General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

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Dilvish
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#31 Post by Dilvish »

Starionx wrote:Minor issue. Systems that have all Spacial bodies occupied with a colony/outpost, still give you the option of creating an outpost base. This is pointless as you will not be able to use it. Bug?
Mere lack of preventing a player from squandering resources on a pointless action is not actually bug in my opinion, no, and there also are many many other ways that waste can be done.

My recollection is that we have taken steps to prevent (or at least help safeguard against) certain common careless pointless wastes, and I recall looking at this particular thing in the past, but at least at the last time I looked at it there was no good way to actually prevent one from being queue up, given our current scripting options. And, OK, I just looked a little bit again-- no guarantees that I checked out everything possible, but the limit of what I see possible would be to put a restriction on either all outpost pods, or alternatively on all colony_base hulls, that if there were more outpost bases queued up in a given system than it had open planets, then NO under-construction ship containing an outpost pod (or alternatively base hull) enqueued at that system would progress. It's not clear to me that that bit of overkill would really always be the lesser of evils, but I guess it's something we could consider.

You could also/instead code up a custom sitrep to warn yourself that you had stumbled into such a situation, so you'd get a warning before you'd wasted more than a third of the total cost.
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Oberlus
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#32 Post by Oberlus »

Starionx wrote:Systems that have all Spacial bodies occupied with a colony/outpost, still give you the option of creating an outpost base.
Dilvish wrote:Mere lack of preventing a player from squandering resources on a pointless action is not actually bug in my opinion
It is a lack in any case. Helping the player to not do pointless stuff is a good trait for the game.
It has happened to me that I have queued a redundant outpost/colony base on a system that already had the necessary bases under construction. I think that is even to be expectable once you hit dozens of systems and hundreds of planets and the building queue is more than 20 rows long.
I've also started a colony building on a planet that had already a colony building queued. Then both have been receiving PPs until the first one finishes and the second one gets it "never" tag.
I think that FO would be honouring its phillosophy of less micromanagement and more fun if it prevents (or at least informs straightaway without the player having to learn to script new sitreps) this kind of pointless actions.
Dilvish wrote:It's not clear to me that that bit of overkill would really always be the lesser of evils
I can't imagine a situation in which preventing unquestionable pointless actions would be overkilling. I mean, I see cases of apparently pointless actions that have a reason to be (like building a second industrial centre on the same supply group if fearing an enemy attack could cut the group in half), but I don't see how an outpost/colony base on a system with all the space bodies occupied can have any reason to be.

Anyway, I'm fine as it is now, the amount of PPs that could be wasted is usually negligible and the required attention to avoid those situations is relatively low. I would put this improvement for the game in low(est) priority.

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MatGB
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#33 Post by MatGB »

I have built Colony and Outpost Base ships in systems that were full, deliberately and knowingly, and I will doubtless do so again in the future.

I also have a tendency to place my Stargates and Transformers on planets inhabited by Silexians, Nymnh and Phinnert. These two plans may be related.

If you decide to build a ship that won't do much that's not a bug, at least not with the code.

@Bilbo: deleted old designs in the design window isn't what I meant. Right click on old ships and scrap the fleets, if your opponent has Deflector Shields Mass Drivers are pointless, etc. Reducing the ship-caused lag is something we're still working on but finding the best way isn't easy.
Bilbo wrote:I am still learning but I dont understand how you can be faster and still use the games features. It takes to turn 75 before one can colonise poor robotic planets. It takes to about 150 and then much more to have any decent kind of fleets. The AIs tend to have a lot better production and research until you have black hole generator and terraform your planets.
The AI doesn't have any method to cheat, it has no way of doing better than you other than being programmed to follow a more optimal path. I try to have Xenological Genetics at or around turn 50 (it's that that you need to get Poor planets), there are ways to get there, learning how is part of the fun: my best advice is to be more aggressive, and perhaps have more AIs in your game so that there's a nice juicy high production homeworld near to conquer early.

And 'decent' for a fleet is relative, if your fleet can defeat your opponent, even by outmanouvre, it's decent for that stage of the game, conquering opposing empires speeds the game up massively, I rarely, for example, actually build an Industrial Centre, I just grab one from an AI, they cost about the same as a warship ;-)

We do need to do more to improve the learning curve so there's more hints and in game help, but not so much that we're spoonfeeding a particular strategy (I prefer a very aggressive approach, other players don't, some even enjoy winning by Transcendence), it's important to learn what works for you.

The most important observation though: most production and research boosting techs give bonuses on a per population or a per planet basis. Prioritising stuff that gives you more people will improve other outputs as well.
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#34 Post by Oberlus »

MatGB wrote:I have built Colony and Outpost Base ships in systems that were full, deliberately and knowingly, and I will doubtless do so again in the future.
Hmmm... I can't figure out the purpouse. Please, can you explain it?

