Clicking a Ship Should Always Select It

[SimonN]

More than once, I've entered nonsensical moves that become a permanent part of the game log.

Example from today: My red-blue homeworld, my two blue ships, my green ship, my yellow ship. I click one of the blue ships and want to send it away. I think for a few minutes. I decide that I want to move the green away instead. I click on the green. This click builds a blue ship, which will be the 4th blue piece in the homeworld.

In user options for BGA Homeworlds, I can disable the buttons at the top, but I can't disable that { a click on a ship, given that a ship is already selected, invokes the technology of the clicked ship on the selected ship }.

Expected instead: When I click a ship, the click always selects the clicked ship. It doesn't matter how many ships I clicked before. Maybe: When I click a ship and it's already selected, the click unselects the ship.

One idea is to add a third option to power selection: Buttons or pieces, pieces only, and new third options: Buttons only.

UI principle: Avoid giving the same UI element two wildly different meanings based on context. As it stands, clicking a green ship has two different meanings: Select the green ship, or build a blue ship. It looks reasonable in theory because of Homeworlds's technology rules; in practice, It instills fear and double-checking into the mere selection.

Separate concern that becomes more interesting when we always click the colored technology buttons at the top (instead of clicking on second ship to invoke technology on the already selected ship): The Homeworlds Live UI puts the command context menu (equivalent to BGA HW's color technology buttons at the top) next to the clicked ship. That reduces mouse movement.