SMAC2 Wish List

[Impaler[WrG]]

Hello everyone first off let me introduce myself, I Play SMAC original but have not tried any other Civ game yet but was taking a look at Civ3 latly, from what I have been reading on this bouard Civ3 is a major let down. Yet some of the ideas in Civ3 sound realy cool to me. That got me thinking about what an amazingly great game could be created by adding elements from Civ 3 into a hypethetical SMAC2. I started puting together a list, so tell me what ya think and add some ideas of your own.

Major Civ3 stuff

Citizens that resist in captured citys
Strategic and Luxury Resorces but implemented more realisticaly (I like the idea that this will prevent 1 faction from running away with the game once they are on top cause at some later point they will likly be short a critical resorce)
War Economy incressed minerals but no Civilian improvments
Conscription turning Population into military units
Forced Labor turning Population into minerals, the quantity of minerlas could depend on your Police Rating.
Central Unit support using Energy Reserves
Culture Points, sound fun but I have heard complaints about the city stealing perhaps better balancing of that feature
Merging Colony Pods into Citys, this would be very helpfull
Simpler Units, keep some flexibity, but in SMAC unit design is just too complicated and tedious.
Abandoning City, turns Population into Colony Pods and recycles all buildings.
Unique Faction Citizen Faces (for emershion)
And ofcorse borrow Secret Projects

Here are some Ideas of my own

Unique Specialist for each faction that do cool things Example... Gian Acolyte +1 Econ, +2Labs, +2Pych and -1 ecological Damage or Morgan Nano-Industrialist +3 Econ, +2Labs and +10% Econ at base. These would be rather high up the tec tree ofcorse.

Explore/Claim territory, after you have explred territory you can claim it just by clicking, then you can trade these claims in diplomacy, territorial boundry would not be incressed by building citys close to the enemy or by culture like in Civ 3. Fighting could ofcorse start up when 2 factions claim the same territory, and then the losser is forced to relinquish their claim.

Some kind of restriction on how many specialist a city can have, it dosen't seam realistic to make Drone into an empath, perhaps only Talents being able to become specialits.

Graphs that can show you specific things like population, energy reserves, tec output so you can compare your self to your enemys over time.

Driving out Forigners when you capture a city or if culture is turning your people traitorus you can get rid of the offending drones by kicking them out, they turn into a colony Pod and are returned to their civs territory, this would cause much less striff then killing them but ofcorse gives the enemy an advantage.

Buttons on the City Resorces manager that will maximize each of the 3 resorces colected, click once maxes with out creating a deficit in any other area, click again and it REAL maxes it out, click a third time and it returns to original state.

Ability to set Bases to contribute to Secret Projects in other bases, rather then building crawlers and disbanding them lets just simplify the whole thing and make it automatic.

Have talents resist Mind Control attempts, If your in Golden Age then your imune.

In the City production list show how much energy is coming from various sources such as space, Trade, Harvest. Also in the Energy usage bars show the breakdown from specialst and the net % multiplier, that would be handy

Monoliths in the Water, ofcorse they would have a different name and shape but do the same thing

Remove elevation changing, just not realistic to incresse the elevation of an area the size of texas by a Kilometer.

When you go to set someting in the Production Querry its a pain to scrolll for a half minute cause theirs a half million units and buildings avalible. Insted you should get a number of Group buttons that then open up into small managable lists that will always fit on the screen without scrolling, Probly 18 with catagorys like Infantry, Navel, Air, Covert, Formers ect ect. For Base facilitys catagorys like Civilian (the happy buildings), Economic, Industrial, Tecnological, Military. No more scrolling and everything is only 2 clicks away.

Well that shure was a long list, tell me if you like-dislike this stuff. I will come up with some ideas for new wonders and stuff like that in a future post.

[BustaMike]

You have some decent ideas... I like the faction specific specialists and the driving out population (happens automatically with aliens, but would be a cool option for all).

A couple things...

Citizens do resist in SMAC (kind of), when you take a city you get more drones (resistors) for a few turns.

You can merge colony pods into cities up to size 7 I think, maybe higher I don't remember.

You can put monoliths in water with the editor or you can even sink them in a game and they stay (ever nuked the ruins?)


