A Newbie's Two Cents

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ShneekeyTheLost
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A Newbie's Two Cents

#1 Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

So I just found Free Orion, and downloaded the v0.3.15 [rev 3727] for Linux, and it's a surprisingly entertaining system. Here's some points I'd like to point out:

* Guide Dang It! I'd really like some sort of reference for what does what where how and why.

* Found a bug. Specifically, at some point the Food and Mineral displays on the main screen froze up and showed a consistent food and mineral score, with a (0.00) adjustment. However, after a while, I was wondering why my Industry was not producing what it should have been, and saw the pp was significantly less. Curious, I increased my Mineral production, which caused it to slowly start rising. So it wasn't that my mineral count itself was frozen, merely the display on the top left part of the screen. The industry, research, and population indicators were working just fine.

* Seems to really punish early expansion, at least until you can get some techs that increase your supply line. I wouldn't have even known that had I not gone to these forums and found a post specifically on that. Again, that's something I'd love to see in a manual.txt file packaged with the next edition of release.

* I know little about coding, but if necessary, I can document decently, and I might be able to write your dang manual, if that's what it takes. Would take me quite a bit, juggling all the things on my schedule, but I think I might be able to pull it off.

* This game is just as addicting as MoO2. I'm sure the challenge will increase when you develop AI for the computer opponents, but at least getting familiar with the system, it's certainly an engaging system.

* I like the way you've set up the resources, with mineral production being necessary to fuel industry.

* One note... you've got such an enormous tech tree that it seems like it would be impossible to get everything done in a game. I mean... I'm on turn 700 or so, and STILL have a long way to go through the tech tree. Granted, this is my first playthrough, I suppose I'll get more efficient as I go along, but seriously... on one hand, I *LOVE* the in-depth tech tree, but on the other hand... in an actual game, I probably won't get to see 2/3 of it.

* Colony ships are too honkin' expensive. Once I got Outpost Module, I can make a ship that does about the same thing FAR faster. Sure, it takes the new colony a bit longer to run up, but I can spam outpost ships very rapidly. Of course, getting there is a pain, but hey...

* On that same note, spamming outpost ships is a fun way to rapidly expand your tech base once you get Basic Autolabs up and running.

* Focused Mining, as it stands, is providing far LESS minerals than regular mining does. I think this has to do with the Mineral Rich ability providing a flat +50 on Mining, and 2xPop on Focused Mining. So you'd need a population of over 25 to come out ahead on that deal, which doesn't happen very often. This could stand a second glance.

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eleazar
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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#2 Post by eleazar »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:So I just found Free Orion, and downloaded the v0.3.15 [rev 3727] for Linux, and it's a surprisingly entertaining system.
Welcome Shneekey :) It's great to hear that FO is providing fun.
Some of your observations are still relevant, but some have been addressed, we've released 3.16 in the middle of July.
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* Guide Dang It! I'd really like some sort of reference for what does what where how and why.

* I know little about coding, but if necessary, I can document decently, and I might be able to write your dang manual, if that's what it takes. Would take me quite a bit, juggling all the things on my schedule, but I think I might be able to pull it off.
Yeah i know the documentation isn't great. With so many features left unfinished, the developers usually choose to work on those rather than documentation. Also after you've spent a lot of time working on a feature it can be hard to see what exactly other people might need to be told about it.

But that's were people like you come in. We have a quick play guide, but it is out of date and incomplete. Feel free to include the answers you've learned the hard way, or improve it -- but make sure you're on 0.3.16 first! Use what time you have available, you don't have to commit to doing the whole thing.
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* Seems to really punish early expansion, at least until you can get some techs that increase your supply line.
I'd like to exploration made a bit more flexible, but the idea is that exploration will be ongoing throughout much of the game, as you work and expand to reveal more of the map, not just something you complete in the first stage of the game.
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* One note... you've got such an enormous tech tree that it seems like it would be impossible to get everything done in a game.
Actually that's the idea. Though the tech tree isn't really balanced, we want the ultimate techs not to be something you get as a matter of course, but something special and relatively rare.
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* Colony ships are too honkin' expensive.
Yep, the were. They are about 1/4th the cost now.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#3 Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

eleazar wrote: Some of your observations are still relevant, but some have been addressed, we've released 3.16 in the middle of July.
Ahh, I think I may see the problem, although I may not be able to actually *do* anything about it.

