I don't know about any of you other players but I know a few who will find it useful. It would help players organize if there were 3-5 more color flags in addition to the ones we have now. I know it would benefit me a great deal with organizing the loads of planets scanned and occupied

Agreed. But I'd find it more useful to do away with flags all together and add a comment section instead. That way we can add notes to a planet for reference instead of trying to remember what colour means what.

I like Fear's idea of more shapes, but I still support this either as more colors, other shapes, or comments.

i would support a 2d and 3rd flag shape ... duplicating the existing colours ... that would give 18 colours altogether. and i still think that adding flags to enemy ships would be neat

but the existing complement of 5 seems to cover most of my current needs. to expand on my previous posting on current flag usage

A. ENEMY PLANETS:

d1: blue flagged - crap planets to be purged
d2: red flagged - low pop planets to be used for Illegal Excavation and Tenebris legion missions
d3: green flagged - to be conquered for production or arti extraction (see my planets)
d4: purple flagged - to be alerted / shared to my legion mates to conquer; planets with an XRP
d5: gold flagged - to be sold

B. UNOCCUPIED PLANETS:

d1: blue flagged - gas planets already considered for Xathe legion mission
d2: red flagged - ??
d3: green flagged - ??
d4: purple flagged - to be alerted / shared to my legion mates to colonize
d5: gold flagged - potential project planets - unscanned VM gas, unscanned barren with close to even resources, unscanned toxics with arti richness 1 less than mining richness, VM metallics (future storage), planets with analyzable effects

C. MY PLANETS:

d1: blue flagged - to be abandoned and purged
d2: red flagged - immediately flux probe after i am crit.hacked (top 10% arti producers, top 10% mining, storages)
d3: green flagged - has buildings to extract
d4: purple flagged - ?? - probably could use for project planets ... but they are usually already gold or red flagged
d5: gold flagged - flux probe after i am crit.hacked (top 50% arti producers and remaining maxed toxics)

so, what other situations do other people need more flags for ?

I flag planets that I've just invaded and need to temp flux in a week. Add flags as a reminder to upgrade items such as uldri capsules, bane psybeacons, concord stations, etc...

Would love to be able to write my own comments though. Things like "Stolen on Dec. 1st" or "upgrade psybeacon on Jan 10th" would be nice.

Adding notes on enemy ships would be great too.

It would be good to be able to add notes etc, but I suspect scan lag would be off the charts if that info was going to be instantly available and of any use to us.
For all the stuff you mention, I use a google spreadsheet.
I find it really useful for upgrades and planetary additions of all kinds... always know where something can go and what I can replace.

upgrade attack upgrade defense 2 more examples

i don't use flags for building notes as i have a planetary tab on my GL spreadsheet to track that.


- the gold colours over the mining / arti richness are for heist stations
- planet names shaded pink: to be purged (might need stuff extracted first)
- planet names shaded blue: pure production - don't defend (and don't build anything that might be missed)
- planet names shaded flesh: flagged gold / red in the in.game planet listing


- the cyan text are buildings which are non-extractable

Damn Sen ...... My head hurts just looking at those Embarrassed to say I just wing it when it comes to stuff like this.... But you guys are way more nerdy/geeky about stuff like this than I. Not that there's anything wrong with that... Sorta.....

and remember, that is just one tab ...

other tabs not already visible in the screenshot (decks is ship mods installed, progress includes stats for each rankup, other planets is enemy planets): base locks, scan runs, buildings (expanding on the abbreviations in the above screenshot), planet cloak, npc ctp, alerts and crits, planetary richness, raid%, research, damage cap (for each ship size), trades, ranks, planet prices (not current), legion info, etc.

It's a sickness then..... One I, thankfully, do not suffer from..... I'm absolutely certain all this adds to your proficiency in the game. I'm equally certain that if I went that route it would sap every last ounce of enjoyment from the game for me. Different strokes.....

That is exactly what I thought before I actually made my spreadsheets... figured it would be a complete drag.
Weird though, once I'd set mine up, my enjoyment actually increased because it made it so much quicker and easier for me.
No more trying planets one by one to find where I needed that new meta-tuned jammer or Xathe Inhibitor, or which planet I hadn't yet upgraded my structures on.

Definitely not for everyone though, that's for sure

I still don't understand why people insist on flagging planets to be purged. FFS, flag your storage, flag stuff to steal, flag stuff to share. Everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING, is purge fodder. If you have time to flag planets to be upgraded, you have time to ugrade the damn thing. Flagging everything in your database sorta defeats the purpose of flagging in the first place.

A better way is to make yourself an excel spreadsheet.

I'm weird, but I flag as follows:

Gold- Planets which I have dropped two lith probes on and made either impossible to find or very close. Saves me time later seeing where to drop more probes. Typically these planets are 'done' as far as what i have planned for them.
Blue-Planet under development but decently cloaked...need better artis and prod as I find them or steal them
Purple-Planets well cloaked by items, need folds so i can switch out for better prod and then move cloak % items to other worlds, also used for planets with 'upgradable structures'
Red- On mine these are for planets to temp flux or i have bricked for now and plan to alter in the near future...on enemy planets these represent planets with limited items, especially good % cloak items.
Green- My storage worlds. As a rule these are 15x colossal plasmas with SS. Try to double up prod and storage.

I did a mass spreadsheet previously and found it useful...but a big drive crash cleared that out and real life has precluded doing a taxonomy of my stuff to revamp. So now I just keep an eye on things. Sorting and searching my planets in an OCD way 3-4 times a day seems to give a pretty good inidication of when/if something gets stolen what the impact would be. Also I am very cofnizant of prod levels, so any dip in a category sparks interest.

my .02 cents

the issue is that flagging is an INCLUDE filter, not an EXCLUDE filter. so if you have a bunch of planets mixed between flagged and non.flagged, there is no way to select JUST the non.flagged ones to avoid possible fat.fingering and potentially purging something that IS flagged for some other purpose.

so, flagging for purging means you can INCLUDE all the crap, EXCLUDE all the goodness, and purge to your hearts content without worrying about clicking one planet too high or too low ... EVERYTHING MUST GO !

by flagging ALL enemy planets after a scan run, i can at a later time instantly spot new unflagged enemy planets when they appear - either via legion alert, crit.hack, or recent colonization of an unoccupied that i had previously had on scan.

It would be cool if you could cycle through flag colors by hitting a button and also have it show unflagged planets

I think you meant to say


Right? For all your imitation OCD organization desires, you still need more to do something that I can do with 3. And I honestly can't recall the last time I flagged anything besides one of my storage planets. Over 4.5 years I have no idea how many purgers I've collected from AP, but I've made 4630 from the mission, and used them ALL. And I have NEVER (EVER) purged a planet I didn't want to purge.

i have purged 2 by accident. that's 2 too many.

i have also sold one of my Modulated Xecti Disruptors (a big deal at the time since i was under rank 100), uninstalled numerous ship mods by mistake while navigating between pages of ship mods, raided twice when i wanted to hack after the raid, etc. and i am not even on a mobile phone. this game has MANY interface issues that could be tweaked and i have just designed my gameplay to avoid as many of those fat.fingerings as i can. so i am handicapped compared to the godlike DF ... i bow down to your superiority.

you really need to chill out about how others play the game. if something does not work for you, you are free to state that. but others find flagging to be useful (for whatever reason), and no amount of nattering from you will change that. so what are you trying to prove ?