Questions about the UI

[Kernel Panic]

In the X3 games the UI was been one of my biggest complaints. I really love the style of empire building possible in your past games so I am really hoping that some improvements are on the way with X4. Will I be able to:

Move windows around the screen?

Resize windows and text?

Have more than one menu open at a time?

Have more than one window/screen/page (what ever you want to call it) open at the same time?

Increase and decrease font sizes?

Get detailed financial information about my empire?

Access and customize asset lists for my empire?

Search through my ships and pilots and stations with a search function?

Customize the position and size of items in the HUD?

Save templates of ship/station load-outs and/or orders for use in the future?

And lastly, aside from small bits we have seen of the changes to the map or player moment (in ship and on station) or modular station building are there any other UI changes the team is proud of?


Thanks!

[CBJ]

Move windows around the screen?
Resize windows and text?
Have more than one menu open at a time?
Have more than one window/screen/page (what ever you want to call it) open at the same time?
Customize the position and size of items in the HUD?

These are all essentially the same question, and the answer is no. The game's UI is not a Windows application, it's an in-game presentation which appears a bit like a holographic HUD, and I'm afraid the "Minority Report" style of control of that presentation isn't something we've been able to replicate!

Increase and decrease font sizes?

This is something we are actively working on, and it seems to be nearly there.

Get detailed financial information about my empire?
Access and customize asset lists for my empire?
Search through my ships and pilots and stations with a search function?

You will certainly have a means to access information about your empire, finances and property, but it's still work in progress, and whether the final version meets your personal definitions of the above is something you'll have to wait and see.

Save templates of ship/station load-outs and/or orders for use in the future?

As already answered in the FAQ, with regard to loadouts and construction plans, yes you'll be able to save them for later use. I'm not so sure about orders as I'm not sure what there is that's particularly useful to save there.

And lastly, aside from small bits we have seen of the changes to the map or player moment (in ship and on station) or modular station building are there any other UI changes the team is proud of?

That's not for me to answer as I've not really worked on the UI.

[PabloRSA]

On the subject.
Will we be able to import / export templates or have access to a online database via the game. Hate to use the term "Creations Club Fallout 4"
Or drop them in a folder and reload.

Would be nice to share designs from the community.

[CBJ]

What do you mean by templates? If you're talking about ship loadouts and station construction plans still, then yes these can be exported and imported and there will be nothing stopping you from sharing them with other players. Whether there will be tools to help with that process is another matter; my guess is that there probably won't be at release, but something might appear later, whether official or otherwise.

[DavidGW]

I'm not so sure about orders as I'm not sure what there is that's particularly useful to save there.

Only thing I can think of is the ability to give an order to a ship while it is being configured for building. For example, if you're building a ship to defend a station, you could set that order before it is built. Better than having to configure the ship, wait for it to be built, and then having to break whatever you're doing to give orders to the ship once it's ready.

Maybe if you wanted to build a bunch of small ships to defend a particular station, or create a fleet of Universal Traders, including orders in a saveable template could be useful?

Although whether such a functionality would actually be useful would be highly dependent on how the game is balanced, which we don't know yet

[Skeeter]

A useful feature maybe could be when building ships u can set ships to a rally point like if ship a is finished being made then go to x station in x zone. So u can fill up ur stations or carriers quickly that way. Like if u mass made 12 fighters u could group that order to 1 job and tell em after ur made go to said station or carrier.

If thats already in x games my bad as i never made ships except maybe in x2.

[adeine]

As long as there are keyboard shortcuts for all menu items as in X3, it won't be a major issue.

For me, X3's menus seemed convoluted and impractical until I got used to using the shortcuts, which allow you to just breeze through what you want to do without even having to look. No need to move or resize a common dialog when you can just press a key.

[PabloRSA]

Yes, I mean external exporting, like save the template as a tab delimited CVS format on the desktop that we can share on an exchange site such as nexus.
It would be nice to have something internal though, where we can browse and see the structure in an editor.

Maybe the top efficient designs selected by the devs could be used by the NPCs and with a whole library, that is some choice and interesting designs popping up.

[bl3ek]

One thing that I find myself needing to do in X3 is open a menu when another is open, to check something.

It is somewhat slow and convoluted to close, open, close then re-open things.

So the value of being able to layer information screens shouldn't be underestimated!

For example, I need to check the map, that shouldn't require me to close down or retrace or back-out of the existing menu/function/screen I'm in.