Next Patch Suggestion

Kimball · #1 February 7th, 2001, 10:49 PM

It would be nice to be able to use emergency propulsion while ships are fleeted together. If all ships have emegency propulsion, it would nice to click the use component button to simultaneously use a pod from each ship, assuming each ship has at least one remaining. It is kind of tedeous removing ships, using pods, and forming new fleets.

Aegis · #2 February 8th, 2001, 07:24 PM

Nice Idea. It's definitely a drag as it stands.

- Aegis

Taqwus · #3 February 8th, 2001, 08:44 PM

Other foo ideas to reduce tedium/repetition:

* Search/(replace | | delete) for construction queues.
For instance, in my current game (255-system galaxy, 5000-point races, otherwise default), being a maintenance-free race I'd built a LOT of shipyard bases, many of which were on Repeat Build for building identical warships.
When I upgraded the design, or moved onto the next hull or whatever, the only way to change them all was manually, one by one. Bugger.

* The skip-damaged-ships option, perhaps, should be changed to "skip ships under repair" -- if a ship has been damaged in deep space, I *do* want to move it (or get a repair ship to it).

* A remote-mining minister might be nice, combined with an option to skip minister-controlled ships.

* An option to speed animation/movement of minister-controlled ships would be nice.

* Minor UI tweak: ability to copy a known enemy design as one of your own. Only buildable if you have the tech, but possibly useful.

* Anywhere there's a slider, there should probably also be an 'type the number' box.

* Perhaps, there should be a way to set how many people should be put into a colony pod by the colonization minister. Not all races at all times need to bother filling 'em.

* In the Facility View from right-clicking from a modify-build-queue window, let me scrap facilities. This would be VERY useful during an atmosphere-conVersion phase. Even more useful, let me enter 'scrap facility' | 'refit ship' | 'launch/jettison cargo' orders in the queue. (Main use: being able to scrap production facilities *one at a time* before replacing each with a Monolith Facility... without having to go through many, many colonies every turn doing this.)

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Kimball · #4 February 8th, 2001, 09:15 PM

Another thing that would be nice is an empire wide "update facilities." I just spent 20 minutes going to several planets so that I could update storage facilities. Would be nice.

Baron Munchausen · #5 February 8th, 2001, 09:18 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Kimball:
Another thing that would be nice is an empire wide "update facilities." I just spent 20 minutes going to several planets so that I could update storage facilities. Would be nice.

There IS one. Go to the construction queues window (the 'wrench' button on the main menu at the left). One of the buttons on the lower right in that window is the global "Upgrade facilities" button, though I forget the exact text on the button right now.

Kimball · #6 February 8th, 2001, 10:53 PM

Excellent! I had no idea. Would probably pay to read the Online manual, eh? Thank you.

DirectorTsaarx · #7 February 9th, 2001, 12:21 AM

There's only one problem with the "universal upgrade" button. The best way to explain is by example:

I always use Temporal race tech, which eventually grants "Temporal Space Yards." HOWEVER, you can't just upgrade a normal space yard to a temporal yard, you have to scrap the old yard and build the new one (since they both build ships, you have to scrap one before building the other, even if there's space available on the planet). IN ADDITION, if you continue researching ship sizes and get the upgraded regular space yard, and then use the universal update, any old yards you haven't converted to temporal yards also get upgraded. If you're not paying attention, the system could end up spending your resources (and build time) on upgrading facilities that you're just going to scrap and replace.

The GOOD thing about the universal upgrade is that it also updates all the pending queues (i.e., if you have 15 Research Facility I's in a queue, and use the universal upgrade function, that queue is changed to read 15 Research Facility II's (or III's, if you researched that fast). Which brings up another issue - on long build queues, sometimes you'll research multiple upgrades before finishing a queue; you'll want to delete old upgrade orders when you issue the new upgrade order, especially since the new upgrade order cost was calculated based on the existing facility costs, not the "post-upgrade" cost. In other words, you can have "Upgrade to Research Facility II (x5)" followed by "Upgrade to Research Facility III (x5)" in the queue. The cost associated with the upgrade to RF III is based on upgrading RF I's to RF III's, not RF II's to RF III's. So that intermediate order (upgrading to RF II) is not only useless, it's a waste of time and resources.

Hope this all made sense - I'm just passing on the things I've noticed while playing, and it's much easier to understand when looking at the queues themselves...

Drake · #8 February 9th, 2001, 12:30 AM

quote:
Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
The cost associated with the upgrade to RF III is based on upgrading RF I's to RF III's, not RF II's to RF III's.

Aren't those costs the same? I thought all upgrade costs were 50% of the cost to build the new facility from scratch.

-Drake

raynor · #9 February 9th, 2001, 12:41 AM

I'm curious.

Even after I get Mineral Miner III's, I prefer to continue building Mineral Miner II's because they finish building in a single turn. Thus, I get the added production immediately instead of getting just 100 more per turn two turns later. Later, after I've maxed out my facilities, I'll upgrade them all en masse. It doesn't seem that I lose any production while I'm upgrading.

Does anyone else keep building Miner II's after they've researched Miner III's?

Because I do things this way, I really hate it when I tell it to 'Upgrade Facilities', and it changes all my Miner II's in production to Miner III's. The same goes for farms and research labs.

Edit->

Hmm... I really, really wonder now. It *always* seemed I was getting a better deal by building 25 Miner II's and then spending 25 turns probably upgrading them all to Miner III's. It just didn't seem worth it to wait an extra turn for each facility just for 100 more minerals per turn. But if it turns out that I'm spending 2000 resources per turn for 25 turns to upgrade it to a Miner III, then maybe I'm not coming out ahead after all.

Where is mathematically minded Zanthis?

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 08 February 2001).]

Nyx · #10 February 9th, 2001, 12:50 AM

quote:
Does anyone else keep building Miner II's after they've researched Miner III's?

Nope. Though I'll be interested to see the numbers if anyone calculates them as requested, if it is better to build the #2 and then upgrade to #3.

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