Foxt’s Minimalist UI

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Author: Foxt

Last revision: 23 Apr, 2021 at 04:29 UTC (4)

File size: 1.13 MB

On Steam Workshop

Description:

This mod clears out a lot of the screen litter in the System UI, making it more aesthetically pleasing and immersive. There are several other mods out there that come close to doing the same thing, but after a couple hours of searching through them I found none of them went quite far enough for my personal tastes. 6 hours and 8 Diet Cokes later this mod came into the world.

Specifically, Minimalist UI does the following:

>Removes all the boxes and frames around ships, fleets, planet names, and stations.

This will sometimes make it difficult to read labels when they stack on top of each other. For me, though, it was worth it to be rid of the dozen green bars greeting me every time I dived into a system view.

>Inverts all black icons to be white, so that all the icons match each other on a dark background.

There may be times an icon hovers in front of a gas giant or something and becomes harder to read. I don’t care, since you can move the camera easily and dismiss that problem. A small price to pay to not have black and white boxes floating around.

>Removes the health, armor, and shield bars above ships and stations.

These bars really don’t tell you much useful information. If there is a battle and you want to closely monitor it, you click on either fleet and the combat window gives you all the info you need, including the shield/armor/health %s to the digit. What’s more, those bars do not tell you how much health remains for your fleet compared to its starting total, it tells you how much the surviving ships have together. In other words, if half your fleet is destroyed but the other half is unscathed, the health bars report 100% health. This makes the information useless 9 times out of 10, in my opinion, so the bars go into the trash.

>Removes the flag emblems from fleets and ships.

These have some utility, but most of the time you are already aware of which fleets belong to which empire from context. The few times they are useful don’t justify the sheer number of them filling up your system map, so they have been removed.

>Removes the homesystem button from colonized planets.

You pull up the exact same screen by clicking on the planet itself, just a few pixels away. The button serves no purpose except to be clutter.

>Adds a new icon for military transport fleets to distinguish civilian trade ships.

All of the civilian trade mods out there that I love use the military transport icon to represent merchant fleets. It’s a bit too military for my tastes, so I made it into a more cargo ship-looking icon. This means that your military transports will now also look like this, but to me that’s no big deal. They are transports not warships, after all.

>Minimizes the planet health bar.

I cut its width in half and made it simpler. It looked like a low res battery charging icon for a cell phone – too cartoony for me.

>Makes the colonized planet emblem frame less opaque.

I cut its opacity by 50% so it stands out a bit less in both system UI and galaxy UI.

To get the most visual impact out of this mod, I recommend the following mods be added to your list:

[1] Dark UI, by ButtJunkie: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=904956708

[2] Hyperlane Transparency Lite, by alsq: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1314805272

[3] Light Borders, by Agamidae: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1506081421

[4] UI Overhaul Dynamic, by Orrie: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623423360&searchtext=ui+overhaul

If this UI is TOO minimal for you, and you want more prominent icons, I recommend 时间领主江泽民’s Minimalist Icon mod, found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1770274432&searchtext=icons. My mod is basically an expansion of this one, and you might prefer it.

Special thanks to CaptainX3 of NSC2 fame for giving me some of his time, and to 时间领主江泽民 for the Minimalist Icon mod that this mod expanded upon.

Compatibility Patches:

Gigastructures (by predator423239n): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2413288671

NSC2 (by LordOfLA): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2222339420

UPDATES

4.20.21 Update:

Updated for newly added icons.

11.23.20 Update:

Updated version number.

8.22.20 Update:

Fixed some files that were making the starbase icons mis-align, or not show up transparent like the rest of the UI elements.

5.20.20 Update:

Updated to new version number to remove the warning light in the game launcher.

3.17.20 Update:

Updated for new game version, fixed some visual glitches with new icons introduced into the game.

7.21.19 Update:

Edited the starbase buttons into transparent icons more in line with the megastructures and other icons on the Galaxy UI. They might be slightly harder to read, but it’s worth it to me to have fewer buttons floating around the map.

7.15.19 Update:

Changed mod version number so it needs to be manually updated less often, and won’t appear as a red [ ! ] as often in your launcher.

Fixed the science station icon which had previously lost a few pixels. It should look normal now

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Revisions:

Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.