BASPM 0.8.1 first impressions and sugestions

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Drewpan
Senior Corporal - Ju 87G
Senior Corporal - Ju 87G
Posts: 93
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2014 10:50 am

BASPM 0.8.1 first impressions and sugestions

Post by Drewpan »

Hi Guys,

I have been off the grid for a couple of weeks and so have not played for that time, but I am back now.

Am playing my first game of 0.8.1 and thought I would give some feedback.

The interface is very nice, very slick and much easier to navigate. The change to a slightly smaller font
has actually made the messages more readable.

I like the new ability of sorting staff members, although some "tool tips" would be nice because some of
the icons are small and not entirely self evident. I do like the interface and don't think you need to change
how it is, but a mouse over tool tip would fix the problem.

On staffing, there is sufficient room to put a short History under the Training Button. I think that having
something like "1956 Q3 Explorer Mission" or "1956 Q3 Advanced Propulsion" would be nice as occasionally
it isn't obvious what the staff member has just done and it would help to manage them better. There would
be room to put three lines in the white font directly under the Training Button.

I love the idea of continuous training, set a training target and forget. I would however like to see two minor
changes. Firstly, I know that there is a message across the top saying what is happening, but I would like to
see immediately after the value the target in parentheses, eg EVA 45.6% (75.0%)
This is just again a quick "look at" way of seeing what is going on for those people who are more "numbers"
people than "words" people. Some people just process data differently so making it more friendly to more
people can only make a great game better.

Secondly, there are times I might wish to pull a staff member out of training in a hurry when the training is
incomplete. I would like to see the current level of the skill displayed as a default instead of the pre-trained
skill. That would allow more rapid management instead of pulling the staff member out of training and
trying to guess what their skill level might be. To maybe discourage people from doing this, but give the
flexibility by allowing it, there could be some penalty for pulling staff out of training early. The way this could
work might be:

Lower the advancement rate per season slightly and when the training is finished, boost the total amount of
training by say 20%. Eg EVA Training for 2 seasons estimated advancement 30%,. After season one, instead
of the increase being 15%, make it only 12.5%, after season 2 increase the skill to 25% and then because the
training is finished add 5% to the total increase (20% of the training total) to make the total increase 30%.

Using this system, the end result should be the same, but there is a penalty for removing from training early.

Last initial thought for the game (I stopped mid game to post this message), I love the way the game displays
the tech increases of the hardware after each season. One thing I noticed however was that when a random
event affects the tech it is not really displayed in the history. Here is an idea to fix that.

Change the history bars colours to green for the tech levels (still readable and green means good). When an
event changes the tech level (random or catastrophic), overlay a red section over the green bar so that it
displays the actual tech level after the event, what the total tech level was, and the amount of decrease.
This only has to be done to the history bars, everything else works the same way.

Eg. X-15 has a previous tech level of 35%, a new season increases the tech level to 50% (wow - good research),
so the current histogram displays X-15 50%. I now move to the new season and a random event knocks down
the tech level 12%. When I complete this turn the next tech increase boosts to 48%. The histogram display
now shows season A) X-15 35% (all green), season B) X-15 50% (first 38% green, 38-50% red), and season C)
X-15 48% all green again. So at a glance I can see what my tech increases were AND there was an event.

Whilst writing this I have had a further thought that maybe a "good event" could display blue, a "bad event"
could display yellow and a "catastrophic event" could be displayed red. This would then tell the story at a
glance for those "visual' people.

Ok guys you are doing a great job. Hope this has helped.

Cheers!

Andrew (Drewpan)
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