Y'see, I run Linux (Ubuntu 11.04), so it automatically let me get the 0.3.15 for Linux tarball.

Your 3.16 update apparently is for mac or windows, but you don't have a linux distro yet.

I'll go see if the windows version can work with WINE and see if I can check out the updated version

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#4 Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

Okay, some things I notice about 3.16:

* Colony ships are still too expensive, outpost ships are superior in nearly every way. I didn't notice a decrease in cost here.

* I found that graphics bug the other guy was talking about, blank lines over the production and research window. Mind you, I'm running 3.16 Windows version through WINE, which has always had issues with graphics cards not working right, but this did not exist in the linux distro of 3.15, and it exists now.

* You have many races, but no way of knowing what each one's strengths and weaknesses are.

* I absolutely love the blind exploration, where you don't know which direction your opponents are going to arrive in, and what paths open up longer exploration routes and which are dead ends

* 3.16 goes to your next turn a -lot- slower than 3.15, but then, you do have an AI working now, so it's probably expected.

* I like the messages window rather than blanking out the whole screen. That was a great upgrade from 3.15 to 3.16.

* I start experiencing a lot of lag as I continue to progress in the game. And by lag I'm talking system resources, not the between-turn wait. The cursor starts leaving shadows behind, it takes a half second for the computer to recognize I clicked on something, that kind of thing. After about 200 turns or so, it got bad enough that I had to save and quit and start it back up, which cleared up the problem.

* Attempting to load the save, however, crashed it. or rather, hung it indefinitely with the message 'FreeOrion server waiting for network events' which never apparently happened.

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eleazar
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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#5 Post by eleazar »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* You have many races, but no way of knowing what each one's strengths and weaknesses are.
Look in the in-game galactopedia. Currently the only difference (for major species) is what kind of planet they prefer.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#6 Post by Geoff the Medio »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* I start experiencing a lot of lag as I continue to progress in the game. And by lag I'm talking system resources, not the between-turn wait. The cursor starts leaving shadows behind, it takes a half second for the computer to recognize I clicked on something, that kind of thing. After about 200 turns or so, it got bad enough that I had to save and quit and start it back up, which cleared up the problem.
Sounds like memory leaks might be contributing to this. I can't suggest a fix for that, but you might want to go into the options screen, galaxy map tab, and disable the starfield and galaxy gas rendering options. That might speed up the FPS you get.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#7 Post by Bigjoe5 »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* Found a bug. Specifically, at some point the Food and Mineral displays on the main screen froze up and showed a consistent food and mineral score, with a (0.00) adjustment. However, after a while, I was wondering why my Industry was not producing what it should have been, and saw the pp was significantly less. Curious, I increased my Mineral production, which caused it to slowly start rising. So it wasn't that my mineral count itself was frozen, merely the display on the top left part of the screen. The industry, research, and population indicators were working just fine.
That probably means that you weren't producing enough minerals to fund all of your industry - i.e. your mineral production was lower than your industrial production. It showed a stockpile of 0, and an increase in minerals of 0 (since all produced minerals were being used on the same turn). Something similar applies to food if you don't have enough to feed your entire population.
Once I got Outpost Module, I can make a ship that does about the same thing FAR faster. Sure, it takes the new colony a bit longer to run up, but I can spam outpost ships very rapidly. Of course, getting there is a pain, but hey...
Eventually, outposts aren't going to have any population, so you won't be able to just colonize all your planets with outposts.
* Focused Mining, as it stands, is providing far LESS minerals than regular mining does. I think this has to do with the Mineral Rich ability providing a flat +50 on Mining, and 2xPop on Focused Mining. So you'd need a population of over 25 to come out ahead on that deal, which doesn't happen very often. This could stand a second glance.
Heavy mining is to give you the ability to make mining useful on big planets, instead of only being useful on smaller planets (where the mining focus provides a greater bonus). That being said, it makes sense that you would have to have a higher population to benefit from heavy mining regardless of whether or not the Mineral Rich special was on a planet.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#8 Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