My one request for SMAC 2 is that BRIAN REYNOLDS is in charge of making it. To quote jimmytrick in some other thread somewhere around here "don't let those hacks at firaxis touch SMAC" or something like that.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Oh yea I know that you can PUT a monolith in the water with the editor, but they don't apear their naturaly in a randomly generated map. That is what I am hoping for. I never nuked the Ruins but I will now

As for the extra drones in captured citys, I find that on highest difficulty levels it dose almost nothing because their is an incresse of only about 1 drone. In the captured city everyone is a Drone rather then every person after the first in your own citys. One Empath and BAM resistence quelled.

I am invisoning that the people retain citizenship and all forign citizens would be drones, but I can't think of a way to balance it and make captured citys REALY resist significantly more then your own people constantly are. The forign citizens need to cause more trouble I think.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Humm how about droping thouse aliens as playable factions, insted they could be a kind of Barbarian that are their to just harrase humans. Kind of like worms but sligtly more intelegent. They wouldn't terraform or do much of anything except make new bases, make nasty units and demand energy credits from you in exchange for peace (witch they would eventualy break anyway like Yang dose). Your options are A-wipe them out B- Pay them off and live with them.

Their citys would apear randomly on planet as they are constantly landing, so they can never be eliminated perminently. The citys would grow in population at some predetermined rate thats uneffected by terrain (cause they dont "work" the land). As the city gets bigger they produce more powerfull battle Ogree things and more offten. The aliens would only have about 8 diffent units in their army all of them like the Ogre things that are realy mean but cant be repaired. As the game progresses the aliens will start making more advanced units like Sea Ogree's and flying Ogree attack planes so they remain a threat.

Their citys would be hard to destroy (free perimiter defence but it dosn't apear graphicaly) if the city is entered by human troops its wiped out completly. Sometimes when their units die or especialy when their citys are destryed you could find an alien artifact. The Aliens would still conduct diplomacy with you but they wouldn't trade tecs, they would only want your EC. They would hate all humans ofcorse, but possibly be designed to attack factions that have more territory or tec, unlike worms they arn't triggered by eco-damage and dont care about SE choices.

[Chaunk]

I think you need to head over to the FreeAC forums, http://www.freeac.org/ and give them your ideas. SMAC2 will to my mind, be appalling, and I doubt I'll be buying it even if it does appear for the same reasons I'm not buying civ3.

Good idea's though. Really like that aliens one especially. Keep 'em coming!

[RedFred]

My first wish is that more than a month would pass before a new thread on this particular topic pops up.

My second wish is that people would at least understand SMAC before trying to fix it. If you haven't played Civ3, I suggest playing it first before trying to incorporate some ideas from a bad game into a good one.

Citizens that resist in captured citys
- already receive higher drones and lower subversion costs

Strategic and Luxury Resorces but implemented more realisticaly (I like the idea that this will prevent 1 faction from running away with the game once they are on top cause at some later point they will likly be short a critical resorce)

- this is supposed to be in the future. Alternative materials should be reasonably substitutable. The diamond icon represents all types of minerals, not one particular type. So in my view there is nothing unrealistic about this.
- SMAC already has lots of play balancing aspects to keep someone from running away from the game. As number one, your research rate will suffer and your diplomacy will suffer.

War Economy incressed minerals but no Civilian improvments

- again already implemented. See social engineering. Moving to either Planned or Power is analagous to moving to a war footing.

Conscription turning Population into military units

- this is the future. Conscription is not likely to result in a more effective military. Highly trained military specialists and high tech military hardware is likely to win wars, not untrained civilians.

Forced Labor turning Population into minerals, the quantity of minerlas could depend on your Police Rating.

- see social engineering. Don't look at Police rating, look at Industry rating.

Central Unit support using Energy Reserves

- not sure what this means. Or why it is a good idea.

Culture Points, sound fun but I have heard complaints about the city stealing perhaps better balancing of that feature

- this could be the single biggest reason why Civ3 sucks.

Merging Colony Pods into Citys, this would be very helpfull

- you can already do this.

Simpler Units, keep some flexibity, but in SMAC unit design is just too complicated and tedious.

- if you want a dumbed down Civ style game, may I recommend CtP.

Abandoning City, turns Population into Colony Pods and recycles all buildings.

- you can already sell off base improvements. You can already build colony pods from the last unit of population at some difficulty levels of the game.

Unique Faction Citizen Faces (for emershion)

- I can't argue with unique faction faces. I have no clue what emershion is.

And ofcorse borrow Secret Projects

- I am sorry to be the contrarian, but I like unique SPs as they are now.


