How to help

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tabbydan
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How to help

#1 Post by tabbydan »

Not sure what I can do to assist FreeOrion.

I could play games and mention what is confusing and could be improved (not sure if that is wanted or not).

Also I could mention lots of wishlists (but I imagine there is a huge backlog of stuff that isn't implemented yet without adding more)

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LienRag
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Re: How to help

#2 Post by LienRag »

Playtesting the latest version (not the stable release) and reporting bugs is always appreciated.

Translations are a way to help too, if you master another language than English.

Design ideas are aplenty on the forum, but if you have well thought-out ideas that are different from what have been proposed so far, you can read the Game Design forums and post in the relevant topics (after you've read what has been already discussed in the past).

tabbydan
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Re: How to help

#3 Post by tabbydan »

Is it possible (acceptable) for me to do a "brain dump"? If so, where would I post it?

I'd put the bugs / inconsistencies first, and then wishlist/ideas later.

I commented earlier that the "pedia" has some misleading info (the derelict ship entry makes it sound like something "will" be revealed after you do something with a derelict vessel, not that the vessel does something for the first player that encounters it and then disappears).

Likewise, robotic hulls descriptions are vague.

Maybe, if someone sent me all the descriptions in the game and "in their words" I could check if the descriptions make sense


I've been playing abbadoni and noticed in a game that I was trying to colonize a inferno planet with a temporal anomaly and it says "good" but the modifier is -2 (looks like a bug unless the anomaly makes populations decrease

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Oberlus
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Re: How to help

#4 Post by Oberlus »

tabbydan wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 6:44 pm Is it possible (acceptable) for me to do a "brain dump"? If so, where would I post it?

I'd put the bugs / inconsistencies first, and then wishlist/ideas later.
Ideally, you would open different threads for different subjects you want to discuss. And open different issues for each feature request or bug report you want to point out. Big posts with lots of ideas are usually hard to follow, difficult to remember and to search for later.

Maybe, if someone sent me all the descriptions in the game and "in their words" I could check if the descriptions make sense
Not sure what you're asking for, but you can check the english stringtables.
I've been playing abbadoni and noticed in a game that I was trying to colonize a inferno planet with a temporal anomaly and it says "good" but the modifier is -2 (looks like a bug unless the anomaly makes populations decrease
Not a bug. Good environment, hard to live in there due to the anomaly. "Good" doesn't mean "good to colonize".

tabbydan
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Re: How to help

#5 Post by tabbydan »

It might help if (with the temporal anomaly) it says that it is a negative growth modifier.

I'm also confused about invading worlds, ground battles, death spores etc.

Bombardment unlocked "death spores" but in the original MOO using those got everyone psychotically angry with you. Are they needed to get the population down before invading, is there a penalty for using them.

On space battles I get some feedback on the armor strength, weapons strength and how the battle went; but with ground battles I don't get any feedback. One game I threw a troop transport at the natives (no shield strength for the natives that I could see) but lost and got no feedback how bad it went. Not sure if I have to use death spores, or more transports...

On ship designs, do the built in designs corvette, frigate, etc; automatically use the latest version of the weapon (such as mass driver) and armor researched?

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Oberlus
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Re: How to help

#6 Post by Oberlus »

tabbydan wrote: Sat Aug 22, 2020 6:34 amIt might help if (with the temporal anomaly) it says that it is a negative growth modifier.
It says it is positive bonus for research and a negative growth modifier (if you read its description):
Pedia wrote:Increases Research on this planet by 5 per Population when Focus is set to Research. Decreases Target Population (regardless of Focus) depending on the planet size:
• Tiny (-5)
• Small (-10)
• Medium (-15)
• Large (-20)
• Huge (-25)
Are [bombardment] needed to get the population down before invading, is there a penalty for using them.
No and no-but-yes.
To invade a planet you need to use more attacking troops than the defending troops in the planet.
1. Part of the troops in a planet depends on the population size, and part of the troops are "flat" bonuses, fixed. So decreasing local population decreases local troops, but not by much.
2. The output of a planet (in research, production or whatever) depends greatly on the local population, so decreasing the population of a planet before conquering it means you'll need some growth time after invasion to recover the same output level. So usually you prefer to use more troops and get the invaded population whole.
with ground battles I don't get any feedback
No need, as per above: if you use less troops than needed, invasion fails (and the local defenders get decreased their troops by the amount of troops you used), otherwise it succeeds. That one time you mention you used less troops than needed.
On ship designs, do the built in designs corvette, frigate, etc; automatically use the latest version of the weapon (such as mass driver) and armor researched?
When you research a refinement of a weapon (e.g. from Mass Driver 1 to 2), the weapons on ships already built are automatically upgraded.
When you research a new weapon (e.g. Laser), the older weapons (Mass Driver) won't be upgraded to the latest weapon.

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Re: How to help

#7 Post by tabbydan »

A UI change that would help a lot is if the production queue could have different views.

With the only view being all planets together in one queue it is difficult to use. If there was an option to iterate over the colonies and look at each queue individually that would be easier to read.

I captured a native population and was expecting to be able to use them to colonize other worlds. However, after capturing them I don't see the option to build a colony ship (or a basic shipyard, if the explanation is that there is no shipyard). Can natives enable you to settle other worlds? How?

