N00b

[Steve]

As noted in the subject, I'm a n00bie. Just found FreeOrion (FO?) yesterday.

I'm very impressed!

A few quick observations, questions, etc...

- Ship design appears to be non-functional, as yet. Correct? I flailed around for some time trial-and-error'ing to figure it out, before looking for help in the "v0.4 Quick Play Guide" and then coming here.
- I have damaged ships sitting in a system with shipyard and drydock; they don't seem to be getting repaired; is that also as-yet-unimplemented, or have I failed to find the way to assign them to dock?
- I seem to have mis-assigned colony resources such that I drove the colony to extinction (!). Whoops. Maybe some sort of warning in such cases...?

Could I suggest/request implementing a stub pop-up when a player enters a not-yet-functional area, to let them know the feature is waiting-for-development?

Many thanks for your effort -- impressive work!

[Geoff the Medio]

- Ship design appears to be non-functional, as yet. Correct?

Ship design works. You can select a hull, then drag parts onto it, then confirm the design, and then order the design built in the production screen, if you have the relevant prerequisites. In v0.3.14 building some custom designed ships will crash the client, however, but the basic functionality is there.

- I have damaged ships sitting in a system with shipyard and drydock; they don't seem to be getting repaired; is that also as-yet-unimplemented, or have I failed to find the way to assign them to dock?

There is no ship repairing in v0.3.14.

- I seem to have mis-assigned colony resources such that I drove the colony to extinction (!). Whoops. Maybe some sort of warning in such cases...?

The way meters such as farming work is likely to change in future versions, so starvation will be a bit slower process than the current situation where one turn with the wrong focus setting can wipe out a colony, but we may consider adding such a warning in later versions.

Could I suggest/request implementing a stub pop-up when a player enters a not-yet-functional area, to let them know the feature is waiting-for-development?

Most of the UI, including ship design, is basically functional, aside from bugs.

[namehere]

ship design doesnt really work for me either, i can select a hull, i can select a part, i can drag a part, but dropping does nothing, i have tried dropping in various places like the hull on the left side, on the top, and in the blank area above the clear parts button, but nothing seems to work

[Geoff the Medio]

There are, or should be, slot icons on most hulls. (Excluding the empty hull, which has no slots). You need to drop the parts onto the slot icons.

To select a hull, you need to double-click it. Clicking once to select the hull (or a finished design) in the list doesn't put the hull in the design work area to the right.

See this screenshot for reference. It shows a Mark I design selected, which (I belive) uses a small hull, with two full and one empty slots.

Note that there are two types of slot icons - internal and external - which can only accept certain types of parts. The parts have backgrounds for their icons that indicate what type(s) of slot the parts can be dropped into.

After dropping parts and giving the design a name, click the Confirm New Design button, and the hull should appear on the production screen, if appropriate filters are set.

[namehere]

ah, i see its the double click that got me :P
you should put buttons for using hulls or building or researching instead of just making it all double click

[Steve]

To select a hull, you need to double-click it. Clicking once to select the hull (or a finished design) in the list doesn't put the hull in the design work area to the right.

That's got it; thanks!

Note that there are two types of slot icons - internal and external - which can only accept certain types of parts. The parts have backgrounds for their icons that indicate what type(s) of slot the parts can be dropped into.

Yep; that part was intuitively self-obvious. Nice bit o' design, that.

After dropping parts and giving the design a name, click the Confirm New Design button, and the hull should appear on the production screen, if appropriate filters are set.

Well... this didn't quite work right, for me. I ended up with 6 versions of the same-named ship, as I got no confirmation of the design being committed, nor any stop/warning for doing another design with the same name.


- Steve

[Geoff the Medio]

I ended up with 6 versions of the same-named ship, as I got no confirmation of the design being committed, nor any stop/warning for doing another design with the same name.

Getting it basically functional was a priority. Getting it working well and "smart" isn't.

I hope to change several things about the current system, such as indicating that a design will duplicate an existing one, requiring an extra click to modify a design so that looking at a design in the design screen and actually making a new design based on an exsting design are different activities, making the naming and descriptions less likely to duplicate existing designs by erasing them and/or populating with distinct and hopefully descriptive autogenerated text by default, making it possible to delete a design, and showing stats about the design-in-progress in the encyclopedia window at the top. But this isn't a priority for me at the moment, and I don't know of anyone else volunteering to work on it at the moment.

[Steve]

I ended up with 6 versions of the same-named ship, as I got no confirmation of the design being committed, nor any stop/warning for doing another design with the same name.

Getting it basically functional was a priority. Getting it working well and "smart" isn't.

Gotcha! Thanks for the reply.