FreeOrion

After I've stumbled over the outdatedness of the current Quick Play Guide, I decided to update it. After Geoff suggested splitting it instead, I've done so (link to new version on top of 0.3 Quick playing guide). Except for the research chapter, it's just a duplicate right now, but that will change...

Right now the wiki article is called V0.4_Quick_Play_Guide, since naming it V0.3.9_Quick_Play_Guide would break everything that links to it every time a new minor version comes out. I don't care about the name, so feel free to rename it as you see fit.

I'll post any questions and concerns I run across during the editing into this thread.

The reason I started a new thread right now is that I've already got a question:
I thought it would be a good idea to add images to the guide to help explain things. On the one hand, an image often says more than a thousend words (see my button hunting trouble ), on the other hand it would be good advertisement for those who are looking whether the game would interest them in the first place.
However, the wiki doesn't let me upload any images (says the action is limited to people in the group Sysops). So, anyway to integrate images into the guide? It's not like I need them, but it would make the end result much better, I think.

PS: I don't have the means to upload the images somewhere else (And I don't think the wiki software supports embedding an arbitrary url anyway...)

Just finished a turn and build an imperial Palace on my homeworld.
I don't understand it's effect: First there is written "Planet on which it is built receive +5 to max construction" (should be "receives"), then under "Effects:" there is written "Source object only Max construction +2" (and not +5). But the tooltip for the cogwheel with the hammer (construction infrastructure) doesn't show any change at all. Shouldn't the "Max Meter" value have risen (to 12 or 15)?

I've got to figure out how things work to document them. And before someone suggests to play for quite some time before starting to document things: Howto guides are best written while you figure things out yourself. That way, the trouble spots are fresh in your mind, and you can help other players avoid them (Which also means less dumb questions like this one on the forums ).

PS: The research is game-breakingly swift. Finishing my first turn I just researched 10(!) Technologies at 1RP/turn@1 turns. When a defense station takes 20PP/Turn@10 turns (and you actually only get 10PP/turn) that's just way to fast. Even if you don't want to balance techs just yet, can't you at least append a zero to their cost? Or even better, just price them according to the number of prerequisites they have?

Alright, I'm going to wait for an answer before I continue. I'm understand the max meters even less now. I advanced another turn, discovered another 10 technologies, and took a look at the max construction meter.
I'm attaching the result as image: Still no visible effect of the Imperial palace, instead the effect of two technologies (two times +5), which is countered by an unknown(!?) -10...

I'm sorry no one has responded, for some reason the couple guys that normally contribute to the graphics forums and elsewhere have been mysteriously missing ever since last friday. Anyway, I don't really think I can help you too much with the meters; they confuse me a bit too, even though I know how they're supposed to work. I can't explain what you've written above, but I do know that left-clicking on a resource for a planet makes it that planet's primary focus and right-clicking makes it a secondary focus.

I think what might be limiting construction is your minerals/materials. Construction might be different from production, but i think it might be the same. If it is, then what it used to be was (research points + mineral points) / 2 = production points. So in this case, it MIGHT be that it's (research points + mineral points) / 2 = construction points. You'll have to test it out. Right now looking at the screenshot, you have 10 research and 10 mineral per turn, making 20/2 = 10 production (construction) per turn. If you want it to increase, maybe raise both of those resources and see what happens. The unknown -10 might be the underdevelopment of both of those resources, or it might be some condition that you need to research a tech for, in order to overcome it.

_________________
Photobucket account for FreeOrion and List of Techs and Icons

[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

If you attach an image to a forum post, or pm an image to me, I can upload it to the wiki for you. Uploading is disabled for wiki non-administrators.


This is a bug in the building definition. It's currently giving +2 to construction to itself, (the source object) and not the planet it's built on (which would be actually useful, and would appear in the construction meter for the planet that you're looking at). You can fix this by editing buildings.txt so that the imperial palace Scope condition is "Contains Source" instead of "Source".


I made most techs cost 1 PP and take 1 turn to make testing easier. If I've got a tech that's 3 levels in, I don't want to have to hit turn 10 times when I could hit turn 3 times to get it researched. There's no point in balancing anything now, so usability for testing takes priority.


This is a more complicated bug. What's happening is that the server sends the clients that actual meter values during the previous production / research / growth phase. This takes into account every factor that affects these meters, even if the empire you're playing doesn't know about those factors. The player's client predicts meter values for next turn using everythin in the universe it knows about. The player might not know about some factor that affects a meter though, so any difference between what the player's client predicts and what the server reported for the previous turn is listed as "Unknown". There's a small bug with this though, when you build a new building or research a new tech: on the first turn, the meter value reported by the server from last turn won't take into account the effects of the new building or tech, leading to a one-turn "Unknown" factors that erroneously counteracts the effects of the new buildings or techs. Hit turn, and the "Unknown" should go away on the next turn.


It had only been a few hours... Don't expect everyone to be constantly refershing the forums 24 hours a day in case a question is asked... I or someone else will probably get to it within a day.


