You could have some sort of UI for this that would a) list each event type (in groups) b) have a check box for 'Display Event Msg' and c) another check box for 'Interrupt Game'. Or, maybe the 'Display Event Msg' could be a drop-down with a couple of options like 'Display each msg' and 'Display one msg for all events in this increment'. I know when I'm facing a mineral shortage, I get a lot of msg spam of all the things that didn't happen because of the mineral shortage. Being able to voluntarily shorten this down to one msg that said something like "Earth experienced 14 events due to shortage of Duranium' would clean up that event list a bit for me. And, maybe d) a fourth column of something like msg priority. Set it to High, Med or Low and the event list is sorted in that order. And maybe an Icon column or something in the event list (or different colors on the System View) to correspond to the priority. That might help with what I feel are really important messages like a ship has been built and the shipyard needs new orders, or hey, we found a new Alien race not being somewhat hidden amongst other msgs like every captain in the fleet telling the Admiral about every repair that they had to do to their ship.
For me, the bug-a-boo lately has been messages saying that a ship either can't transit a jump pt because the jump ship hasn't gotten there yet, or that a ship has run out of fuel and can't complete its orders. I find the first interrupt very handy of course. But, after the first interrupt, they get very annoying as I may be having a jump ship on the way but with a time of arrival of 20 days, and the game won't run longer than 6 hours without me getting another message saying the ship is out of fuel or can't jump. I've found a way to force this to run a bit longer by using "Auto-Turn" and "Min Inc", but that has the side effect that if for some reason some aliens suddenly start shooting at me, its likely to be one day or five days before I can respond because of the way I'm having to force the game past the constant interrupts. Being able to have some control over which events interrupt the increment and which don't would be a more elegant (and safer for my fleet) solution.
As the admiral of the freaking fleet, I'd like to be able to either a) tell the captain of that ship that I know he's has a problem and that he shouldn't feel the need to tell me about his fuel shortage every 6 hours on the hour. Or b), at least tell my staff that the next time that whiny SOB of a captain calls in to say he's out of fuel that I really don't want that msg delivered to me.
And that he certainly shouldn't barge into my office and interrupt the happy ending of my massage to tell me that the captain has sent his 17th msg saying he's out of fuel. That is if the staff officer doesn't want to find himself working the third shift manning the comm station at the auto-mine complex on Asteroid 106.
And yes, I know Steve is correct when he says this is 'some work'. Especially if you start to think about testing all of these custom settings we are asking for to make sure they work before they get released. As an ex-product manager for a software company, I know stuff like testing is a part that both customers and programmers tend to forget about.
And this one seems pretty testing intensive. But, hey, I can always dream.
