Author Topic: 3 Research QoL Improvements  (Read 1737 times)

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Offline Destragon (OP)

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3 Research QoL Improvements
« on: August 17, 2022, 09:51:17 AM »
Aurora's research mechanics are great, but they tend to require a lot more mouse clicks than necessary. Here are 3 quality of life suggestions that will help reduce mouse clicks and make assigning research a faster process:

1: "Matching Scientists Only" box should have memory of its state

When closing the window and reopening it, the game should remember if the "Matching Scientists Only" box was checked or unchecked.

So that you don't have to keep clicking it whenever you bring up the research screen. Having it based on memory seems like a better solution to me than making it the default, although personally I'd also be okay with it just being checked by default.

2: "Prioritise Project" button

When you have a scientist selected who's already researching a research project, the "Create Project" button should turn into a "Prioritise Project" button. When you click this, the selected technology should become the scientist's current research and the previously researched technology should be moved to the top of the scientist's research queue. Every other tech in the scientist's queue will in turn be moved down by one.

Having this button would mean that you don't need to cancel a scientist's current project and their entire research queue, just because you want to reprioritise a different technology. This comes up often for me, especially when a prerequisite tech has been researched for a tech that I really want to research (or when a new component/unit design needs to be researched, see suggestion 3), but I don't want to cancel and re-assign scientist's research queue.

3: "Create & Assign" button for designs

This button would be added to the component, missile, turret and ground unit design screens (and in the class design screen for prototype components) in addition to the normal "Create" button. When it is clicked, the game picks the scientist with matching field and most labs, who's currently researching a project and assigns the research of this design to them in the same way that the "Prioritise Project" button would do. If no matching scientist can be found, pressing this button would give an error popup (or let you pick a scientist from a list).

Similar to suggestion 2, this button would save you from having to cancel a scientist's project and queue, just because you want to research this new component/unit ASAP. In addition, this would also make it so that you don't have to open the research menu and search for the new component/unit in the drop down lists.
 
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Offline joshuawood

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2022, 10:49:10 AM »
4.  A Button for Auto-Research that just chooses the next lowest cost tech, picks the best researcher for it and assigns them with max labs :p
 

Offline Zhukov

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2022, 05:00:30 PM »
5.  Sort by Labs / Sort by Date should have memory of its state.
 
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Offline Garfunkel

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2022, 07:01:46 PM »
A "Sort by Annual Research Points Produced" would be a nice addition.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2022, 08:04:29 AM by Garfunkel »
 
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Offline StarshipCactus

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2022, 03:32:33 AM »
I like these.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2022, 04:22:12 PM »
I would like an option to display age and health status of scientists directly in the scientist list part of the research UI ( to be able to judge which tech categories soon will be in need of skilled scientists when you only have one 68 year old sick +60% PP tech guy )
 
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Offline Vandermeer

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2022, 01:17:21 AM »
I would like an option to display age and health status of scientists directly in the scientist list part of the research UI ( to be able to judge which tech categories soon will be in need of skilled scientists when you only have one 68 year old sick +60% PP tech guy )
That is ageist!
But yes, I also found myself going into the officer window all the time to check on scientist age and health yesterday. I didn't do that in the years of the past, weird. Must be a side-effect of research now taking longer, so planning with foresight might now appear more attractive.(eg raising promising youth)
playing Aurora as swarm fleet: Zen Nomadic Hive Fantasy
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2022, 10:53:57 AM »
I like 1 and 2, 3 doesn't seem like something I'd use but maybe others would. Same for 4 and 5, really.

6) A scientist dying or retiring while conducting an active research project should show up in the log as a different event than just a normal officer health update. "John Smith, currently in charge of 10 labs researching Mining Rate 20 tons on Earth, has decided to retire" or something. And it should show up even if you have normal officer health updates hidden.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2022, 10:56:22 AM by Bremen »
 

Offline Malorn

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Re: 3 Research QoL Improvements
« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2022, 05:49:07 PM »
All of these sound good, especially #6 and #2.