Hello All! / Dear Devs 
Newbie 1st post here. As in the title, I'd like to suggest feedback and new ideas about various UI issues and functionality. I've thought about these ideas quite a bit and hope you might like them or maybe find them interesting to talk about as they seem like decent potential additions/enhancements to the arsenal of management tools already implemented. A few more thoughts after the list. Please bear in mind I am not a coder - I just love games, and this game in particular.
In summary, I've been enjoying the interface quite a bit, modding it to make some tweaks and improvements, and overall I think a lot of things feel really intuitive (in particular the row of hotkeys along the top matching the row of buttons, or the shift clicking or ctrl clicking).
I do believe however, that we are just on the edge of a truly functional and intuitive UI and management experience. There are some elements that are still too clunky and slow down the management experience quite a bit, especially when playing as a large major such as USSR or USA, or Germany mid-late game.
(Personal Angle Here).
Thanks for reading!
Feedback on the post would be appreciated - format, detail, method to discuss issues etc. This is my first proper feedback post ever feedback on the feedback would be awesome as if I get my feedback bug free it potentially bodes well for overall development of myself and the discussion and the game. Would rather not use "spoiler" as it's not exactly a spoiler but might make it easier for people to read the key points quickly.
Newbie 1st post here. As in the title, I'd like to suggest feedback and new ideas about various UI issues and functionality. I've thought about these ideas quite a bit and hope you might like them or maybe find them interesting to talk about as they seem like decent potential additions/enhancements to the arsenal of management tools already implemented. A few more thoughts after the list. Please bear in mind I am not a coder - I just love games, and this game in particular.
- DRAG BOX SELECTION / MORE REFINED SELECTION - in unit selection menus:
when clicking "O" to bring up the army panel I believe it should be possible to create a drag box when selecting units instead of just shift clicking etc. When there's 50-100 or more divisions, it's a long process to re-organise and select all of one type or even your whole army (if you need to without using the map due to units too spread out). This is especially in multiplayer when you're at speed 4 early game and speed 3 most of the time. If you mis-click halfway down the list, starting a again is horribly inefficient and uncomfortable at best.
alternatively implementing a "Right Click" and "Select All of this Type" (or select all) option would be awesome. So, when sorting - click the "Type" sort column, then either right click and select all/all of this type, or drag and select however many you want. This would smooth out a major part of the game and make more room for tactics and strategy.
Drag selecting would also work wonders for using over the top left list of units that pops up when you click an army. Or when you drag select on the map and they pop up in the top left for further management/sorting. Because of the way stacking works it can be hard to select specific armies or groups on the fly, without sometimes getting into intricate shift clicking. This idea should smooth that out. That said, I love a lot of the ideas already implemented, e.g. "S" to select half - such a nice simple way to split and sub split armies quickly.
- CONTROL GROUPS FOR ARMIES ("ctrl 1-0, assigning hotkeys"):
Maybe this is a cliche that Paradox want to avoid considering every RTS ever pretty much uses ctrl groups. But that shouldn't be a reason not to do something that has a lot of functionality and a strong block of muscle memory space in many RTS gamers' brains. We have a whole number row just above the qwerty row we are already using a lot, it would make life so so so much easier if we could number our armies and select/zoom to them with a tap of "1-0" or a double tap. Looking around for the General Portrait or the Theatre Icon when in the heat of a macro management crescendo while away from the battlefield (especially in multiplayer) can be worrying when you just need to get back to the army/battle at hand as quickly as possible after doing some macro-management. This could be totally eliminated with control groups. It can of course also help for microing between your different armies too.
- SORTABLE THEATRES - HOTKEY / BUTTON or DRAG & DROP:
Probably needs less description. Simple to say, not sure (I don't code) how easy to implement. Simply adding a tiny "Title Bar" or clickable surface to grip for drag and drop up and down to the Theatres in the top right. Alternatively, the ability to click up or down to sort the Theatres in any shape or form. Being able to half organise but not to structure the position of the theatres is a nightmare when trying to -feel organised- and -know where everything is- in the middle of a messy unpredictable game about war. e.g. If I make a North West, Centre West, South West and Far Eastern type arrangment of theatres when playing the USSR, it's important for me to have these in descending order so that the bottom one is the one most far away to the right, and the other 3 are in descending order with some relationship to where they are on the map. I then know the top 3 are my Europe facing fronts, the 2nd one probably being my main army group, and the bottom one takes a less priority (depending on the relationship with Japan). A bit autistic? maybe - I'm sure we all have our quirks when organising things, and I think this would help a lot of people reconcile theirs
- SORTABLE GENERALS/ARMIES - HOTKEY / BUTTON or DRAG AND DROP:
Same reasoning as above, but for the Generals/Armies at the bottom of the screen. We may all have preferences for organising our different armies and to have them just random can be very hard to not get confused when redeploying one army to another front etc.
