Upkeep for summoned units - Page 2

UncleYee · #11 April 10th, 2007, 08:07 PM

I definitely second the call for upkeep for each unit to be visible on the unit info screen. I mean why not?

So I've been summoning wolves as LA Ulm, you know for fun, and I went looking for some info on upkeep, and here's this thread. My wolves don't seem to cost any upkeep, by the way, but I wouldn't swear to that.

So what it's looking like based on my reading is that SOME summons have upkeep, and some don't. Maybe. And while our first understanding was that the list of summoned units with upkeeps was quite short, there are actually quite a few summons that'll cost you gold. And there's no easy way to tell, because if things like foul spawn and Call of the Winds birdies have costs, then it isn't just a matter of recruitable = upkeep cost, is it? Or are those things recruitable?

Yeppers, I think being able to see the upkeep per unit in game would be fantastic.

vfb · #12 April 10th, 2007, 08:45 PM

Please grab Edi's spreadsheet from the Units, Weapons, Armor link in his sig.

Recruits and Summons: the "Cost Gold" column determines maintenance, at (Cost Gold)/15

Mercenaries: the maintenance is zero

Pretender: I have no idea if you have to pay maintenance on your pretender

I think it would be nice if "Cost" and "Maintenance" could be added to the "Hit Points" window so that it looks like this:

Hit Points: 10
Size: 2
Cost: 24
Maintenance: 24 / 15
...

UncleYee · #13 April 10th, 2007, 11:19 PM

How bout just having the program do the math for us, so it reads:

Hit Points: 10
Size: 2
Cost: 24
Maintenance (per turn): 1.6

Because fractions are hard.

But what would also be really awesome were if Upkeep #### on the main GUI were clickable, and then you saw a list of your unit types, row by row, each row containing the unit icon, how many you have, how much they each cost per turn, and then the total you're paying per turn for that type of unit. I'm looking at you, loremasters.

I know it's a lot to ask for, but this type of game does have a certain appeal to us imperial accountant types.

I'm finally and begrudgingly downloading OpenOffice. I like Dominions, but do I download-and-install-100MB-program-just-to-read-one-spreadsheet like it? I can finally answer yes.

vfb · #14 April 10th, 2007, 11:27 PM

That sounds like a nice idea!

But I was thinking of something that would take minimal effort from the developers. I don't like opening the spreadsheet too much myself, because it eats all my RAM and makes my system start swapping.

If they're going to code an Upkeep anyway interface though, that would be a pretty good place to put a Dismiss button.

Sombre · #15 April 10th, 2007, 11:28 PM

lol. I had the same problem with Open Office. Ok it's free and it works on all platforms and blah blah blah but seriously I'd much, much rather have had the spreadsheet in excel. Oh well. I have no clue how to use open office which rather limits the usefulness of the db for me, as does the fact that my computer throws a hissy fit for ten minutes every time I open it :]

Still useful though. Appreciated. And I second, or third or seventh or whatever the request for an upkeep breakdown, or an upkeep display for each unit. It seems like an oversight that it's not in the game already.

Wish · #16 April 11th, 2007, 12:42 AM

we don't feel sympathy for people who aren't computer literate enough to figure out open office, which, incidently is as easy to use as microsoft office.

Edi · #17 April 11th, 2007, 01:03 AM

Open Office works very much like the Microsoft Office suite. Obviously there are some differences, but the basic functions are the same, especially in the spreadsheet application.

I'm aware of the problem with the spreadsheet bringing most computers to a screeching halt when it loads, it does the same for my own machine, which is a fairly top of the line rig bought just last September. That's an unfortunate side effect of the heavy use of VLOOKUP on the display page, but I don't know of anything else that will keep the data sorted correctly under all circumstances (given how the functions have been entered). It also allows me to pay minimal attention to maintaining the display, unlike with the Dom2DB where I screwed up with design and had to do five times the amount of work to get results only half as good as the Dom3DB. It loaded faster, true. It was also a nightmare to maintain.

Converting the thing to Excel, while possible, would have been more work than it was worth at the time when there was so much else to do.

There will be a DB update after the next patch because of the new nations and there would be one regardless of such additions merely on account of the huge number of stat fixes we're going to see.

It's possible I'll provide an Excel version at that point, and it will also have fixed formulas for age and possibly for prot as well. The problem with an Excel file would be, aside from data format conversion (which is rather trivial now that I know some of the OO peculiarities regarding Booleans) its size. The current Unit DB in Excel could run over 10 MB easily if past comparisons of Excel vs Open Office file size for the same data are anything to go by.

For people who are currently having problems with the DB, save a new copy and delete everything on the unit display page from the columns that have text entries (the undead/demon/magicbeing/animal and the survival columns onward and leave just the numerical data and random masks. That will cut out a huge amount of array references, reduce file size and reduce load times significantly. You're going to have to look that data up on the BaseU page, though.

Hellboy · #18 April 11th, 2007, 01:13 AM

Quote:

Edi said:
Converting the thing to Excel, while possible, would have been more work than it was worth at the time when there was so much else to do.

...

It's possible I'll provide an Excel version at that point, and it will also have fixed formulas for age and possibly for prot as well. The problem with an Excel file would be, aside from data format conversion (which is rather trivial now that I know some of the OO peculiarities regarding Booleans) its size. The current Unit DB in Excel could run over 10 MB easily if past comparisons of Excel vs Open Office file size for the same data are anything to go by.

Much though I am a fan of Excel, and sceptical about Open Office, I don't think that providing this in Excel format needs to be a high priority. It's pretty easy to open it up and export to Excel, for any one that really want's to work in Excel (and in fact I do that sometimes).

Just my two cents, but Edi if you're more efficient working in Open Office, I think you should continue to do that. Now, if you were one of those rich IW developer guys, just raking in the cash like they do, I'd feel entirely different about the question

Edi · #19 April 11th, 2007, 01:36 AM

Actually, an Excel export is fairly easy to do from the finished file. I'll still be working in OpenOffice. I'm not touching Excel with a ten-foot pole if I can help it, so a conversion is the most I would be willing to do. But not before the next patch version.

Sombre · #20 April 11th, 2007, 02:14 AM

Open Office might be as easy to learn as microsoft office, but since I've already learned office, it's annoying having to adjust. I'm sure other people feel the same way. Not your problem I know, but don't act like people are ignorant for not liking/wanting to use Open Office.

People keep telling me to use Photoshop or GIMP instead of Paint Shop Pro, but I know Pro well and I have no interest in switching. If people put out graphics which you needed to use GIMP or Photoshop to even look at I'd feel annoyed about that too.