Some of your own ideas were better ones. I liked the unique specialist per faction. BTW, you can currently have monoliths in water less than 1000 m. deep. You can do it by sinking land monoliths, it is handy for naval upgrades.

Sorry to be so critical, but in my view making SMAC more like Civ3 would be a huge step backwards and not in any way an improvement on the game.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Impaler,

Been meaning to respond to your thread for awhile now. In most respects I agree with Unca Reds comments. Elements of Civ3 into SMAC would be problematic at best. I like the thoroughness of your comments and some very cool ideas such as Faction specific specialists.

By the by Bustamike indicates colony pods can be added back. (matter of fact you can add pods back indefinitely in SMAC and in doing so can avoid building a Hab complex or Hab Dome.)

I really think any attempts to marry the two games (CIV3 and SMAC) would just dilute/destroy the masterpiece (Guess which one I consider the masterpiece .)

So.... Culture IMO is a big no no for SMAC or SMAC like games
Strategic Resources may have some value but not in the form presented by CIV3.

IMHO the biggest things they would need to do in order to make a good sequel to SMAC(X) is fix the unbalanced air combat system.

I would suggest considering all air units arty. Arty rules should be reworked such that they are a one round combat only and can indeed kill any units in the open. (Bunkers and Bases units can be injured to 20% health)

Nerve gas. Eliminate it or tone it down significantly.

Introduce a tactical combat zoom in screen ala MOO2.

Finally make sure it is BRAC. Don't even consider letting anyone but Brian Reynolds near the project. SMAC was a Brian Reynolds masterpiece. Left to the hands of what is now Firaxis we would no doubt be sorely disappointed as the folks there would give us AC-lite. So BigHugeGames, after your done with your RTS game please, please, please consider a TBS game in the flavor of SMAC with your own unfettered genius at work.

Seriously though great first set of posts. Even though I don't necessarily agree with them keep the ideas flowing.

Og

[~OmegaRed~]

Now I have read all of the posts to this thread, and I do agree on some points, and disagree on others.
I have played all of the civs, 1, 2, 3, CTP, CTP2, SMAC, SMAX, etc, etc, etc. I think I'm at least somewhat qualified in my opinions.

First, the comments about Brian Reynolds, are COMPLETELY CORRECT. This is totally his masterpiece and Firaxis better not F*** up SMAC2.
Now onto gameplay,
The Secret Projects are fine, I agree that a few are overpowered (Cloud Base Academy) but in general I think that they're balanced well. The Hunter Seeker Algorithm is totally useless in SMAX, I think they need to restore it to its full strength (ie. SMAC) but perhaps extend its protection to cities only, and not individual units.

The Unit Design feature is perhaps the coolest thing about SMAC/X they should definitely leave that in. Also, the fact that you can upgrade an entire class of units at once is ever so useful. It is wonderful that i can create a heavily armored bomber unit, perhaps on a tank chasis, and a lightly armored unit that solely captures cities.

As for Atrocities, leave them in, this is the future and the leaders are (suposedly) ruthless, but perhaps come defense against Nerve Gas, and a weaker planetbuster, but by no means should they remove Nerve Stapling.

The Culture system of Civ3 should be integrated in some form, I'm not exactly sure how, but I like the principle. When a city is taken over, the number of drones should definitely increase by more than 1 or 2, and perhaps a revolting citizen or two would be an interesting twist.

Strategic/Luxury resources are a good idea, not the same ones as civ3 because satlpeter would not be viable in the future, but perhaps silksteel or something.

Finally, Central Unit Support is wonderful, I think it is much more realistic than support by city. Simply because a marine is trained @ MCRD in San Diego doesnt mean that the San Diegans supoort him while he's in Afghanistan.

That's my rant.
OR

[Capt Dizle]

How can you reconcile leaving nerve stapling in and adding culture. Culture on Chiron, please give me a break. The events on Chiron encompass a few hundred years, not six thousand.

I literally despise culture.

I could go for centralized support.

Strategic and luxury resources is not a good concept for SMAC. There is no need for it, the gameplay is great, light years ahead of Civ3. The game only needs tweaking. Less would be more, as is, SMAC is wonderful.

Odds are 10-1 that a sequel to this game would be a step backwards. If made by Firaxis the odds are 100-1. If designed by the Civ3 team, there would be no calcuable statistical possibility that SMAC2 would be as good as the original. One billion to one odds would be too short, cause those guys are totally clueless.

