UI overhaul

[Causeless]

Will the UI ever be changed? It's really inefficient and ugly right now, to be honest.

 

Giving units commands to run/walk/hold whatever is really time consuming, as you need to click on the unit then move the mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen, doing this for every single unit you select. On top of that, many of the buttons are ambiguous: is the "run" button indicating the unit is already running, or do I click it to make the unit run? "Run" can be interpreted as both the current and desired states, which are opposites in this case. Perhaps an icon would would better?

 

There's also other issues - seeing the amount of cover, condition, and morale of a unit requires a lot of work. First you need to click through all your units unit, not knowing which ones are in a bad state, then look to he upper left and decipher a bunch of samey-looking bars aside from colour. I think it's be a lot better if you managed to get this data on each unit itself - for example, a little bar on top of the unit flags to indicate condition, and have the unit flag "fill up" from bottom to top to show morale by desaturing the non-filled-up part.

 

The point is, the player should be able to see the state of the battle in an easy overview, not by clicking every single unit.

[squishband]

I

Will the UI ever be changed? It's really inefficient and ugly right now, to be honest.

 

Giving units commands to run/walk/hold whatever is really time consuming, as you need to click on the unit then move the mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen, doing this for every single unit you select. On top of that, many of the buttons are ambiguous: is the "run" button indicating the unit is already running, or do I click it to make the unit run? "Run" can be interpreted as both the current and desired states, which are opposites in this case. Perhaps an icon would would better?

 

There's also other issues - seeing the amount of cover, condition, and morale of a unit requires a lot of work. First you need to click through all your units unit, not knowing which ones are in a bad state, then look to he upper left and decipher a bunch of samey-looking bars aside from colour. I think it's be a lot better if you managed to get this data on each unit itself - for example, a little bar on top of the unit flags to indicate condition, and have the unit flag "fill up" from bottom to top to show morale by desaturing the non-filled-up part.

 

The point is, the player should be able to see the state of the battle in an easy overview, not by clicking every single unit.

Interesting point about the need to look away from the battle.

[Tormidal]

OP has very good points on the state of the UI and the terrain.

 

My suggestion is tooltips. Hover the curser(if on PC/MAC) over a brigade to see things like cover/moral/condition in a small box, and I would actually suggest taking a page from Dawn of War's book, and have a small icon or status indicator when hovering the cursor over a spot of terrain to see what kind of cover bonus it gives.(Its the same mechanic in Company of Heroes.)

[gekkoguy82]

+1 for tooltips!

[Riekopo]

Very good points. I think that all the commands should be available to the player on the screen in a convenient location. Right now it feels like a tablet UI. Like Total War Rome 2's.