Progress update 2018-10-18: (Make sure your browser window is wide enough!)
Phew! That took a lot of work. As I said in my last update I am going through all the windows with my 2086 game and fleshing out display and functionality. So back on October 3, I figured I'd go through the windows in alphabetical order, and the first up was Ammo Management. Took an hour or so, easy! (Although, I'm leaving it disabled without SM Mode because it's cheesy free ammo). Next up, Class Deployments. Easy! Another couple hours. These were actually pretty well done from my previous pass-thru. Next up was Class Design. Ok no problem. Right?
HA! What a ride. Remember, not only am I making things display data from the database correctly but I'm making it actually work. That means calculating Armor values, Crew requirements, every possible module combination for ships, and you get the idea. Armor modules were by far the worst to do. I'm fully aware of
how it's supposed to be calculated, and of all the
forum posts and
spreadsheets in google-land on the topic. Turns out, none of them are completely accurate when put to the test. I never was able to get a perfect match but I come pretty close with a lot of fudging. I will revisit later on.
In making Q4X one of my hopes was that existing A4X spreadsheets and forum posts with ultra precise ship designs would work in Q4X but unfortunately with armor differences and other rounding errors that won't always be the case. 11000 ton ships will become 11050 ton ships, and so on. The way I have it set up, ships in A4X do keep their statistics intact when imported to Q4X, but as soon as you edit the design, the Q4X math takes over and your values change slightly. In general, Q4X makes much more precise calculations than A4X because A4X likes to perform rounding multiple times in a formula.
New windows and linux downloads are
available if anyone wants to take a poke. I recommend using the
https://itch.io/app for nice small patch sizes. I replaced the database (the save-game) with my year-2086 game that was used to record the animation above, for a better demonstration. If you want to try out the 2086 game and you've run an older version of Q4X in the past, make sure you close Q4X, delete the old save (at %APPDATA%\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\Quasar4x\quasar4x.sqlite) then restart Q4X.
Here's a list of changes:
- New Major calculations: dynamic Ship Design Summary, Armor Thickness, Armor Columns, # of Armor components, Maint Supply amount, # of Crew Quarters, DAC chart, Electronic DAC chart, Design errors and warnings, Show Refit cost from selected other ship, show eligible additional classes if this is primary class for a shipyard, Maint Life, AFR%, IFR%, 1YR msp cost, 5YR msp cost, Ship Range and Duration on full power
- New Minor calculations: Fighter vs Regular class, Commander Priority, cost of ship, size, +4 Armor for PDC, Ship thermal, cross section size, rank required, protection value, cloaking sensor reduction, engine power, fuel efficiency, fuel capacity, # harvesters, # terraformers, salvage rate, MaxSpeed, shield strength, shield recharge rate, daily shield power cost, reactor power, required reactor power, damage control rating, jump rating, jump distance, cryo capacity, active sensor strength, EM sensor strength, grav survey rate, geo survey rate, ECM, cargo capacity, magazine capacity, troop capacity, drop capacity, cryo drop capable, Jump gate construction time, cargo handling, notes, build points, tons per man, capacity per HS, crew HS required, actual crew HS, spare crew HS, armor area, armor strength, armor width, internal HTK, build time, load time, missile GPS, missile MCR, Max repair, thermal signature, EM signature
- New Functionalities: Change class, Ship vs PDC, change hull, keep excess crew quarters, obsoletion, show size in tons, weapon range bands, target speed bands, enter deployment time, enter armor rating, rename class, auto-rename class based on theme, select name of class from db, re-number ships in class, create new hull and abbrev, create new class, delete class, give class to NPR, upgrade armor, unlock/lock, copy design, show civ designs in class dropdown, don't use theme for new class name, sort class dropdown by alpha size hull or cost, enter/exit SM mode, text file for copy paste, list available components, add component by double click or add button, remove component (double-click/add), 1/5/10/100 components at a time, components display window, group/ungroup components, show obsolete compoenents, show commercial components only, preferred mag loadout, add/remove 1/10/100/1000 ordnance to pref loadout, ignore size restriction, obsolete ordnance, show obsolete ordinances, component summary and sort by amount/size/cost/crew/htk, total materials required, min rank and class priority, record notes, show ships in class, hide/show under construction, show civ ships.
- And a few other odds and ends.
Next up will either be the next window in the alphabetical list which is Colony Summary, or switch gears and do the Galaxy View window. Haven't decided yet! (Edit: It'll be Galaxy Map
)I may be taking a few days off to play the latest Oxygen Not Included update as well!
Thanks for reading! It's a lot of fun to take a break and do a writeup like this and sort of see for myself how much I've done.