Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: ceselb on July 12, 2011, 05:55:51 PM
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I have a big problem. This is my second game. I keep having problems with designing ships. Takes forever to get them to show up in the shipyard after designing them. First two times it took well over a year. This time I did two at once and it's now been over 2 years and they still don't show up.
Wiki or forum doesn't specify what you actually need to do to save your design. I lock the design and also press save under the "DAC / Rank / Information". I don't know if that is needed, but the first times I kept going back every 30 days to check and I fiddled with a lot of things, so I don't know. Those two were what finally made it appear. But not this time.
The wiki/forum thread needs updating too. Either to state that it takes a long time or what to actually do to get the design finalized.
When I registered here I got an email saying this: "Before you can login and start using the forum, your request will be reviewed and approved. When this happens, you will receive another email from this address. "
I haven't gotten such an email yet but I can still post here it seems. So either it doesn't need to be reviewed anymore or the mail simply isn't going out. Either way, something needs to be fixed.
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Your shipyards need to have sufficient capacity for the designs to show.
As for the second email, I have a choice; Approve, or Approve and Send Email. I usually approve without the email.
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The two variants, grav and geo ships that I designed are 1150 ton each. All yards are above 5000 tons. Those were finalized 2. 5 years ago now. The third ship is 30000 tons, but I have one yard of that size. That's over a year ago now as well.
Look here, the refit list is empty:
(http://hxxp: hxxp: hxxp: hxxp: ceselb. myftp. org/shipyard. png)
EDIT: For some reason I can't get the image to post, or even show up in preview. Maybe the bbcode implementation is broken or something? Direct link.
EDIT2: Something is really screwy, forum just ate that link. *Sighs. * Oh well, I'll just post it without any bbcode fluff, just paste it in and have a look. ceselb. myftp. org/shipyard. png
EDIT3: Apparently the forum puts an extra space after each period for every edit, making my post look very odd indeed. Fixed, but I won't fiddle more with this now.
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(The forum stuff is spam prevention.)
The shipyards can only refit to or construct an assigned class or eligible additional classes.
In the Shipyard Complex Activity section choose Retool for Selected Class and choose the 30k ton class.
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Please see the link to the image I posted. That list is empty. (Unless you mean something else than 'Economy -> Manage shipyards'. I don't have anything called Shipyard Complex Activity).
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Ok i'm not ENTIRELY sure what the issue is, but we'll go with this:
Your shipyards have no class asigned. Instead of looking down in the refit section, where its blank, look up top:
Task type: no activity.
Set it to: retool shipard for selected class, select the class. It will instantly retool because its the first design, and then you'll instantly be able to begin construction down below.
A yard can be retooled, for a nontrivial cost and time.
note: "the shipyard complex activity" section is in that window you linked.
The top third is the list of yards. middle is "shipyard complex activity". bottom is "create shipyard task"
The wiki could stand a substantial rewrite. But I for one am working on my graduate thesis, and don't have time to do anything :'(. However, once thats done, i may have time to get in there and do it-- as you figure stuff out, consider it as well! ;D
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I've drawn a red box around the control where you choose Retool. Once Retool is selected a list of classes small enough for that shipyard will appear just to the right of that.
(http://i.imgur.com/mRbrq.png)
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The one on the last third, 'task type -> refit to' is functionally identical I belive. It's the one I used in my first game when I managed to build two different designs.
Anyway, that list is also empty. ceselb. myftp. org/shipyard2. png
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The one on the last third, 'task type -> refit to' is functionally identical I belive. It's the one I used in my first game when I managed to build two different designs.
No, "Refit to" changes an existing, already built ship to a different class. "Retool" changes the shipyard.
Is the class marked as obsolete on the F5 Class Design window? Are there any Design Errors listed on the Design View tab of the same window?
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EDIT3: Apparently the forum puts an extra space after each period for every edit, making my post look very odd indeed. Fixed, but I won't fiddle more with this now.
That's a spam prevention measure. Once you hit 10 posts your urls won't be munged.
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No, "Refit to" changes an existing, already built ship to a different class. "Retool" changes the shipyard.
Well, that's odd in that case. But no, that is empty as per my image.
Is the class marked as obsolete on the F5 Class Design window?
No, it's not. Besides, that would involve me having put that checkmark there myself, right? I'm not that stupid.
Are there any Design Errors listed on the Design View tab of the same window?
There were none when I built it. Can't see now, since I locked the design thinking that was the problem. Are you saying it doesn't need to be locked to show up in the shipyard then?
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it locks automatically when you tool the shipyard for the first time.
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As far as I know there are only three reasons a class won't show up in the Retool list: marked obsolete, too big for the yard, or a military class on a commercial yard.
Your Shipyard #2 is commercial, is the class? The last line of the summary on the Class Design window should read: "This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes".
