Outliner

[Flame13223]

This has probably been discussed before but I just want to say, the outliner in stellaris is kind of terrible.

In normal play it can get hectic towards the end, where you have lots of spaceports and planets, you keep scrolling and scrolling down or use the tiny little bar at the side, to go through everything. Its a necessary part of the game, of course but scrolling through it non-stop is kind of annoying and tiring.

But when I use the planet cap mod so that I dont have to use any sectors anymore, I often end up having 30+ planets and that is when it goes from just annoying and tiring to actually painful. I played Stellaris for 3-4 hours and my fingers started to hurt because I scrolled so much it was actually literally painful towards the end.

So I tried not doing that anymore and using the sidebar but muscle memory already made that a bit hard, as I find myself scrolling intuitively...I also tried using sectors more but we all know sectors are kinda bad.

I am not entirely sure how to fix the outliner but one thing I thought would be good is for it to have tabs. Like in a browser you would have planets, starbases, etc on separate tabs so you don't need to scrool up from ships through starbases to get to planets you can just use one click and get immediately to planets.


PS - One other thing that could help is the press scrolling, when instead of pushing the wheel up/down you just press the wheel down once and then move the mouse up/down and it moves the screen, like in browsers and stuff. I am not sure the exact name of that feature but it would probably be helpful. I use it all the time in browsers.

 

[Post-Moe]

Personally I kinda wish there were 2 outliners, one right side and one left. Then add outliner options to move categories to the side you want them on.

That way I could have for example all my civvie ships, fleets, shipyards and starbases to the left, and all my planets and habitats etc on the right where they were before. Makes it about twice as fast to scroll down the list to find the stuff you need. Custom categories would be great too, so I can split my planets up between what they're used for. (Mining worlds, science worlds etc.)

I agree with OP that the outliner deffinitly needs work. Late game I spend about 60% of my time scrolling trough lists rather then actually playing the game. So a big +1 from me.

 

[pryr]

I hope that devs are considering outliner changes. It's already a pain to scroll in lategames just because of stations. With sector rework in 2.2 we will be able to directly control all our planets and we need something more advanced than current outliner. Otherwise it will be a scrollfest that OP described from his modded experience.

 

[Flame13223]

I hope that devs are considering outliner changes. It's already a pain to scroll in lategames just because of stations. With sector rework in 2.2 we will be able to directly control all our planets and we need something more advanced than current outliner. Otherwise it will be a scrollfest that OP described from his modded experience.

With starbases specifically it would help so much if I could just remove starbases from the list at will, say if I upgraded one to the max already then I could just remove it from the list or move it to the very bottom so I don't have to scroll over that anymore...when you have 30+ starbases you probably will have like 14-18 that you dont need to click at all, ever.

 

[Kayden_II]

Yeah, this will become a problem since in the upcoming version, you will control all of your colonies, so that all of them will occur in the outliner ...
(The only thing, what they've changed so far, is this new drop-down-"tab" (sectors) in regards to the organization of colonies) ...
You will also get this new drop-down-"tab" for your "branch offices" (as a "MegaCorp"-Owner) ...

I would probably add an other sub-drop-down-"tab" (star-system) under the sector-one and consolidate all the immobile stuff (colonies, habitats, starbases, observation-posts and branch-offices) into this sector-/star-system-/drop-down-system ...
01. Drop-Down a sector and you get the list of all the star-systems you own (via outposts / starbases) in this sector ...
(Here, it's already possible to access your outposts / starbases) ...
(If a star-system contains colonies / habitats / observation-posts then I would also add some sort of a or multiple symbol(s) to mark this star-system) ...
02. Drop-Down such a star-system and you get the list of your colonies + habitats + observation-posts in this star-system ...

Branch-offices are not in your own empire, but nevertheless, I would probably implement this sector-/star-system-/drop-down-system, too.

 

[Xoatl]

Personally I kinda wish there were 2 outliners, one right side and one left. Then add outliner options to move categories to the side you want them on.

That way I could have for example all my civvie ships, fleets, shipyards and starbases to the left, and all my planets and habitats etc on the right where they were before. Makes it about twice as fast to scroll down the list to find the stuff you need. Custom categories would be great too, so I can split my planets up between what they're used for. (Mining worlds, science worlds etc.)

I agree with OP that the outliner deffinitly needs work. Late game I spend about 60% of my time scrolling trough lists rather then actually playing the game. So a big +1 from me.

