I'm not a hardcore player, so I will try to give some suggestions from a novice user standpoint. I think this kind of view point is also important if you wish to bring the game closer to new crowd.
1.
How do I know which improvements to build on special tiles with icons? Descriptions for those icons are not always clear. For example: "This slice of paradise is where everyone wants to live, or at least visit....". There are even more unclear descriptions than that.
I've had this problem in Galciv 2 too. You should really improve explanations for new users or do the following thing in the interface:
My suggestion is to display these small icons on the improvements themselves too. So if a planet has certain special tiles, icons from those tiles would also be shown on the appropriate improvements in the list. That way player could easily match improvements to special tiles.
2. Tab with the list of ships should have subtab named fleets where user could quickly see his fleets listed instead of looking into large number of single ships.
3. Name of the save files should have turn numbers in them really. Currently, only save time is displayed as an information about the save. But having the turn number in conjuction with my next suggestion would be very nice.
4. There should be a user defined number of autosaves the system keeps, not just the last one. If I defined saving on each turn and I wanted to load a save file from 10 turns ago, I'm not able to do this. This system functions perfectly in Civ5.
5.
- Mousing over the smiley in the right top corner of the screen (approval) shows no tooltip like the rest of the icons.
- When you try to construct a star base within the range of another star base, the option is grayed out. But the user doesn't know why. A tooltip would be very handy for new users.
What do you think about 1st suggestion? If there's a better way to match the tiles to improvements, please tell me.
