could use to make a more informed decision.  It's like these scans are all working backwards.

Does this observation make sense to others?