- LARGER PRODUCTION MENU, DRAG & DROP or HOTKEY, in columns (not moddable?):
There is a mod for larger prod menu, to prevent excessive scrolling. For some reason the mod default sorts the order into rows and not columns, so to click up or down to sort the production the factories/equipment in question moves sideways instead of up/down. A Dev made larger enhanced production menu, with improved sorting/drag drop, would be a godsend to us! (imo)
- RESIZE / RELOCATION OF NEWS & POPUPS:
In single player it's fine as you get the popup and can pause. In multiplayer there are a LOT of popups sometimes coming all at once, some of which you really should read to see what's going on outside your front, with your alliances and other world events. But you may be in a crucial tank battle, surrounding or trying to escape a surround etc. When 5 popups come all at once the ONLY thing to do is get rid of them all as quickly as possible. This has implications for your map awareness and your decisions in the current battle if you miss the news. It would be good to optionally resize the popups, make them a clickable alert, or reposition them a little to the side so you can see your central vision on the map where you might be managing forces.
Also I think having a full scale popup with an OK button when someone is lagging is a recipe for lagger hate crimes couple that with the fact that the game slows down a notch everytime someone lags, and you get a lot of impatient and upset players. I think the popup should be downsized and the OK box removed, and the slow down of the game should be an optional check box (when playing with friends you will care if they desync, other public games the worse laggers will often get kicked anyway so it's less of an issue if they start falling behind).
- HOTKEY TO CANCEL BATTLEPLANS QUICKLY:
Quick touch on this, as I'd like to talk about battleplans in another thread. But it is kind of a UI/management thing. To be able to cancel all, or cancel the selected Generals' battleplans using a hotkey on the central keyboard seems essential. When you are well into an operation and advancing in a war, frontlines can get very very messy. It would be ideal to be able to delete them quickly so you can redraw them, so as not to fiddle around figuring out which General you have, which plans you need to delete, reach across keyboard to find delete, then click again (or if you are me, mis-click)
In summary, I've been enjoying the interface quite a bit, modding it to make some tweaks and improvements, and overall I think a lot of things feel really intuitive (in particular the row of hotkeys along the top matching the row of buttons, or the shift clicking or ctrl clicking).
I do believe however, that we are just on the edge of a truly functional and intuitive UI and management experience. There are some elements that are still too clunky and slow down the management experience quite a bit, especially when playing as a large major such as USSR or USA, or Germany mid-late game.
(Personal Angle Here).
This is my first post in the forums and I'm actually quite nervous. I'm a grown man but this game makes me feel like a little boy a times, haha I've come to realise that I really love this game and care about it a lot and have been waiting for it through years of playing lots and lots of other games for 15-100 hours and searching for a game to commit to. This game, I could sink hundreds and hundreds of hours into, recruit old best friends in the mix, and buy all the DLC and be a real fanboy. But it is only really a 75% game when you think about it at this stage. It's oozing potential and fills a few awesome niches, but it's just not quite there yet. I know the journey to the next 15% to get it to "Brilliant" or "Outstanding" or "Classic" is going to be exponentially harder. Hopefully I can help with some feedback and suggestions and constructive criticism, I will make a few more posts with other ideas and feedback that I hope we can discuss, and I hope the Devs might find helpful too.
I've come to realise that I really love this game and care about it a lot and have been waiting for it through years of playing lots and lots of other games for 15-100 hours and searching for a game to commit to. This game, I could sink hundreds and hundreds of hours into, recruit old best friends in the mix, and buy all the DLC and be a real fanboy. But it is only really a 75% game when you think about it at this stage. It's oozing potential and fills a few awesome niches, but it's just not quite there yet. I know the journey to the next 15% to get it to "Brilliant" or "Outstanding" or "Classic" is going to be exponentially harder. Hopefully I can help with some feedback and suggestions and constructive criticism, I will make a few more posts with other ideas and feedback that I hope we can discuss, and I hope the Devs might find helpful too.Thanks for reading!
Feedback on the post would be appreciated - format, detail, method to discuss issues etc. This is my first proper feedback post ever
feedback on the feedback would be awesome as if I get my feedback bug free it potentially bodes well for overall development of myself and the discussion and the game. Would rather not use "spoiler" as it's not exactly a spoiler but might make it easier for people to read the key points quickly.
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