shipping line herd management

[Brian Neumann]

3rd button - recall all civilian back to earth and hold

I would make that recall all civilians back to the capital instead of earth.  While earth may be the start capital for the bulk of campaigns, it does not have to be it, and the capital can be changed to another colony.  This also allows the game to use such an order on npr's if there is a reason to do so without having to change the coding at a later date.

Brian

[Vandermeer]

I would hate to be on that ship.

Alfapiomega! Finally I see you around. Now stop fooling around and get back to recording!

So, I understand that civilians are responsible for a good part of the terrible slowdowns of the game?

Tested and veryfied.

If civilians are one of the main sources of the slowdowns, then perhaps rather than keeping down your own civilian sector a different, general solution is needed, one that also influences the NPRs. Because only limiting yours civilians shipping lines to a set number with a checkbox does nothing for the ships the NPRs build.

Yep, government control would do nothing about the main problem of the multiple other races, which is why (at least in the current version) you should hunt every alien ship down as fast as possible, because they may fly through jump points to discover new systems and unbeknownst to you could randomly spawn a new race somewhere, which is the start of an exponentially downwards spiraling performance loss as those start flying around too.
I forgot to mention that when I looked for how many races were actually in that second game of mine in the end, I found a large number of which I never heard before (I only ever saw two), which were discovered by the nprs or maybe the two imperiums I let the game generate alongside with me at the start (I never knew if they were part of those I discovered or not). So evidently the slowdown came from aliens mostly and the players governential ruling wouldn't change anything on that side. (not to mention all the secret fighting breaks that arise in addition to that from so much traffic :O)

I like your idea with some population dependant limit in that regard. Also the increase of freighter capacity is not only helpful but also makes sense. At least if I understand right that civilian craft never flies more than 4 jumps from its homeworld(?), then there would be some level on which ultimate saturation of tasks is reached (anything is answered and the grid stil is flexible to some degree), and capacity is the only concern left, which can be reached either by still more or just bigger ships. Considering the problems, bigger is better.
You forgot fuel harvesters in your calculation though [/nitpick]

There is a mechanic that allows shipping lines to scrap an old ship when a new one is constructed. The problem is that if all the civilian ships are currently on missions, none of them are scrapped. I need to add some code that flags a ship to be scrapped once it finishes its current mission. That would significantly reduce the number of ships.

I also like the idea of adding larger civilian ships in the later game to reduce the overall number.

That sounds great and promising already.

how about 3 things
1st - box with number of authorized civilian ships
2nd - civilians running bigest possible designs
3rd button - recall all civilian back to earth and hold

it should not be work extensive for Steve and should solve any problem

and 4th
I would add "self destruct button" to each merchants somewhere in shipping line info just in case ...

The problem is that that all would only work if it would influence other races too, which cannot be true for the 3rd eventually and 4th button (for spoilers) at least. Changes need to be deep rooted into the concept and treatment of civilian ships in general. Esoteric balancing adjustments from the player side can only do so much.

[MarcAFK]

So I think it might be a good idea to limit total number of systems to below that point where NPRs generated NPRs and civilians, start to cause slowdown, tell me , how many system were generated in that game at the point where the slowdown became impossible to manage, and how many NPRs were there? I might create a poll asking people's experience with slowdown, at what point it occurred, discuss how it can be managed etc. it would be very useful for the FAQ, then again if steve fixes civilians significantly in 6.40, it'll be rather redundant.

[Vandermeer]

I went into a old save of the second game again and have to correct myself: The total ships count of all four shipping lines together was actually 800+ on my side (seperating in 560-280-few-few), not the biggest already, so much fewer are needed for problems. Also, when I take the Precursors, Invaders, and the Star Swarm out, only 5 NPR races remain. Altogether they own a mere 232 civilian ships, which is nothing compared to mine, so in this game the slowdown must instead come prominently from the players side. This is likely so though, because I started the game with a difficulty modifier of 20% so the other races all fall back alot. (I still had to learn many things since in my first game I lost pretty early to BUG-class bombardement missiles with only ever having had one real military vessel flying, and knowing nothing about many functions)
In this game I only owned 3 other systems, only one of which colonized for real, and the other two remote mining grounds, and all in 1-2 jumps range of Sol. Nothing against the wide spread expansion I manage in my third game right now and without problems.

I cannot name the point where the game became impossible to manage anymore though. It is like watching a plant growing. It happens unnoticable slowly every turn, and at some point you just look back and recognize - things have changed. I was in denial for quite a bit longer than it was good for me, not wanting to give up on the game I had already invested many hours in. At this end save I myself can see 86 systems, and when I switch to the only other selectable race (which is one which i am allied with) then I see 46 system, where some likely are discovered by me too. ..But there must be quite a bit more with the other 3 hidden races, so who knows.

