Author Topic: C# Suggestions  (Read 265993 times)

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Offline Droll

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1845 on: June 11, 2021, 03:53:25 PM »
I can't be bothered to dig through the C# mechanics changes thread

But I can!

Closest I can find is this post here. It comes close to what you are describing, stating that lore-wise only craft of <500 tons can land on a planet, and using this as the logic for cargo shuttles. However, it does not state explicitly that fighter-size ships would be able to land on a planet to load and unload cargo.

I'd guess that Steve never thought anyone would actually be trying to do this for any purpose other than RP and thus either didn't think of or didn't get around to implementing shuttle-free load/unload for fighters.

This is the post I was thinking of, now that I re-read it, I think you might be right in your interpretation. I recall reading that post and making the assumption that the 500 ton rule was supposed to be all crafts below 500 tons and didn't realize that it was specifically referring to the shuttles that are a part of the cargo shuttle bay component.
 
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Offline QuakeIV

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1846 on: June 11, 2021, 09:16:04 PM »
To be honest I bet you he forgot.
 

Offline xenoscepter

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1847 on: June 11, 2021, 11:47:31 PM »
I can't be bothered to dig through the C# mechanics changes thread

But I can!

Closest I can find is this post here. It comes close to what you are describing, stating that lore-wise only craft of <500 tons can land on a planet, and using this as the logic for cargo shuttles. However, it does not state explicitly that fighter-size ships would be able to land on a planet to load and unload cargo.

I'd guess that Steve never thought anyone would actually be trying to do this for any purpose other than RP and thus either didn't think of or didn't get around to implementing shuttle-free load/unload for fighters.

This is the post I was thinking of, now that I re-read it, I think you might be right in your interpretation. I recall reading that post and making the assumption that the 500 ton rule was supposed to be all crafts below 500 tons and didn't realize that it was specifically referring to the shuttles that are a part of the cargo shuttle bay component.

 --- Well, I pestered Steve about Fighter-Sized Colony Ships, and he implemented them for v1.11. They were buggy though, and AFAIK, remained so through v1.12. However, in v1.13 I believe they are fixed... although I haven't tested that theory...
 

Offline kyonkundenwa

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1848 on: June 12, 2021, 09:49:12 AM »
Closest I can find is this post here. It comes close to what you are describing, stating that lore-wise only craft of <500 tons can land on a planet, and using this as the logic for cargo shuttles. However, it does not state explicitly that fighter-size ships would be able to land on a planet to load and unload cargo.

I'd guess that Steve never thought anyone would actually be trying to do this for any purpose other than RP and thus either didn't think of or didn't get around to implementing shuttle-free load/unload for fighters.

In the 1.12 changes list, Steve explicitly states that "Fighter-sized craft do not require cargo shuttles to load / unload colonists or cargo. Due to their size they can land and load/unload directly."
I don't know if it actually works. I made an engineless fighter with cryo transports the other day and it couldn't load/unload without a cargo station but that might be because it was engineless. I didn't test it exhaustively in order to produce a bug report.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1849 on: June 12, 2021, 10:26:41 AM »
Closest I can find is this post here. It comes close to what you are describing, stating that lore-wise only craft of <500 tons can land on a planet, and using this as the logic for cargo shuttles. However, it does not state explicitly that fighter-size ships would be able to land on a planet to load and unload cargo.

I'd guess that Steve never thought anyone would actually be trying to do this for any purpose other than RP and thus either didn't think of or didn't get around to implementing shuttle-free load/unload for fighters.

In the 1.12 changes list, Steve explicitly states that "Fighter-sized craft do not require cargo shuttles to load / unload colonists or cargo. Due to their size they can land and load/unload directly."
I don't know if it actually works. I made an engineless fighter with cryo transports the other day and it couldn't load/unload without a cargo station but that might be because it was engineless. I didn't test it exhaustively in order to produce a bug report.

In that case someone who has confirmed this should report it as a bug. I would do it but I can't confirm myself at the moment.
 

Online Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1850 on: June 12, 2021, 11:27:10 AM »
I can verify that small crafts still can't unload/load cargo on their own, at least not colonists which is what I tested, I did not try from a cargo hold.

