Observed small changes in 7.0

[Jumpp (OP)]

Things I'm seeing that may be new, or may just be things I never noticed:

- A scientist who wasn't leading a project got a skill increase.  Message said something about studying hard.

- Ground forces commanders with no training skill get assigned to appropriate posts.

- Naval officers seem to get assigned more like how I'd do it manually. Almost looks like it's trying to get guys with high training skill posted to ships that need training.

- A fleet that finished training to 100% ended its training order with an interrupt. Previously, I'm pretty sure I've seen such fleets continue wasting time and fuel until I noticed them.

[sloanjh]

- Ground forces commanders with no training skill get assigned to appropriate posts.

Steve posted that he "fixed" this one near the very end.  Don't remember if someone complained in Suggestions or Bugs; Steve said the old behavior was WAI, but agreed it was suboptimal....

John

[MarcAFK]

Over in the bay12 forums there's been a lot of people suggesting that resource generation is exceedingly generous now compared to old versions. I haven't actually started playing my new WH 40k campaign but I did notice earth has enough duranium to keep the space marines happy for quite some time. 

[Garfunkel]

- A scientist who wasn't leading a project got a skill increase.  Message said something about studying hard.

That's been possible for a while. Quite rare but does happen.

[Jumpp (OP)]

Steve posted that he "fixed" this one near the very end.  Don't remember if someone complained in Suggestions or Bugs; Steve said the old behavior was WAI, but agreed it was suboptimal....

John

That was me. Didn't notice that Steve had replied. My forum-keeping-to-date-up-with skills are poor, it seems. That's awesome.

[83athom]

That's been possible for a while. Quite rare but does happen.

Rare? I've seen it a few times a year in my games.

- A scientist who wasn't leading a project got a skill increase.  Message said something about studying hard.

Previously possible.

- Ground forces commanders with no training skill get assigned to appropriate posts.

I don't pay attention to this so this may have changed but it may have been like this already.

- Naval officers seem to get assigned more like how I'd do it manually. Almost looks like it's trying to get guys with high training skill posted to ships that need training.

I've seen this in the last version as well, so not a change.

- A fleet that finished training to 100% ended its training order with an interrupt. Previously, I'm pretty sure I've seen such fleets continue wasting time and fuel until I noticed them.

I've had interrupts for 100% fleet training in previous versions, you probably missed noticing it.

[Jumpp (OP)]

Rare? I've seen it a few times a year in my games.

I cheat, mostly.

I used to keep every scientist working by assigning them jobs, worthwhile or not, and one lab each. Couple games back it hit me that I could keep them working with zero labs each, so that's what I do now.

As a fairly new attention-conservation technique, I let new scientists sit idle until the next time a research project finishes up. So  I wouldn't have many opportunities to see this message. It'd be easy for me to miss it.

Which all leads to a simple question: Do scientists skillup faster when they're working than when they're idle?

My tedious procedure of keeping every scientist working 24/7 would be entirely pointless if not, and I'd love to be done doing that.

EDIT: It occurs to me that I'm making a further assumption without any evidence: That a working scientist's chance of skilling up is unrelated to the number of labs he's operating. That's pure speculation on my part and I've got no idea if this is true or not. All I really know for sure is that scientists working projects with zero labs can get skillups with the same "experience" message that those with more than zero labs get.

So, the question I really mean to ask is: Is there any difference among the following:

- The rate at which idle (non-assigned) scientists gain skill.
- The rate at which working scientists with few labs gain skill.
- The rate at which working scientists with many labs gain skill.

[83athom]

My tedious procedure of keeping every scientist working 24/7 would be entirely pointless if not, and I'd love to be done doing that.

That made me think of a mechanic that might be interesting. Maybe scientists should have a "dedication" percentage for researching to simulate sleeping and such. They would get a base of 80% for their specific area with a diminishing % for others (based on a relevance scale we could make), with a chance to be +/- ~10% for individual research techs. Another thing to add to that is increased skill onus chance for higher dedication, as well as a higher accident chance. I might add this to the suggestions topic but what do you guys think of it first.

[Mastik]

Over in the bay12 forums there's been a lot of people suggesting that resource generation is exceedingly generous now compared to old versions. I haven't actually started playing my new WH 40k campaign but I did notice earth has enough duranium to keep the space marines happy for quite some time.

My present game had about 143,000 Duranium.  I ran a few random game generations, i got a range of 213,000 to 806,100.

[xeryon]

I think the increase in mineral densities on system bodies was to balance out how the jump point concentrations now favor long chains.  The end result being fewer nearby bodies to mine so make the ones available richer.  IIRC Steve mentioned this in the thread discussing jump point and system generations.

[linkxsc]

Ive noticed slightly larger concentrations on a couple of restarts, at least in sol, though only pertaining to the inner planets, and they all seemed to have lower than normal acess. I mean earth last patch usually had all resources at .9 or 1.0. Now most seem to hang around .8

Also on 2 of the starts none of the gas goants had a mentionable amount of sorium (like literally hundreds or a few thousands, where usually at least 1 will be over 1 mil)

[Garfunkel]

Rare? I've seen it a few times a year in my games.

I think I see it about once or twice a year so yeah, it's rare. Considering how many scientists you have.

Do scientists skillup faster when they're working than when they're idle?

Much faster, so it is indeed a good idea to keep them working 24/7.

What I do once I have a good number of labs, is to have 2 scientists for each field (except biology), a main one and a backup one who has 1 lab to work on something non-important. This way once the main scientist dies or retires, I don't lose too much time with the backup guy being fairly proficient already.