First, let me say, I like RUS so far having played just a few turns into the Grand Campaign. I love the AGE engine and Russian Civil War for me really is unknown terrain.
Nevertheless, I want to share a few thoughts about the interface.
1. Gun turrets as buttons to click on: I’m used to this from playing ROP which has those menus at the same place. But this not very clear for a couple of reasons:
-You’re using symbol-marked buttons for nearly everything else, but not for these two important menus. To make it worse, there’s a third turret just as cosmetic.
-From the player’s POV the division in exactly two menus (Building units + Options, Info, Replacements) is not very clear.
-When you put the mouse over those two turrrets you read IRC “Build mode” and “click on the image to open the strategic atlas”. But the latter one contains much more than the strategic atlas.
2. Clicking on the “Stategic Atlas” turret opens an important menu with sevaral sub-menues. Unfortunately, with 1152x864 resolution those windows partly overlay the permanent top bar displaying the state of ressources. Plus it’s buttom sub-menu button bar overlay the buildable units icons.
And this very buttom sub-menu button bar does have some not very clearly labelled buttons:
-“Forces”
-“Production” (better:”Replacements”)
-“Economics” (better: “Mobilization” or Recruitment”)
-“Politics”
-“Diplomacy”
-“Various” (better: Industrialization”)
-“Spec Ops”(maybe: “Policing”, “Agitation” or “Control”?)
3. As for the top bar displaying the state of ressources, while it does also display the ressource additions per turn, it does not display ressource substractions. Why do the latter happen? IRC there is a monthly cost for pimping say aramament industry. But how much? Could this be displayed somewhere?
Regards