Change to Civilian Detection for v5.0

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have made a change to civilian detection to try and improve performance a little. At the moment, you have to detect your own civilians using your sensors. However, they have transponders so 99% of the time they are automatically detected anyway. So in v5.0, your civilian ships are always detected, just like civilian mining colonies. In fact they won't even really be contacts - they will show up like one of your own fleets but in the civilian contact colour. You can still hide them by turning off civilian contacts. The advantage of this is that the sensor and detection code won't even run for those systems where there are only your ships and civilian ships. This also means there won't be a civilian alien race because you will never actually detect them and civilian contacts won't clog up the various contact lists.

Steve

[Beersatron]

I have made a change to civilian detection to try and improve performance a little. At the moment, you have to detect your own civilians using your sensors. However, they have transponders so 99% of the time they are automatically detected anyway. So in v5.0, your civilian ships are always detected, just like civilian mining colonies. In fact they won't even really be contacts - they will show up like one of your own fleets but in the civilian contact colour. You can still hide them by turning off civilian contacts. The advantage of this is that the sensor and detection code won't even run for those systems where there are only your ships and civilian ships. This also means there won't be a civilian alien race because you will never actually detect them and civilian contacts won't clog up the various contact lists.

Steve

Wait a minute, if we can not detect the alien civilians then how can we destroy them!!! Or am I reading that wrong?

Oh, and do alien shipping lines surrender their ships and assets to the conqueror or just disappear?

[Nabobalis]

I have made a change to civilian detection to try and improve performance a little. At the moment, you have to detect your own civilians using your sensors. However, they have transponders so 99% of the time they are automatically detected anyway. So in v5.0, your civilian ships are always detected, just like civilian mining colonies. In fact they won't even really be contacts - they will show up like one of your own fleets but in the civilian contact colour. You can still hide them by turning off civilian contacts. The advantage of this is that the sensor and detection code won't even run for those systems where there are only your ships and civilian ships. This also means there won't be a civilian alien race because you will never actually detect them and civilian contacts won't clog up the various contact lists.

Steve

Wait a minute, if we can not detect the alien civilians then how can we destroy them!!! Or am I reading that wrong?

Oh, and do alien shipping lines surrender their ships and assets to the conqueror or just disappear?

No I think your reading that right. I think we are able to target them but I assume that civilian ship routes was abstracted in the beginning?

I would suspect that the ships/assets are surrendered.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have made a change to civilian detection to try and improve performance a little. At the moment, you have to detect your own civilians using your sensors. However, they have transponders so 99% of the time they are automatically detected anyway. So in v5.0, your civilian ships are always detected, just like civilian mining colonies. In fact they won't even really be contacts - they will show up like one of your own fleets but in the civilian contact colour. You can still hide them by turning off civilian contacts. The advantage of this is that the sensor and detection code won't even run for those systems where there are only your ships and civilian ships. This also means there won't be a civilian alien race because you will never actually detect them and civilian contacts won't clog up the various contact lists.

Steve

Wait a minute, if we can not detect the alien civilians then how can we destroy them!!! Or am I reading that wrong?

Oh, and do alien shipping lines surrender their ships and assets to the conqueror or just disappear?

This only applies to your own civilians. As at the moment, you can't tell which alien ships are civilians. Alien civilian ships will surrender, although as individuals not as an intact shipping line.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Just a quick note to let everyone know that in v5.0 you will no longer need to detect wrecks either. This is partly to improve performance and partly to show up the ancient wrecks that appear in some systems but that most players will never see because they don't detect them. You can still toggle the display of Wrecks on/off using the Wreck checkbox on the System Map

Steve

[Nabobalis]

Just a quick note to let everyone know that in v5.0 you will no longer need to detect wrecks either. This is partly to improve performance and partly to show up the ancient wrecks that appear in some systems but that most players will never see because they don't detect them. You can still toggle the display of Wrecks on/off using the Wreck checkbox on the System Map

Steve

How much of a performance boost do you think all these changes have achieved?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Just a quick note to let everyone know that in v5.0 you will no longer need to detect wrecks either. This is partly to improve performance and partly to show up the ancient wrecks that appear in some systems but that most players will never see because they don't detect them. You can still toggle the display of Wrecks on/off using the Wreck checkbox on the System Map

Steve

How much of a performance boost do you think all these changes have achieved?

It will depend on the size of the universe and how many civilian ships you have. For small universes it won't have much effect, but for large universes with little inter-race contact but a lot of civilian shipping it should significantly reduce the time required for detection.

Steve

[Nabobalis]

So the setting on the contacts panel means I can toggle the passive detection of civilians? Or does it just hide them from the map?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

So the setting on the contacts panel means I can toggle the passive detection of civilians? Or does it just hide them from the map?

If you set the contact filter to no civilians it hides them from the map. They aren't detected though in the contacts sense any more. You can automatically see them if you want to.

Steve