Two clicks for the price of one, please.

[Baddieus]

I miss using Shift + E from X3 to go from the chair to the space suit instantly without question ... perhaps that can be re-coded into X4 to go directly from the chair to the suit without having to press enter, select the option to get up, wait on the pilot to emerge, click the rear panel, select to use spacesuit, and then click one final time to be sure this is what I really want to do. There is a cut-scene of sorts once all the clicking is done & you go from being on the ship to being in the external dock floating out ... so I would suggest an optional ship control in the settings that we experienced players can manually engage that will allow Shift + E (or other combination) to go from the chair to floating out the dock into space instantly.

As for returning to the chair ... perhaps while standing within ship in space using Shift + C as an option will automatically take the chair from wherever the player is standing?
On the station we use Shift + D to go straight to the ship, or select a ship to go to, then we could Shift + C to take the chair after the ship is selected? (Thinking hold Shift, press D you're on board, press C you're in the chair, press D again and you're flying.)

Just some thoughts ...

=Baddieus=

[Socratatus]

First and most egregious, when getting into the pilots chair one has to click it twice. I can think of no occasion for asking the pilot to leave and not then immediately occupying the chair but the interface requires doing it twice, every time.

sigh...
Just because YOU can't think of one, doesn't mean others can't.

Ok, I'm an immersion player. Sometimes I order my co-pilot out of the seat and NOT sit in it myself. I just want that seat empty for roleplay reasons (I hope you don't expect me to go into details). I don't always want to immediately sit in the chair afterwards.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the total lack of imagination of people who play games. If they don't like it, no one else possibly could!

But I can understand what you're saying, so the Devs could make it OPTIONAL, so I don't have to play your way.

[ahostofissues]

First and most egregious, when getting into the pilots chair one has to click it twice. I can think of no occasion for asking the pilot to leave and not then immediately occupying the chair but the interface requires doing it twice, every time.

sigh...
Just because YOU can't think of one, doesn't mean others can't.

Ok, I'm an immersion player. Sometimes I order my co-pilot out of the seat and NOT sit in it myself. I just want that seat empty for roleplay reasons (I hope you don't expect me to go into details). I don't always want to immediately sit in the chair afterwards.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the total lack of imagination of people who play games. If they don't like it, no one else possibly could!

But I can understand what you're saying, so the Devs could make it OPTIONAL, so I don't have to play your way.

There’s no functional reason for an empty chair. If it were removed, it would have zero effect on the game. So it’s “flavor”, which I understand has the side benefit of allowing someone like you to assign a made-up pretend purpose for it (no insult intended). I got no hatred for role play. All good.

But there’s a big difference between “flavor” that adds atmosphere (e.g. the decor in station trader area) and flavor which actually has the functional effect of making the game UI harder and more frustrating to operate.

Empty chair is in the second category. It leads to all kinds of actual functional gameplay problems like accidentally talk-activating the pilot who is in the course of standing up, making it frustrating to “point” at the right thing in tight cockpits when the chair is doing it’s rotation animation, etc.

I get why you like it. But that’s not sufficient reason, not even close, to inflict on everyone else the UI problems it creates.

[GCU Grey Area]

First and most egregious, when getting into the pilots chair one has to click it twice. I can think of no occasion for asking the pilot to leave and not then immediately occupying the chair but the interface requires doing it twice, every time.

sigh...
Just because YOU can't think of one, doesn't mean others can't.

Ok, I'm an immersion player. Sometimes I order my co-pilot out of the seat and NOT sit in it myself. I just want that seat empty for roleplay reasons (I hope you don't expect me to go into details). I don't always want to immediately sit in the chair afterwards.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the total lack of imagination of people who play games. If they don't like it, no one else possibly could!

But I can understand what you're saying, so the Devs could make it OPTIONAL, so I don't have to play your way.

Agree with Socratatus on this, although aside from immersion have encountered a few practical situations in which it was decidedly useful to leave the pilot's seat empty.