IMHO.

[Dcole78]

agree that ac is light years ahead of any other civ game but for a major reason that hasn't been mentioned here. It has PLOT!!! Do you remember the first time you heard deridre claim something was controling the fungus or you figured out the planet was almost conscious? This was an absolutely incredible addition that makes the game light years ahead of any other civ type game. Also being able to design units is most definitly one of the best features it increases the strategy ten-fold oh and in a world where we can colonize another planet raising an area the size of texas by one kilometer is easy!

just my 2cents.

[Method]

Originally posted by RedFred
Central Unit support using Energy Reserves

- not sure what this means. Or why it is a good idea.

this is where each unit costs a certain amount of energy per turn, not minerals per turn taken off a base's production.

from civ3, in despotism each city supports 4 units per turn, monarchy cities under size 6 support 2, 6-12 support 4, above 12, 6 per turn, republic you have to pay for all your units.

so in despotism if you have 5 cities, you can support 20 units for free. every unit you have above 20 costs 1 gold(or energy) per turn.

personally i like this idea. one thing i noticed really soon after i came back (from, oh, shall i say, the dark side ) to SMAC was base specific unit support which costs minerals.

[RedFred]

Thanks for explaining, TKG.

In that case, the concept is not unreasonable. Perhaps it would be appropriate that military units should have both energy and materials maintenance costs.

However, such a change would, at best, only have an extremely minor impact in my enjoyment of the game.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Yep thats what I was refering too, suporting units with Energy Credits that come out of your Central EC Reserves insted of minerals.

Also it would make sense that different units would take differnt amounts of support, say a scout patrol might be 1 energy per turn but your AirCraft Carrier is going to cost 20 per turn.

Your Support rating on the social enginering would have to be totaly re-done, like making it a flat % reduction of all your total support costs, simmilar to how research and industry work. So say your supprt costs are -30% of normal you would pay 70 credits a turn when your oponent with an identical military pays 100 credits. Now if you introduce the ability to put your military on Reserve, units could be on reserve only in bases and would then have their support costs cut in half, the down side is it takes a few turns to "mobilize" the unit before it can attack (unmobalized defenders sufferse a -100% penalty). So if you take your usaly 70 EC military and put it all on reserve it cost only 35 a turn to support.

This would greatly change the tactics involved in supporting a large military, currently you can support a lot of troops by having many small bases, under centralized support you need to generate more Energy Credits witch is easier to do in a smaller group of large citys because 1. They will be closer to your HQ and 2. Econ facilitys will be more cost effective.

[SirVincealot]

Centralized military support = absolutely. Moving units from overburdened cities is an absolute pain.

Culture = how? There is NO WAY Peacekeepers would turn their whole city over to the Spartans! Maybe -some- citizens might defect if you run your faction against type (play the Gaians as a Police State, say). Very tough to pull of.

Plot = definately. One of SMAC's brilliant ideas.

Strategic ressources = terrible idea, awful implementation: the concept behind culture was to force players to build a tighter civ (already a noxious concept), now we are FORCED to build bases at all four corners of the map (colonies don't work across the sea), causing the very fragmentation culture was purportedly against and sending inefficiency through the roof. Furthermore, the other Civs play the ressource card like pr!cks (I had to "buy" oil from the Babylonians at a cost of 2000[!] gold, when they had THREE wells and were still living in the dark ages - they probably didn't even KNOW what crude oil was!) and the stuff disappears randomly (may last 50 turns, may last 4). Disgusting.

Better/more graphs = yes. Greater feedback always appreciated in a 4x game.

Faction specific specialist = tasty

Centralized Secret Projects = denied. Leave my Secret Projects alone! You can steal them from captured cities, that's cool, just let me know which city built what and I'll capture THAT one: adds some strategy to conquering war effort, might be nice.

Simpler unit workshop = nope. That's one of SMAC's greatest assets.

Brian Reynolds = not too phucking likely: one of many, very specific clauses in his departure contract was to NOT make turn-based games. This clause in effect for a number of years; this is standard corporate practice.

VERY LITTLE in SMAC needs "fixing" or "bettering" If it ain't broken, leave it darn well alone

Regards,
SirVincealot

[Chowlett]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
... the down side is it takes a few turns to "mobilize" the unit before it can attack (unmobalized defenders sufferse a -100% penalty).

