Well actually I'd say more in a precise and less precise way. The Icons give you an at a glance idea of the planets relative production in each category. the numbers give you precise amounts, and a graphic representation is always a nice UI element.

Good question I hope it doesn't mean that but would be good to know how they will accomidate more if not.

A fair question as I say I think the general idea of the icons is to give you a quick visual read on how much of each the planet is producing relativley, they could do this other ways. Part of the reason I'm sure is that if they just had numbers it would make the screen look a bit like an excel accounting spreadsheet which does put some peopel off.

I think this is a pretty good idea.

I think most the buildings are still placeholders ported straight from GC2 at the moment so they are likley to change. But I would point out the buildings are only representative not to scale, etc.

As I say I see the colony screen as a sort of big screen augmented reality display I'm being shown as leader.

Okay because I was quick to throw my opinion on the planet screen with out much in depth discussion I'll throw my complete list out there.

Likes

1. The contrast, however it would be nice if there was little color versus black and white, but not enough to prevent the buildable tiles from popping.
2. The unused tiles are not outlined at all...
3. It appears easier to "rush" or "buy" and improvement with the new system.
4. The pending terraformed tiles do not appear (just adds more clutter until you can actually use them) Don't need to plan with it as the first several planets are going to be well in use before I get that technology, I can re-do the planet then.
5. No Capital taking away from 1 usable tile on the planet. (Suggestion bring it back if able to but not using a usable tile)

Dislikes

1. Available projects on the right should be listed as such, Most current improvements, Old improvements, Projects, All...
2. Everything seems super big on the screen, I would love an extra line or two of tiles both horizontal and vertical right now the maximum planet quality is 43 (with every tile filled) Galactic Civilizations 2 this is 72 By adding one row on this would raise this number to 57 by adding 2 rows it would raise it to 74 which is where I would see the target being... Hasn't anyone else seen this?
3. Don't like the large display of manufacturing/research/wealth on the bottom. Would prefer that to be displayed in a corner or along one side. (With all the other stats)
4. With moving the statistics to the bottom right corner, you could then extend the que.
5. 'Govern Planet' I feel should be above 'Done'
6. Pending buildable options shouldn't be labeled as 'Available Projects' as that makes it appear that everything here are 'Projects' being that you already have the sub category labeled as 'Projects' Suggestion instead would be to rename one or the other labeling the overall category as 'Available Options'or the existing 'Projects' as 'Planet Focus'
7. No Capital, mainly because of the loss of the adjacanty bonus' (Suggestion place on non-usable tile, therefore not generated on a bonus tile)
8. The hexes, however, they make sense with the adjacanty bonus', squares would minimize the effects but would look cleaner.

I think that is it for the momement...

I like the lack of useless hexes in the map. Don't distract my eyes with useless lines!

I like the configuration of the screen except that I don't see why such a big space for the manufacturing/research/economics. It also seems to lack access to details like orbital defenses, extra planetary details,... stuff?

Edit: USA's (real's world) surface is just 1/3 of Africa. Just saying.

Those icons are a staple of this type of 4x games, I would dearly miss them if they were gone.

As someone previously said I think It would be better to have only icons for 1 - 10 - 100.  Having this icons for 5 and 50 too makes it visually confusing. With a better contrast It would work better at assessing the value at a glance. 

Like someone earlier also said, I like to have a visual representation of how badass my planet is

What is the purple building in eastern North America? I was assuming it was the capitol, but multiple people have commented that there is no capitol on the map.

Actually, it was 72 in GalCiv 2. Still, I'm not bothered by the reduction of the possible max PQ. Seriously, how often did you even reach that in GalCiv 2 without cheating or an extremely unlikely combination of random events? 

Also, due to the adjacency-system, planets in GalCiv 3 are much more productive than they were previously. Simply because you need fewer tiles to achieve the same, or better, effect.

Colonial Hospital, is the purple building cutting through the middle east of the US.

Building I can't place is in central america, but I know that's not the Capital as it's in the build que.

You're right, I knew that I just mistyped, thanks for the correction.  corrected my previous post.