For example, ship delivery mission in The Void, in which the delivery zone quite close to one of the hazardous regions. Although there was plenty of room to park the ships outside the hazard, it was still close enough to trigger automatic risk avoidance. Method by which I got the ships to stay in place was to fly each ship in personally but leave each one there with the pilot's seat empty.

More generally, also tend to leave the pilot's seat empty on personal S fighters while they're docked aboard my capital ship. Just for the sake of speed in situations where I might end up dashing to the docks in an emergency where literally every second might count (e.g. my capital's engines have just exploded, so it's time for last ditch defence while my service crew try to fix the problem before the rest of the ship explodes).

Otherwise for me it's also just a matter of immersion. Have no issues at all with waiting a couple of seconds for my relief pilot to stand up & leave the cockpit before I take control.

[exogenesis]

If you're very quick with two consecutive clicks on the chair
(I've unconsciously trained myself to be so)
you can avoid the 'talk' dialog - & you go staight to sitting,
but it seems to depend a bit on ship model.

However that makes it doubly frustrating when you don't get the timing quite right
& you're expecting to take control,
only to have the blasted pilot stand there & stare at you, blocking the chair access !

This is by far the most annoying thing in X4 for me.
I feel pretty self-controlled in that I think I've only destroyed one
display monitor by punching it in frustration over about the past year over this.
(unfortunately that was a £1600 one, now back on the £250 ones).

Get out of the (swear-swear) way you moron !, no you can't (swear) help me !!,
sod off out of the freakin way !!!

Would willingly pay ES n-times the price of X4 to remove this (& some other) 'irritations'...

/rant

[Submarine]

First and most egregious, when getting into the pilots chair one has to click it twice. I can think of no occasion for asking the pilot to leave and not then immediately occupying the chair but the interface requires doing it twice, every time.

sigh...
Just because YOU can't think of one, doesn't mean others can't.

Ok, I'm an immersion player. Sometimes I order my co-pilot out of the seat and NOT sit in it myself. I just want that seat empty for roleplay reasons (I hope you don't expect me to go into details). I don't always want to immediately sit in the chair afterwards.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the total lack of imagination of people who play games. If they don't like it, no one else possibly could!

But I can understand what you're saying, so the Devs could make it OPTIONAL, so I don't have to play your way.

Umm hope you are not talking about me there. I get roleplay, there already exists a command to "get up" and vacate the chair, so expediting chair swap does not take that option away from roleplaying etc. I roleplay a bit, in fun. Doing battle with Xenon is part of that.

I dont exclude roleplaying as a viable motive, nor real time action. I accept the internal schism and include both sides of the duality it creates. The reason it exists is that sometimes we need to dedicate our brain to action, sometimes we need to communicate. The energy constraints of our neurophysiology mean that fast reaction times are optimised by suspending social cogitation. Its just a neurophysiological switching mechanism with psychological effects which has evolved due to the constraints of thermodynamics in a biological decision making organ.

Some might call it a devil I just call it a thought process and the devil, as ever, is in the detail. No need to take sides with one and project the other as if an opponent in battle, (unless of course the role requires it!) we all use both (expeditious action and social cogitation including roleplay) and a game like X4 would be enhanced by the opportunity to play with both. Don't you think?

[Jeraal]

I understand the roleplay angle. If you want to tell the pilot to get up, click on the pilot. Click on the seat to get near instant access. You could even think of that as RP'ing. By clicking on the seat you are actually spinning it and forcefully removing the pilot. Sort of a "Get up you idiot! You're gonna get us both killed!" Role players can still do as they like, and impatient people like me don't have to be irritated.

[Nanook]

...

There’s no functional reason for an empty chair. ...

Nonsense! When you sell a ship, do you leave the pilot in it? If not, you have an empty chair.

