The data presented in the user interface needs improvement, and the user interface itself as well

[ichi Exterminatus Driverslicenso]

There's things to like about the UI but it's not without its criticisms. Here are some of those:

Companies don't make money looking at income and expenses separately, and at total numbers. I need numbers and graphs telling me what my OPERATING INCOME over TIME is. We need AVERAGES over TIME.

Just now I was trying to figure out what's more efficient and what is sufficient for my line; 3 fast trains with fast cars, 4 slower trains with fast cars, or 4 slower trains with slow cars. I had to more or less guess based on the basically useless bar charts; a visual representation that can easily deceive you into thinking a line is doing better or worse than it actually is. If an average operating income had been presented to me, I would have known right away.

Here's a bunch of suggestions for finances:

In the main finances window:
- On the finances tab, on the table tab (ugh), add a "subtotal" line under Road, Railroad, Water and Air to see in general how well that type of transport is doing; maybe even add a divide between passengers and cargo
- On the finances tab, under investments, give detail on what vehicles have been purchased, rather than bunching them up under "vehicles" (same goes for headquarters tab under Assets/Inventory)
- On the finances tab, why is there another charts button? If you desperately want to keep them, put them on the charts tab, or just remove it altogether because the bar charts are useless.
- On the charts tab, add operating profits over time and add a number that lists the average over the last X years (X = configurable)
- On the charts tab, add income over time (+X)
- On the charts tab, add delivered cargo and passengers over time (+X)

Statistics:
- Under line/vehicle statistics (why that's even a separate button from the line manager is beyond me), what does "balance" even mean? Balance from when? This month? This year? The life span of the line?

Other UI element suggestions:

- Please, please please please add a little triangle with lines or dots at the bottom that *literally* every UI has to resize a window in both the X and Y direction simultaneously. Come on.
- Also make it more apparent that i'm using a window rather than making everything flat. Or better yet, let us choose between different UI designs. Or better still; let people mod the UI. I get it, woo modern UI design made for tablets and people with fat fingers looks nice (not) bla bla but we're using mice here.
- Add a button for adding cars/engine to the "pre stage" or whatever you want to call it rather than having to hover over the car/engine ; I can't count on my hands and feet how often I've accidentally pressed the buy button because I wanted to add the currently selected car/engine to the "pre stage", or added the wrong type because the damn "add" button keeps moving (can't rely on muscle memory).
- Let us clone vehicles from vehicle window. It's too cumbersome to add more trains to a line.
- Remove the depots from the line manager. Why the hell would I want to see a big-♥♥♥ list of random depots?
- In the vehicle manager, move the sell button the the end of the row. The most important elements (setting a line and selling a vehicle) should be the easiest to find.
- Move the trains button to the very left, which is obviously the most used button in the game.
- The menu for building could be so much smaller if you have a flat image of what the rails/signals/waypoints look like so that you can have the rail building tools next to the stations simultaneously. Or you could add another row. Man, I'm constantly switching tabs and menus. It's cumbersome. Same goes for roads (the street structures can stay in their own menu).
- Put the upgrading existing roads in the street modification tools menu, because that's what it is. If you do what I said above, you could even have the tram/bus separate from the road upgrades.

There's so much space horizontally to list vehicle details and such; why does everything need to be a list that I have to scroll through? It's such a waste of time when I have more than enough screen real-estate to see everything at once.

That's it for now, I'm sure i'll come up with more in the future.

The future is now:

- Open the line manager when you click on the line inside a vehicle window; there is no reason to have another window with line info details when there's already statistics and the line manager
- Honestly, you could probably combine the line manager with the vehicle manager. Lines to the left, stations in the middle, vehicles to the right. The way I think is "I need to edit the vehicles on this line", so I go to the line manager only to find the vehicles aren't there. I'm doing this constantly.
- Add a per-line metric that shows much money it costs to maintain the rails that a line is using; does it make monetary sense to double up on rails, or is it better to have trains wait? Maybe incorporate this into a line profit over time chart, that way you weigh if having more infrastructure maintenance costs is worth it or if more train maintenance costs is worth it.

[bobajob3306]

Some great ideas, I love this game a few tweaks like you suggested would certainly make a difference

[b0nk]

Well put!

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by Yak Hunt:

Well put!

Agree!

[CreatorOfWorlds]

+1