nothing new, just a few improvements

[crys (OP)]

i know thouse ideas might have been posted before, but i really dont want to read years of old ideas - sorry =)

1.  time stopping events.

i see the problem here, in the time needed to go by, for the production cycle.  which is suggested at game start to be around 5 days or youre choosing.
but there are some events which can occur very often which breaks this production time cycle.

a
jump point found or grav.  survey finished
you will allready see a real slowdown with as few as 10 ships - more and youre game will nearly stop to advance - not to speak about youre production.
i dont see thouse two events as importand enough to stop anything, so i would suggest to either remove them from stopping time cycles, or let them stop after youre next production time cycle has finished.  (if the game can support this).  both ways it would prevent the loss of production/research/mining/fun

b
movement orders
ok it is getting difficult here.
i would be happy to wait for the next production cycle or even the full 30 days for any ship, except combat ships.
for the order to divide ships after doing something, it is allways silly to stop the game, because they have some default order then anyways or the order was a mistake in the first place.

c
research/finished production
here it could be helpfull to make a game stop, to the next production cycle.
but im happy with it not stopping too.


2.  ground units

i started a game and i have something like 200 low tech ground troops.

you can only disband or convert them to cadre one at a time.  with over 200 units its very silly.
i dont know about ground combat, but if its again just one unit at a time ouch.
it would help a lot, if you could select more then one unit at a time, for any option you want to take.

about ground unit production - it would help to give us a que here, to produce more without visiting it all the time.

about ground unit research - the base stats of the units is missing in the research descriptions.


3.  economics window/f2 refresh all

im not sure what is it refreshing, but its not the populates systems list, or the list of task groups in task groups window.
thouse i need to refresh most often and i dont like to open them again and again, all the time =(


4.  event updates -> a team member died/retired(geo/diplo/xeno/espio)

it means have fun searching them =(
is there allready a way to locate them easily? if not can you add the position of them in the msg?


5.  task groups window(f12)
there are some traps here

A.
a few times i wanted to repeat some actions a lot like 150 times - thats no problem, but when you enter the numbers without deleting the old ones by mistake, you get a lot of repeats like 50150 - was 50 before new 150
this actually deadlocks the game, when you select this task group again - you can just kill the game and ignore the task group forever or absorb them with another task group.  idk if it damages the database in anyway.
is it possible to catch large numbers? which would break the game.

B.  releasing tractored ships.

several times i released a tractored ship to another task group.  that works good, but if you work with tugs and mining/terraforming bases - they might not be added to the planets terraforming or mining statistics, after releasing them to a task group in orbit or even to the planet itself.
i would say it happens in more then 20% of the tries.

C.  default orders

difficult to say something here - a lot of traps to walk into.  mostly range problems like refueling, when far away from youre planet.
i would like a join higher fleet in system option =), but move to entry jump point works propably better, can cause problem when you take trade location or refuel as option to collect ships(range).

D.  Parent formations.

i usually have grav survey task groups of 5 ships or geo survey with up to 20 ships.
dividing the fleet and collecting them at the entry jump point afterwards, works very good.
but if you should loose the parent ship of the subordinate formations, then its a pain to manage them.
an option to promote a subordinate ship to the superior/parent of the fleet would be very nice.

6.  research - sensore and fire control

when you design something here, it seems very expensive to research compared to weapons or engines.
to make things worse, you need to research alot and design alot.  maybe overkill?



ok this was a huge wall of text, i hope its understandable - im not the best in english, thanks for reading.

[Erik L]

For #3, at the top left corner you should see a droplist with your empire name in it. Click that and select your empire again. It will refresh the population list without closing/opening the Econ window.

[crys (OP)]

thanks that helps a little =) - i was hitting group by function twice, but it required it to load all things twice.
to 3.
does it remove/add items to construction options too? like remove the option to build cl to construction factory/mine/fuel refinery/. .  when you dont have any cl anymore.  (hope it was called cl - lol)

[Erik L]

does it remove/add items to construction options too? like remove the option to build cl to construction factory/mine/fuel refinery/. .  when you dont have any cl anymore.  (hope it was called cl - lol)

If you are referring to the CI from a conventional start, once you are out of CI the options to convert should go away. Though you might need to refresh for that to happen.

[Gyrfalcon]

For #2 - what population are you starting with to have 200 conventional ground units? Even starting with a population of a billion, I only get something like a combined total of 60 or so units between LTA and LTI units.