Also, when I park one of my personal ships, I Do Not want a pilot sitting in the chair. I may want to be able to immediately teleport into that ship and jump into the seat. I don't want to have to wait for the NPC pilot to vacate it first. If I need an NPC to fly my ship for some reason, I'll call up one of the onboard marines. So, empty chair, right?

[ahostofissues]

...

There’s no functional reason for an empty chair. ...

Nonsense! When you sell a ship, do you leave the pilot in it? If not, you have an empty chair.

Also, when I park one of my personal ships, I Do Not want a pilot sitting in the chair. I may want to be able to immediately teleport into that ship and jump into the seat. I don't want to have to wait for the NPC pilot to vacate it first. If I need an NPC to fly my ship for some reason, I'll call up one of the onboard marines. So, empty chair, right?

Ha ha! Yes, quite right. I bow to your superior wisdom.

It’s good to see that now we’ve descended into the “grasping at straws” portion of the analysis.

Because obviously the need to vacate the ship isn’t the feature, the feature is “I want an empty chair for 5 seconds before I sell the ship.” I see. Excellent.

And of course the effort needed for a pilot vacate the chair (which, mind you, is exacerbated by the mechanics of that process being incessantly obnoxious)… that 8 seconds could mean the difference between life and death in what you’re doing! Except the looong, slooow animation of takeoff. And then the need to fly somewhere. And the need for the wait for travel drive to spin up. So, yes, absolutely. I see the need for an empty chair here otherwise the “get up pilot” bit just absolutely ruins everything!

Good grief.

But I understand your post was in good fun, so thanks for some comic relief.

[jlehtone]

"Action heros" seem to leave the "save" to last second, (except in more "artistic" movies, where they do die). Is that a smart thing to do?

On another genre, War Thunder, it always takes time for a crew-member to replace incapacitated colleague. Alas, there that is a "designed feature".


Neither matters. What matters is that empty chair is a "feature" for some players. If you can add a new feature without affecting that existing feature, then please do.

[ahostofissues]

"Action heros" seem to leave the "save" to last second, (except in more "artistic" movies, where they do die). Is that a smart thing to do?

On another genre, War Thunder, it always takes time for a crew-member to replace incapacitated colleague. Alas, there that is a "designed feature".


Neither matters. What matters is that empty chair is a "feature" for some players. If you can add a new feature without affecting that existing feature, then please do.

It’s also a pain point for a significant number of people. That matters too. Matters a good deal, and I’d say a whole lot more than it mattering as a “feature” given the extremely limited applications/uses of the feature, and size of audience for it (a few people, role players, etc)… vs LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO PLAYS X4 who has to deal with the negative aspects of it.

Just because it’s a “feature” doesn’t mean it should exist if the downsides outweigh the benefit.

Every feature is a trade off of one sort or another. I’d say the consensus of people who care enough to chime in here is “I really, really hate this” (most) vs “well, it’s ok, it has some purpose” (a few). We’d have to poll then entire user base to draw any conclusion, as Internet forums tend to be self-selecting of people with axe to grind about something.

But saying it’s a “feature” doesn’t mean it’s automatically ok. It is, in fact, at minimum Very Questionable in terms of the balance of “benefit as a feature” vs “irritation/annoyance/rage as a UI fail”.

The socratatus comment I was originally replying to was calling someone out for being self-absorbed to the point where they only considered why they didn’t want the feature, his point being that just because that one person wanted it gone didn’t mean it was bad.

I’m saying that’s a bit hypocritical. It’s equally true that just because socratatus wants the feature, that doesn’t ipso facto mean it’s therefore justified to inflict it on everyone else.

Is it a feature? Yes. Do a few people want it? Yes.

Is it also a huge pain point and UI fail? Yes. Do many people hate it? Yes.

I haven’t heard anyone give any actual solid justification that for keeping it and inflicting it on everyone who has to use the UI.

