Resource overview

[akronia]

We often count our crystal/metal harvesters in the galaxy map (in c/m mode) to decide, which planet goes to whom.

There must be a quicker way to see how many harvesters I have?
I'm aware that by hovering over my resources on the top I will see allied income rates and totals, but those are often misleading due to massive build-queues or massive fleet-repairings.

It might be a great idea to incorporate that info into the "Galaxy Totals" in the galaxy view.

Speaking of which I just noticed that the information levels are a bit unclear in my opinion.
Currently it shows planet and ship numbers and then goes on to game settings (style, cheats, minor factions, etc.).
That seems out of place there. I'd rather have a resource and energy, maybe even knowledge overview just like with planets and ships, to see how many harvesters they and I have.

Maybe even show that info for every player, not just a total as in "Allied Planet", but rather "Planets Held by Player2: xy".

Applying this to harvesters could mean "Your Harvesters: 8M / 10C", "Player2 Harvesters: 10M / 3C" and so on.  

I feel like this should be a quick overview of my and my allied empire, avoiding any immersion-stopper, like showing if cheats are enabled.
I realize there might be no other spot to show the current game settings - maybe add a new button to the galaxy view on the bottom for that?

[Ozymandiaz]

Actually, the income rate can be seen by allies regardless of building and repair.

Resource rate = Income - Outgoing

Last I checekd I saw all for my ally, thus we got a nice measurement of how much resources each got his hands on.

[akronia]

Ah yes, thats right 

But I find it easier to communicate "I have 18C right now" rather than "my current income is 254 crystals" and comparing that quickly with the other income rates, via skype.

[x4000]

There are a couple of things that already exist that should help for this.  First, on the galaxy map itself, there are filter modes for the number of crystal, metal, or overall resource spots on a per-planet basis.  Simply hit R, C, or M, I believe, and it will show you per-planet.  That way you don't have to go hovering over a bunch of planets when deciding which planets to take if you are looking for one to capture for resources.  That's thing #1.

If you are wondering which player has the least number of metal or crystal producers, then you want the Economy tab of the stats screen.  In that screen it has a count of the total amount of metal and crystal coming in, as well as the "# producers" of each, and so forth.  An even easier way to visualize more is to use the graphs view, and look at the metal and crystal income to see whose is lower or higher over time.  Just click on the scores panel at the bottom right of the screen to see all of that sort of thing, if you're not familiar with it already.

The galaxy totals are only ever going to be global information about the galaxy, with a few brief nods to you, enemies and allies -- it's really a very secondary feature.  Generally speaking, its primary function is to tell you the cheats and other immersion-breaking stuff; all the rest of that information is pretty much duplicated from elsewhere. Per-planet data is based on the galaxy map filters or hovering over each planet individually, and all of the per-player information (and information-over-time) is in the stats/graphs section, which is hugely useful and which I suspect is just something you hadn't found yet.

Hope that helps!

[akronia]

If you are wondering which player has the least number of metal or crystal producers, then you want the Economy tab of the stats screen.  In that screen it has a count of the total amount of metal and crystal coming in, as well as the "# producers" of each, and so forth.  An even easier way to visualize more is to use the graphs view, and look at the metal and crystal income to see whose is lower or higher over time.  Just click on the scores panel at the bottom right of the screen to see all of that sort of thing, if you're not familiar with it already.

Ah, nice, I wasn't aware that it shows the # of producers, thanks!

The galaxy totals are only ever going to be global information about the galaxy, with a few brief nods to you, enemies and allies -- it's really a very secondary feature.  Generally speaking, its primary function is to tell you the cheats and other immersion-breaking stuff; all the rest of that information is pretty much duplicated from elsewhere. Per-planet data is based on the galaxy map filters or hovering over each planet individually, and all of the per-player information (and information-over-time) is in the stats/graphs section, which is hugely useful and which I suspect is just something you hadn't found yet.

My point is accessibility of information, really. The statistic screen is nice and very informative, of course. Overwhelmingly so, in fact, that it takes quite some brain cycles for me to drill down the information and comparison I'm looking for. The best example beeing I simply overlooked the "# of producers" column.

I mostly use the stat screen if I'm idle because other players are away shortly or the game is paused because they want to plan out mine-layers or rethink their build-queues. I just can't concentrate on this big table view while the game is in progress and 2-3 other players are talking via skype. I remember that we once checked the stats to decide who would get the first Mark IV builder, but we needed to pause the game to discuss the data. Now, that is not a bad thing, and we pause regulary and discuss our strategy and next moves.

But, opening this big stat window, clicking again on the economy tab, sorting by producers, just to see how many crystals my allies have, when we have this great quick overview of information in the galaxy view seems too complicated to me. The big selling point beeing that I'm in the galaxy view all the time, checking waves, sending fleets, classifying new worlds, in short, managing my/our empire.

You said the galaxy totals are a secondary feature and I agree, they are not very usefull at the moment, in my opinion. In the early game I can grasp the number of allied planets in the galaxy view and see my total ships in my control groups or using the Q filter on the map directly. In a late game this information is even more statistical than strategically relevant.

But let's say in a 3-player game everyone got 5 planets so far and a decision has to be made who will get the next adjacent planet. Let's say this world has nothing to offer but resources, to simplify the argument. This planet even has no grand strategy to it, no strategic value in terms of defensive position or new gateways to other parts of the galaxy.
It's simply a matter of saying "Ok, who want's some more resources? Let's check who's got what, to keep it fair and balanced." - and now I feel it will greatly improve the flow of the game if a had an quick overview right in the galaxy view who's got how many resources.

