[POLL] Production wheel Vs. Sliders. (Alpha 1)

good idea,

i want a combo with fillable numbers and the option to lock 1

so my choice isnt there

I went for the wheel I actually think its a really great idea.

Stop the madness Max! We don't need a poll, I prefer the wheel to but its just a alpha version and it needs our feedback to improve. (I admire your initiative and curiosity though. )

 I picked no opinion because the wording was to stiff and did not reflect well on the feedback on the forums. The sliders are worse because they are all separate. The wheel is bad because it's so tiny and loose. But will probably end up being better and faster. I couldn't say that on the poll. (nice website you found, I think the devs might use it in the future.)

You also said the answer to your question by saying the current Wheel design is probably not final, that also makes it hard to form a Sovereign opinion in three black and white boxes. (One who seeks righteousness in democracy, will only find a multitude of opinions.)

DARCA.

Production wheel is a better format for controlling three inter-related sliders. It's been done before and it was just fine with that game (Sim Ant comes to mind).

If you move to a 3 slider version you need a locking mechanism as you cannot control the direction of the other two sliders. The production wheel removes the absolute NEED for a locking mechanism. There do need to be some shortcut keys or some lines drawn on

On the other thing about polls. Unless there is incentive to force those who would not usually go and poll, your poll will be skewed merely because the only ones who will vote are the ones who feel really strongly one way or the other.

The lines that are one the production wheel are not extremely helpful at the moment. It would be nice to see arcs where one would always get 50% research, 50% production, 50% wealth. Just as indicator lines for people. These arcs would be a more helpful guide in setting up your production ques cause it gives those that are not used to seeing such a circular representation a marker. If I place it on this line I will get 50% research.

In brad feedback 031014 they mention " the profitability dotted line" when talking about the wheel. So i think we can at least expect a line that indicates when a planet is paying for itself.

I suppose a fillable field where you can enter a desired production amount, which would then pop up a line at which that amount of production is achieved, would be cool too. As im sure many people will find it hard to eyeball that on a wheel isntead of a slider. This would be very usefull when you want to see if you can produce a ship in 4 turns instead of 5 for example. Or perhaps a checkbox called "optimize production" that when checked will show you where turn amount transitions occur on the wheel for the thing your currently producing, either with line(s) or colors.

ofcourse it would be abit more complicated then that when the double queue comes back, when theres essentially 4 variables (social production, military production, research, wealth) so maybe the whole wheel isn't the optimal solution anymore then.

I think the thing most strongly missing right now in the whole mechanism is not about the wheel itself but rather the lack of realtime monitoring of your Research and planetary queue ETA.

Not necessarily true but the same could be said of any forum poll. The goal is to get a general idea and also stimulate discussion.

 That is also why I added the No opinion choice. for those who do not feel strongly enough for one side or the other.

maybe with 4 variables it has to become something like this

or even... the production square:

 (or the production tetrahedron?)

or maybe some pie chart that you can drag/adjust or something

Seems like the production square would not work.

For instance how would you set it to  50% Social, 50% wealth, 0% research, 0% Military?

For what it is worth I really love the production wheel!

I really do like the production wheel. Sliders are probably better for selecting exact values to the nearest whole percentage point. The production wheel is more intuitive and makes it easy to change my empire's focus quickly (and frequently, if desired). 

I don't want the sliders back.  My biggest gripe with planetary production management in GC2 was that every time I increased points to one area of spending, the points were arbitrarily taken from the other two areas - usually the area I didn't want to lose points from.  The wheel is a good step, but it needs work.

Just made a post about the wheel before I saw this. The ability to lock one of the aspects is really important imo. I voted for the wheel in the poll, but what I really want is both, so I can use the sliders to move the dot around the wheel and vice versa.

So far the way I play Is I barely use the global wheel ever. I just set it to 100% something on each colony lol.

Until I run out of money, then I improvise.

Yea, I set it to 100% production. For the start.

I have played GC1 and GC2 since they went into Alpha, so you are right, I have developed a taste for how it works. However, I like the wheel and hope it develops into a better way of controlling this mechanic of the game. However, right now it has some deficiencies, which is why I pointed them out. Since the wheel is still a work in progress, I was hoping the devs would find some elegant way of resolving those deficiencies.

Production wheel +1, but with a minor tweak: add text boxes to set(type) the values "manually".

If there's two things in this crappy world that I hate, it's polls and the friggin production wheel.

Sliders may not be as hip and cool as the new production wheel, but they're simpler to use when trying to get exact numbers.  I think the production wheel is clunky.  Instead of just setting the sliders to the values I want, I have to go searching for some little hex that represents those values.  And who the hell knows where that's going to be, right?

It's interesting I actually find the wheel really easy compared to the sliders, and not at all hard to adjust with precision. I found the old multiple sliders with locks way of doen things bordering on the broken.

I do think this is a change that some people will hate and some will love. Regardless I agree the colours need tweaking to help the color blind and that they have a fair bit of scope for tweaking the sensitivity. I guess those who will find it intuitive and easy are those who commonly use graphics packages that use a very similar way of picking colours.

Ultimatley a few people are bound to hate it regardless of tweaking and tuning, but many people will also find it a much more elegant solution than the multiple interrelated sliders.

You could do that if you make it a tetrahedron, but that's going to be completely unintuitive for most people. 

My main point is, while the wheel is a pretty neat solution if theres 3 variables, it's rather useless when a 4th variable is added when the double production queues come back.

I think the current plan is to keep the wheel and then add a slider to divide the production set in the wheel between military and social, but that doesn't strike me as a very elegant solution.

not if all 3 have a 2 or 3 way spit

i can imagine the wheel for high lvl and the slider or 'sub-wheel' for the detailing.

I think i  adressed that in my responce on SY100 as well

lol, indeed,  I think that would be much more annoying to use than the wheel + 1 slider.

I posted a lot on this very issue in this thread. Seems like people do not like this solution for no other reason than it is not "elegant".

I disagree, I find it perfectly fine and so far no one has suggested a better alternative.

So, was your hate for the production wheel strong enough to commit into voting in the dreadful poll?

[quote who="Nukar"]A  slider? 
Atm we have the 3way disc to divide. How will this be affected?
I  suspect that the ‘ slider’  will be a further detailed dividing of the production section  as set on the disc
If so will research and wealth get extra detailing to (please do  ) 
Example: 2 researches parallel based on divided resources :type 1 as we know it know.; Type 2 ‘reverse engineering. No idea on wealth. Maybe tourism and economics where both can be affected by different events.[/quote]

While that sounds cool, nothing immediately obvious comes to mind that are good options for research and wealth, which would make the system to contrived.

i suppose you could think of military production as "off world" and social as "on world", so you could perhaps do research a tech (on world) and have your scientist explore the solar system and increase your chance at some sort of random events within the system (off world sort of). For wealth you could do produce money normally (on world) and increase the efficiency of mining of the (strategic) resources they were gonna add in some radius (off world)

I think the wheel is a good improvement, however, until the build times update as i adjust the setting it still needs work.  the values update and the wealth updates, but the values on the right for my build que don't update until i add something else to the que or come back to the planet from changing screens.

the more i think about it, the cooler the idea sounds, Nukar.

i especially seem to be intrigued by the idea of using research points for random events, and then my researchers stumbling on some contained supervirus that they ofcourse accidentally set free and kill half the planet, instead of the precursor ship they thought it was from a distance.

i'm sure that will be put in at some point. That's a pretty standard feature i'm sure they just haven't got around to it yet.