However, I did frequently get several planets into the 30's and 40's without cheating, my best record with the planet quality double random event was 62, that was a great game Even with that being said, a planet quality 30 shouldn't fill up the majority of the planet half should be right which would put it at 60 max which is still more than the current max by far.

I like the monochromatic unusable tiles. Provides a good contrast and makes it quicker to see where to build the next project. 

I don't think the image of Earth and the moon is necessary as well. 

On the right hand side, I like how the projects are split from the rest of the buildings. I don't like that they are labelled Available Projects for the buildings and Projects for economic, research queues. Doesn't make much sense to call the buildings/constructions projects in this case.

PS. I think the blue outlines of the buildings are unnecessary.

I personally don't like the monochromatic portion of the image, especially over the oceans - it just looks like there's nothing at all there, and that the continents are just kind of floating in space, especially since the monochromatic portions are somewhat transparent. I feel that having the hex grid show only on the improvable tiles is sufficient for showing where you can and cannot build things, though I suppose a highlighting option wouldn't be terrible.

I count 13 tiles shown; the planet class is 15. Unless you're suddenly counting planet traits as part of the planet class, there's something wrong with this picture, especially since I have no idea where the other two tiles are. Are those extra tiles available through terraforming? If so, why do they show up in the listed planet quality? When choosing what planet to colonize, my primary concern isn't how good it can eventually become, but rather how good it is right now, and I'd be seriously disappointed to colonize a Class 16 world and find only 7 tiles available immediately upon colonization.

Unless tax rates are back, I don't know that I like approval being around. Without a variable tax rate, it's just a bar that says you must build this many entertainment facilities on this planet in order for it to be useful to you, especially if elections come back.

Without the box displaying information about the selected tile, how am I to determine where the tiles with an inherent bonus are (e.g. 'mountainous' +1 to wealth structures, or 'grasslands' +1 to population)? Do I now need to click around everywhere with each type of improvement to see where the bonus tiles are, are the tile-type bonuses gone, or do they get their own little icons now?

I tend to agree with the others who have said that the 1/5/10/50 set of icons is a bit awkward. If you want to do something like that, might I suggest making it 1/5/25/125, so you'll always have 0-4 of any specific size of icon at once? Or the 1/10/100 set that others have suggested, for 0-9 icons of a given size? I realize that it's the same pattern as the symbol set for Roman numerals, but I don't really think that it works well here.

I also feel that unless each category is given a grouping under the 'all' tab, it's a bit odd to separate out the projects like you've done. I don't see any evidence that there are separate 'ships' and 'improvements' blocks, yet having those separated would be as useful for the 'all' tab as having the projects separated out as they are.

I didn't catch that myself, but I do know that this has been a problem in Alpha 0.0.1.0 & 0.0.2.0.

In both versions several planets have generated at X class but, when you enter it is actually at Y class, pictures are posted of this in one of my other posts see below

Planet Wisp in topic 1 see pictures.

As a side note:

Anyone who questions the rationale behind the Founder's Program should be sent to this thread.  This is exactly the reason we wanted the Founder's program.  Great stuff guys!

Note to everyone, the missing Capital is just a mistake in the mock-up, we are not removing it.

I like most of it OK I agree it not done! I feel we should have smaller Hexeseseses. too.

so more could be added,... but if your not suppose to have a Planet bigger the a 25 would

you really need more Hex space?? 

I cannot overstate how much I hate the monochromatic unusable tiles. I loathe them. While this isn't a deal breaker, this will piss me off to no end.

It's good UI design I'd say. Makes you focus on the important parts. What pisses me off is the zigzagging ships. Argh.

Sometimes, Form > Function

This is one of those instances

Hi,

The picture looks great. I personally like the monochrome and lack of border for non usable tiles. I just wonder how it would scale to 1080p? I find the item size ok when viewed at 100% but when stretching the picture to fill the screen (~140%), everything seems too big.

I agree with a previous poster than using 50/10/5/1 for the icons is a little strange as you can have at most 1 of size 5 or 50. using 10/1 may be enough, or maybe 25/5/1 ?

I don't know what is behind the govern button, but I wonder if it would make sense to have a mini production wheel specific to this planet directly on the main planet screen?