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MatGB
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#35 Post by MatGB »

Oberlus wrote:
MatGB wrote:I have built Colony and Outpost Base ships in systems that were full, deliberately and knowingly, and I will doubtless do so again in the future.
Hmmm... I can't figure out the purpouse. Please, can you explain it?
It's in the next line of the post ;-)
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Oberlus
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#36 Post by Oberlus »

MatGB wrote:
Oberlus wrote:It's in the next line of the post ;-)
I also have a tendency to place my Stargates and Transformers on planets inhabited by Silexians, Nymnh and Phinnert. These two plans may be related.
Well, I still don't get it, but that's why I'm so interested :)

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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#37 Post by defaultuser »

Starionx wrote:Minor issue.
Systems that have all Spacial bodies occupied with a colony/outpost, still give you the option of creating an outpost base. This is pointless as you will not be able to use it.

Bug?
Always been that way. You can make a outpost base when there's only one planet period. Just in that class of things that you'll need to be careful with.

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Dilvish
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#38 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:Helping the player to not do pointless stuff is a good trait for the game.
Why else do you think I noted we try to do that?
Oberlus wrote:
Dilvish wrote:It's not clear to me that that bit of overkill would really always be the lesser of evils
I can't imagine a situation in which preventing unquestionable pointless actions would be overkilling.
If all I was talking about was preventing unquestionable pointless actions then it wouldn't be overkill-- but perhaps I actually had reason to use that word? Let me try explaining again-- if you were also trying to build any kind of mobile, useful outpost ship in that system at the same time that you queued up an extra, would-be-wasted, outpost base, then the scripting to block PP being spent on the wasted outpost base would also stop PP being spent on the useful mobile outpost ships (if the restriction were put on the outpost pods; if the restriction were put on the base hulls then blocking an unneeded outpost base might also stop someone from getting progress they were counting on for comsats or base-troopers, which in some situations could also cause people great trouble). The overkill is that in this particular kind of case (regarding situationally useful/useless combinations of ship parts/hulls) I don't see any way to block exactly only the wasteful combination, at least with our current scripting support.

**edit -- perhaps the word "overkill" is not quite fully appropriate for what I was referring to, perhaps think of "friendly fire casualties" or just "undesired side effects" or something along those lines.
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#39 Post by defaultuser »

MatGB wrote:@Bilbo: deleted old designs in the design window isn't what I meant. Right click on old ships and scrap the fleets, if your opponent has Deflector Shields Mass Drivers are pointless, etc.
They're not pointless at all. They bulk up the overall fleet and absorb shots so more important ships don't.

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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#40 Post by Oberlus »

Dilvish wrote:If all I was talking about was preventing unquestionable pointless actions then it wouldn't be overkill-- but perhaps I actually had reason to use that word?
Sure, that's what I thought, that you had a reason, but I couldn't see it. I may have a weird way to ask questions :)
Dilvish wrote:if you were also trying to build any kind of mobile, useful outpost ship in that system at the same time that you queued up an extra, would-be-wasted, outpost base
I think I understand now, this misunderstanding. I was thinking of pointless colony/outpost bases (i.e. those immobile little hulls). I'd never consider ships (mobile) as pointless. I mean, I'd like the game to prevent me from queueing colony/outpost bases on already full systems but not colony/outpost ships, since those can travel and do their thing elsewhere. So for this to make sense the restriction should be imposed on base hulls with colony/outpost modules, not just one or the other, and since it may not be possible for current scripting I can happily forget about it. Could the restriction by imposed over designs with colony/outpost modules with 0 speed? Does the scripting allow for that instead of hull-type+module-type?

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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#41 Post by dbenage-cx »

Quite possibly, but there may be other corner cases to check against.
e.g. Some new mechanic that creates a new planet or removes ownership from one.
Maybe the planet is moving somehow and will pass an unowned system soon.

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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#42 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:Could the restriction by imposed over designs with colony/outpost modules with 0 speed? Does the scripting allow for that instead of hull-type+module-type?
Not the kind of build restrictions you are looking for, as far as I can see. Keep in mind that scripting focuses mostly on dealing with "UniverseObjects" (systems, planets, fleets, ships, fields and buildings), and that a shipdesign is not an object in this framework, and nor is an entry in an empire's production queue, and there are only specific ways that scripts can interact with shipdesigns and production queue items. The main scripting component we are talking about here would be the Location and/or EnqueueLocation portion of the script for an outpost pod ship part, or for a colony base hull. Despite its title that page has a fair bit of information on scripting in general, not just Effects. If you are wanting to learn about our scripting you should carefully read that whole page (although portions are probably currently a bit stale).

Those specifications effectively say "An Outpost Pod (or colony base hull) can only be built (or enqueued) at a planet meeting the following requirements" (we are coming up with a set of planets where that individual part can be built). And then for a given planet, either outpost pods are buildable there, or they are not. A shipdesign is buildable at a planet if and only if all of its individual parts (and hull) are each buildable there
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Re: General experience with 0.4.7 RC1

#43 Post by Ophiuchus »

MatGB wrote:I have built Colony and Outpost Base ships in systems that were full, deliberately and knowingly, and I will doubtless do so again in the future...
Nice, didnt think of that. Have to try next game :)
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