vector67 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2017 11:17 am
Looking over the suggested project interface, I would say that that is fairly intimidating for anyone not familiar with it. I think it's important to have fine control over individual projects and have an interface such as that available, but the card idea is a much better introductory game mechanic. The idea I'm thinking of here is that by default applying a card to an area creates a project in that zone and assigns it's inputs, processes and outputs based on the card you've put on that area. If you come back later you can modify either the card or the project itself. That way if you want super fine detail you can modify an individual project using a suitably involved interface, but if you want a simpler approach you can just use cards. I think what this comes down to is player motivations as mentioned earlier. Some players will be uninterested in managing projects, and so it would be nice to provide a simpler way to interact with projects that doesn't require a lot of learning in order to know how to use it.
Frankly, I agree. The project creation interface i showed should be a sort of middle ground interface. Which actually brings up an interesting idea i had as typing that sentence :p
There should be several levels of complexity and detail, perhaps a top level of "Cards" several dozen being pre-defined but also the ability to add your own from the lower levels. These are pretty simple and you just place a card on an asset or subordinate and it uses the pre-defined defaults. And you can also drag a card-asset/subordinate pairing into another project to connect them.
Behind the Card interface is a box and description layer like what i showed, it shows all current projects with their defined settings, where you can tweak them and get into more detail about the specifics, as well as create new ones either from card templates, or custom ones.
Behind That is a nitty gritty details interface which shows all the various tasks that can be assigned, the various dependencies and ability to connect them to different projects, organize them in custom hierarchies, each level having it's own details. so you could theoretically implement a whole sector-scale project with all the nitty gritty details on mining, infrastructure, defense, and whatnot all in a single project that you can execute at once, and basically order the full construction and expansion into a new region with just a few clicks.
Each level would be for more and more advanced players, but the front "cards" would just be a pre-defined selection from the stuff available in the interfaces behind it.
This would give simplicity on the surface, but extreme depth for those who want to micromanage.
Flatfingers wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2017 12:43 am
One of the things I thunked was that maybe there really are two key interfaces needed, and they don't necessarily have to be different conformations of the same visual system: 1) the New Project Editor, and 2) the Project Management Display.
What you've shown seems like a cut at a New Project Editor. That makes sense; that's what we were talking about.
But it seems to me that, as we're doing things in the game ourselves (rather than creating projects for NPCs), we'll want a visual representation of the projects that are active for our character and for our current role in the faction(s) to which we belong. With so many different kinds of things to be able to do, both at any moment and over time, I'm thinking players will absolutely have to have a screen that's dedicated to managing all active projects associated with their character.
The default view would show all current projects and their general status. If possible, it would also show their hierarchy (if JoshCo implement the "nested projects" notion). We should be able to filter on:
- all Projects/Tasks/sub-projects assigned to our character personally
- all Projects/Tasks/sub-projects assigned to any faction for which our character is the top-level leader
- all Projects/Tasks/sub-projects assigned to our character's subordinate role in a faction and all sub-roles managed (see below)
- Project category
- Project status
- Other Very Obvious Thing I Failed To Think Of
(The question occurs to me: should Projects and Tasks be assignable to characters only? Or should roles in a faction -- other than the CEO role -- exist independently of whether a character currently fills that role, and managers can assign Projects and Tasks to a
role as well as to individual characters?)
From the base Project Management screen, it should be possible to click on an individual project to drill down into it to see its details, in particular the satisfaction conditions and their specific statuses. Finally, each (sub-)Project and Task assigned to an NPC should also show that NPC's name (and maybe location? and current activity?), and allow clicking on that NPC's name to see specific details of assigned Tasks and their statuses. (This last part might actually need to be part of the Faction Management interface -- wouldn't suggesting some design features for that interface make an interesting new thread? hint, hint
)
Hmm, a project editor & project management, good idea. I agree with your filters, but i would also add a Map function to see where different projects are.. The map of projects having some quick info and more detailed, clickable, hover text. There should be filters for firepower, income, recent hostilities and combat, togglable alerts for different satisfactions and statuses.
The map should also show the delegation of who is controlling what projects at different levels... to see a sort of territory makeup within your territory of the higher ranking members and sub-factions... and a direct way to communicate with those npcs from the map.
Yes, i think there roles and projects should be independent of those filling it, except in the case where your subordinates created their own projects... because that would probably happen too, no?
Drilling into the details should definitely show some stats, such as the history of different aspects in both spreadsheet & graph forms, show who attacked you, when, and where from, and with what strength.
It should tell you how much is being freelanced, how much is done by controlled assets, and so on.
In regards to changing the conditions of a project, yes, i think that should be doable at any time. contracts which have already been outsourced are locked though, a contract is a contract, and for outside work, it should be a "going forward" sort of policy, while with owned assets, the changes are immediate.
And flat, that image of the nodal data editor, yes, yes, yes, and more yes. if we can get anything that looks like that, it will be amazing
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