Bunch of UI improvement suggestions

[Tikotitok]

Here's a bunch of suggestion bulletpoints:

1) Number of tiles to be built

When dragging the mouse to e.g. build Tiles, Ladders or pipes in a line, there should be a little number right next to said plan, showing how many tiles wide/long said thing is going to be. This would make it far more convenient to build anything in specific dimensions and simplify building material managing.

2) A little text / Symbol with a hover-over text showing what skill/job a building uses, and how it affects usage

Since forever, I have had trouble in figuring out what skill and errand certain structures use. I am still unclear if the manual metal refiner uses operating or athletics, and what the feck the apotechary is supposed to use. I still am unsure whether or not any skills actually make the manual generator work faster.

3) Early Bird / Night Owl traits should be marked with an icon in the scheduling screen by the dupe's head

4) Ideally, skills, interests and traits would be visible on the same page without need to scroll and duplicants should be easier to sort/compare

I have often wanted to be able to quickly and easily check all work-relevant information when trying to figure out or remind myself how I should employ my dupes. Currently skills and interests are on separate tabs making it more annoying than it should be. I would move the duplicant bio to another tab and arrange skills, interests and traits to fit on the same tab. This might require resizing the tab. Also, to check who was a night owl or gastrophobic with the cooking skill of 7 ect, I need to either click on every dupe individually or look into the priorities tab to see who can't cook. Which brings me to the next point:

5) All relevant information on dupes should be easily available and manageable: combining the priorities, scheduling and skills tabs, the possible introduction of symbols for skills, occupations and traits to save space?

Duplicant management could be streamlined if priorities, schedules and and skills could be managed from the same tab. So, I could have a listing of all my dupes, with their faces, names, learned jobs represented by little hats (e.g. senior architect + gofer hats next to the face) and skills, marked by little symbols, numbers and additionally a heart depending on if the dupe is interested in the skill. The priority for errands could be in the same area, for example a box above or below, similiar to the current one.  I could then click to sort by their mining skill, and seeing that Lindsay likes digging and has a skill level of 3, I could immediately increase her digging priority and noticing she has learning in the negatives, ban her from research in the same stroke. Seeing a marker for an available skill point in the "little hats" section, I could click there to open up a smaller screen for the skill tree and choose the hat she should wear. Since my memory is bad, I then click on a little bookmark next to the Senior Miner skill to remember later what I was supposed to level on her. I then close the skill tree and head to the other side of the screen where I can create and modify schedulings. I have two different shifts, and wanting to ensure I have an active miner in both, I click to expand a table where the the total skills distribution is symbolized, maybe with easy-to-read bars or something? (e.g. three bars on the "architect" hat to represent a total of three skill points put into the architechture line) Seeing the default shift has plenty of mining levels, I then assign Lindsay into the night shift. Also, thanks to the obviously visible "early bird" symbol attached to Joshua's head, I can immediately notice he's in the wrong shift and correct the situation. Also, if I forget what any symbol meant, I can always just hover my mouse over it for that spicy hover text.

 

Well, this was not supposed to be a wall of text but I started to write this at midnight and kind of rambled on from there. The last point is a pretty major suggestion for an interface overhaul, but I have been kind of annoyed by the current system and wanted to give my feedback. (Major feedback soon before launch, christ this seems impolite.) I should stop writing before I forget completely how English works. Have a nice day. Sorry if you can't make out a single sentence.

EDIT: I really shouldn't do anything while half asleep. For example, ventilation shafts already have a little number for the lenght of the vent. Oops.

[LeftyRighty]

All good points, but re 2: that information is on the Errands tab