After playing Sins of a Solar Empire for awhile, I noticed some UI issues that I think would be relatively easy to fix and I think would greatly enhance gameplay. I should mention that I tend to select ships by either using the Ctrl-# slots, or by clicking the fleet bars that appear to the left of the planets, depending on which set of ships I want to select. I am unaware of the proper name but when I refer to a "combat pin" I am referring to the fleet-graph that appears to the left of a planet when allied ships are present at a planet, which appears opposite to the hostile graph that appears when hostile ships are at a planet. Empire pins are the dots which occur to the left of the HUD.
1: Auto Fleet should be off by default. I tend to have my main strike force under Ctrl-1 and my swarm ships I just leave unassigned and move them by their combat pins or empire pins. I also tend to leave behind my fleet ships in strategic choke points as a defense force while I planet hop with my main strike force. Sometimes my main strike force and my defense/swarm forces occupy the same space for a short period of time. Unfortunately, what happens is these swarm ships tend to auto-fleet with my strike force, so when I jump to the next planet for an assault with the intention of leaving behind my swarm ships for defense, they end up following my strike force and leaving my planet undefended. This is particularly noticable when I am playing Vasari and I have the returning armada upgrade to my phase nodes. I tend to use all captial ships as my strike force and move groups of swarm ships to strategic defense locations and I often catch them wandering off into battle without my direction.
2: When I am Macroing I tend to zoom out to planetary view and move groups of ships via the combat pins and right clicking on planets. I have noticed an unfortunate tendency for the right click to hit a cargo ship or other jumping ships and initiate a default "follow" command on a ship instead of a "move" command to the planet, which results in my ships going places I didn't want them to originally go. It would be beneficial if when zoomed out the pointer favored planets over ships and other orders so I could move my ships to planets instead of directing them to follow random cargo carriers.
3: I often catch these slip-ups during game play and go to correct these maneuvers. Often times, however, these ships are in the process of phase jumping away from the planet I wanted them at and the ships seem to be unable to break out of the pre-phase jump sequence, which results in my ships phase jumping away from the planet I want them at to a neighboring planet, and then back again, wasting alot of time and resulting in a great deal of damage to my ships. I can understand the logistical reason for ships to be unable to change direction during a phase jump, but the ships should be able to break out of the pre-jump sequence and cancel their jump to undergo new orders before they actually jump. It even seems that if they are moving to begin a phase jump, they often still seem unable to break out of this command and attack. I think the pre-jump sequence should be breakable. Sometimes I cannot figure out exactly why my ships decided to phase jump away from a planet, and I must assume it is because I directed them to follow a ship, an errant right click while switching windows, or they simply decided they didn't feel like massacring
4: Planetary defenses could be stronger. Maybe I am using them incorrectly but usually I use swarm ships for defense. If I note an attack force of more than about 4 ships heading towards one of my planets, I send swarm ships to defend the planet. The AI tends to send large strike forces of bombardment craft and my defenses usually cannot take them out before they hose the planet. The AI usually doesn't bother colonizing the planet after that either, it tends to be a harassment technique. I think the planetary defense forces should be effective against forces larger than about 4 ships. A fully upgraded planet should require a sizeable force to overthrow. I understand the balance of this is difficult. I use jump inhibitors simply to allow me to kill off more ships, I don't use the repair bays, and if I have extra slots I will throw in a weapons blocker or a planetary shield. My main defense focus is on hangar bays which seem to be the most effective. The missile/gauss platforms tend to be too "upfront" in combat, and die very quickly. I think the ballistics platforms would be far more effective if they occupied 2 slots perhaps, and were able to defend a much larger area so that they would be out of firing range of the ships, instead of up front and often the very first target the AI chooses because it happens to be the closest thing to shoot at. My hangar bays survive much longer because I can keep them on the far side of a planet and make them the last target of opportunity. Ballistics platforms should have the same advantage, or be able to sustain much more damage.
5: When I hover over a combat pin (the bars that appear to the left of the planet) it brings up a list of ships represented by that graph. If I click that combat pin, it selects all those ships. It would be nice if I could control select or shift select ships out of that list as long as that combat pin is selected to specify specific ships. This would allow me to move and select ships by type from a specific planet.
6: I would like to see the whispers/messages decrease greatly. They seem to be very loosely based upon presences rather than AI intention, which leads to confusing gameplay. One of my planets was being seiged by a decently sized force, and my "Allies" said (several times) "The calvary is here!" and had a strike force nearly double the hostile force at my besieged planet, so I felt like my planet was safe. When I noticed my planet "dying" however, I checked the scene up close and the hostile force was assaulting my planet and my "allies" were happily sitting there watching it happen. I really think my allies (at 100%) should offer more defense and if they are just passing through or lounging, they should not announce that the "Calvary is here" if they have no intention of helping. I have also noticed the hostile AI whispering taunts like, "Say goodbye to X" and I go look at X and they've seen one LRM frigate to bombard a planet with 6 hangar defenses. I can handle the "hostile forces inbound" warning, because I can glance at the phase lanes and see what the hostile force is, but if the AI is going to tell me "Tell the citizens of X I am coming for them" it would be nice if it only did that when the AI was sending a sizable force.
7: Research. I have noticed that I tend to have my research projects backed up into a list that exceeds my monitor resolution. I know this is a complete waste of resources but if I am not building ships and I have the resources available, I like to place them in research. I don't think research should be *faster* per se, but I think multiple research bays should be able to handle multiple research projects. For example, the ultimate bombardment weapon of each race requires 8 weapons research facilities, and researching that should require all 8 facilities and proceed at a normal pace. However, if you are researching level 1 missiles and ballistics, those only require 1 research bay, and should be able to be researched simultaneously at multiple weapons research bays. This would make having more than 8 research bays profitable if you are trying to burn through the research and help expand neglected trees without having to wait through an endless queue. Fleet upgrades should be able to be researched at any free research bay.
Those are my suggestions for game improvements. I may post more suggestions later as I delve deeper into the game.