It would be nice if the "wheel of habitability" would be spun based on the player race. I'm Abaddoni and Terran still is at the top of the wheel

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Oberlus
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Re: How to help

#8 Post by Oberlus »

tabbydan wrote: Sat Aug 22, 2020 2:08 pm A UI change that would help a lot is if the production queue could have different views.

With the only view being all planets together in one queue it is difficult to use. If there was an option to iterate over the colonies and look at each queue individually that would be easier to read.
I wouldn't like that.
There is a single queue indeed, so showing fragments would of little help to be able to manage it.
To highlight the queued items under construction in a given system, select that system.
I captured a native population and was expecting to be able to use them to colonize other worlds. However, after capturing them I don't see the option to build a colony ship (or a basic shipyard, if the explanation is that there is no shipyard). Can natives enable you to settle other worlds? How?
A colony must have happiness>=5 and population>=3 to be a source for colonists.
Invading a colony zeroes its happiness, which increases at +1 per turn, so you have to wait 5 turns.
It would be nice if the "wheel of habitability" would be spun based on the player race. I'm Abaddoni and Terran still is at the top of the wheel
Your empires will have several species most of the time so this would have little utility. Having a single, fixed wheel is easier to remember.

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Re: How to help

#9 Post by defaultuser »

tabbydan wrote: Sat Aug 22, 2020 2:08 pm A UI change that would help a lot is if the production queue could have different views.

With the only view being all planets together in one queue it is difficult to use. If there was an option to iterate over the colonies and look at each queue individually that would be easier to read.
Note that the queue items for the selected planet are highlighted in green. I think what you suggest would give you false information. The queue doesn't have any priorities based on planet at all. Remember that items are built using the pooled resources for the most part, except for planets disconnected from supply. This is different than most similar games.
I captured a native population and was expecting to be able to use them to colonize other worlds. However, after capturing them I don't see the option to build a colony ship (or a basic shipyard, if the explanation is that there is no shipyard). Can natives enable you to settle other worlds? How?
For any question like that, details matter, especially which native species. Some natives can't colonize. Some can't build ships. If it won't allow you to build a shipyard, then the latter probably applies. Also, you should rarely be building colony ships. For the most part, colonization should be done using outposts and colony buildings. There are exceptions, but they aren't routine.

tabbydan
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Re: How to help

#10 Post by tabbydan »

I have a captured system with happiness = 6 and population = 18.3 but oddly I can't build a colony ship, I can't even seem to build a basic shipyard (if that was the issue)

On the giant queue, I wasn't saying remove it, I was just saying it would be nice if there was a way to get individual production queues of various planets. With everything jumbled together I find it hard to read and I'd be willing to bet other people find it hard to read.

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Re: How to help

#11 Post by tabbydan »

The reply of "which species" came in after I was asking. I assumed all natives could build ships. It looks like the natives I just captured can't.... oops

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Re: How to help

#12 Post by defaultuser »

A species that can't build ships might still be able to colonize. The Pedia for them will tell you that. If they can colonize, then you can use an outpost at the the target system, then (if that planet is on the same supply) you can colonize by building a colony start at the outpost. An example of that would be Phinnert.

As far as the queue, I'm not sure what problem you're trying to solve. It's best to prioritize production in an overall manner. You use the position and the priority of the item. It's not like games where each planet has its own resources and production queue.

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LienRag
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Re: How to help

#13 Post by LienRag »

tabbydan wrote: Sat Aug 22, 2020 10:30 pm
On the giant queue, I wasn't saying remove it, I was just saying it would be nice if there was a way to get individual production queues of various planets.
There are not individual production queues for planets. The basic unit of production is the Supply group.
As noted above, this is different from other games so you may be confused about that concept.

Of course, things are build on a specific planet, but since production points are allocated globally (on the full Supply Group) a view per-planet would be very misleading.

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Re: How to help

#14 Post by tabbydan »

Between me being used to more "realistic" games where things are built on a specific planet and only at the rate of the industry on that planet, and some UI bugs in the FreeOrion queues... I had the mistaken idea FreeOrion was using the same production model.

The Queue bugs I've seen typically occur if something is at the top of a queue for a while and then you insert something ahead of it. Then the item lower in the queue can sometimes be finished first (violating the terms of a queue, and wrongly suggesting to me that maybe ships were made on the individual planets per their production capacity). I've seen this bug on the production queues and the research queue.

After playing a few more games and seeing that (as you say) production points from the whole empire will go to whatever planet you choose (regardless if it is an old colony presumably with lots of factories, or a brand new one) I withdraw my apparent complaint on the global queues.

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Re: How to help

#15 Post by Oberlus »

tabbydan wrote: Thu Aug 27, 2020 6:51 pm The Queue bugs I've seen typically occur if something is at the top of a queue for a while and then you insert something ahead of it. Then the item lower in the queue can sometimes be finished first (violating the terms of a queue, and wrongly suggesting to me that maybe ships were made on the individual planets per their production capacity). I've seen this bug on the production queues and the research queue.
In queues of jobs with different completion times it is normal (and does not violate anything) that items lower in the queue are finished sooner, as long as the system has more effort to devote than the amount the first job can take per unit of time. It happens on multitude of systems, like CPUs or kitchens.

Glad to hear you are figuring out how it works.

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