Send ship parts list directly to industry - components from Class Design.

[Oafsalot (OP)]

Basically, I would like the ability to import a ship's part list directly into the industry tab.  With a flag/tickbox to ignore parts already in the stockpile

It becomes very difficult to manage large lists of stockpile parts vs what is needed, going back and forth between Class Design and Stockpiles.

If I could send a ship design a predefined number of times, with a flag to say ignore built parts, that would be great.

Thanks

  Oafs

[Pedroig]

Standardize parts is the best way to do this currently.  I only have five different types of Engines, Fighter, M1, M2, M3, and Civilian.  I just use more of any of them if I need more EP for the craft.  Sensors, weapons, etc, pretty much the same thing, when I hit a new tech point, I upgrade the tech and production.

[Snoman314]

Yeah I 100% agree. A significant amount of playtime is currently taken up copying data across to a spreadsheet I use to manage component production, and then going back to the industry screen to queue up tens of different component production jobs. This is even with already making significant performance compromises in my ship designs to use standardised sets of components.

It's been suggested before, but doesn't seem to have gotten much traction: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10640.msg160499#msg160499

Ideally I'd like to be able to select a set of ship classes, enter a multiplier for each, and have a consolidated list of components sent to the industry queue of a selected colony. But I'd be happy enough with a button on the ship design screen that just sends that ship's components to a selected colony's build queue, and I could manually delete or increase numbers from there.

[Garfunkel]

That extra work is a price you pay for building ships significantly faster when compared to the "lazy" method of just using shipyards.

[xenoscepter]

 --- How about a checkmark in the Shipyard by "Use Components" that is greyed out unless you hit the "Use Components" checkbox? And when you tick it, it automatically cues up the parts if they aren't in the stockpile when you go to build that class. Call it, "Use Industry" or something.

[Snoman314]

--- How about a checkmark in the Shipyard by "Use Components" that is greyed out unless you hit the "Use Components" checkbox? And when you tick it, it automatically cues up the parts if they aren't in the stockpile when you go to build that class. Call it, "Use Industry" or something.

That assumes your shipyard is at the same population as your industry, but mine always is so that'd work for me.

[xenoscepter]

--- How about a checkmark in the Shipyard by "Use Components" that is greyed out unless you hit the "Use Components" checkbox? And when you tick it, it automatically cues up the parts if they aren't in the stockpile when you go to build that class. Call it, "Use Industry" or something.

That assumes your shipyard is at the same population as your industry, but mine always is so that'd work for me.

 --- That's true. Although with the extra micro of shipping them, perhaps the need for a component list might be moot?

 --- Perhaps a new type of construction facility that only produces ship parts? Have a drop down that lets you select the ship type, and then these factories produce a full set of the necessary components. And you specify how many sets or just to keep building them until you say stop. Have one of the drop downs be, "Build Selected Component", so you could say, have a set of factories producing nothing but Large Maintenance Storage Bays or Cargo Shuttle Bays or something.

 --- Might even pair well with a "Launch Partial" option so you can tow half finished ships to "Finishing Yards." So a few places build some generic parts, have a shipyard with one slipway producing partial ships, then their shipped off to a finishing yard that either produces or ships in the rest of the parts.

 --- Or a place that builds a few sets of engines and/or other high-cost components, builds partial with them, then they go to other shipyards for finishing.

 --- Or some backwater shipyard that just builds partials w/o components, then you tow the barren hulls to a proper shipyard, have your ship component factories build whatever sets of components are needed for that class and finishes them out.

[Snoman314]

There's some interesting ideas there, and there could be all kinds of interesting, in depth logistics chains involved in production, that I'd love. But, I'm mainly for now hoping for the minimum viable option to reduce this pain point (spending ages working out what components I need to produce, and then queueing them up).

Due to shipyards having the potential to be dislocated from industry, I think the smallest possible change would involve adding production options on the industry screen, not the shipyard screen, as that avoids the potential dislocation problem.

In the spirit of minimum amount of additions to reduce the size of the job for Steve to implement, I'd add a sixth category of items that can be added to the production queue, after Space Stations, called Class Component Sets or something. That gives a list non-obsolete ship classes to choose from. Clicking 'Create' adds to the queue all the producible components for one ship in that class, multiplied by the number in the 'Number of Items' field.