The class does not need to be locked (which is kind of counter intuitive.) I don't think design errors make a difference, I asked that as a shot in the dark.
Have you tried the Retool for either of your other designs on the other shipyards?
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Ofcourse the one I had selected was a commercial. I hadn't seen those. I thought they were invisible or something like the ships they produce for the civilian companies.
Great, spent 5 years upgrading the wrong yard. Now it'll take another 5 years to upgrade the right one to 30k tons.
I wonder what happened last game then as I did a non-whatever start and only built normal military yards. A whole lot of trouble then too.
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This game is a puzzle at first. Theres so many little things. The first several games were a waste for me, too, but now i'm having a wonderful game that is playing just the way i want it to. Stick with it! And we're here to sort out the crazy.
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Ofcourse the one I had selected was a commercial. I hadn't seen those. I thought they were invisible or something like the ships they produce for the civilian companies.
Great, spent 5 years upgrading the wrong yard. Now it'll take another 5 years to upgrade the right one to 30k tons.
I wonder what happened last game then as I did a non-whatever start and only built normal military yards. A whole lot of trouble then too.
Actually it will prob take a bit longer to upgrade a Naval yard to 30kT (Civillian yards build capacity faster)
I'm 7.5 years into the game and I have two yards with 2 slips which have reached 27kT - they started at 5kT and have been on Continual Capacity Expansion since the start of the game . The two yards with 3 slips have just reached 16kT (half way to my 32kT target).
For the purposes of testing, you can go into SM mode, open up the shipyard that you want and increase the capacity (theres a button that appears marked something like "SM SY Mod" which appears to the right of the Auto-Rename button)
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you can go into SM mode
No, I can't. Didn't set a password when I generated a new game and it gives an error message when I give a blank one to login now.
EDIT: Also, having an easy cheat function has destroyed more games for me than I can count. I'm not sure your suggestion is for everyone.
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No, I can't. Didn't set a password when I generated a new game and it gives an error message when I give a blank one to login now.
EDIT: Also, having an easy cheat function has destroyed more games for me than I can count. I'm not sure your suggestion is for everyone.
Unless you actually created a password then you should only need to enter thru the PW request when entering SM Mode.
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Sorry, not going to try that.
Anyway, I have more problems. 5 geosurvey ships are done. Since I think putting them in the same taskgroup would make them go as a group I put them in 5 separate groups. Primary: survey planet or moon. (because last time it did the asteroids first for some reason) Secondary: survey next 5 bodies.
Trouble is they're not moving. Remembered they didn't last time either until I assigned a commander. So they now each have a (naval officer) as a commander. With a survey bonus, that I hope will help. Trouble is, they're still not moving.
Finally got the first one out by giving a manual order to survey luna. It actually went there right away, so the ships are functional and such. So why aren't anything happening with automatic orders?
Second question. Read somewhere that maintenance whatever on a planet stops the clock. Well, it hasn't on those ships. 0. 29 on one and 0. 10 on the other 4. Why isn't this working? (They're small and well withing the planets maintenance weight limit).
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Sorry, not going to try that.
Anyway, I have more problems. 5 geosurvey ships are done. Since I think putting them in the same taskgroup would make them go as a group I put them in 5 separate groups. Primary: survey planet or moon. (because last time it did the asteroids first for some reason) Secondary: survey next 5 bodies.
Trouble is they're not moving. Remembered they didn't last time either until I aassigned a commander. So they now each have a (naval officer) as a commander. With a survey bonus, that I hope will help. Trouble is, they're still not moving.
Second question. Read somewhere that maintenance whatever on a planet stops the clock. Well, it hasn't on those ships. 0. 29 on one and 0. 10 on the other 4. Finally got the first one out by giving a manual order to survey luna. It actually went there right away, so the ships are functional and such. So why aren't anything happening with automatic orders?
Did you set up the game with the system already surveyed? It looks like there are no survey targets nearby.
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Crap, that I did. Thing is I selected the same thing on the first game and it didn't happen then. I just thought surveyed meant you saw all the asteroids and comets or something. *Sighs. *
How about my second part then. Why was the maintenance clock still running?
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Its not REALLY just an easy cheat function. The game is based on a huge database, a complicated, occasionally messy database. Sometimes, stuff gets borked, and you need to go in and prune things.
Please post your ship design so we can look at it. If its not moving... you didn't... forget to put engines on it, did you?
5 task groups for 5 survey ships is the way to go. each ship then may operate separately.
maitenence does stop on a planet, but it needs a maitenence facility. you can see the size of ships the planet can handle on the F2 summary screen. Maitenence only occurs if the ship is smaller than the total facility size.
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Earth can handle 13000 tons, the geo survey ship is 1150 tons. So I don't understand why the clock was still moving.
