Dev Diary #104 - Quality of Life improvements in 1.6
Hello and welcome to this Dev Diary that will mainly focus on the Quality of Life improvements we will add to the game with 1.6. The improvements for this update are mainly focused on three areas: Diplomacy, the Outliner and the Census Data panel, with some additional bug fixes and improvements sprinkled on top.
[h2]Diplomacy[/h2]
The “Start Diplomatic Play” popup has gotten an overhaul that should make it much easier to get an idea of how likely any Country is to side for or against you. The “Relative Preference for Country” tooltip has also been polished up. It now gives you more information on the first level of the tooltip, which in turn should make it clearer which factors go into the AI’s decision making process.
The tooltip for a Country has gotten completely reworked to include better contextual information, more data and clearer information hierarchy.
The Country details panel has gotten a slight tweak to the layout, which makes it possible to see both the Country’s Attitude towards you, and their current Strategies at a glance. Since these factors are important in the AI’s decision making process, having them more easily accessible should help make a Country’s behavior more comprehensible.
The Diplomacy Map Mode has gotten a new Map Marker that shows any ongoing Pacts you have with that Country, their Attitude towards you and Relations (+ any eventual rate of change)
Diplomatic Pacts have been reworked to more clearly state what could cause them to break. This change is also reflected in the “Pact has broken” Notifications, making them easier to understand.
[h2]Outliner rework[/h2]
The Outliner now has tabs (Pinned / Economy / Politics / Diplomacy / Military / All). Most Outliner items also had a design pass, and most of them now show some additional information. We have also added a new Outliner item for Countries, showing their Rank, Attitude towards you and Relations.
In addition to these changes, you are now able to unpin Political Movements, Diplomatic Plays etc, giving you more control over what is shown in the Outliner. We have also added an option to move the Notification feed to the left of the Outliner, similar to what Nugget’s mod “Notifications not over Outliner” does.
Notifications are now color-coded to give you more information at a glance.
[h2]The Census Data panel, formerly known as The Pop Browser[/h2]
In the previous Dev Diary we introduced the Pop Browser (which has been renamed to the “Census Data” panel, based on a suggestion by forum user Buladelu). Since then we have also added Literacy, Job Satisfaction and Needs as columns in a second “page” in the spreadsheet. The common suggestion of visualization of Interest Group membership sadly had to be postponed to a later date due to implementation difficulties and performance concerns. You can of course still see which pops are part of an Interest Group through the Population tab and on the relevant Interest Group details panels, like before. For upcoming updates we are looking at the feasibility of implementing similar screens for other central types of data, with Buildings, States, Countries, and Goods currently being in the very earliest stages of planning.
Showing columns for Radicals, Loyalists, Standard of Living, Political Strength and Interest Groups
Showing columns for Literacy, Job Satisfaction and Needs[h2]Misc improvements[/h2]
Scroll positions within the left-side panels are now saved and restored when opening/closing or navigating between panels, which results in less unnecessary scrolling.
Input Goods Shortage Map Markers are now collected per State on mid zoom level, similar to Construction, reducing the overall map clutter
An “Upgrade All” button has been added, both for Upgrading all Formations in your Country, and for Upgrading all Units within a particular Unit Group in a Formation
The Employment Indicator has gotten a reworked tooltip that more clearly explains why a Building is able to hire or not.
The way we display Qualifications has also received some significant changes. Previously, we would display all Qualifications for a particular profession in the State Panel, regardless of whether the Pops that held those Qualifications actually had any real chance of becoming that Profession. For example, your Capitalists might very well have tons of Machinist qualifications, but it’s not too likely that they are going to quit their jobs and make the switch from factory owner to factory worker. Adding to this confusion, the ‘Insufficient Qualifications’ warning when constructing a building or changing a PM would only look at Qualifications among Peasants and the Unemployed, meaning its predictions would often not play out that way in practice.
In 1.6, we now always show something we call ‘Employable Qualifications’, which is Qualifications held by Pops that are reasonably able to take a job, defined by meeting the following criteria:
- Isn't already the relevant pop type
- Is unemployed or a jobseeker
- Is not enslaved
- Isn't working in a government building or subsidized building
- If employed, wouldn't consider the change in pop type to be a downgrade (ie, Aristocrat qualifications for Farmers aren't likely to be considered - based on wage weight and how well their current workplace is paying)
What this means is that when you get a warning for a building that’s to be constructed not having enough Qualifications to fill, that warning can actually be trusted, and you’ll have a much easier time determining which Professions are a bottleneck for your industrialization efforts.
The tooltip for changing Production Methods now has much more accurate predictions as it now takes more factors into account than before (Employment changes, Throughput, State Traits among others), plus had a few bugs fixed.
The Construction Interaction now has two modes for the list items: “Condensed” (which is what is currently in game in 1.5) and the new “Full” mode, which has additional information like State Traits, Employment, Production Methods and Local Prices for Input and Output Goods.
The Transfer Units panel has gotten some extra functionality compared to what is currently available in 1.5 based on many requests from our players. First and foremost, you can now with one quick button press move all or half of the Units and Commanders over to the other side. You may of course want to be more detailed when setting up your transfers, something we now provide additional tools for, namely:
- Text input box (write the number you want immediately)
- Slider + Arrow buttons (slide the number to whatever you need it to be)
- A list of all individual Units (if you want to be really nitty gritty and select/deselect individual units)
We want to have most lists sortable and/or filterable by suitable factors in our game, which is becoming more and more of a standard for us to help you find the exact thing you want especially in lists with more than 10 entries. In the Transfer Unit window we have included a filter for you to get the Units from a specific State in the selected Formation.
During one of our Personal Development Time days we finally made a working prototype for what has internally been referred to as the Holy Grail of Tooltips UX: Tables in Tooltips. This implementation is only used in two places as of 1.6, but we’ll most likely start using these more often in the future, as they make it much easier to present certain types of information with greater clarity.
[h2]Closing thoughts[/h2]
Working on the Quality of Life improvements for 1.6 has been both really fun and rewarding, as it includes some improvements with a high positive impact on the overall UX of the game. The high point for me was either finally seeing the Census Data panel take shape (after having been one of those features that we have had scheduled for “the next patch” for a very long time) or solving how to move the Start Diplomatic Play predictions out from the tooltips into the popup panel.
That’s it for this week! In two weeks Alex will discuss the upcoming changes to the migration mechanics and their impact on game performance.