Gods, I don’t even know why I’m arguing about this, honestly. Devs will do what they gonna do. They can read the comments here, decide for themselves where the appropriate balance on feature/annoyance spectrum lies. And they will. They already have, in fact, because it exists in the game. Maybe they’ll change their mind. Probably they won’t. They got some big problems, I’m not sure this even rises to the level of things they should actually be spending time working on. Some big problems in X4. This is a problem needing revisiting for a second look, but it’s far from X4’s biggest issue.

[Eyeklops]

Pressing a key twice is undeniably not as good as pressing it once and getting exactly the same functionality though, surely ?

Only if it is the same functionality, however in this case it isn't. One external view mode is relative to the ship, the other is relative to the sector with the ship in the centre of the screen (defaults to looking north & slightly down before adjustment). Find both modes useful. Latter mode particularly so during fleet battles, where I find that having an external view which defaults to a consistent orientation very useful for keeping track of where a particular object is & which direction it's moving in, in relation to everything else nearby.

Fully agree on the way F2 & F3 work. A double tap on a keyboard key is no big deal. Having to click an extra time with the mouse (which is what this thread is primarily about) = PITA tho. A bigger issue for me is the shift + middle mouse is awkward when in 3D rotation mode. Much rather have that mode rotate with left mouse and select objects with ctrl+left mouse.

[af_2017]

• First and most egregious, when getting into the pilots chair one has to click it twice.

No, because I might want the ship staying still without pilot control.
That's why there should be two options:
- take control (immediately sit to the chair), currently this takes two clicks and delay
- ask the captain to leave the chair without taking control; this happens currently after first click

[Rei Ayanami]

For me the main issue is not that I have to click twice, nor the delay, but more the inconvenience that I have to carefully realign the mouse cursor with being able to click on the seat, because once the pilot turns around to move the chair, the pilot is in the way and clicking then would result in me talking to the pilot instead, so I have to find a new spot to click on.

Perhaps CTRL+leftclick could immediately take control of the chair or automatically takes control of the chair as soon as the pilot gets up. For a more cinematic solution it could be CTRL+leftclick on chair, lock controls, pilot turns around, once pilot leaves chair automatically sit in chair and unlock controls.

[af_2017]

For me the main issue is not that I have to click twice, nor the delay, but more the inconvenience that I have to carefully realign the mouse cursor with being able to click on the seat, because once the pilot turns around to move the chair, the pilot is in the way and clicking then would result in me talking to the pilot instead, so I have to find a new spot to click on.

I feel sorry for suggesting this disgusting solution:
After first click I used to look down and move toward the chair (there are not many of clip testing so you can stay with the chair at the same place).
And there's always visible part of chair where I do second click to occupy the chair.
This way I used to avoid clicking npc captain.

But generally I do agree: good (UI) developers must always consider amount of clicks and tend to reduce them.

[ahostofissues]

• First and most egregious, when getting into the pilots chair one has to click it twice.

No, because I might want the ship staying still without pilot control.
That's why there should be two options:
- take control (immediately sit to the chair), currently this takes two clicks and delay
- ask the captain to leave the chair without taking control; this happens currently after first click

I don’t know how others feel, but I’d be 100% fine with this. The issue is the click target on second click: rotating chair, pilot moves to obscure most of the chair, etc. It’s the “dynamic situation making it harder to do second mouse click as intended, given that you have to shift around to hit the right target.”

Make it so 1-click on chair runs the whole thing, and add a dialog option for “get up”.

The cases where you’re trying to get into the chair often involve “take over because captain is being stupid, and I gotta fix this fast.”

The cases where you want to leave the chair open, it seems, rarely involve a need for making this happen fast.

But I think the issue from Egosoft’s side is that there’re are three actions, which are completely separate:

1. Tell pilot to give up, the first “activate” action.
2. Chair rotation and pilot-gets-up visual animation action.
3. Sit down in chair action.

I’m obviously uncertain as to whether it’s possible, without undue effort, for Egosoft devs to merge those three actions into one (fast action) and still leave 1+2 as a separately activate-able action.

