After 200 hours, a explained bugfix and qol wishlist

[nolok]

Love the game, spent already two hundreds hours on it (my god ... I need to stop), a couple of improvements are needed but there are also some rather straightforward fixes that I hope we could get quickly that would be a massive upgrade

It's only "small" stuff, not in that they don't require work but in that it doesn't change the game nor affect multiple game systems

**Straight up bug fixes or things that are not intended**
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1. There is an option to show smaller sized items in list (Control Center List Sizing), it's independant of UI scaling and it works great, but it's not saved so I need to set it after each game relaunch ! So I have to re select it every single time. I play in 2560*1600, with "large UI" and "Smaller Lists".

2. We can zoom in the research screen, but it's not saved so again, have to redo it after each game relaunch.

3. Please force pause as long as the game menu, or any of its submenus, are open. Or at least, if pause is active, disable resume. The game should not resumed because I press space while I’m in the settings.

4. Mouse click-drag for moving main view is awesome. I love it. But it really shouldn’t lose our selection. Select a ship, click-drag to the target you want to send it to, and … Nope, unselected. That’s because the first click is automatically counted before detecting if it’s a drag or not. So sometimes it’s even worse, eg if you start your click drag by pressing over another ship or a moon or whatever by mistake at the end of the drag it’s that one that’s selected, so you might give orders to the wrong selection.

5. As long as you pause the game and keep trading multiple time without unpausing, you can trade the same super valuable special locations as many times as you want to the same empire. I assume they only consider it "seen" after a game tick passes or something.

**"Small and easy" changes that would really improve things**
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Things that I believe you already have behind the scene, it's just not exposed to the user with a button or label.

1. We need a "scap ship immediately" button like in DWU. Early game, explorer gets stuck in a ion nebula, cannot go further, cannot go out, and all I have is the "retire at shipyard" button that will never work since it can't leave, that ship is now trapped there forever while I pay maintenance.

2. We can see the trade amount we have with other empires, but not for independant colonies

3. We can see the resources other empires can provide us, but not the resource we can provide them

4. Can we please, for the love of god, get a “pop up events never auto pause” option like in DWU ? Yes, I know I can suppress popup, that’s not what I’m asking.

5. Pop up for base construction suggestion should really, really have a "show me where" button like some other popup. As-is we need to zoom out to see the system outline/highlight if we want to know where it is.
(when coupled with the "it suggests things so far out in enemy lines it's crazy" and "zoom is the main game crash factor for many", that's problematic)


**Some work needed but still small**
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Things that isn't in the game, but doesn't need completely new systems

1. Automation: "Construction: Ship & Base design": this should be 4 options Ship private, Ship state, Base state, Base private. At the very least separate State and Private. Yes, I know it's technically possible that to achieve it with picking the right "Auto Design" choice in the designer for each, but the global automation handling is so much better than DWU that I would love to see that wart removed.

2. Automation: "Exploration": we need an option for "Ignore asteroids". This one should be straightfoward as to why. Wouldn't be needed if change to exploration given below is done to fix it.

3. Automation: "Construction: Base Construction". Split mining base and monitoring stationg from the rest. Some suggests making an option for each base type and it would indeed better but I assume you don't want to clutter it too much. Just because I'm fine with the AI auto-building research and resort at every good location doesn't mean I also want it to pop mining base all over.

4. Automation: "Construction": we need an "only within borders" option, or something to stop it from suggesting building in some remote place behind an enemy empire.

5. Automation: "Construction": we need to be able to set the minimum % of resource before making a mining base, or alternatively the ability to tell it to ignore asteroids. I'm using "suggest" and I can't be the only one spammed about dozens of 5% steel asteroid. This is not fun, yet removing suggestion would not be good for the rest (especially since it would also remove resort/reserarch/... suggestions as-is).

6. Automation: "Military": we need an "Allow cross class retrofit" option. There is several type of class for each type, but right now they don't play well with the automation at all because it considers them all the same and only use the last one designed. Allowing a yes/no will let people keep the current system if they prefer its simplicity.
If someone want a cross hull retrofit they can still do it by hand on the ship retrofit menu itself (right now it's backward, to have the fleet we want we have to disable retrofit and then upgrade each by hand to their respective sub class).

7. Automation: "Troops": Garrison levels options should have a "none" option. It might already possible right now with an empty template assigned to the world ? But I'm not even sure.

8. I think you went the wrong way about patching asteroid scanning. What you need to do is: IF the ship has a resource scanner (the thing that scan everything in a circle around the ship) AND the ship is going to scan an asteroid, THEN it should move to 25% of the scanner max range before scanning (right now it does 100% of max range).
If you do that, you can even revert your previous asteroid survey time change. Asteroid field would be scanned in 3 scans at the most, and it would keep the resource scanner technology lines as a very important line different from the surveying scanner line.
"Important" asteroid with hidden stuff (there are a few by field) would still be surveyed the normal way, and it will be much more pleasant for the player while making sense balance wise, for a very small change.

9. Ship designer: right now the upgrade button will update every component automatically to their latest update. I think that's great. But could you allow me an option to disable that ? Two reasons: one, sometimes it's wrong (going from epsilon torperdoes to shockwave torpedoes while still only having early targetting techs ? your ship now does less damage). Two: the kind of people who like to use the ship designer are the kind of people who like to update a component and see the stat increase. I can't be the only people who do "edit" to see my old ships stats before doing "upgrade" to see how they change.


**More complex changes**
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I think this would require a lot more work to implement

1. Instead of having fleet templates have one row per ship class, you need a "+" button where the player can add/remove rows as he desires, and can have several row of the same ship type.
The current system would work great for DWU, but unlike DWU in DW2 ship type are not AI-behavior change but actual capabilities change, and they also have several sub class variants.
Therefore it makes a lot of sense to want a command cruiser AND a regular cruiser line, or two different cruiser design, etc ... In the same fleet design.


**Gameplay changes**
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Unlike the things above this is not something everyone would obviously agree on, but I truly believe it would be better

1. Peaceful Colonization should require us to have the first diplomacy tech for the species being taken over. Rodents are not integrating lizards into their empire peacefully just because they traded fuel, despite not understanding anything about their culture ... It would also avoid the sudden blobbing where most independant get swallowed one after another and keep them relevant longer in to the game.


Thank you for the great game !