That's sort of how things worked in previous versions, but for the last few versions, there have been two droplists used to select focus, both of which are manipulated with left clicks.


Construction has nothing to do with research or minerals. Production points are a combination of minerals and industry.

Oh. I thought his post was like a day or two old because he had replied to himself several times. Prolly shoulda looked at the timestamp first...



Right, right. I knew there was something + something = something else...I just wasn't really sure and said that it might be what the problem was, I really didn't know.

_________________
Photobucket account for FreeOrion and List of Techs and Icons

[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Well, after looking around some, I discovered that the research costs are defined in a simple config file as well (techs.txt).
Soooo... I wrote myself a ruby script that reads in that file, calculates how many prerequisites each tech has, and writes the file out again, just with new 'researchcost' and 'researchturns' settings.

The formulas I used are:
researchcost=5+nPre*3
researchturns=2+nPre

It's very easy for me to rerun the script with different formulas (I could also take category and techtype values into account).
I am going to attach the resulting tech.txt (zipped, since txt isn't allowed) file to this post. I think I would like to suggest the replacement of the techs.txt in the Quick Play Guide (using this formula or a different one).
Though I still think it would be better to spread the game with a techs.txt file containing sensible reseach cost values, and just replace them with 1/1 for testing purposes...

I also corrected the imperial palace in buildings.txt, and tested the result: It works. I am going to assume that this isn't the only time the mistake is made in buildings.txt, as I can see 'scope = Source' quite a few times in there. I am for example reasonably sure that the effect of Bioterror Lab is wrong (scope=source), but I won't even try to correct any mistakes in buildings.txt by myself. Not enough knowledge...

I should have time to go over more areas of the guide from today till sunday. I will post pictures I would like uploaded when I am done with the text.

For the actual v0.4 release, we'll probably use some more sensible cost and turns values for techs and buildings, but I won't make those changes before then. Using anything other than 1/1 for the guide makes sense, as it's hard to illustrate and explain usefully if everything has trivial cost and time.

I did a check for scope = Source myself after noting the problem with the Imperial Palace.

I just invested some time into getting a screenshot of a side bar showing as much information as possible (for the Quick Play Guide, of course).
Looking over my screenshot, I spotted a little inconsistency: The current population is 1.95 (number next to the two white people), while the tooltip says the current population is 1.8!? Even taking rounding into effect, this doesn't mesh. So, is the number show next to the two people actually the population <i>next</i> turn? (Would be quite counter intuitive). Or is this a weird rounding bug? (Why are you rounding at all? Shouldn't the tooltip show you <i>more</i> informations about whatever you are hovering over instead of less?) I'd be thankful about enlightening here, since I intended to use this screenshot to explain what is shown on it.

Besides this question, I'd also like to ask whether it is possible to configure somewhere how many ships you start out with (obviously I couldn't find it myself nosing around in the text configuration files). I would enjoy the amount described in the Quick Play Guide v0.3 (2 Scouts +1 Colonizer) much more than the currently implemented (5 Scouts + 10 Colonizers + 1 Mark I). Just a question of immersion...

The population statistic indicator shows the population for next turn. This is done because this way it's much clearer that you're going to starve your population in half if you have insufficient food due to focus changes you're making.

The tooltip is rounding to two digits, while the sidepanel stat indicator is rounding to three. This exact number of digits isn't particularly important, but rounding needs to be done because meter changes can have arbitrary precision, and we don't have space to write +1.925353256363, and obviously wouldn't want to even if we did have space...

An example tooltip should probably show some effects from techs and buildings.

Changing the starting fleet requires recompiling. The current larger fleet was added at the request of AI scripters for testing purposes. v0.4 will probably go back to more reasonable / fun initial fleets.

Thanks. A closer look around showed me that all the single numbers in the sidebar are for next turn. I still say that's counter intuitive, but I can see your point as well. I'd just think about whether there isn't a way to have your cake and eat it too (=Show current numbers AND whether you will starve them to death. Space for two numbers, or coloring the single one?).


In that case I would advocate letting the same function that formats the single number next to the icon do the formatting in the tooltip as well. If nothing else, it would make the realisation that the single number is the projection for next turn easier.


Yes I know. Will have a look for something to boost population... (It's just the most natural example to explain things in more detail with.)


Thanks for the info. A smaller inital fleet in v0.4 would be great! (And putting it into a configuration file would obviously be ideal. That way the AI scripters could still do their tests with higher numbers...)

Thanks for answering! Wiser again...

"next turn" numbers can be thought of as "the end of this turn" numbers. "current" is "the start of this turn". With things as they are now, the number of resources you produce after pressing the turn button is consistent with the numbers shown on the sidepanel, which is as it should be, I think.


It already does. The function has a parameter that determines the number of digits shown.


Making universe creation, including start of game assets for players, scriptable is a long-term goal, but will require a significant amount of reworking and isn't a very high priority.