Only 6 Leaders?

[Offe]

Although I said I wouldn't speculate, maybe introducing a new lower tier of default leaders, without traits or levelling e.g. literally on the level of envoys, would solve this. So when you build a science ship, or a fleet, or have a sector, it is automatically assigned an envoy-tier leader without traits or bonuses. When the leader pool refreshes, IT PICKS LEADERS FROM THIS POOL of envoy-tier leaders, and you get to choose which ones have ascended from being position-fillers to true leaders with reputations.

Can I tag devs on here? lol. Read this idea, devs!

This idea was considered several times during development but it comes with a package of other problems and limitations and isn't so entirely straightforward as it would seem at first glance

 

[Offe]

Thanks for commenting Offe. Could you expand a bit on what some of those problems might be? We were told in the hotfix thread that the decision to keep big silhouettes in the UI was a heated topic. That similarly has a seemingly straight forward solution of removing/minimising that icon (it's definitely not fun for the UI to make the player feel their fleets, planets, and sectors are lacking). I'd be interested to know what problems the devs have identified in removing that.

Well, not sure how to summarize 1+ years worth of discussions into one short posts but basically there are a lot of trade offs that don't have clear easy solutions.

Here there is a trade off UI vice between clearly showing that you CAN assign a leader here, and at the same time it should feel like you don't HAVE to do it. Sure you can make the icon smaller or hide it but then it is much harder for new players to find it.

Same sort of arguments for having token level 0 leaders on every single spot, how to clearly show that this leader isnt really a real leader and that you can assign someone else here to give actual good buffs without making it exactly the same where you feel like you HAVE to assign someone there? Also when you would remove a leader from a spot like unassigning an admiral, instantly someone else would appear there would probably make it confusing.

Also the gray zone for these token leader becomes problematic right away where for example you assign a governor to a planet where previously the level 0 leader "Steve" used to be, but then you change your mind and remove your governor, how do you then make "Steve" reappear on that planet instead of someone else? Similarly if split and merge a fleet with it self new Admirals would appear every time.

The list goes on and these are just things that still are weird with that system, completely disregarding how long it would take to make and how many side effects and new bugs it would cause

I am not a UX designer so I can't cover everything, but yes this topic was probably the most discussed through the entire development.