I like the game, but..

[Bags77]

As said, i like the game and mechanics, but DAMN.. it's almost impressive how bad the UI/UX is..
Just an example: I recently tried to save the game before going into a mission and closed the game by mistake. It's as if nobody in your team played any games in the last 20-25 years to get a feeling of common user interfaces.
What did you try to do? Make it bad on purpose so it appears "retro"?

[Konscience]

it would almost be a good feedback if your prefrontal cortex was working properly and didn't include the 2/3 last sentences in your msg.

[Bags77]

Yeah, i really didn't had feedback in mind when i wrote that. Just rage quit and just needed to vent..

[Morhem]

Playing the demo now. Love those quirky indie games, but.. what were the devs smoking when they made the UI? Ground flash drives with High Fleet installed? High Fleet's ui is not THAT bad. All the unlabeled buttons with mysterious pictograms on them and no tooltip, mentions of how important city damage is and no mentions how to repair it, city districts inside the Calendar tab for some forsaken reason, and the worst offender is production tab.
Am I blind, or is there no way to know what you're clicking on? Like, there's Weapons tab, so I assume items under it are weapons, and there's even a picture, but would it kill you to include its name somewhere? And some stats? Or maybe a tooltip? Or better, all of the above? In the engineering also. There's stats at least, but..
Or when I try to move the city, and the game beeps at me, and draws a ! sign on the map.. am I doing it? Is it gonna move now? Or is it displaying an error? Now way to know except to already know.

[Mr.Psyker]

You have to learn the old way. I am just glad it doesn't take quarters.

[Morhem]

Originally posted by Mr.Psyker:

You have to learn the old way. I am just glad it doesn't take quarters.

Lend me your wisdom: You start the game with 3 pre-equipped mechs. I try to assemble 4th one, but if I give it 2 rocket launchers, the weight becomes 173/172.
I take one of the pre-equipped ones to the hangar, and it says 173/176. To learn howit managed this, I take down the motor, and see that its just a standard starter motor, like the ones I have in storage. I install it back. It gives 1 weighlimit less.



What?

[Some goofi dummi]

I dont think the ui is bad, its just not as intuitive as almost every modern ui tends to be. Yeah it isn't easy to learn quickly but its better overall for the feel of it over minimalist standard unity type ui you see in almost everything nowadays

its old school on purpose, actual old school ui was way more janky then ME tho lol

[Surma]

Originally posted by Morhem:

Originally posted by Mr.Psyker:

You have to learn the old way. I am just glad it doesn't take quarters.

Lend me your wisdom: You start the game with 3 pre-equipped mechs. I try to assemble 4th one, but if I give it 2 rocket launchers, the weight becomes 173/172.
I take one of the pre-equipped ones to the hangar, and it says 173/176. To learn howit managed this, I take down the motor, and see that its just a standard starter motor, like the ones I have in storage. I install it back. It gives 1 weighlimit less.



What?

So the game starts the 3 intro mechs with extra power to each of the 4 motors. On the engineering screen with a mech in the bay you get access to 6 button to the left of the mech.
[1]|[2] - OS , Weight
[3]|[4] - Armor , Repair
[5]|[6] - Energy , Paint

If you click on the energy button and then click on the toggle below the reactor you gain access to the wire overview.

Each + wire increases the energy cost of the module by 5 and adds 3 to the total energy the reactor provides.

E.g.
You + wire a motor. You increase the weight it can carry. You increase the energy usage by 5. You increase the total energy available by 3.

Each - wire decreases the energy cost of the module by 5 and subtracts 3 to the total energy the reactor provides. If a minus wire underflows it adds the remaining to the energy cost of the module.

E.g.
1) a module has a energy cost of 5, you - wire it, you decrease the module cost to 0 and decrease the total energy available by 3.
2) a module has a energy cost of 3, you - wire it, you decrease the module cost to 2 and decrease the total energy available by 3.
3) a module has a energy cost of 1, you - wire it, you increase the module cost to 4 and decrease the total energy available by 3.