This + three tabs per outliner would be amazing

 

[daisha]

I don't even last long enough in a game to get to the 30 planet hell-outliners you folks are describing, but I'm still frustrated by the lack of information in it. In CK2's outliner you can see income and troop levy totals for every holding you directly control, I would like to see the Stellaris outliner show net production of energy, minerals, and food per-planet, along with combat width/defense armies present.

 

[Flame13223]

I don't even last long enough in a game to get to the 30 planet hell-outliners you folks are describing, but I'm still frustrated by the lack of information in it. In CK2's outliner you can see income and troop levy totals for every holding you directly control, I would like to see the Stellaris outliner show net production of energy, minerals, and food per-planet, along with combat width/defense armies present.

At the moment you don't really get to 30+ planet hell-outliners unless you use the mod that lets you directly control all planets and not use any sectors bc right now you'd need to put like 25 planets into sectors, because you can only directly control around 3-10 planets without penalties, of course depending on civics, technologies and even ascension perks and traditions.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I agree it's an annoying issue. If it helps anyone I use these mods but I think they're essential and should be integrated into the base game:
Tiny Outliner 2.1 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1395190521
Tiny Planets! (in Outliner) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=779729987
Here's a comparison with and without the mods for my current game (also modded to increase core sector cap).

Vanilla: 5 pages of scrolling, planet names are truncated

With mods: 2 pages of scrolling, planet names are shown

 

[Archon87]

Do you not realize that you can collapse sub-sections of the outliner and only look at the ones relevant to you at the time? Like if you don't have anything important going on with your starbases, just collapse it until needed. Honestly the only sections that ever get a bit large for me are planets, habitats, and starbases. But I'm never in a situation that I need all of those open at once.

Maybe you're just playing on bigger galaxies, but I also never saw a reason to have that many science ships either.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Do you not realize that you can collapse sub-sections of the outliner and only look at the ones relevant to you at the time? Like if you don't have anything important going on with your starbases, just collapse it until needed. Honestly the only sections that ever get a bit large for me are planets, habitats, and starbases. But I'm never in a situation that I need all of those open at once.

Maybe you're just playing on bigger galaxies, but I also never saw a reason to have that many science ships either.

Yes I know about hiding things (you can also reorder things with the gear symbol). But if you hide it because you don't currently need to see it then you can't tell when something changes and needs your attention. A smaller, more efficient outliner would be useful for when you actually need to keep track of things. This isn't a large galaxy either, I'm just playing wide (I haven't actually attacked any other empire yet and I'm on 0.25x habitable planets, only captured 1 primitive size 23 world, 24 with MoN), I've just decided to colonize everything in my territory and stick bio-trophies on all the useless tiles after a tall start. But even if this was an issue solely for players using 2x larger maps or on 2x habitable worlds it would make the issue no less valid, you just wouldn't notice it. Out of sight, out of mind...

On to collapsing sections, not so easy for me. Here's why:
Civilian:
I want to know when my habitats are 50-75% done so I can order a colony ship and not have it wasting 10 energy/month for a few years sat idle, or worse not having a colony ship ready and having the ringworld/habitat be unproductive for a few years. (having the option of automatically having a colony form when it's completed would be great and would probably stop AI empires from wasting a year or 3 building a colony ship and waiting for it to arrive).
I want to know when science ships are idle so I can order them out to the rest of the universe. If I collapsed this I could have 3+ science ships sat idle for years and miss out on anomalies, contacts, precursors and event chains. I can't only ignore the 10 out of 15 (ish) scientists assisting research, it's all or nothing. Also I took the starting civic for -50% leader costs and +a bazillion leader slots, all my leaders are robots and have a max level of 10 so I want to keep them earning XP so they get new traits and hit max level eventually.
Planets:
I have a machine race, seeing all the planets lets me make sure each developing world has the pop growing and building under construction icons. I could spend all the minerals to fill planet 1 first rather than spreading the resources out but but that would lose my empire about 15 energy/minerals/etc per planet per 2 years (or whatever the growing time for a pop is). Again, there are fully developed worlds that I'd like to be able to hide but can't... all or nothing.
Starbases:
I have 3+ being developed at one time, I need to keep going back to bastions to upgrade them and yes... all the fully developed economy and fleet ones I'd ignore, but it's all or nothing.
Habitats:
I've never needed to revisit regularly... this may change in the new version as they'll have other issues like overcrowding and planetary decisions to keep an eye on.
Lastly Military:
I'd like if this actually had more information rather than less... perhaps extra icons for hostile present in gravity well, hostiles in sensor range, shields nullified/slowed/starbase effects or other auras. It feels like it's wasting space by doing so little.

