One of the issues that I had even with GalCiv 2 and am finding it happening now again with GC3 is that while I love the ship designer to no end... it still takes a long time to effectively create designs because it is entirely mouse driven. Clicking to place a part and then having to manipulate a number of "dials" takes a bit of time and requires looking away from the point you are attempting to work on. This keeps it from being quick, easy, and fun.
I would like to suggest finding inspiration for improvement in an unlikely place: Kerbal Space Program. Their ship builder is extremely easy to use, for one very important reason: they have bounded the rotational axis controls for their parts to the WASD/QE keys. This makes it extremely intuitive to use and to be able to put parts precisely where you want them, arranged how you want them. There are also a couple of keys to toggle auto-symmetry and to cycle through rotational constraints.
The ship builder's UI is great as-is, and the layout of the screen is fine. The only thing missing to make this perfect would be to add these sorts of hotkeys to make it that much easier to use.
Thanks!
My current issue with the ship builder is that to even rotate your ship you HAVE to have a middle mouse button or half the fun of this game is out the window.
You literally cannot alter any input commands except gizmo's in the Input, to rotate your ship which is crucial to even building one, you MUST use the middle mouse button.. Well the problem is my middle mouse button doesn't work 100% of the time or very well, and the only other one I have doesn't even have a middle mouse button.
However, that isn't really the issue since I guess I'll go put some money down to buy a mouse, the simple fact is.. what about people on laptops, or such that don't have a button recognized as the middle mouse? Or simply want to use a different button all together?
While we cant do everything with key we can certainly do more. We will probobly be adding allot more polish of this kind to the Designer as we finish up game play features.
That's great to hear. There really should be someway that allows a person to continue enjoying the game fully, a mechanic like rotating your ship is detrimental to being able to enjoy the designer, and probably shouldn't be stuck to a button which everyone may not have, or be able to use. Using Shift, or even both mouse buttons together at the same time would be a better option and something anyone can do.
Yes, please... looove designing ships, spend at least half my time doing that, but this at least needs a duplicate feature.
Now I wanna make Kerbals as a custom faction....
While I agree that the wasd approach has some merit, with the dials you have half a degree control. Do you really want to have to push 'w' 720 times to get a full rotation?
The better choice might be to add an input box under the dial, so you could type, for example 270 degrees, then fine tune w the dial.
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