[dyra55]

Originally posted by Morhem:

Or when I try to move the city, and the game beeps at me, and draws a ! sign on the map.. am I doing it? Is it gonna move now? Or is it displaying an error? Now way to know except to already know.

It can't move through enemy territory and mountains, you may need to clear the tile from enemies before being able to move to it

[Witch ~]

Originally posted by Surma:

Originally posted by Morhem:

Lend me your wisdom: You start the game with 3 pre-equipped mechs. I try to assemble 4th one, but if I give it 2 rocket launchers, the weight becomes 173/172.
I take one of the pre-equipped ones to the hangar, and it says 173/176. To learn howit managed this, I take down the motor, and see that its just a standard starter motor, like the ones I have in storage. I install it back. It gives 1 weighlimit less.



What?

So the game starts the 3 intro mechs with extra power to each of the 4 motors. On the engineering screen with a mech in the bay you get access to 6 button to the left of the mech.
[1]|[2] - OS , Weight
[3]|[4] - Armor , Repair
[5]|[6] - Energy , Paint

If you click on the energy button and then click on the toggle below the reactor you gain access to the wire overview.

Each + wire increases the energy cost of the module by 5 and adds 3 to the total energy the reactor provides.

E.g.
You + wire a motor. You increase the weight it can carry. You increase the energy usage by 5. You increase the total energy available by 3.

Each - wire decreases the energy cost of the module by 5 and subtracts 3 to the total energy the reactor provides. If a minus wire underflows it adds the remaining to the energy cost of the module.

E.g.
1) a module has a energy cost of 5, you - wire it, you decrease the module cost to 0 and decrease the total energy available by 3.
2) a module has a energy cost of 3, you - wire it, you decrease the module cost to 2 and decrease the total energy available by 3.
3) a module has a energy cost of 1, you - wire it, you increase the module cost to 4 and decrease the total energy available by 3.

Sounds unfun af

[Morhem]

Originally posted by Witch ~:

Sounds unfun af

Well, I actually disagree with that. Fussing about smallest stats, and doing microscopic adjustments to your mechs is what this game is ABOUT as far as I understand it. The game is niche, and if you're uninterested in that niche, it will probably be unfun for you..
But obtuse UI is just objectively bad. CDDA and classic Dwarf Fortress are more intuitive, and that saying something.

[Konscience]

yeah the game is about mech engineering, so if the engineering mechanics are not appealing to some, ... user issue idk

[minuz1]

I love how absolutely terrible it is.
It makes atmosphere

I'm not saying you're wrong, this is a prime example of the saying "The customer is always right when it's a matter of taste".

[Stronkponker]

TBH it's really not bad at all once you learn what does what (which takes like all of ten minutes max). Most buttons are labeled or have tooltips anyway, and those that don't are either obvious or have a hotkey associated with them (free-cam and fullscreen in battle for instance) and in the case of free-cam there's a little animation that plays when you toggle it near the button, so if you use the hotkey (assuming you aren't yet in fullscreen) it immediately draws your attention to the button. Once you actually understand what the buttons do (again, doesn't take long at all) the ui is very endearing, at least to me.

[gMoneySlim]

I very much enjoy the un-intuitive UI, I've only played two games of it until my city died but now know what each and every button does from just pushing them and seeing what changed, I don't have the full game yet so about 20 in-game days before I died on my second run I ran out of research and my forward progress was stopped by a lack of new tech to overcome the growing enemy forces, so I assembled an 8 mech team and went out in a glorious battle against overwhelming odds, even losing was fun for me.

[sEver]

I truly doubt this could be achieved by accident. I guess it's the form of self-expression of the author.

Look at the release notes and it becomes clear that the author isn't a big fan of presenting information in an easily understandable fashion.
Look at the tutorials.
Did you get all the information required to actually play the game from the tutorials?

Seems like quirky user interface and leaving us to self-discover what does what, or maybe read the manual book, IS the integral part of the game here.

It's the author's right to make a UI that will not be convenient or easily understandable.
It's our right to not like it.