-100%? That means they have no strength whatsoever. Perhaps you meant -50% - half-strength?

[MariOne]

Originally posted by SirVincealot
VERY LITTLE in SMAC needs "fixing" or "bettering"

...except, maybe, its million bugs, design flaws, loopholes?

OTOH, if SMAC were perfect, we'd probably have to forsake our real lives as playing it would complete and fulfill us as cosmic beings....

[Capt Dizle]

LMAO!

Well, Mario, you should be more specific and list the whole million!

Seriously, as tough as we have been on Firaxis about the shortcomings of SMAC in the past, Civ3 has taught me to appreciate what Brian gave us.

[RedFred]

The bugs and flaws in SMAC become all that more noticable because the game is endlessly replayable.

I too, was hard on Firaxis in the past over SMAC, partly because they have no clue about PR. Leaving aside an inflammatory interview or two, their attitude towards patches has incurred the wrath of many a gamer. More progressive companies actively work with the gaming community to resolve problems.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Well if you think about it many of the secret projects are not "big buildings" like in all previous Civ games. Logicaly an invading army can capture the pyrimids if they take over the city its in. But how to you steal the Citizens Defence Force? or the Longevity Vacine? or the Empath Guild (all the empaths could evacuate the city). Some Projects (particulary the one that effect all your citys) just don't sound to me like they are "in" one location. Thouse projects would be unstealable and would be destroyed only when the whole faction dies.

Others most definatly are in a single location like the Merchant Exchange or the Space elivator, or the Super Colidor. They either effect only 1 city or they are a real physical "building". Ofcorse that might not be good for game play and it would be real anoying to remember witch projects were in a single city and witch were universal and etherial.

But thats not actualy what I ment, I was refering to how you can build crawlers in 1 city and imediatly send the crawlers to a second city that is building a project and continual cash the crawlers in. The net effect is that that particular city is sending all its minerals towards the construction of a project in another city. So lets just have an option that apears in the production list of all your citys after 1 city has started building the project. The option would be listed as "Contribute too such and such SP in City X" and all the minerals are sent their without all the hassle of making crawlers and cashing them everyturn. Before you have Industrial Automation their would be 50% waste involved in the transfer, after IA the waste disapears. So this new option dosen't actually change much of anything it would just stream line the process of SP building.

On a side note I would greatly incresse the mineral cost of most mid and late game SP, the early ones are good cause they take a good long time to make, but in the mid and especialy late game SP are gobbled up in a few turns.

[Mongoose]

I don't like it. The current system permits an opponent/enemy some opportunity of interdiction or disruption of the convoy. What you suggest would be unassailable. As a general rule, I think it is a BAD THING when a game provides resources to a player that are out of reach of other players and subsequently not liable to attack.

Similarly, some system of interdicting enemy commerce should be put in place. Not sure how to do that, myself.

[Impaler[WrG]]

You could always destroy the terrain improvments such as mines and BoreHoles or sabotage Mineral bosting facilites with Probe teams. Also late in the game you usaly have Mag tubes connecting your large citys so the Cawler moves instantly from your city ware it was made to the destination city so the supply Crawler never even EXISTS durring the enemy turn.

[Impaler[WrG]]

How about every military unit except probe teams you have next to an enemy city reduces its comerce income by 1/3?

[Kataphraktoi]

How about every military unit except probe teams you have next to an enemy city reduces its comerce income by 1/3?

i sure dont see how that would make the game more fun...

[jimbob]

my wish list:

A better looking map. smax is a great game, kind of ugly to look at though sometimes.

Leave resources (oil, rubber etc.) for future civ games, leave smac out of it. Stick with the simple concept of energy, food and minerals. One less thing I got to worry about when I'm woopin on somebody (or when somebody is woopin on me).

I love to see the concept where roads enhance the terrain in some way.

One thing that bugs me about smax is I can't just contact a faction and say "Yo, Morgan .. I'm declaring war on you because you are a money hungry freak that's going to declare war on me eventually anyway". Be nice to just declare war.

Wouldn't mind seeing more types of alien life forms.

I wish for an ai that's not extremely retarded. I just love it when I see "The Hive" put 30 airplanes in this ONE base with ONE defender. 3 helicopters later, so much for his airforce.

I wish for a bug free game (ya right, that will happen).

I hope they don't change around the game to much, I do dig playing smax.