No option to de-select components already in inventory - just delete them from the queue after. Nothing fancy, just a huge time saver.

Should be relatively simple to iterate over all components in the ship class, see if they're buildable by industry, and if they are add them to the queue.

[alex_brunius]

There's some interesting ideas there, and there could be all kinds of interesting, in depth logistics chains involved in production, that I'd love. But, I'm mainly for now hoping for the minimum viable option to reduce this pain point (spending ages working out what components I need to produce, and then queueing them up).

Due to shipyards having the potential to be dislocated from industry, I think the smallest possible change would involve adding production options on the industry screen, not the shipyard screen, as that avoids the potential dislocation problem.

In the spirit of minimum amount of additions to reduce the size of the job for Steve to implement, I'd add a sixth category of items that can be added to the production queue, after Space Stations, called Class Component Sets or something. That gives a list non-obsolete ship classes to choose from. Clicking 'Create' adds to the queue all the producible components for one ship in that class, multiplied by the number in the 'Number of Items' field.

No option to de-select components already in inventory - just delete them from the queue after. Nothing fancy, just a huge time saver.

Should be relatively simple to iterate over all components in the ship class, see if they're buildable by industry, and if they are add them to the queue.

In the interest of developing it further. Could another option be to abstract this even further?

What if there was a generic industry project simply called "Shipyard Support" which would just speed up ship construction by X% as long as enough BP is assigned to it? X% would then be calculated based on how much of the ships total BP that is made out of components, and resource consumption for the ship construction would be increased by a corresponding amount (so the total stays the same).

Basically it would be a micromanagement reduction option that from a game mechanic standpoint would do exactly the same thing as manually building all components (transferring Industry BP to Shipyard BP), that can be used instead of manually queuing and building ship components. The main limitation would be that it can only be used on the same body.

For it to work smoothly there would also have to be a total somewhere in the Shipyard UI listing how much BP the shipyards are using to build components (so that you don't waste more industry than needed for the project).

[Oafsalot (OP)]

Yes, good idea.  Perhaps Shipyard Support would be a category of construction type in the industry tab with the shipyards appearing in place of the components/installations list.  Adding a % and directed at a single shipyard.  It would then expire when the shipyard jobs did.

Also, then you'd be able to add more than one specific shipyard to the list without much need for a new interface that way.  And this would queuing of those jobs too.

It's up in the air how much assistance a shipyard could get maximum or how exactly it would apply to the Build Points.

[Snoman314]

For it to work smoothly there would also have to be a total somewhere in the Shipyard UI listing how much BP the shipyards are using to build components (so that you don't waste more industry than needed for the project).

It's up in the air how much assistance a shipyard could get maximum or how exactly it would apply to the Build Points.

I think these two points are the core of why I don't think this is a good idea. I feel like you're handwaving away a pretty big problem. How much of your industry would be getting spent on sending BP to the shipyard exactly? At what rate does each class of ship consume BP? Does that rate vary between classes? Probably. How will the industry BP go into ship construction so points aren't wasted?

I see two solutions to this problem raised by your suggestion:
1. Steve codes up a system that constantly calculates the right amount of BP to maximise shipyard construction in the next construction increment, without wasting BP for normal industry. Whatever's left goes to the industry queue. This would be easy for the player if that player's industry is at the same population as the shipyard, which is not always the case. But it's the worst from Steve's perspective, as this would probably require the most work to implement, of the ideas I've seen.
2. The player selects how many factories are diverted to shipyard support manually and has to adjust the amount to suit the current construction. Very micro heavy for the player, and still not all that simple for Steve, as it's still adding new systems to the game.

Given that Steve hasn't shown much interest in this feature, I don't see #1 happening. On the same grounds neither do I see #2 happening, but I wouldn't want #2 either, as that sounds like a lot of work as a player.

This reasoning is why I'm suggesting a way to quickly queue up components based on selecting a ship class. Doing it that way meets the following criteria:
1. Allows industry and shipyards to be dislocated, same as things are now.
2. Is only a slight addition to the existing systems and UI, minimising the work required by Steve to implement and increasing the chances it gets added in.
3. Is still only a few clicks to add all the components to the queue you need, and then that's it - no micromanagement (which is the the whole point after all).