I recently bought into BB5 and I love what I’m seeing, but I found my patience with the game failing recently and I realised it’s because building a 2nd Manticore has made the Personnel screen very aggravating.
Using buttons to transfer Soldiers between aircraft and the base can be confusing, especially when the buttons swap places depending on the soldier’s current location. Having the buttons on the far right of the soldier’s model also makes it annoying as I have to keep looking left, checking the Soldier’s current status, then swing my head right to look for the right button to press.
I’m much prefer a drag and drop approach with the Base and any docked Aircraft presented like inventory bags. Click a “Transfer” button or start dragging soldiers from the list on the left to open up an inventory-style interface in place of the soldier’s model (we don’t really need to see them for location management). This temporarily hide (grey out?) all soldiers not in the same location as the one you just selected, and will open a “bag” for each location they can be moved to (or, alternatively, open all locations and hide or grey out the ones that the soldier can’t reach).
Dragging a soldier will give an icon showing the soldier’s name, class and/or portrait (pending customisation options?), and will hilight the bag slot they currently occupy. You can drop them over any empty slot in an aircraft, or anywhere on the base if the base has infinite capacity. If you drop a soldier on an occupied slot, then the soldier in that slot will swap places with the soldier you moved.
To close the bags, click an ‘X’ on the drag and drop window, or click the buttons to start editing a soldier’s training or equipment.
I think this would make managing personnel much quicker and more intuitive.