My One UI Complaint

[Tom West]

I'm curious whether anyone else does this to themselves, but I find at least once a (game) day or two, I activate an area with multiple units (usually one armor and one infantry), and, all fired up I send one unit into battle. I check the odds, they look good, and hit commit.

Approximately 1/2 a second later, I face palm, having forgotten (for the 20th time) to move the second unit before pressing commit. This mostly occurs when the two units would be going to different locations.

Any possibility of an "idiot" setting in an update to put up a confirmation dialog box if you activate an area and press commit without moving all its units?

Second minor suggestion. A "rate this app" button on the front page to make it even easier to rate it. Perhaps have it show up only once a few games have been played.

[Amaranthus]

Yes, I've done it a few times - it lost me the game once, when I moved my infantry 1 space and then forgot the 2nd encircling double move with my Panzer. An pop-up warning would be really handy.

[s_nkarp]

Hah -- we had a long debate about mistake-proofing, going back and forth on the depth of Undo functionality.

Problem is that a delay long enough to recover is really annoying when you don't make a mistake (which is most of the time, once you get used to the game). Up until Beta we had more "Are you sure?" sorts of checks -- people got pissed.

We stayed away from a zillion configuration options: each combination multiplies complexity for the user, coder, and every succeeding design decision.

[Polybios]

Yes, please do not add these buttons again.
I like these situations, where I realize the mistake.

[s_MesaDon]

Yes, please do not add these buttons again.
I like these situations, where I realize the mistake.

I agree, with the very generous undo button this leaves at least some human error chance. Forgotten or to late orders happen in real-life so I guess this mirrors that. I put it down to the learning experience.

[daviddunham]

You can cancel a move if it doesn’t involve combat, but in practice no matter what the delay is, you only realize it at delay + 0.0001 seconds.

[Tom West]

I agree that Undo beyond commit is problematic. After all, you don't want to allow a player to "re-roll".

However, I will make my case for a "confirm you didn't want to move an activated unit".

My claim is that, at least in the Race to the Meuse scenario, a "useless confirmation" (i.e. forcing a confirmation when the user *hasn't* made a mistake) probably rarely occurs. Note that such a confirmation dialog would *only* appear if you moved one unit, but didn't want to move the others from the activated area. At least in the RttM scenario, that's pretty darn rare.

On the other hand, failing to move units in a scenario as finely balanced as RttM often costs one the game, which may mean an hour or so of gaming lost to a careless click - that's a pretty steep price that feels easily avoidable.

(My problem is that I move a unit into combat, check the odds, and then instinctively read "Commit" as "Commit the unit to combat", not "Commit all moves for all units from the activated region".)

Of course, an alternative UI change is to make activated, unmoved units a special color that stands out, giving a visual clue that you don't press commit until that color is no longer found on the map.

If the vast majority aren't losing games to this particular carelessness (on my part), then obviously it's not a candidate for an incremental patch somewhere down the line. But if there are others, it seems a way of reducing frustration due to a UI mechanism.

I'll leave it at that. Others can indicate whether they think such a change is merited or not.

Once again, congratulations on a 5 star game - I've made my rating.

[Yojimbo252]

I don't see a problem with the suggestion as long as it's a togglable option, then each player has the choice whether they want the feature enabled or not.