They could obviously rip the whole implementation out and start over, but who knows if the work involved in that would be with it.

So given need to prioritize resources, I would advocate “just remove 1 and 2, make 3 — sit in the chair — the only action”.

There’s nothing you need to do in the game that requires an empty chair. There’s no game mechanic tied to it in any way. Remove the possibility of an empty chair entirely from the game, and your ability to play the game changes not at all. Nothing — nothing — in the game requires an empty chair as a prerequisite.

Empty chair is all about “I, the player, want to pretend that X”. Which, fine, I’m 100% ok with.

But if developers can only do one quick fix or nothing, that quick fix should be “eliminate the empty chair.” What we lose is in no way comparable to the benefit this would provide in UI.

[ahostofissues]

For me the main issue is not that I have to click twice, nor the delay, but more the inconvenience that I have to carefully realign the mouse cursor with being able to click on the seat, because once the pilot turns around to move the chair, the pilot is in the way and clicking then would result in me talking to the pilot instead, so I have to find a new spot to click on.

I feel sorry for suggesting this disgusting solution:
After first click I used to look down and move toward the chair (there are not many of clip testing so you can stay with the chair at the same place).
And there's always visible part of chair where I do second click to occupy the chair.
This way I used to avoid clicking npc captain.

My “solution”: look at the base of the chair, triple-click as fast as I can. 85% of the time this turns the whole thing into a single user action. But it involves slowing down, intentionally targeting one small specific thing, and still 15% of the time I end up in a conversation with the pilot… while my shields are being shredded, the ship I’m chasing is getting away, whatever (whatever Bad Thing my pilot is letting happen that I’m trying to boot him out of the chair so I can fix).

[Nanook]

...

So given need to prioritize resources, I would advocate “just remove 1 and 2, make 3 — sit in the chair — the only action”.

There’s nothing you need to do in the game that requires an empty chair. There’s no game mechanic tied to it in any way. Remove the possibility of an empty chair entirely from the game, and your ability to play the game changes not at all. Nothing — nothing — in the game requires an empty chair as a prerequisite. ...

You know, having a closed mind about how others play the game is not helping your cause. I've given a number of reasons for having an 'empty chair' and you've chosen to discount them because you don't play that way. I'm sure others have reasons, too. In your games, you may like to have an NPC pilot in every ship all the time, but I don't, for obvious reasons. Too many times I've gone for a spacewalk and had the NPC pilot jump into the seat and 'continue with previous orders', flying away leaving me stranded. It's the main reason that none of my ships not currently active do not have a pilot. Having to constantly check and remove past orders kinda negates the whole click saving thing.

And for the record, there's one very important instance where that empty chair is a prerequisite: during the HQ mission when Boso Ta tells you to make sure no one is in the ship that's about to explode.

[ahostofissues]

You know, having a closed mind about how others play the game is not helping your cause. I've given a number of reasons for having an 'empty chair' and you've chosen to discount them because you don't play that way. I'm sure others have reasons, too. In your games, you may like to have an NPC pilot in every ship all the time, but I don't, for obvious reasons. Too many times I've gone for a spacewalk and had the NPC pilot jump into the seat and 'continue with previous orders', flying away leaving me stranded. It's the main reason that none of my ships not currently active do not have a pilot. Having to constantly check and remove past orders kinda negates the whole click saving thing.

And for the record, there's one very important instance where that empty chair is a prerequisite: during the HQ mission when Boso Ta tells you to make sure no one is in the ship that's about to explode.

Re: emptying ship for Boso Ta: you think most players accomplish this by being in the ship, telling the pilot to work somewhere else, then leaving the ship in space suit, flying off to a second ship? Vs being in second ship, doing "get info" on target ship and using Crew tab to reassign the person? Or emptying the crew first, flying the ship yourself, and leaving by space suit? Two approaches that in no way involve chair behavior.

There are (at least) two alternate ways of accomplishing this that do not involve chair behavior at all. So it's hardly "needed".

