Another point of feedback I'm looking for relates to the "Explore Surface" button found in the features list that you click to pop the surface gui. As is probably self evident, this operation is technically a deposit itself (and technically a blocker we are "clearing" at that).

First, I'll just say that it's annoying that despite me setting the "clear time" to 0 days, the operation still has to be queued. Two issues with this:
1. The player has to awkwardly unpause the game and wait for a day for the "blocker" to actually clear, and have my custom GUI pop.
2. If the planet is already constructing something then the player also has to manually bump the "Explore Surface" operation to the top of the list, even more clicks!

I managed to fix both of these issues with my "Planet View" mod. You get your own dedicated button on the main screen, always, with no queuing or unpausing needed - it's very reactive. This is great, but obviously not everyone is going to use both mods.

If anyone has any ideas there, let me know.

But I also have another question relating to this "blocker".

I specifically designed the mod this way, instead of a planet decision, because what I was aiming for is that because it's a blocker it'll actually show a useful icon on the outliner when it's ready to be cleared. I.e: Every time the planet has exploration ready, the player instantly knows (thanks to the outliner) and off we go.

Because if this doesn't work you obviously have a pretty tedious and unplayable scenario of having to manually remember to check all your planets every X years to see if they have explorations available.... (The fact that the AI explores its own stuff means that exploring isn't THAT much of a click spam job, the computer does a lot of it before you even acquire a location in the empire, but you never know with these players on "huge" galaxies and max habitable planet sliders!)

So anyway I'm just wondering if that's actually working out. Because in my limited testing I couldn't see the outliner reacting to ANY deposits... Is that not a thing any longer????

I like your planet view mod but don't like to play with only 12 building slots. The current work around (by a different modder) seems to delete the button that allows for surface view in this mod. I also left a message on that mod page, but thought I'd mention it here as well.

I love the concept of the mod, but if it means going back to just 12 building slots, I may never use it.

@Tpark
Thanks for the post! You don't NEED to use that planet view button to access surface exploration. It's available on the planetary features panel no matter what ui/mod you use.

So just use this mod + whatever UI you like.

Confirmed - I just got to having a colonized planet and can see the unexplored features.