[Jac de Molay]

Yes more alien life forms definitely, as well as more natural features across the whole biological spectrum. Natural terraforming options besides just fungus. I loved the idea of Planet as a living, breathing, ecosystem.; now take it further.

Dave

[Straybow]

SMAC "perfect?" You gotta be kidding: an energy economy? Look, they've got portable reactors that soldiers can carry in battle. A technology capable of that can basically make as much energy as they want, wherever needed.

C'mon, "Energy Bank?" I believe that's what we call a battery. You can get a free one every month from Radio Shack. I suppose a more sophisticated system of "banking" energy would also use capacitors. Ooo, another high tech item.

What exactly are these little balls of energy, floating, yet immovable, scattered about the terrain? "I hope that thing is 110V-60 cycle, otherwise I can't plug my cellphone recharger into it."

---

Assuming that a complete rewrite of the economy and terrain resource system wouldn't be in the works leaves plenty of tidying up for the sequel. SMAC has an (inter)face only it's mother could love.

Various menus are clumsy at best. For the base build menu just give us text lists in columns that don't need to scroll if you're at a descent screen res (ie, 1024x768). Have the picture pop up according to whatever is highlighted or hovered over, or a tiny symbol as in Civ.

Same for Unit Workshop: text lists in columns, with some organizational sense to them.

Clutter-free display. The reveal-terrain-below-units-and-improvements function needs to be expanded into hotkey view options. I want to be able to make all those friggin' formers and supply crawlers disappear or become "ghosted" without changing anything else.

[BustaMike]

Press 'T'. It's a hotkey and it shows the terrain. Pressing it once gets rid of the units, pressing twice gets rid of terraforming, etc..

[Method]

Originally posted by Straybow
C'mon, "Energy Bank?" I believe that's what we call a battery. You can get a free one every month from Radio Shack. I suppose a more sophisticated system of "banking" energy would also use capacitors. Ooo, another high tech item.

What exactly are these little balls of energy, floating, yet immovable, scattered about the terrain? "I hope that thing is 110V-60 cycle, otherwise I can't plug my cellphone recharger into it."

---

Various menus are clumsy at best. For the base build menu just give us text lists in columns that don't need to scroll if you're at a descent screen res (ie, 1024x768). Have the picture pop up according to whatever is highlighted or hovered over, or a tiny symbol as in Civ.

Same for Unit Workshop: text lists in columns, with some organizational sense to them.

Clutter-free display. The reveal-terrain-below-units-and-improvements function needs to be expanded into hotkey view options. I want to be able to make all those friggin' formers and supply crawlers disappear or become "ghosted" without changing anything else.

what's the matter with an energy bank? who cares? it's just fiction.

and i don't think anyone wants SMAC 2 to be like civ3 at all. i think that the "clumsy" menus are perfectly fine how they are, so you don't have to read, you can just tell what each project is by the picture. the unit workshop is probably the best feature of the game and is easiest to understand how it is.

the only thing i miss from civ3 is being able to right click on a stack of units (usually enemies) and see what's in it. in SMAC i have to press 'v' move the cursor onto the units and then see what's there.

[Mongoose]

Play with detailed pop up menus on right click...'move cursor here' is the top option.

[Straybow]

TKG, it is the interface I'm talking about, not the way you design the units or build them. Take a look at what I mean. What is good about the workshop is the unit image and data on the left that shows mouse rollover. What is bad is that you can only scroll one unit at a time instead of paging through it, and the complete lack of organization. There is no relationship between when I designed these units and where they appear in the list. The names are truncated to the point of being useless.

If the Workshop list were in one or more columns then a more complete name could be shown beside the image, plus whatever data can fit in the column width, as in the Build window from Civ2. See how much more data can be shown? Isn't that what an interface is for, to show you what you want to know? It would then be easier to compare designs, for example, because you wouldn't have to keep highlighting them alternately. Separate columns for active designs, extant legacy designs, and entirely obsolete designs would be nice.

At least the base build menu already is a two dimensional presentation. The large blocks make easy targets but also make for much scrolling. I like using a keyboard. My shoulder sometimes gets sore from being in the same position using the mouse for long periods (like playing a TBS game). I can use a keyboard all day with no problem, and tabbing between fields or actions is often faster than trying to point to a narrow scroll bar. The SMAC menus don't work well with keyboard input, unless you first point to one item with the mouse.