Mass Drivers

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Steve Walmsley wrote:
TNEs are much heavier than normal ores so they have much more impact  

...on your economy  

Will mass drivers be on the list of items that can be added to colonies by SM mode?

They are on the SM Mods window.

Steve

[Pete_Keller]

OK, I'll bite, where do I find them to build?

Pete
(Running 2.0)

[Kurt]

OK, I'll bite, where do I find them to build?

Pete
(Running 2.0)

I think they are in 2.1

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

OK, I'll bite, where do I find them to build?

Pete
(Running 2.0)

They are in the unreleased v2.1

Steve

[Pete_Keller]

OK, I'll bite, where do I find them to build?

Pete
(Running 2.0)

They are in the unreleased v2.1

Steve

Tease  



Pete

[sloanjh]

Um - is there any way to tell how much of what is in the mineral packets in transit?  I'm trying to figure out my home system's duranium burn rate and I don't have a good handle on how much my asteroid mine is making every update since it's immediately being loaded onto a mass driver and fired off to Terra.  This causes the "Recent Stockpile +/-" field to show up as "0.0".

Could "we" maybe add another column for "mass driver +/-" that would tell how much of the change is due to mass driver packets?

I also am not seeing a speed/eta for my mineral packet on the system window.

Thanks,
John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Um - is there any way to tell how much of what is in the mineral packets in transit?  I'm trying to figure out my home system's duranium burn rate and I don't have a good handle on how much my asteroid mine is making every update since it's immediately being loaded onto a mass driver and fired off to Terra.  This causes the "Recent Stockpile +/-" field to show up as "0.0".

Could "we" maybe add another column for "mass driver +/-" that would tell how much of the change is due to mass driver packets?

I also am not seeing a speed/eta for my mineral packet on the system window.

I've added speed, time and distance for mineral packets. I have also added an option to show the content of each packet, rounded down to the nearest integer for each mineral type for space reasons

The extra column is a little more tricky. The existing stockpile +/- is zeroed before mineral production in the 5-day increment so you can see the change. If I zero mass driver +/- at the same point, you would lose any packet arrivals during the movement phase of the 5-day increment. I can't reset it before movement though because I never know until after movement if this is going to be a 5-day increment or a standard increment (because of movement sub-pulses). I think the only way to do it is to keep a temp table of packet arrivals during each movement phase and then add that to the new overall packet changes table if it turns out to be a 5-day increment. Any packet arrivals in-between 5-day increments will change the +/- situation as they arrive.

Steve

[sloanjh]

I think the only way to do it is to keep a temp table of packet arrivals during each movement phase and then add that to the new overall packet changes table if it turns out to be a 5-day increment. Any packet arrivals in-between 5-day increments will change the +/- situation as they arrive.

That was along the lines of what I was thinking of.  Note that I've found a workaround - when a packet arrives the +/- is set to the "correct" value.  Between that and the ability to see what's in a packet, I think this request has dropped to low(er) priority.

Thanks,
John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I think the only way to do it is to keep a temp table of packet arrivals during each movement phase and then add that to the new overall packet changes table if it turns out to be a 5-day increment. Any packet arrivals in-between 5-day increments will change the +/- situation as they arrive.

That was along the lines of what I was thinking of.  Note that I've found a workaround - when a packet arrives the +/- is set to the "correct" value.  Between that and the ability to see what's in a packet, I think this request has dropped to low(er) priority.

I have done it anyway

There is now a mass driver +/- column on the mineral tab that includes any packet arrivals during the movement phase of the 5-day increment. I setup the temporary table as above and it seems to work OK. From the user perspective, it resets at the start of each 5-day increment, although it is a little more complicated behind the scenes. It is useful to know what minerals are flying around in packets.

Steve

[Kurt]

Steve-

In the original message of this thread you stated that the permissable targets for a mass driver are other of your populations in the same system with mass drivers, and any detected alien populations whether they have mass drivers or not.  

Has this changed at some point?  In the Twin Moons game both races have detected at least one alien population, but neither can target anything but their own populations with their mass drivers.  

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Steve-

In the original message of this thread you stated that the permissable targets for a mass driver are other of your populations in the same system with mass drivers, and any detected alien populations whether they have mass drivers or not.  

Has this changed at some point?  In the Twin Moons game both races have detected at least one alien population, but neither can target anything but their own populations with their mass drivers.  

It looks like it has changed, although I don't remember changing it. There was probably a good reason at the time but I don't remember that either . Senility is obviously creeping in.

Steve

[Kurt]

Steve-

In the original message of this thread you stated that the permissable targets for a mass driver are other of your populations in the same system with mass drivers, and any detected alien populations whether they have mass drivers or not.  

Has this changed at some point?  In the Twin Moons game both races have detected at least one alien population, but neither can target anything but their own populations with their mass drivers.  

It looks like it has changed, although I don't remember changing it. There was probably a good reason at the time but I don't remember that either . Senility is obviously creeping in.

Steve

I didn't remember any change being mentioned, but I sometimes miss things, especially when I'm running a campaign and not paying attention to the latest version.  Happened with SA all the time.  

That is just as well.  In the Twin Moons campaign, I was going to have the Colonists use their mass drivers to systematically wipe Strug colonies out throughout the system.  This might lead to a situation where everyone needs to keep building mass drivers to make sure that no one else has more than they do.  The more I thought about it, the more untenable this situation seemed.  Both sides might be able to protect their home worlds, but it seemed unlikely that either would be able to build any colonies, as they wouldn't be able to divert enough mass drivers to protect the colony without weakening their homeworld defenses.  

Of course, this problem is limited to situations where two sides have major worlds in the same system.  

Thanks

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I didn't remember any change being mentioned, but I sometimes miss things, especially when I'm running a campaign and not paying attention to the latest version.  Happened with SA all the time.  

That is just as well.  In the Twin Moons campaign, I was going to have the Colonists use their mass drivers to systematically wipe Strug colonies out throughout the system.  This might lead to a situation where everyone needs to keep building mass drivers to make sure that no one else has more than they do.  The more I thought about it, the more untenable this situation seemed.  Both sides might be able to protect their home worlds, but it seemed unlikely that either would be able to build any colonies, as they wouldn't be able to divert enough mass drivers to protect the colony without weakening their homeworld defenses.  

Of course, this problem is limited to situations where two sides have major worlds in the same system.  

That wouldn't be a problem. Although you may need a lot of mass drivers to send minerals, one mass driver at the target will catch an unlimited amount of minerals, so one mass driver will protect a colony against any size of mineral packet.

Steve

[ShadoCat]

Of course, this problem is limited to situations where two sides have major worlds in the same system.  

That wouldn't be a problem. Although you may need a lot of mass drivers to send minerals, one mass driver at the target will catch an unlimited amount of minerals, so one mass driver will protect a colony against any size of mineral packet.

Steve[/quote]

That changed?  I thought that a mass driver could only catch 5 packets at a time.

[Kurt]

Of course, this problem is limited to situations where two sides have major worlds in the same system.  

That wouldn't be a problem. Although you may need a lot of mass drivers to send minerals, one mass driver at the target will catch an unlimited amount of minerals, so one mass driver will protect a colony against any size of mineral packet.

Steve

That changed?  I thought that a mass driver could only catch 5 packets at a time.[/quote]

Do'oh!  It's right there in the first post in this thread, in the second paragraph!  And all this time I thought that MD's could only catch the same amount that they could send out!  Oops!

Kurt