Status of systems not presently seen

Karibu · #1 November 28th, 2003, 03:53 PM

I have been thinking following thing (like propably many others). If your ship goes through colonized system and then leaves it you immediately lose all the information of that system (except the location of planets and their atmosphere) if you do not take a print screen and glue it onto your wall. This is not situation in real world. It would not be very difficult to do like this (mimicing real world situation):

When your ship leaves system, you still see all those things what you saw whn your ship went throug it. When you would look that system at galaxy map, you would see that view until another ship goes throug that system. There could be little counter at the upper left corner on the system showing how many turns has passed since Last update (so you would be aware of how reliable the screen is). It is that there is no update of ship locations and planet ownerships (mineral status, population, etc.) until next voyage. It would be tremendous enchancement for your game, though, it would make sensors little less useful.

Do we see that on SEV?

Alneyan · #2 November 28th, 2003, 05:29 PM

I second your proposal, I admit I tend to use the System notes just for that purpose. (System Alpha Centauri, controlled by the Fiendish One, sixteen juggernauts sighted closing in with our wormhole.) That is especially true for long games, when you don't even know who owns what systems if you are no longer present there.

Or alternatively, I may launch old savegames just to check what was going on at this peculiar moment. But at any rate, i would like to see such a feature in SEV.

TerranC · #3 November 29th, 2003, 02:30 AM

You could use the "Omnipresent View of all systems" option in your games to get an effect somewhat close to what you've described, but it wouldn't be a snapshot; it would be more like having an invisible satellite in the system(s).

Fyron · #4 November 29th, 2003, 02:48 AM

The reason this was not done is because it would increase the size of some parts of savegame files (some large parts) by 20 fold...

Andr�s · #5 November 29th, 2003, 04:16 AM

I totally agree with this ideas. I hardly ever bother to take notes, and of course some times I regret it.
The computer is much better on recording storing this kind of data than a human being.
This could just be recorded locally, a file is generated when the player views a system for a 1st time each turn. There's no need to send that information to the server, hence turn files will not get bigger.

Omnipresent View of all systems provides real-time data, that is not what is intended.

Taera · #6 November 29th, 2003, 04:32 AM

i suppose what we need is an adapted Version of Fog of War. you see the basics (colony owners, static installations etc) but thats about it
Wasnt it that way in SE3?

Asmala · #7 November 29th, 2003, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
The reason this was not done is because it would increase the size of some parts of savegame files (some large parts) by 20 fold...

It cannot increase savegame files significantly. Required information is only a few bytes per object. Imagine how many objects you can squeeze, say, to 20 kb?

Karibu · #8 November 29th, 2003, 12:41 PM

Andres has a point. There is no need to send that data into server. You just keep the galaxy map on your hard drive and server merely updates the views of the systems you see. Does anyone has Aaron's phonenumber? Call him and tell what we need, Hush!

Roanon · #9 November 30th, 2003, 02:55 AM

The philosophy behind the current system is, however, that you can play the turn and have ALL data just by grabbing the result file. Makes it easy to do a turn on any computer with internet connection if you are not at home. Or to rebuild from scratch if you lost your hard drive / computer / whatever.
Changing that as you propose, Karibu, would mean you have to carry around your SE Data with you to the computer where you want to do your turn. And you'd have to keep making regular backups by yourself in case that something goes wrong, because you cannot recover all data from the .gam file.

Fyron · #10 December 1st, 2003, 04:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Asmala:

quote:
Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
The reason this was not done is because it would increase the size of some parts of savegame files (some large parts) by 20 fold...

It cannot increase savegame files significantly. Required information is only a few bytes per object. Imagine how many objects you can squeeze, say, to 20 kb?

Yes it can... it would have to store the same data that is present for each system in the galaxy, but for every single turn. Or, it would just store the latest Version of what each empire has seen for each system, which would require up to 20 times as much space for all of that information. It takes more than a few bytes to store all of the information for a system, especially when those systems start getting lots of ships and units and such in them.