An even better solution from my point of view would be to be able to create planet "kind" or "category" like research planet, production, balanced... and then be able to assign a category to each planet. Then changing we could have a production wheel by category. With a system like this, you would not need per planet adjustment of the percentage and just having a way to change the planet "category" from the main planet screen would make for very fast adjustment, kind of like how in Civ V, you can select a production goal for you city in one click from the main screen.

keep up the good work guys

I suppose people will always like different things. And that's fine.

There you go again, being reasonable and non-confrontational! Damn you!

I really feel that this information needs to be present on the map itself, not hidden behind a tool-tip or on the selected tile details. In the absence of a significant production bonus from colonization events, it's important for me to know at a glance that the tiles of a given world favor wealth and population over manufacturing, or something like that. How this shows up isn't terribly important (but please don't make me judge by the line weight of the tile border), but it needs to be something that I can see at a glance rather than via inspection of each tile.

Take Civ II as an example - you know at a glance what an area is good for before you ever consider improving the area. That city in the hills is strong on production and not quite terrible on food, the city next to all the mountains is okay at production but has next to no food, the city in the plains has lots of food and a little production, and the city in the grasslands has lots of food but little production. You know what you'll get by claiming a portion of the map just by looking at the map, and importantly each tile type is visually distinct from the other types - you're never going to mistake plains for hills or forests for grasslands (though you might miss a bit of grassland nestled in amongst a group of hills). In GCIII, you have no idea what you'll be getting by building improvements until you click around or wait for tool-tips to pop up, yet knowing where the bonuses are is important for planning out where to put your improvements for best effect, both during the construction process and after. If it's color-coded (e.g. blue tiles give research bonuses, red tiles give manufacturing bonuses, green tiles do nothing), or if there's an icon representing the bonus, then I at least know that there's something special about the tile even if I don't know what, and I don't have to inspect each and every tile on each and every planet to find out where the special stuff is and what's special about it.

I really like the monochromatic display, it makes it appear much more as a "display", thus adding to the immersion factor for me.  However, I do think the hex outline around the main display shouldn't be jaggy, it's pretty distracting.  And I also think it'd look better if the hexes themselves were a wee bit smaller.  As far as being functional, it would depend on what popups would display with a mouse hover.

I don't like playing a game with black and white "displays". Its basically saying "don't enjoy looking at anything else but what we want you and have fun playing our game were bland totally colorless screens are complemented with the rainbow that is is the production wheel."

I honestly don't even think this is a really what SD has planned. They may have just dimmed the display to show us how useable tiles are now illuminated by green. I hope that is the case or I have to modd more stuff. :'-(

DARCA.

I felt the need to return to this thread just to strongly agree with this statement!

There are a few good space strategy games out there, but lots of them are heavily limited by clumsy or ugly UI's. The community reaction to early Endless Space builds evidenced that attractive cosmetic design in 4X is important to people (in my opinion). For me, once a certain level of immersion is broken, it's a slippery slope towards the feeling that you are playing a spreadsheet. I want to be able to feel that each planet, or at least some of them, are real living places, that are valuable and important to me/my empire.

I totally understand the idea of viewing the planet management screen as an efficient interface or terminal that you use for managing your worlds remotely, but perhaps an interface within an interface is just too meta for me

If we do end up having a really basic planet management screen, could we have another view where we can see what our world looks like up close?

I'm also really hoping that as our worlds develop, we'll be able - from the space view - to see little lights glimmering on the surface, and little structures and ships in orbit to represent the level of population, industry, and perhaps tech.

Perhaps we could take a middle route. 

Make the planet screen immersive and colourful, yes that would be nice. But I want to be able to look at the important tiles in the world more easily and know that I can build on them and what I should build on them should be easy to build. I agree with joeball123 that it needs to intuitive. In Civ games you know that should probably build a farm on a plain, but you could just as easily build a mine to customise your city. 

Perhaps we could make the tiles that are buildable a bit larger than the rest, or make them 'pop-out' a bit, either all the time or when you hover the mouse over them. Also make the outlines heavier so that they will be easier to see. I think that would make them more distinctive than the rest of the tiles, getting the best from both worlds.

EDIT: fixes