Terraforming UI Improvement

[yourITguy (OP)]

I find the current terraforming UI fiddly.  I think it can be drastically improved by the small change of replacing the "Add gas to atmosphere" checkbox with either a set of radio buttons or a drop down, with the following three options:

1.  Add gas to atmosphere
2.  Remove gas from atmosphere
3.  Do nothing

[Father Tim]

I find the current terraforming UI fiddly.  I think it can be drastically improved by the small change of replacing the "Add gas to atmosphere" checkbox with either a set of radio buttons or a drop down, with the following three options:

1.  Add gas to atmosphere
2.  Remove gas from atmosphere
3.  Do nothing

The dropdown box used to have a blank / "No gas" option so it was more obvious where to park it to do nothing.

For now, you could adopt the habit of selecting Ammonia and setting "Max Atm" to 0.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

There is a 'None' option.  Selecting Add Gas and setting Max to 0 with any gas except Water Vapour turns off terraforming, exactly as it did in VB.

[Father Tim]

There is a 'None' option.  Selecting Add Gas and setting Max to 0 with any gas except Water Vapour turns off terraforming, exactly as it did in VB.

That's more of a "Don't do anything" option.  I'm talking about a specific entry on the list of gases dropdown.

I suppose a more-obvious option is a big red button labelled "Terraforming OFF!"

[Cocyte]

The dropdown box used to have a blank / "No gas" option so it was more obvious where to park it to do nothing.

There's still a 'None' option - around the end of the list. It would be better on top, I agree.

[Father Tim]

Heh.  How alphabetically delightful.

[Disguy]

I would prefer a text read out of what terraforming thinks its actually doing.  Sometimes I change something on the screen say the amount from 1. 0 to . 5 and I come back turns later and its at 0. 6xxx.  Even though the screen says 0. 5. 

I don't recall what the values where but it was drastically higher than what was displayed on screen.

[UberWaffe]

I would suggest changing the terraforming so that a target can be set per gas.     

See image for more details:



The database table would look something like this:

Code: [Select]

CREATE TABLE "FCT_AtmosphericGas"(
"TerraformingTargetID"  Integer DEFAULT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
"GameID"                Integer,
"PopulationID"          Integer,
"SystemBodyID"          Integer,
"TerraformingGasID"     Integer,
"AtmosPressureTarget"   Double DEFAULT 0 )

Edit: Forgot to put the 'Del' buttons in the mockup.  They should be in the list on the bottom-right of the image, one for each target.

[yourITguy (OP)]

I think most of the workarounds and solutions that some people has suggested is just reinforcing my point about the UI being fiddly. 

UberWaffe's design is pretty much what I would want in the long-term, but I purposefully chose to keep my suggestion simple and limited to a UI-only change so it would not require a database update.   It should also be a very fast change to implement. 

[Father Tim]

I think most of the workarounds and solutions that some people has suggested is just reinforcing my point about the UI being fiddly. 

UberWaffe's design is pretty much what I would want in the long-term, but I purposefully chose to keep my suggestion simple and limited to a UI-only change so it would not require a database update.   It should also be a very fast change to implement.

I think the best and fastest change is just to bump the "None" option to the top of the list.  This could be done simply by renaming it "1.  None"

[Alsadius]

I think the best and fastest change is just to bump the "None" option to the top of the list.  This could be done simply by renaming it "1.  None"

Or "(None)". I'm not sure whether it'd go to top or bottom, but it looks less weird.