RFE Better information with command center

[AaronGullickson]

I am going to use this issue to collect information on improvements that could be made to the command center introduced in 47.7 in order to better provide players with information without going back to the fugly space killing log on every page.

Scenario information

Scenarios are auto-generated in AtB. Currently, this information doesn't appear in the log, so players have to switch back and forth between briefing room and command center to check on mission status.

Possible solutions

I think there are two changes that would help here.

1. Include new generated AtB scenario information in the daily log report, which is probably something that should have already been happening.
2. Include a pending scenario panel in the command center. This will be useful for non-AtB campaigns as well. At a minimum, I think this would contain the name of the scenario, the current number of units deployed to the scenario and (maybe) a link to the briefing room tab with appropriate scenario. It might also be nice to include some buttons to manage the scenario, although this probably can't be all the buttons in the briefing room. But at least start game, join game, and resolve manually.

Overnight repairs

The last repair check panel in the repair bay gives info on each repair roll. However, if the player has scheduled jobs and wants to stay on the repair bay when advancing the day, they won't get information on the outcome of any scheduled jobs.

Possible solutions

We could keep a separate report of repair jobs and just display this on the last repair check panel when the day is advanced. The only problem is the size of this panel. We probably want to set a fixed size and then enable scrolling.

Personnel/Unit checking

Players may want to use the links in the log to go look at personnel/units based on some report about them. They then have to tab back to the command center. The examples we have are XP gained and family events (e.g. marriage) but another case might be maintenance checks.

Possible solutions

This is a harder one to tackle, but I don't think the issue is as problematic as other ones. Units that are damaged from maintenance checks will show up in the repair bay so there is already information there. The XP one is a potential issue as players might want to check to see which personnel are now eligible to purchase skills and abilities.

One way we could address this is by putting some indicator on the personnel/unit pages for recent changes to certain fields. We could for example put a (+1) in the XP field for personnel that have recently gained experience and have that last for some duration. We could even make this sortable so players can quickly find all the personnel who have recently gained XP. I recommend we try this out with the XP field and if it works we can consider other fields in units/personnel that could get the same treatment.

Update: Apparently this is an issue for new prisoners as well. Putting a date of "joining" in the personnel field would solve this problem as players can then sort on prisoners and filter on date of joining.

Other changes

Re-enable the detached daily log panel

We can re-enable the ability to use the daily log panel as a detached window for those who really want it always around.

Better color changing for command center tab

Currently the command center tab changes color every day because the date shows up on the report if nothing else. Furthermore if the user is in the repair bay and makes a repair they get a color change even though they can see what was changed. More intelligent alerting would be useful here.

A news ticker

We could use the middle top space to put up a news ticker with "Recent News" and news items will show up there. I have been wanting to do something like that for awhile now anyway.

[NickAragua]

I still think it'd still be useful to give the user the option of keeping that daily log panel detached. There's just a lot of stuff that happens on there, and it's going to be a lot of work and extra UI elements across multiple tabs to account for all the info that people might need to keep an eye on while in another tab (e.g. news articles, wanting to watch your ship(s) move across the star/planetary map, action on any theoretical new tabs that may or may not be introduced in the future).

[AaronGullickson]

It should not be difficult to re-enable it.

[molemanBT]

I would absolutely love a news ticker that shows wars, planets changing hands etc

[gsparks3]

I can confirm that one of the things I would most like on the Command Center (that is not currently present) is a list of pending scenarios, so that I can see what's coming up and when at a glance. Right now, with multiple subcontracts active, you have to go to the Briefing Room tab and manually switch between all of your active contracts to check, which is much more annoying and unwieldy. Having the Command Center display hotlink to the Briefing Room description of the respective scenarios would probably be most efficient, although other buttons might be useful.

[mjbroekman]

Can the information from the 'overnight' (i.e. automatic/continued repairs) actions be sorted by type of activity as well? It's frustrating to scroll through trying to look for refit entries intermixed with repair entries or mothballing or activation entries. It would be exceeding helpful to have them grouped together:

Overnight:
Scenario Data:
...
...

XP Report:
...
...

Repair / Salvage:
...
...

Refits:
...
...

Mothball /Activations:
...
...

Procurement:
...
...

Current Day: