I am flabbergasted by your reasoning for removing the research queue feature. I'm not wrong in saying that it's been a highly requested feature for a long time, correct? In that case, how could you implement the entire feature, decide internally that it "doesn't improve the experience", and then remove it?
Vaclav played a lot of normal (freeplay) games with the queue, and he also supported me that the feature in reality doesn't make the experience better.
So two devs, likely already with an established way of playing the game that is unlikely to change, decide that a feature isn't helping them, so it shouldn't exist. Okay.
Also, I definitely noticed the language you used for the "pros" and "cons" in order to further your point. I'm going to go through them bit by bit:
Cons
The newly unlocked recipes might be overlooked (It is solvable by some kind of pop-up, but it is far from perfect).
Don't show a pop-up, show a notification that is clickable, so that the player can deal with it when they want to. This should be part of the feature, not a "con"
It removes the joy of looking at the result of the research and of picking a new thing that will be the next one to do.
Seriously? The "joy" of looking at the research would happen just the same if the notification mentioned previously exists, and "picking a new thing" would happen already when queueing it up.
It adds to the feeling of just going through a to-do list without having much to say about it.
I legitimately have no idea what this means.
The queue has to be changed a lot as the priorities change.
Also not a con: Without a queue, you have to change it every time, whereas you need to change it much less frequently with the queue.
Pros
It feels appropriate in some situations, like finishing all remaining green science that I don't care about as I'm not producing blue yet etc.
Emphasis mine. This is what I'm talking about w/ the language. You consider this a pro, but then you use negative language to make it feel like a con and convince the playerbase. Stick to the facts please.
It feels okay to queue the repeating upgrade research at times, but as the cost grows quite fast usually, it becomes less and less of a problem.
Emphasis mine. I'm not sure what you mean by "becoming less of a problem". What is the problem? That it only "feels okay"?
Review
So your pros & cons listed, in plain english, are the following:
Cons:
We didn't implement a way to notify you when a technology is done, so you might miss things.
It doesn't "feel good"
You still have to change the queue sometimes.
Pros:
You can use it to finish any side technologies you missed after beelining for main techs.
You can use it to queue up multiple of an infinite upgrade research.
And here's my pros and cons:
Cons:
More UI
Pros:
Less micromanaging = less distractions from the actual gameplay
Not having to remember which technology you're going to research next, if you're beelining for something
You can use it to finish any side technologies you missed after beelining for main techs.
You can use it to queue up multiple of an infinite upgrade technology.
If you want other ideas for how to improve your feature, I read elsewhere in this thread that there's a mod that adds a good research queue. There are also some good highlighting suggestions. You could also research how other games do it, such as Civilization or the Research Tree mod for RimWorld (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1266570759), which I think is the best example of a research tab in a game, period. (it allows you to queue up researches infinitely, supporting shift + click to add a new research to the queue, and clicking a tech further down the line to queue up the whole tree to that point)