One could make an experimental game though, where a good number of starting npr are present, and the empires all start with boosted population. One could cheatingly fund their shipping lines to start the sprawl as early as possible, so we have many civilians even when few systems are discovered, and then see how and when it really becomes a problem. Maybe define a line of 'unbearableness' that when a 1-day turn takes more than 20-seconds or 30 or so, the game is classified as broken, and the census about civilian ships and systems can be made.

[Zincat]

You have high expectations indeed. 30 seconds for a 1-day turn? That's ridiculously fast I'd say XD

[Thiosk]

In the previous versions, I tailored civ ship size by really scaling in the cargo size such that they couldn't build more than a few. Millions of tons. 

Since they design their own ships now (yes?) i was worried that my strategy would no longer work.

[Steve Walmsley]

At the moment when a shipping line builds a new ship it checks for ships that are more than 10 years old and are not currently carrying out orders. If it can find one, it is immediately scrapped. The problem is that civilian ships are rarely doing nothing.

In v6.40, when a shipping line builds a new ship it checks for ships that are more than 10 years old regardless of current orders. If it can find one, it is flagged for future scrapping and its default orders are removed. During the 5-day update any ships flagged for scrap and without orders are scrapped at that point. This should result in a lot more of the older ships being scrapped.

[Zincat]

At the moment when a shipping line builds a new ship it checks for ships that are more than 10 years old and are not currently carrying out orders. If it can find one, it is immediately scrapped. The problem is that civilian ships are rarely doing nothing.

In v6.40, when a shipping line builds a new ship it checks for ships that are more than 10 years old regardless of current orders. If it can find one, it is flagged for future scrapping and its default orders are removed. During the 5-day update any ships flagged for scrap and without orders are scrapped at that point. This should result in a lot more of the older ships being scrapped.

I am really happy about this change, but isn't 10 years a bit too much? How about making it 8 years or so? No sense in keeping obsolete ships, and I'd think that in 8 years there are bound to be improvements in the technology, so that civilian companies can make better designs.

[Steve Walmsley]

I've also added Huge Freighters and Huge Colony Ships, which have 5x the capacity of the Small versions. In addition, when choosing a Colony Ship or Freighter the Shipping Line will choose the largest vessel it can afford (after accounting for future dividends) rather than selecting randomly.

[Zincat]

I've also added Huge Freighters and Huge Colony Ships, which have 5x the capacity of the Small versions. In addition, when choosing a Colony Ship or Freighter the Shipping Line will choose the largest vessel it can afford (after accounting for future dividends) rather than selecting randomly.

Ok, this sounds a lot better. Let's hope that this stops the civilian ships madness. Plus, huge freighters are good, for when you need to move a lot of big things later in the game

[MarcAFK]

I'm sure this would have a significant reduction in civ shipping capacity, I'm not worried about slowdown much now if it really was civs and NPR civ shipping causing the main non-transient lag. Thank you steve, I hope all these new features and optimisations aren't taking you completely away from that awesome test campaign, I'm looking forward to seeing what's going on in that system, but I think it'll be awesome if you include that one in the patch like you usually do with test games.

[Alfapiomega]

Alfapiomega! Finally I see you around. Now stop fooling around and get back to recording!

I am all over the forum. Also currently have 12 episodes recorded and uploaded so they will go out after the Europa Barbarorum batch is published.

[Vandermeer]

Great. I watched your whole let's play subsequently on a second screen during my whole Aurora play experience so far.(kind of the complete Aurora media surround program nerd-out ) Now I am in the finishing phase of my third game, but just for nostalgic reasons I want to end it the same way the whole venture started.
..Just ...a couple...more ..hours.

[Zincat]

Another thing, Steve, that might help with actually making civilians more useful. Right now the priority of user-given civilian orders is very low. Civilians basically do whatever they want, and do not care much about your orders unless they just happen to be in orbit around the world where the order is.

Even though I have 8 shipping lines and close to 150 freighters now, I have an order for moving automated mines that has been waiting for 2 years, and not a single mine was moved yet. And this even though there are freighters in the system. Most of the freighters though are in the nearby system, cause I have 5 colonized planets there.

So, I'd like to request that either player-issued orders are prioritized, or that the player can prioritize them by paying more! Say that I pay double for the transports, of course the civvies would come and carry my stuff first!

Also, a question, I have 8 shipping lines (3 were born in the last 2 years) and I can't help but notice that things slowed down a LOT lately.

Could it be that the number of shipping lines is also an important fact in slowdowns? Aside from the total number of ships I mean. I say so because lately it takes about a minute to open up the shipping lines window, while before it did not though I had the same number of ships.

If so I assure you we can live with just one shipping line, for performance's sake....