I'm not dismissing that your "reasons" exist, technically. I'm dismissing their weight as serious assertions with regard to the issue at hand (the UI behavior problems).

Your “reasons”, so far as I can see, consist of:
1. Not blowing up a pilot in main plot point
2. Not selling a pilot with the ship
3. Wanting seat empty because… reasons? … when you park the ship.

# 1 is just comical. A one-time event, lasting 10 seconds, in a game that takes 100 hours or more to play. With two alternate ways to do it. Hardly compelling. Borderline not even serious. In another context I would have thought this a funny joke.

#2 is such a tiny little edge case… And you’re not even on the ship when you do it! You evacuate the ship, including yourself.

You're telling me that to prepare a ship for sale you need to be on the ship, initiate conversation with the captain, move him. Then go to the crew roster and promote another captain, so you can talk to him in the chair and move him, then go to the crew roster... I have trouble believing anyone empties a ship for sale by doing this. Again, giving the extremely limited nature of the "use case" here and the fact that this is much more easily accomplished by another mechanism, asserting this as a reason appears to hold little weight.

#3 is a personal preference. It has zero effect on game mechanics. None. You just prefer it for aesthetic reasons. Fine. Good for you. But it’s not a gameplay mechanic where you “need” an empty chair. (You think it's for gameplay reasons, but your "reason" here is that you're unwilling or unable to turn off the "abandon me in my spacesuit" behavior via game setting. You're in effect choosing to set your game to behave in the manner you find objectionable, then saying "but I have to be able to have an empty chair to avoid that!" I submit that instead what you really "need" is to make use of a game setting provided for exactly, specifically, this purpose.)

Again, every single player, every one, who plays X4 has to deal with the UI and control issues presented by the current operation of the chair. That issue exists, and is non-trivial.

If you’re presenting #1 - 3 above as in any way a serious counter for that fact then your brain just works differently then mine in some way that we are never going to get past and agree on.

Do people exist who have some sort of roleplay use for the chair? Yes. Are there ways of accomplishing "empty the chair for sale/destruction" that involve making use of the empty chair as a mechanic? Yes. You are right that they exist.

The question is do they matter? are they necessary? do they add value that justifies the UI pain point? You're right that I'm dismissing them because (a) they're extremely specific, limited in scope, use, and value, and (b) there are alternative mechanisms that work quite well and are easily available.

If it seems like I'm being dismissive of "how other people play" it's because no one who plays that way has chimed in to offer an "I need this because..." reason that holds any water. A few poeple feel like they want it. No one has come up with any reason why the need it.

Plenty of people have come up with reasons why they need the behavior to go away, foremost among them being the frustration of simply trying to operate the game mechanic the way it's intended.

So I'm not dismissing your reasons. I'm saying "I heard your reasons, I took a close look at them, and I'm having trouble believing you're serious about their actual value to most players." They're simply not compelling enough to merit being actual arguments for keeping the current UI behavior as a requirement for them to exist.

[Edits: heavily edited. My first version was way off-the-handle obnoxious and I apologize to anyone who read it. I was being even more of an ass than usual, and it was not called for. This version is still pretty agressive, but that's intentional.]

[ahostofissues]

In your games, you may like to have an NPC pilot in every ship all the time, but I don't, for obvious reasons. Too many times I've gone for a spacewalk and had the NPC pilot jump into the seat and 'continue with previous orders', flying away leaving me stranded. It's the main reason that none of my ships not currently active do not have a pilot. Having to constantly check and remove past orders kinda negates the whole click saving thing.

Uh… you DO realize there’s a game setting that controls this behavior, right? That you can turn it off…?

If you’re hanging your hat on this, then… Whew. Ok. I have to admit, I have no response. Other than to just stare at your text sort of dumbfounded. You got me. I’m flummoxed.

Maybe you started with X4 before the anti-stranding settings were introduced. Maybe you’re genuinely unaware that they exist. Gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that’s the case.