Edit:
What I'd like as a feature is a "show items needing attention" button that hides the developed worlds with nothing to build, science ships on survey and assist missions, fully upgraded starbases etc. I think that would really help even if the interface remained just as chunky and could only show a handful of entries (but again, Tiny Outliner shows that could be improved too).

 

[Flame13223]

Do you not realize that you can collapse sub-sections of the outliner and only look at the ones relevant to you at the time? Like if you don't have anything important going on with your starbases, just collapse it until needed. Honestly the only sections that ever get a bit large for me are planets, habitats, and starbases. But I'm never in a situation that I need all of those open at once.

Maybe you're just playing on bigger galaxies, but I also never saw a reason to have that many science ships either.

That doesn't matter generally with planets you have around 10 and starbases you havel ike 20-30 but you only ever need to upgrade or modify 3-4 of them at a time. So you scroll by the rest for no real reason, planets and starbases can get maxed out to the point where there's literally no reason for them to even be on the outliner anymore. Collapsing a couple categories won't make anything easier whatsoever, I tried, believe me I friggin tried but it doesn't help.

 

[mergele]

I agree it's an annoying issue. If it helps anyone I use these mods but I think they're essential and should be integrated into the base game:
Tiny Outliner 2.1 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1395190521
Tiny Planets! (in Outliner) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=779729987
Here's a comparison with and without the mods for my current game (also modded to increase core sector cap).

Vanilla: 5 pages of scrolling, planet names are truncated
[...]

With mods: 2 pages of scrolling, planet names are shown[...]

Oh I so need those!

 

[Flame13223]

Oh I so need those!

mmm I dunno it doesn't look like it helps clarify things a lot but I'll have to try them out extensively before I can give a full opinion.

 

[Flame13223]

I am in a playthrough right now with 60 planets and 49 starbases and what I learnt is, a hide planet/starbase from list option would be SO useful. Most of my stuff is maxed out, but I cannot remove them individually from the list.

 

[ross-g]

I'm hopeful they will just add filter buttons to the outliner as they are doing with the buildings menu.

All it would need really is a few smart filters to make it much better:

All | Inhabited | Stations | Fleets | In progress | Misc

 

[Kayden_II]

An extension of the outliner-settings would be good, too ...



I mean an extension of the outliner-settings to rearrange or delete the stuff in the red squares.

 

[avsbes]

Yeah, this will become a problem since in the upcoming version, you will control all of your colonies, so that all of them will occur in the outliner ...
(The only thing, what they've changed so far, is this new drop-down-"tab" (sectors) in regards to the organization of colonies) ...
You will also get this new drop-down-"tab" for your "branch offices" (as a "MegaCorp"-Owner) ...

I would probably add an other sub-drop-down-"tab" (star-system) under the sector-one and consolidate all the immobile stuff (colonies, habitats, starbases, observation-posts and branch-offices) into this sector-/star-system-/drop-down-system ...
01. Drop-Down a sector and you get the list of all the star-systems you own (via outposts / starbases) in this sector ...
(Here, it's already possible to access your outposts / starbases) ...
(If a star-system contains colonies / habitats / observation-posts then I would also add some sort of a or multiple symbol(s) to mark this star-system) ...
02. Drop-Down such a star-system and you get the list of your colonies + habitats + observation-posts in this star-system ...

Branch-offices are not in your own empire, but nevertheless, I would probably implement this sector-/star-system-/drop-down-system, too.

This will be better with the ew system, cause you won't be micromanagig an individual planet even close to as often as now. so you can just minimize the planets tab most of the time, removing a lot of scrolling as you don't have to scroll down 30 planets or so in the lategame, but one minimized tab which is shown approximately half as large as one planet, removing about 98% of the scroll distance for this.

 

[Arkangilos]

Maybe we could get a slider at the beginning of the game to turn outliners off XD

 

[Flame13223]

Completely unmodded game towards the late/end-game phase, I have on my outliner:
- 8 habitats
- 12 planets
- 16 Ringworld sections
- 37 Starbases
- 7 fleets
- 1 collossi
- 5 science ships
- 6 construction ships
- 2 armies
- 6 political factions
(And that's with 11 planets being assigned into a sector)

This thing will be the end of my scrolling finger.