Bigjoe5 wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:* Found a bug. Specifically, at some point the Food and Mineral displays on the main screen froze up and showed a consistent food and mineral score, with a (0.00) adjustment. However, after a while, I was wondering why my Industry was not producing what it should have been, and saw the pp was significantly less. Curious, I increased my Mineral production, which caused it to slowly start rising. So it wasn't that my mineral count itself was frozen, merely the display on the top left part of the screen. The industry, research, and population indicators were working just fine.
That probably means that you weren't producing enough minerals to fund all of your industry - i.e. your mineral production was lower than your industrial production. It showed a stockpile of 0, and an increase in minerals of 0 (since all produced minerals were being used on the same turn). Something similar applies to food if you don't have enough to feed your entire population.
No, it showed a stockpile of several thousand, I had more than enough minerals to support my industry. Then those numbers just froze. It still said I had several thousand in the bank, when I actually ran myself dry. It never told me when I started running red. I have, however, been unable to duplicate this bug.

[/quote]
Once I got Outpost Module, I can make a ship that does about the same thing FAR faster. Sure, it takes the new colony a bit longer to run up, but I can spam outpost ships very rapidly. Of course, getting there is a pain, but hey...
Eventually, outposts aren't going to have any population, so you won't be able to just colonize all your planets with outposts.[/quote] Now that's a bummer. Colony ships, as it currently stands, are *FAR* too expensive to build early-game. Here's the problem:

1) Industry. At 15/turn, it takes almost 100 turns to make one. That's... not very viable.

2) Minerals. At 7.5/turn mineral output, it actually takes about twice that long. And, unless you research Asteroid Mining or Orbital Mining, there's almost no way to GET mining to build a colony ship WITH.

3) Planetary Focus. Each planet can only focus on one thing at a time. Your first planet *MUST* focus on Food, or your empire starves, point blank. So your second planet either focuses on industry, and you are unable to support the mineral draw, or it focuses on minerals, in which case you're limited to a 15/turn, and it takes nearly 100 turns to build it. During which time, you can't build anything ELSE. Like Outpost ships. Or Mark 1's if someone's scout shows up in your turf and starts trying to starve out your one colony by parking over it.

These three things make it *VERY* difficult to build a colony ship to expand your empire. If Outpost Ships don't bring a 1/10th of a population unit with them, to act as 'very slow growth colony ships', then there's really no viable way to build a colony ship early game.

If you prevent outpost ships from generating automatic resources from Basic Autolabs and Basic Autofactories, then I would go further and say that it would be literally impossible to do so for at least the first hundred turns or so, which would bore most players to tears.

As it is, I did come up with a cute tactic, which I call the 'Decentralized Distribution of Supplies' (DDoS).

Basically, you aim for Habitation Domes, Orbital Farms, Basic Autolabs, Basic Autofactories, and Orbital Construction in your research. Once you get Outpost ships, build one and send it somewhere. If there's a place with ancient artifacts within your supply lanes, get that. Otherwise, whatever Good or Adequate planet happens to be in your supply lane. By turn 100, you've pretty much got all of those techs, and your outposts now provide 5 Industry, 5 Research, and most of them are probably research focused (since that is the only focus worth having on an outpost until Orbital Mines/Asteroid Mining) so they're generating 15 research each.