Another issue that still exist is that Troop Transports can unload/load troops on any planet no matter their size without cargo shuttles a well, I'm pretty sure they are not suppose to be able to do that. At least it is a bit weird that they can.
 

Offline Polestar

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1851 on: June 12, 2021, 12:14:23 PM »
Some suggestions and observed issues, based on a couple of 1.13 games:

1. The Swarm is too variable in the danger level it poses, and can be far too deadly. What deep-space bugs should not do is a) scout your home planet (>10B km away from any jump point or linked LP point) five years into a game, park 10s of thousands of tons-worth of warships in orbit a few months later, destroy all your shipyards, and start bombarding your helpless early-game homeworld to dust and ruin. Endlessly, because they never run out of supplies.

This is unfair, because:
a) The player, if they set up using ordinary early-TN tech levels (the ones the game offers as defaults), may well not be able to fend off such an attack so early on. "You lose. Regardless of any attempt you might have made at preparedness." is not what a game should tell players. This applies also to the Invaders.
b) Distance should matter to the AIs. If the AI can't be made to understand fuel limits, it should at least respect a travel distance limit.
c) Supplies should matter to the AIs, at least in some sense. They don't have to run out when attacked, but if attacking, they should not be able to fire beam weapons endlessly, especially when bombarding.
d) If it is intended for space bugs to be a mortal threat, or at least if they should attempt to wipe out players if not stopped, then the game should provide some sort of warning that these aren't just ship-killing, wreck-harvesting critters ... the Swarm wages wars of extermination!


2. The bugs or game design choices that trigger lengthy - and in some cases quasi-endless - runs of increments measured in seconds, when the player is not involved, need to be hunted down and put of players' misery.

a) Are all fire controls being properly cleared when a target is lost or no longer available?
b) Can AI-versus-AI fights be resolved using a simplified set of rules? "If on attack and not in range, but might be able to get into range, chase until in range. Otherwise, defend. If has missiles, and missiles can't be shot down well enough, subtract missiles and inflict damage. If has beam weapons, and can catch target, catch target and inflict damage. Otherwise, set to chase or defence, and counter-fire only. Repeat for all other sides. Repeat for each suitable sub-block of time. Stop when all but one side is destroyed or escapes, or all sides are on defense, or the player-specified block of time ends." That kind of thing.
c) If a) and b) are not sufficient, then at least allow the player to learn which fleets are killing game progression, so they they can be deleted. Make it easier to kill off fleets without triggering "not set to an object" error messages.


3. On the subject of those dratted error messages: The keystroke used to clear the message should not be the same keystroke used to request another turn increment. At present, both are ENTER on my keyboard. Extra credit if the error message could be presented without popping up a box, and/or if the game got better at deleting objects that trigger such messages. For example, if a ship can't find its fleet, maybe kill off the ship?


4. The game interface redraws windows and refreshes text extremely inefficiently. This is immediately noticeable on the message window. The Economics window also has a problem here, a problem worsened by its refreshing every turn increment (even if only 5s) instead of just doing one automatic refresh every construction cycle. In long games, the Leaders window and even the Ship Design window can also bog down.
 

Offline Droll

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1852 on: June 12, 2021, 12:32:11 PM »
In long games, the Leaders window and even the Ship Design window can also bog down.

So for the leaders window I actually know exactly what the problem is. The game has a filter system that lets you choose between officers of certain type, rank and skills. The problem is, the filtering is automatically done and not done manually at the players discretion.

Furthermore, when you open the commander window this search is done with the default settings which are set to "Naval Officer, R1 - Rmax" which means that every time you open the commander window the game is going to search through and sort potentially 1000s of naval officers and sort them in descending order of crew training even if the player has no reason to.

This problem is further exacerbated by the inefficient refreshing present in the commander screen like all the others because every time you do something in the commander window, the search gets repeated and you have to wait again.

The ideal solution is to have the player press a filter button, so that a search only happens when they tell it to. The easy work around for Steve (and to a lesser extent us) to do is to change the default settings for the search, specifically make the ranks a range such as R2-R1, which will return a list of 0 officers almost instantly. If you have multiple assignments on the commander window I recommend that players also do this, wont save you the initial loading time but you will at least be able to assign officers and not have to wait.
 

