Feature Requests (mostly QoL)

[Outliver]

Hey, everyone - and a late "happy new year". I hope, you're all doing well! I thought I would use the current beta phase as an opportunity to submit some feature requests I've been collecting while playing. Without knowing the intricacies of your engine too well, I think most of them (with few exceptions) should be fairly easy to implement in terms of bang for buck. Neither do I know the organization of your company, but I've organized the FRs in a way that I think makes sense. I know that the forums act as some sort of ticket system, but I didn't want to spam the forums by opening a new topic for each request. So, I hope it's fine to have them compiled in this fashion. Thank you guys for the amazing work you've done and for keeping this game alive and getting better and better still, even after all these years. Man, how time passes. Anyway, here are the requests:

UI

• Player transaction log - show the station's sector (at least in the tooltip)
• Logbook - "jump to ship" button for "pirate harassment"
• Com - in the pirate harassment com, show ship, sector, and commander
• Logical station overview - show the incoming ship's commander in the tooltip
• Terraforming - show available resources for projects, regardless of whether or not they've been started
• Object info - Is there personnel information available for space suits and pods?
• Build menu - In the build menu, we see how many resources are needed and how many are coming in. The information we need, however, is how many resources are still missing, meaning we have to do the math in our heads. It would really convenient if the game did that for us.
• Map - I still wish, there was a way to reset the map rotation without jumping to the player location (like in some much earlier version)
• Station editor - the auto-suggest for the search in the map is really nice. But now I want a search field in the station editor, too, to filter layouts.

Gameplay

• Ship order queue - a "notify when ready" checkbox in the ship orders to force the "awaiting orders" message.
• Subordinates - add a "recall group" option in the context menu of a subordinate group
• Subordinates - a way to manually limit the "max gate distance" for subordinate ships
• Ship behavior - it still happens: you land on your M ship with a fighter. You exit the fighter. The fighter goes off to some station (is it the last it's been docked to?). This behavior is just so annoying 95% of the time. Each time I teleport somewhere or enter a ship, I pause the game as quickly as I can to prevent the ship from doing anything stupid. G - R - wait - PAUSE - check - remove orders - give new orders. Maybe a checkbox in the ship's behavior page could do the trick?
• Ship default behavior - a way to automate the cutting of supply chains to certain stations. Example: a command (that requires a police scanner) that causes a ship to scan other ships within a region/radius and attack the target if it matches a list of factions and wares. NPCs can be pirate factions, why can't we?
• Logical station overview - a newly-built module must not cause manually-set buy or sell offers to change

Logic

• Ship overview/loadout - can "Do not change when default skin is changed" be set to true for captured ships by default? In addition to that, also perhaps generally via some sort of game setting?
• Map - a trade filter to show/hide trade offers from build storages
• Map - I get that queuing messages instead of immediately triggering them when the map is open was probably a quick fix to prevent the message box from popping up over the UI elements of the map. I also appreciate, that this solution was probably chosen to make it easier on newcomers who are not familiar with the logbook and all that. Unfortunately, for us heavy-map-users, this means that we're probably gonna miss important events and only notice them when it's too late. Can a different solution be found?

Miscellaneous

• Plots - show orientation (e.g. a pin for where "top" is). Both, a UI solution or just an edit of the cube mesh would be conceivable.
• Dock modules - Is it possible for the news on docks to actually display the news we see in the logbook? Or maybe just local ones (those of the system or nearest sectors) and those relevant to the faction that's owning the station. I know that this is probably a bit more involved, but I think it would really add to the overall immersion. Maybe something like this can help.
• Goggles - It's nice to have the goggles back. Makes sense with the customizable FOV, I guess. But, why not move the camera instead? That way, you wouldn't lose resolution (most noticeable with the backdrop).

[CBJ]

The forum rules for the Public Beta Feedback forum explicitly state that it is not for feature requests, so I've moved this to the main forum where these belong.

While I'm here, I will reiterate what I said in the last similar thread which is still on the front page of the main forum:

Just for reference, laundry lists of unrelated suggestions may be easier for you to write, but they make reading, tracking and understanding how popular each idea is pretty much impossible. They also tend to degenerate into wishlists for features that are anything but "small" QoL suggestions. Ideas are much more likely to be seen and followed by developers if they are posted in individual topic-specific threads.

[Outliver]

Damn, CBJ, you're fast - even on a frickin' weekend. Thanks for moving the topic, and sorry for posting it in the wrong forum. So, uhm, are you saying, I should delete this one and kinda "spam the forums" instead?

[CBJ]

It's up to you. I would suggest at least some broad categories, like "UI QoL improvements", and maybe looking for existing (fairly recent) threads for some of the more miscellaneous items. None of this guarantees anything, of course, but it does make it more likely that ideas will be seen and considered, even if there is no direct response from a developer.