EDIT: Now I'm very confused. I set the game up so that all jump points had a gate or whatever. I thought that would mean no silly jump engine needed. Tried to send my geo ships through, but they can't, says they need an engine or assistance from another ship. Does this setting not function like described for some reason?
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Do your jump points have red squares around them? If not, you probably set the option for jumpgates after you created the world. You'll need to either build them yourself now or make em via SM mode.
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That or it's bugged, my games when I set jump gates on every point often don't put them in Sol, but they are everywhere else.
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That or it's bugged, my games when I set jump gates on every point often don't put them in Sol, but they are everywhere else.
This will often happen if you add the setting after the start of the game. Using the setting for gates at every jump point only adds them to new jump points/systems when they are created not to existing jump points. You can use the sm functions to add gates to the jump points if you want to in this case. In the System overview (F9) screen, jump point tabs there is a box with several options that only shows up with sm mode on. It is center left directly under the listing of the jump points. One of them is to add a jump gate to an existing jump point. Select the jump point and then click on the button to add the jump gate, repeat as needed.
Brian
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Earth can handle 13000 tons, the geo survey ship is 1150 tons. So I don't understand why the clock was still moving.
How did you get them in orbit of Earth? With a "move to" command or an "extended orbit" command? Maintenance only works after "move to" (think of it as Low Earth Orbit).
EDIT: Now I'm very confused. I set the game up so that all jump points had a gate or whatever. I thought that would mean no silly jump engine needed. Tried to send my geo ships through, but they can't, says they need an engine or assistance from another ship. Does this setting not function like described for some reason?
Did you use the "Standard Transit" or the "Squadron Transit" order? "Squadron Transit" doesn't work with jump gates. And do your geo survey ships have engines? What's their max speed rating.
John
PS - Please "new user" questions like this in The Academy, as discussed in the "Where Should I Post?" FAQ.
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I didn't get them into orbit. So that's why it's not working then. Though I'm curious to the reasoning behind having ground based things only work in orbit.
Standard transit. If it matters, since there's only one ship per taskgroup. And yes they have normal engines, or they wouldn't have moved to the jump point at all. 2608 km/s. I did change everything before starting, unless some hidden and weird option starts it in the background. *Sighs.*
Everything was changed before hitting 'select this' or whatever it said. I don't even know how to navigate back through the maze of things to get there. Not even going to try.
That or it's bugged, my games when I set jump gates on every point often don't put them in Sol, but they are everywhere else.
Might this be the case then? It's intentional, to prevent whatever aliens to just flood through and smash you first thing? (It's odd, reading through maybe 5or 6 games there always seems to be atleast one alien race right on the next jump point. Is that hardcoded somehow? Seems very very unlikely to happen by chance that often among 1000 systems.
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No... they're... in orbit. you don't have to launch them. honestly, at this stage, i would suggest taking screenshots again to assist us. You have more than 5 posts now, so you should be able to post URLs and images normally.
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No... they're... in orbit. you don't have to launch them. honestly, at this stage, i would suggest taking screenshots again to assist us. You have more than 5 posts now, so you should be able to post URLs and images normally.
Threshhold is 10 posts.
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No... they're... in orbit. you don't have to launch them. honestly, at this stage, i would suggest taking screenshots again to assist us. You have more than 5 posts now, so you should be able to post URLs and images normally.
That situation is long gone now and since I couldn't post screenshots sensibly then I didn't take any. Just take my word for it, while the ships didn't move at all since produced the maintenance clock ticked on.
Anyway. How can you make a gate using the SM mode? I actually went into it now and couldn't figure out a thing.
EDIT: Threshhold is 10 posts.
Well, it still adds another space after the period when I edit. So either it's still trying to censor me or something else is seriously b0rked with the forum code.
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EDIT: Well, it still adds another space after the period when I edit. So either it's still trying to censor me or something else is seriously b0rked with the forum code.
Post a link so I can see what's happening. Once you hit 10 posts, it should not munge up the urls anymore.
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I think we have a misunderstanding. You said "My ships' maintenance clocks are advancing even though they're in orbit of Earth and Earth has more maintenance capacity than the size of any ship". (Paraphrase)
I said "How did you get your ships into orbit of Earth?"
You said:
I didn't get them into orbit. So that's why it's not working then. Though I'm curious to the reasoning behind having ground based things only work in orbit.
This sounds like you're saying "I didn't get the maintenance facilities into orbit. Why should they need to be in orbit if they're ground based?" then you didn't understand what I was saying.
If what you're actually saying is "oops, my ships started moving away from Earth at speed 1, so they weren't in LEO even though I thought they were" and "What is the reasoning behind having ground-based maintenance facilities only work on ships in LEO", then the answer is "Because they only work on ships that are 'at' the planet, and if you move away even a tiny little bit the game considers you to be 'not at' the planet."
John