FreeOrion

Just downloaded the latest Windows build that pd was kind enough to host (thank you for this), and it seems to be working. One question about it though, is the lack of background stars only a feature of this build?

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What is your favourite alien species and WHY?
Preliminary thoughts about diplomacy
Some unfinished ideas for specials

Check options - "galaxy map". Some of the things might be ticked off.

Some things were indeed ticked off. I should have realised to check options first, before asking.

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What is your favourite alien species and WHY?
Preliminary thoughts about diplomacy
Some unfinished ideas for specials

Sorry to be joining this discussion so late, but somehow the development of these detection radii on the galaxy map totally slipped my notice. Maybe i should have stayed active is the stealth/detection discussion longer, but it got mathematically arcane enough that i didn't have anything to contribute and lost interest.

But currently we have a situation were we have clever rules, but no good way to show the player how effective his detection actually is, without the clunky expedient of switching through different views that "assume X stealth". This IMHO is not a UI problem. This is a problem with game mechanics that have gone beyond what a UI can reasonably support. Unless there is a non-obvious solution to displaying this detection info... but i really doubt that there is.

This IMHO is not a great solution, but it may be about as good as is possible. It's going to be a lot more confusing when you get a bunch of overlapping detection ranges.

And what about the detection ranges of allies, or enemies who are thoroughly infiltrated by your spies? Are we going to have a rainbow mush of overlapping detection circles?

I'd be posting in a design thread, but i wasn't able to find where these mechanics (for the galaxy map) were discussed.

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I've suggested that a gradient be used so that a region of space in which you could see a ship of stealth 80 would be much more vividly coloured than a region of space in which you can only see a ship of stealth 10. This would make it extremely easy for the player to detect "gaps" in his detection where moderately stealthy ships could remain undetected. I've been told though, that this would be very difficult to code, though I think the extra utility it would give the UI would be worth it.

My recommendation would be to only show one empire's detection range at a time. The player can switch at any time between seeing his detection, and the detection of other empires (based on his visibility of their detectors). A small icon on the fleet and ship panels could be used to indicate which empires are known to have visibility of the particular fleet/ship.

This thread was the one that discussed stealth and detection mechanics for the galaxy map, and it's still open, though I'm not sure how likely it is for the decisions which were made based on that thread to be revisited.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Interesting! What happens if the observer goes to the tech or design screens?

On the research screen, the tree is visible, and techs can be clicked on to view their details, but double-clicking does nothing (whereas it would enqueue a tech if the player was controlling an empire).

The production screen shows no buildable items and an empty queue, though buildings (but not ships) being produced at planets can be seen on the sidepanel.

The design screen has a list of empty hulls that can be clicked to see their details, but no ship parts are shown (same situation as buildable items, probably). Double-clicking a hull puts it in the design edit window, but clicking the confirm design button (which should be disabled for observers) does nothing. I haven't investigated why hulls are treated differently from parts in their lists, though they probably shouldn't be. Clicking to view finished designs (instead of empty hulls) crashes the client, probably due to an assumption in code that there would be a valid current empire available.

For all three views, there should probably be an option to view details for a particular empire, though this also would probably be done as part of the espionage system.

Yes, that's what I was getting at. Thanks for the update!

I was wondering if these two modes will be sufficient. I'm thinking specifically of this common situation:

A guard fleet sitting in a border system and a scout from a race you haven't met yet arrives. How do you want your guard fleet to react? With the two modes of "agressive" and "passive", you are limited to either the "shoot first, ask questions later" approach (and start your relations with this new race on not so friendly terms), or just sit and watch as the scout happily proceeds into your territory (and see things you probably don't want it to see).

I think what surely would a viable "policy" in this case is: Don't initiate combat immediately, but also don't let the scout pass through the system. This could be achieved by a third mode, "defensive", which is something in between "agressive" and "passive". A fleet in this mode would not initiate combat, but it would not allow enemy (as in "not allied") fleets pass through the system (they would have only the option of returning to the system they came from). If the intruding fleet has also a mode of "passive" or "defensive", they can not pass the system. To break through, they must be set to "agressive", initiate combat and can only pass if the defending forces are defeated.

I think this is a tactic you may want to employ generally for guard fleets if you don't want to defend your borders agressivly (as in shoot at everything that shows up if it's not ships from allies)...

The other option would be not to initiate combat if diplomatic relationship between the empires is undecided.

This means, that during the turn after initial contact with the scout, the empires would be either "at war" (which would result in combat with aggressive guards) or "at peace" or "allied" which should not result in combat.

I can see the problem that the scout would have one free jump that turn (that is it would not be stopped at the system it was first detected).

In the future there could be introduced civ-like diplomatic options like borders and right of passage that could be used to prevent other empires from entering empire's space unless they start a war or sign a treaty.

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[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - xkcd

I suspect that it would be relatively rare for the first contact with an enemy empire to be a ship in a system with your own empire's ships, since there is no (longer) any distance-dependence to detection ability. As such, if you can see a ship in a system with your ships, then you'd have been able to see it a turn or two before it was in that system or before your ships were in that system. A case where this scenario might occur is if you unlock a boost in detection strength that suddenly makes the ship visible without moving, but in that case, I'm OK with minor border skirmishes / accidental battles on the first turn a new empire is seen in neutral territory. This sort of encounter does occur in science fiction (eg. Babylon 5 when Humans meet the Minbari), and is a reasonable outcome if one is moving trigger-happy fleets around in neutral or foreign territory.

I also do not want to add a bunch of different control settings or rules about how to handle various different scenarios or different empires' assets upon contact, as this would make fleets too complicated to control.

That's a diplomacy issue that will only really be relevant when empires get the option of not being at war. But looking ahead-- one of my ideas is that the default diplomatic status between empires is that you attack any ship within your territory, but not outside your territory. (Territory probably = "systems where you have an outpost or colony")

Also/Alternatively it may be nice to have the option to immediately retreat, with apologies, when you violate the territory of an empire you are not at war with, but neither are allied with. Something in the presumed future battle queue. This would be to prevent unintended states of war due to exploring.



I agree.

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After fixing some build errors and small bugs I finally managed to produce a working build for OSX. Can be downloaded here.

OSX folks, please download and test!

Note that, as far as I know, everything already worked fine on OSX, even with non-Latin user names or pathes, but this test would be good to use to make sure that it still works / hasn't been broken by the changes.

Yes.

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