Then you just spam outpost ships until you occupy every single planetary object within your supply reach. Aim for orbital mines if one of your outposts is Mineral Rich, or Asteroid Mining if you've found asteroids to support this industry. You'll probably want a several asteroid mining facilities, since your industry will be 5x (number of outposts) + 15

That builds you a good infrastructure which provides good tech and industry from which you can expand out into the galaxy at large, slowly but surely creeping along as your supply lanes spread, until you run into someone else.

Once you get your industry up to over 1k, then colony ships become worth building. But getting it up there without the ability to spam outpost ships, will be nearly impossible for several hundred turns.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#9 Post by eleazar »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:Now that's a bummer. Colony ships, as it currently stands, are *FAR* too expensive to build early-game.
Balancing is ongoing.

I have a hard time remembering exactly when changes were made, but it seems colony ships were cheapened after the initial release of .3.16. If you look at the design screen they cost 1100 PP right? In the latest revisions they cost 350 PP. Maybe they will become cheaper later.

I think you should be able to get a 3.16 (R 4224) which has the newer cheaper colony pods.
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:3) Planetary Focus. Each planet can only focus on one thing at a time. Your first planet *MUST* focus on Food, or your empire starves, point blank.
Planets don't starve so easily now, but yes, focus needs more work.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#10 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:3) Planetary Focus. Each planet can only focus on one thing at a time. Your first planet *MUST* focus on Food, or your empire starves, point blank.
Planets don't starve so easily now, but yes, focus needs more work.
Consider also that you can choose between expansion with food production on the homeworld, or building other stuff at your homeworld and delaying expansion. The homeworld can generally feed itself without focusing on farming.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#11 Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

eleazar wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:Now that's a bummer. Colony ships, as it currently stands, are *FAR* too expensive to build early-game.
Balancing is ongoing.

I have a hard time remembering exactly when changes were made, but it seems colony ships were cheapened after the initial release of .3.16. If you look at the design screen they cost 1100 PP right? In the latest revisions they cost 350 PP. Maybe they will become cheaper later.

I think you should be able to get a 3.16 (R 4224) which has the newer cheaper colony pods.
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:3) Planetary Focus. Each planet can only focus on one thing at a time. Your first planet *MUST* focus on Food, or your empire starves, point blank.
Planets don't starve so easily now, but yes, focus needs more work.
The download linked and on the file-sharing site is 3.16-ALPHA [4046]

Where can I obtain a copy of R4224? I tried browsing through the stickies, but that just pointed me back to the download of build 4046

Also, if there's a way I can get it to run native Linux without having to run it through WINE, that would make things easier. There seems to be a memory leak somewhere causing it to lag after around turn 100 or so, and occasionally, you can input commands after you click on the turn button but before it gets back around to you. During this time, you can select research and production and add/remove things to the queue, at least until it officially becomes your turn, in which case the SitRep window pops up, which automatically closes whatever window you were in. Doing so, however, can cause it to hang or crash. I don't know if it's a problem with the version, or a problem with WINE not liking it (I do have Winetricks to install .NET framework support for 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and I even got 4.0 to work so I could run Terraria). I think, honestly, I'd like to go back to 3.15's between-turn splash screen, because it seemed to to a whole lot faster, and at least I couldn't accidentally click on something before my turn and crash the program.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#12 Post by Geoff the Medio »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:Where can I obtain a copy of R4224?
The recent build threads for Windows and OSX are in General Discussion.
Also, if there's a way I can get it to run native Linux without having to run it through WINE, that would make things easier.
You could compile the Linux version yourself...
I think, honestly, I'd like to go back to 3.15's between-turn splash screen, because it seemed to to a whole lot faster, and at least I couldn't accidentally click on something before my turn and crash the program.
The speed (or lack thereof) of v0.3.16 and later versions is not related to the use of a splash screen or messages window.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#13 Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:Where can I obtain a copy of R4224?
The recent build threads for Windows and OSX are in General Discussion.
Found it. Downloaded it. Very awesome, and fixes several problems I had. Also no memory leakage so far.
Also, if there's a way I can get it to run native Linux without having to run it through WINE, that would make things easier.
You could compile the Linux version yourself...
I've never done something like that before, but... hmmm... I'll look up the documentation and see what I can do. I assume the tarballs on the Compile page are the most up to date, and I can simply run the line in Terminal to get it to start? Installing dependencies generally simply involves typing in the names in the Ubuntu Software Center, much easier than going through Terminal, and I get version numbers to double check against known compatibility at the same time. Is there a way I can turn the compiled Linux version into a tarball and send it to someone who can put it up for other Penguins to download? I'm not a programmer, so I can't contribute much to the project, but if I can figure out how to compile and package the versions, that's at least something.
I think, honestly, I'd like to go back to 3.15's between-turn splash screen, because it seemed to to a whole lot faster, and at least I couldn't accidentally click on something before my turn and crash the program.
The speed (or lack thereof) of v0.3.16 and later versions is not related to the use of a splash screen or messages window.
[/quote] The splash screen also keeps the user from clicking somewhere he shouldn't while between turns and possibly causing unexpected problems. However, for debugging purposes, I can understand why you do it the way you currently are.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#14 Post by Geoff the Medio »

