Station Planning Frustrations

[thijso]

A large number of frustrations with the Station Planner are making designing and building stations a pain.

- the camera viewpoint is not completely free

I can understand the camera being tied to some point when in the game (external view of ship or station, for example), but in the station planner it's just annoying and gets in the way. When zoomed in the rate of movement is severely limited, so much so that the only real way to pan or move is to first zoom all the way out, move, and then zoom back in. Just let the camera be completely free.

- zoom impacts module placement

Also, when zoomed in it is impossible to add a module. If you select it, it appears somewhere way behind and out of view. The only way to place it is to zoom all the way out. Why?

- allow for selecting the module to attach to somehow

Now, often the connection points that the new module or sequence selects to snap to are all over the place. Make it possible to (pre-)select the module that the new module or sequence should snap to possible so that this process becomes less frustrating (and sometimes downright impossible).

Others have often asked for the following (though I find it less of a problem):

- Can you reduce or add an option to remove station module transparency?
When you add new station modules to an existing station, it is very hard to see the newer modules, because they are nearly invisible to the existing modules, that have their normal textures displayed in the station planner. This also applies to bigger "not-yet-built" stations too.



And there are probably more improvements that are possible, but these are the main ones, I think. It would be really nice if the devs spend some time looking at this, as station building is a core part of X4.

[GCU Grey Area]

Recommend trying the experimental free camera mode: viewtopic.php?f=192&t=440977
Presumably there is a reason why this never became the standard mode. However I've never noticed anything particularly detrimental while using it & indeed consider it absolutely essential for some of my larger, more complex builds.

[thijso]

Recommend trying the experimental free camera mode: viewtopic.php?f=192&t=440977
Presumably there is a reason why this never became the standard mode. However I've never noticed anything particularly detrimental while using it & indeed consider it absolutely essential for some of my larger, more complex builds.

Ah, I missed that post. I'm going to try it right now, because I think it might be exactly what I want. And if it is, I agree with you, why is it not the default?

Anyway, thanks!