Offline Blogaugis

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1853 on: June 13, 2021, 04:22:32 AM »
Some suggestions and observed issues, based on a couple of 1.13 games:

1. The Swarm is too variable in the danger level it poses, and can be far too deadly. What deep-space bugs should not do is a) scout your home planet (>10B km away from any jump point or linked LP point) five years into a game, park 10s of thousands of tons-worth of warships in orbit a few months later, destroy all your shipyards, and start bombarding your helpless early-game homeworld to dust and ruin. Endlessly, because they never run out of supplies.

This is unfair, because:
a) The player, if they set up using ordinary early-TN tech levels (the ones the game offers as defaults), may well not be able to fend off such an attack so early on. "You lose. Regardless of any attempt you might have made at preparedness." is not what a game should tell players. This applies also to the Invaders.
b) Distance should matter to the AIs. If the AI can't be made to understand fuel limits, it should at least respect a travel distance limit.
c) Supplies should matter to the AIs, at least in some sense. They don't have to run out when attacked, but if attacking, they should not be able to fire beam weapons endlessly, especially when bombarding.
d) If it is intended for space bugs to be a mortal threat, or at least if they should attempt to wipe out players if not stopped, then the game should provide some sort of warning that these aren't just ship-killing, wreck-harvesting critters ... the Swarm wages wars of extermination!
Personally, I always disable Star Swarm because - I simply refuse to believe that the open cosmos can be habitable to any sort of living being.
Even with precursors and extra-galactic invaders I am reluctant to add them, due to the phrase - "...which do not behave in the same way as a normal non-player race (NPR)" - but for the latest play-through, I've decided to add them, for extra challenge and that they may have a reason to exist.

Since, at the start, and even as the game goes on, the player has the option to enable or disable the "Spoilers", that is more of a player's preference, whether he/she wants a greater challenge/have fun with a strategic nightmare story of monsters that can live and multiply in space and how a player defeats them, or sees himself/herself defeated by them. I choose to disable them, because it would ruin my suspension of disbelief.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1854 on: June 13, 2021, 11:53:14 AM »
One can always enable a spoiler race after the game has started and the player race is situated.
 
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Offline Black

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1855 on: June 13, 2021, 12:07:16 PM »
Would it be possible to get SM command to "reset" system bodies? Basically it would delete all bodies and spawn new ones.
 
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Offline xenoscepter

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1856 on: June 13, 2021, 02:14:21 PM »
I can verify that small crafts still can't unload/load cargo on their own, at least not colonists which is what I tested, I did not try from a cargo hold.

Another issue that still exist is that Troop Transports can unload/load troops on any planet no matter their size without cargo shuttles a well, I'm pretty sure they are not suppose to be able to do that. At least it is a bit weird that they can.

 --- This is a bug, I myself reported it in v1.11, it was "fixed" in v1.12, then again in v1.13. http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12035.0 <=== This post confirms that the function is intended. You should post it in the v1.13 Bugs Section. I haven't confirmed it yet, and probably won't be able to for a while due to my son being born yesterday.

 - Sent from Mobile.
 

Offline Droll

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1857 on: June 13, 2021, 03:14:22 PM »
due to my son being born yesterday.

Congratulations!
 

Offline xenoscepter

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1858 on: June 13, 2021, 03:55:46 PM »
due to my son being born yesterday.

 --- Cheers! Currently stuck in a hospital with little to do. Poor guy was a month and a week early... But he's getting better real quick.

 --- That's enough Off-Topic in C# Suggestions though. :)

Congratulations!
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #1859 on: June 14, 2021, 05:06:34 AM »
This raises an interesting point whether or not the policing requirements of a planetary population should increase as the planet becomes more full above a certain threshold. For example, when the space taken is at least 50% the policing requirements start to increase more than usual, with the increase being more extreme as the space used approaches 100%.

Found this in the "What is your biggest empire" - thread and thought, this is worthwhile to think about. We do have unrest due to overpopulation, though it makes sense that once you get close to the maximum (lets say 95%) that people get uneasy and begin rioting which leads to an increase in police needed... . And it would make sense that people will increase violence more if they are in enclosed spaces (i.e. installations) - so the need for a non-zero planet which needs installations should be higher than on a zero world... .
 
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