ShneekeyTheLost wrote:I assume the tarballs on the Compile page are the most up to date
The latest version is the latest in SVN.
...and I can simply run the line in Terminal to get it to start?
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but the tarballs or what you get from SVN aren't compiled code. I don't know how complicated it would be to get the compilation going, but some command-line work will likely be required.
Is there a way I can turn the compiled Linux version into a tarball and send it to someone who can put it up for other Penguins to download?
You could provide binaries for people using the same distribution (and version of that distro) as you, but making a more widely-usable binary is complicated. The person who did it for v0.3.15 and before isn't able to do so anymore, so we couldn't provide a Linux release of v0.3.16.
The splash screen also keeps the user from clicking somewhere he shouldn't while between turns and possibly causing unexpected problems.
The solution is to disable whatever commands can cause the crashes while waiting for updates. If you can provide a specific set of actions you're able to do in v0.3.15 or later versions that cause those crashes, it would be useful.

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Re: A Newbie's Two Cents

#15 Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:I assume the tarballs on the Compile page are the most up to date
The latest version is the latest in SVN.
...and I can simply run the line in Terminal to get it to start?
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but the tarballs or what you get from SVN aren't compiled code. I don't know how complicated it would be to get the compilation going, but some command-line work will likely be required.
Got quite a way into it, then ran into a problem. Installed GiGi, rev 853 so it would have Boost 1.42 as a dependency, which is included in the distro I have. Built and installed GiGi no problem. Made sure the OGRE dependencies were done. Went to run

cmake .

and got:

:~/freeorion/FreeOrion$ cmake .
-- Build platform: linux
-- Could NOT find Boost
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:62 (message):
Boost libraries (>=1.44.0) not found

Is there any other way, barring downloading and installing the most current version of Boost (which I found here) to deal with this error?
Is there a way I can turn the compiled Linux version into a tarball and send it to someone who can put it up for other Penguins to download?
You could provide binaries for people using the same distribution (and version of that distro) as you, but making a more widely-usable binary is complicated. The person who did it for v0.3.15 and before isn't able to do so anymore, so we couldn't provide a Linux release of v0.3.16.
Drat. Well, I suppose if anyone else is running Ubuntu 11.04, it might help them, but that's probably not many people.
The splash screen also keeps the user from clicking somewhere he shouldn't while between turns and possibly causing unexpected problems.
The solution is to disable whatever commands can cause the crashes while waiting for updates. If you can provide a specific set of actions you're able to do in v0.3.15 or later versions that cause those crashes, it would be useful.
I'll try to localize and see what is causing it to do that, but I haven't gotten it to do it on purpose yet. If I can duplicate a crash, I'll be sure to post it.

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