Ground combat works with multiple units at a time. You generally won't see damage to every unit deployed every tick.

Ground unit production can be expanded by building more ground forces training facilities. Given production times of Trans-Newtonian units is fairly long, I don't think you really need to have a more expanded queue then increasing the training facilities.

I agree on point 6, by the way. Sensors are hugely expensive investments, well out of line with other components.

[crys (OP)]

im still trying out the game =) usualy i run out of cash quickly, so i started with a little more ppl (6b).
The part about the ground combat, it was about selecting one unit at a time to send to combat or select multiple at once.
i just assumed it would be like disbanding or turn them to cadre, hope im wrong there.

about point 6.  i think the numbers are very high for beam fire controls.  guess you could argue you dont need good sensor coverage with beam ships.
i shouldnt have put point 6 in here, i wanted to focus on better game flow.

[Erik L]

Conventional starts are considered to be advanced/hard mode while the TN start is the easier default mode. If you've not tried a TN start, I'd suggest trying one as it may alleviate some of the issues you see with wealth.

[crys (OP)]

oh i just remember salvaging some wrecks - the problem here was again that it can call a stop to time progression.
lets say you salvage youre lost grav/geo surveys(which have little return/value), you propably make a loss in minerals/time (you would produce more minerals in the time, which is lost to the time stoping event, cutting short the production cycle)

[Person012345]

For #2 - what population are you starting with to have 200 conventional ground units? Even starting with a population of a billion, I only get something like a combined total of 60 or so units between LTA and LTI units.

Ground combat works with multiple units at a time. You generally won't see damage to every unit deployed every tick.

Ground unit production can be expanded by building more ground forces training facilities. Given production times of Trans-Newtonian units is fairly long, I don't think you really need to have a more expanded queue then increasing the training facilities.

I agree on point 6, by the way. Sensors are hugely expensive investments, well out of line with other components.

To be fair I have started with a population of 8 billion before, RPing a united earth.

[Erik L]

Just remember that the initial AI player(s) are based on your starting population.

[Bgreman]

oh i just remember salvaging some wrecks - the problem here was again that it can call a stop to time progression.
lets say you salvage youre lost grav/geo surveys(which have little return/value), you propably make a loss in minerals/time (you would produce more minerals in the time, which is lost to the time stoping event, cutting short the production cycle)

Just so you know, you don't lose out on the production if you get an interrupt before the production cycle "ends."  The cycle time merely means that "every X seconds, the production cycle routine runs."  So if you get an interrupt, the production routine will still run when the time reaches the next multiple of the cycle.

[crys (OP)]

hmm
but why is any build timer pushed back then? like say resarch finishing may 25.
now you get a stop after 4 days it moves to may 29?

i changed the production cycle to 86k secs now - that should be little below 1d - propably slowing the game turns alot too

but i have still seen alot of pushbacks for about 1d or so(and i had enough wealth)

[Steve Walmsley]

hmm
but why is any build timer pushed back then? like say resarch finishing may 25.
now you get a stop after 4 days it moves to may 29?

i changed the production cycle to 86k secs now - that should be little below 1d - propably slowing the game turns alot too

but i have still seen alot of pushbacks for about 1d or so(and i had enough wealth)

I would advise against setting it to 86k. That will slow the game down considerably. No matter how long between production cycles, the amount of production is based on the interval. So if there is 5 days between cycles, you get 5 days of production. If they are 9 days apart, you get 9 days of production, etc..

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

5.  task groups window(f12)
there are some traps here

A.
a few times i wanted to repeat some actions a lot like 150 times - thats no problem, but when you enter the numbers without deleting the old ones by mistake, you get a lot of repeats like 50150 - was 50 before new 150
this actually deadlocks the game, when you select this task group again - you can just kill the game and ignore the task group forever or absorb them with another task group.  idk if it damages the database in anyway.
is it possible to catch large numbers? which would break the game.

If you set too many orders, use the "Delete All" button to remove all orders for that TG (located to the right of Add and Remove)

Steve

[crys (OP)]

in this case you get an error spamm - too many actions to calculate mission time or something like that
you allready get the error when you select the task group, and its not stoping to spamm you(ok after pressing enter for 10 secs i quit waiting for the error spamm to stop) - so you can only fix it with absorbing the task group



edit:
about the production cycle - i shortend it to reduce production losses for turns which are less then 5 days - but maybe im wrong here like Bgreman said, but i dont think so.   
the game is allready slowing down for me - maybe i go with the 5d cycles with my next game again.