UI/AI/Info Screens have not kept pace with game updates - some ideas

[hechicera]

UI/AI/Info Screens overlap. It is all about management that is fun, making interesting decisions vs management that is unfun, usually repetitive micromanagement, or management where finding the info to make the decision is annoying. There is usually a balance. I am probably more sensitive to it since age is starting to hit my hands.

Preface
I decided to write this up after one small change in test UI made me overly frustrated. It did increase micromanagement, and the one piece of info to help is not very visible on small UIs with many pawns. I think I overreacted to that one thing, but I realized I did it because I was playing unmodded to test and the overall amount of unfun management was much higher than before. Many fantasic new things and systems have been added in Royalty and 1.2. So my frustration isn't that the tools didn't exist before, but that they have not kept up.

But there's a mod for that. Yes! With great mod support from both the game and wonderful modders there probably is a mod for what annoys me. So, I counted my mods by category:

(Tools for Mods)
(aka Harmony)
4

Cosmetic & Customization
(Hairs/Textures/New Variantsd of Existing Items)
18

Additional Gameplay Elements
(aka Duns Bad Hygiene)
12

UI Pawn/Item Control Helper
(aka Reverse Commands/Locks/Complex Jobs/Cleaning Priority)
15

UI Added Info
(aka Bionic Icons/Menu & Info Panel Replacers/ Overlays)
18

The base tools are neutral, customization and new gameplay categories are always fun ways to expand. But about half of my mods address either micromanagement, or the need for non-frustrating access to the information to manage. That's ... a lot.

So now for ideas, or other game UI's to look at for ideas. I am not plugging the games, or their mechanics, just pointing to potential UI/AI/Info options.

AI can be a way to help limit micromanagement. Managing animals is one such. Dawn of Man will let you set limits for any animal type. It then generates jobs to slaughter the excess. Sometimes if the limit is low and misfortune kills your last male/female you have issues. Which is perfect. I would suggest perhaps a category of jobs on the butcher table. Or a bigger redesign of the Animals UI. Or rework their "Limits" system for Rimworld, they do it for items like the "Make Until You Have X" jobs on production stations. Where in Rimworld the limit is set per job per production item. They set the limits globally. So there is no redoing them when you add a new production station, or finding all the stations to reset all the limits manually. Same amount of management, much less clicking. What is odd is that Drug Usage is already this way in Rimworld, centrally managed.

Overlays. Starting to get bottom right bloat. Add useful mods and its bigger. Civ 6 Lenses is an overlay sub-menu for the map. Also they have a "Map Options". It may be time to make overlays a sub-menu. ONI's overlays menu is also good organization. While the room info has improved greatly in 1.2, it still lacks some information.

Better organization of ingame facts than "i" tab on everything. And/or links to wiki. ONI has in game database now, other games link to wikis. The "i" tab has a habit of telling me all the details except what I wanted to know. Like does a goat give milk? More than a yak? (and the wiki omits them too). Usually I rely on alt-tab and internet search to modders that parse files each update.

Sub-Menus off the Pawn control button in the bottom. Wow it's big now. Draft, Pyscasts two obvious candidates.

Where's the thing issues?
OK who's the pawn that has X Psycast, and is he drafted? click, click, click - Tribals and their tree ... everyone has many.
Prosthetics, labeling? how many of X do I have?
Where's the clothing, weapon I want? Do I have one? in a what materials?
Where are dead animals on the map? a red x is there but the small size and much scanning is ugh.
Who's drafted? windowed with many pawns that underline is just not visible.
Need some search functions, better labeling, more clear marking schemes in general.

Better selection of kind. You already have this as a UI scheme for selecting items on the ground. How about things like: double click a drafted pawn and select all other drafted pawns with same category weapon? (melee/ranged/none).

New games and resetting up all your drug schedules and production item job lists. Some ability to save across games and making production limits more like Drug Schedules and saving common lists.

So now I see why I went ARGH at just one tiny UI change adding some clicks. Catching the UI/AI/Info up to all the new complexity isn't a quick bugfix and is very unsexy coding. I know. But I'd love to see something to cut my mod list down in future QoL upgrades!

Any other specific ideas on handling UI, info availability, and organizing/removing the more repetitive management tasks?