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Talk about hidden functionalities…
I wish Egosoft would hire or consult a competent interface ergonomics professional rather than the 12 years old nephew of the boss or something. Or at least, that they would watch some youtube tutorials on the subject… Dwarf fortress is the only game I can think of with a worse interface.
I personaly like to hire my employees myself except marines and service crew.
In my game every manager and ship trader is a teladi.
So putting some npc in there like the station sellers i would dislike. For example i dislike having paranid traders on my station, but i cannot hire them myself.
It's not so much about depth, exactly, it's about how much stuff can be done at a given time. There's a big list of things you can do to a ship by right clicking on it, plus there's messing around with the crew, the behaviors, the various rules... there's just a LOT you can do. Hence, you get great big menus (or sub-menus).
For this, I think what you really needed was a little tooltip on the grayed out menu entry saying why it wasn't working. I've seen those a lot in this game, but I don't know if that got one or not. I think the only way to get the gray menu option is to have no dealer, but if there are more ways that can all happen at once, then the tooltip thing starts to get bad as it tries to list off multiple reasons.
A good interface is flowing right. It is easy to remember and easy to find the information you need once you learn where to find it. It's easy to learn through, in regard to the complexity of what you are learning.
I spend my time in the menus, not playing the game. This atrocious interface is a time sink, not a time saver. I'm wondering what my ships are doing, look at the list, and get random icons I still mostly don't know what they refer to; sometimes, I get the system the ship is in, sometime nothing. I can't even sort the list. Some of the quests submenus even change shape depending on who know what for no reason. Sure, the list is a good idea… In a sea of bad decisions.
A good interface will reuse whatever other interfaces nailed it in other similar enough games and will not attempt to reinvent it unless the result is much better.
In a good interface, it doesn't require 50 hours of gameplay to master the basics without searching for this or that and still require notes to find a less used information when you reach 100+ hours.
And respect the rules. Only give the information needed when it is needed or requested. Don't mix information with function. Make sure every function is always at the same place.
Context menu is very good if you are using a spreadsheet. Not a real time game. How many games can you think of in which you have to use (plain text!) context menus? None? It's because this is bad!
When you Add to the mix entry positions in the menu that move all over the place, random info in random tabs, sometimes to the right, sometime to the left, three different selections at any time used by random functionalities… It's just a mess.
You mention tool tips. I can't remember one game using a cursor after my Amiga days that doesn't use tool tips apart from dwarf fortress. Even you recognize a little use case missing in the game. In a game that complex, tool tips should be everywhere, instead of this massive lists on both the left and the right of the screen taking two third of the screen. Even Excell does have tool tips! IIRC, MS Office had them in Windows 3.1.
The few icons attempted don't even match any convention, often look very random for the functionality/information they hide.
The tabs are all over the place and pack random data bits together with random buttons to access more random data. Some data, you can't even get (or I didn't find them in this mess) like the list of stations buying or selling this product, the total amount needed. You have to zoom in and move the screen around out to find some, and then move the screen while pointing at some menu. It's just bonkers.
They are making good effort trying to make it better that's true. But how can't they see that they are nowhere near up to the task? How can't they see they need professional, specialized highly competent help on this? Why won't they at the very least get training or even read a book on the subject?
So frustrating.