This happens a lot in our 3-player games during the first 3h on a large map and we literally count our crystals/metals right in the galaxy view, because even compare the big income-numbers or, as I said, break the flow and drill into the statistics is not as smooth as saying "I have 8C, you 14C and pete, you got 12C, let me take this one".
It's just a matter of hovering over the fictious Resources Overview button and seeing "Me: 8C / 10M".

Sure, all the information I'll ever need is right there in the stats window, but not as accessible as the overlay filters in the galaxy view or hover-over info-texts. The stats are great for long-term analysis or ending a session of many to come, just to see how we progressed against the AI. But I feel major information for strategic decisions should not be burried down there, but be accessable right in the interface. And I feel the stats are more of a secondary, addendum interface element.

As I said, those global informations about the game settings need to be somewhere, I guess I made my point not very clear in the beginning. This is merely a suggestion to improve the flow of the gameplay.

[HitmanN]

This is merely a suggestion to improve the flow of the gameplay.

Go and post this in the Development->Suggestions forum.

I can support this, though wouldn't call it a priority thing. I don't play much co-op, so I've only ever needed to check this info couple of times, but it's been a bit of hassle with the current methods.

[x4000]

Okay -- thank you for clarifying your points.  However, I'm not sold on this one, and here is why:

- There are an infinite number of things that could theoretically be promoted out of the stats screens based on some game situation or another.  The fact that one stat or another is particularly exciting to a particular group of players is not reason enough alone to start shifting all that stuff out into the main interface.  I don't think this is a more generalized request.  So if you start shifting too much of that stuff out into the main interface, you wind up with a main interface that is just as complicated as the stats interface.  Yes, this is the slippery slope argument, and yes, that is generally a fallacy.  But the stats screen is built around detailed stats that I didn't find relevant enough on an ongoing basis to put into the main interface.

- The purpose of the Global Stats button on the galaxy map is what it is, it's meant to be more of a technical summary of your current game, a way to know how to recreate your galaxy map or to summarize it for players that might want to show off an AAR with a single screenshot of the galaxy plus that overlay.

Those are my generalized objections to this line of inquiry regarding moving whatever out of the stats screens into the main interface or into the global stats button, etc.  The fact that there is too much information on the stats screens is not a convincing argument to me, because the whole purpose of the stats screen is to prevent there from being too much information on the other screens.

Regarding this specific request, regarding the number of producers, there is a reason I consider that very noncritical and something to leave on the stats screen: it is non-actionable data, really.  I should have responded with this earlier to your other request.  But, assuming that you are trying to decide who needs given resources the most, there is only one reliable way to do that: gross income of that resources.  Simply hovering over the metal or crystal incomes at the top of the screen in the main screen (or galaxy map) gives you that data for all players.

Here are the factors that simply looking at the number of harvesters would omit:
- How many general command stations does each player have?  Those provide a lot of income, so one player with fewer harvesters but more planets might still have more income.
- Same deal with how many upgraded command stations (mark II and III) they have.  That can skew it even more.
- Same deal with any other special capturables that give them resource income, like rebel colonies or captive settlements or so forth.
- Also, same with if they have a home station home core, if they lost their home planet.

If you're just looking for gross numbers for an attempted apples-to-apples comparison, you have to account for the incomes of all those various things.  That is already right there at the top of the screen for comparison, and the number of harvesters is irrelevant for that.  But, you can even take it to another level, if you want, and get more complex than just using the gross number, such as:

- Which players have the most expensive ships that they need to keep building?  In other words, is one player needing more metal/crystal than others in order to keep up repairs/rebuilding/starships/whatever?  The metal and crystal needs of a player with a really effective MRS and starships are not the same as a player who is churning out chaff units.  To evaluate who needs metal and crystal the most, I would suggest simply looking at who is the poorest on them the most.  Of course, if one player is being wasteful or engaging in the bulk of the fighting to the exclusion of others, then that would give you skewed results and just lad to giving them more resources to let them continue fighting more while others fight less.  This is quite undesirable, assumedly.  So it takes a human touch to analyze.

- Beyond the above, energy is another factor. If one player needs a ton of reactors for some reason, they will need more metal/crystal income to support that.  A group of players may or may not want to factor that -- it's a gray area, to me.


At any rate, the gross is the way to look and is already in the interface when you look at this in its simplest form.  When you want to get more crazy with it, you probably want the trend graphs.

[akronia]

First of all, thank you for taking the time to clarify this for me  

You are absolutely right that the interface should be clean and not overloaded with too much information, and especially shouldn't be overcrowded by specific wishes of user groups. That would make a great addition to a future expansion: the ability to customize the interface with overlays and extra informations, in a modular way.

Getting back to the resource overview, my feeling of missing information spread from the false assumption that counting the harvesters would be the best approximation of evolving needs. I simply hadn't accounted for advanced command stations or special capturables or the other factors you mentioned.
So all my ideas on redefining the galaxy totals were made on this assumption, overlooking the fact, that the net-income is right there for all allied players.
And much more accurate on making the decision of assigning planets to capture next.

So, thanks again for clearing that up, I'll try to teach my team not to count harvesters anymore