Exploration

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Slith
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Exploration

#1 Post by Slith »

A thought on exploration; it would be nice if I could set scouts to 'auto explore' much like they do in Civilization 4. It can get a little repititous sending my scouts from one system to the next manually.

Also, why is there only one build queue? I mean, would it not make sense that each planet would have its own seperate build queue? That way I can have one planet producing some colonists, and another producing warships, at the same time.

Another thing, is that it takes quite a long time to research anything. I've usually only researched 4 or 5 subjects by the 100th turn. It just seems excessively long.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Exploration

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Slith wrote:A thought on exploration; it would be nice if I could set scouts to 'auto explore' much like they do in Civilization 4. It can get a little repititous sending my scouts from one system to the next manually.
I expect we'll eventually have something like this set up, but it's sort of an AI thing (though for the player), which hasn't really been implemented yet. Bug Yoghurt about getting AI stuff working, if you're interested.
Also, why is there only one build queue? I mean, would it not make sense that each planet would have its own seperate build queue? That way I can have one planet producing some colonists, and another producing warships, at the same time.
There is only a single global build queue for an empire in order to reduce micromanagement. Normally in 4X games, you have to spend lots of time checking and fixing up the build queues of each planet each turn. You also have to have each planet building something separately to use up its own prouduction points. For FO, we decided to pool all the industry and minerals (and thus Production Points) for your empire into one pool, which is then spent on a single queue of projects. Those projects generally have a build location, which is currently a planet you control, and different projects can be produced at different planets, but they're all stored and sorted on the single queue.
Another thing, is that it takes quite a long time to research anything. I've usually only researched 4 or 5 subjects by the 100th turn. It just seems excessively long.
Did you colonize more planets? (Building more colony ships, in addition to using the one you start with) Did you research any techs that improve your Research Point production? Did you change any planets to Research Focus? All of those can speed up research. Did you use all available RP every turn, or did you just enqueue one tech and let the extra RP go to waste?

Regardless though, currently there hasn't been much blanacing done, as FO is still relatively unfinished and most of the content is likely to change, so there's not much point in doing so yet.

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utilae
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Re: Exploration

#3 Post by utilae »

Slith wrote: Also, why is there only one build queue? I mean, would it not make sense that each planet would have its own seperate build queue? That way I can have one planet producing some colonists, and another producing warships, at the same time.
I think we could do the following:
Have one build queue, but you choose which shipyard the ship is built at. There may be five shipyards in your empire, so all this would mean is that your ship would be built based on that shipyards resources or the empires resources. The ship would be built at that shipyard, so you would build a ship at the left side of your empire, so that it can get to the left most outer planets faster to protect them.

Of course we could just build ships in an empire build queue, and set waypoints of where they need to be, so the right shipyard builds it, etc.

marhawkman
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Re: Exploration

#4 Post by marhawkman »

utilae wrote:
Slith wrote: Also, why is there only one build queue? I mean, would it not make sense that each planet would have its own seperate build queue? That way I can have one planet producing some colonists, and another producing warships, at the same time.
I think we could do the following:
Have one build queue, but you choose which shipyard the ship is built at. There may be five shipyards in your empire, so all this would mean is that your ship would be built based on that shipyards resources or the empires resources. The ship would be built at that shipyard, so you would build a ship at the left side of your empire, so that it can get to the left most outer planets faster to protect them.

Of course we could just build ships in an empire build queue, and set waypoints of where they need to be, so the right shipyard builds it, etc.
Erm.... except for Shipyard structures that's pretty much the way the game works right now.... :roll: All we'd need to do is add shipyard tech to the game to make that happen.....
Computer programming is fun.

JamieK1981
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Re: Exploration

#5 Post by JamieK1981 »

Well, i would prefer to explore planets manually, that way, i can explore, colonise and move on.

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eleazar
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Re: Exploration

#6 Post by eleazar »

JamieK1981 wrote:Well, i would prefer to explore planets manually, that way, i can explore, colonise and move on.
"Auto Exploration" might eventually be an option, but it certainly won't be mandatory.

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Xenon_K
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Re: Exploration

#7 Post by Xenon_K »

eleazar wrote:
JamieK1981 wrote:Well, i would prefer to explore planets manually, that way, i can explore, colonise and move on.
"Auto Exploration" might eventually be an option, but it certainly won't be mandatory.
I agree, I think it should be optional. Auto explore can be very handy. Or at the very least make robotic ships capible of auto explore, as humans can forget or be lazy. :lol:

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Gargamel
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Re: Exploration

#8 Post by Gargamel »

I think just long distance plotting, or waypoints, would solve this problem.

Be able to set a series of way points for a scout ship, and it would automatically move to the next waypoint as soon as it had enough fuel to move.

This could be used for battle fleets too, as you could route them around trouble spots much easier.

dalmedya
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Re: Exploration

#9 Post by dalmedya »

Slith wrote:A thought on exploration; it would be nice if I could set scouts to 'auto explore' much like they do in Civilization 4. It can get a little repititous sending my scouts from one system to the next manually.
From a gameplay viewpoint, my opinion is that Automatic Exploration should be a researchable technology.
Also, why is there only one build queue? I mean, would it not make sense that each planet would have its own seperate build queue? That way I can have one planet producing some colonists, and another producing warships, at the same time.
Projects are built at the currently selected (green outline) planet. Additionally, if your PP exceeds the first project's per-turn requirement (the first number in the construction list), any other PP will go the next project in the queue, and so on.
Another thing, is that it takes quite a long time to research anything. I've usually only researched 4 or 5 subjects by the 100th turn. It just seems excessively long.
You need more colonies with the Research focus. I like going straight for the Habitation Domes tech and deploying 0.1 population research centres on every gas giant and asteroid belt I can find, then research Asteroid Mining to feed minerals to my Industry-focussed homeworld. Research and Mining are not affected by population like Farming and Industry are.
Of course, this requires the outposts be deployed within infrastructure range, and my initial colony ship be used to deploy at a farming world, or you'll need the Orbital Farming tech.

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eleazar
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Re: Exploration

#10 Post by eleazar »

dalmedya wrote:Projects are built at the currently selected (green outline) planet.
It's only green if your empire color is green.

dalmedya
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Re: Exploration

#11 Post by dalmedya »

eleazar wrote:
dalmedya wrote:Projects are built at the currently selected (green outline) planet.
It's only green if your empire color is green.
Yeah. I'd edit it to read 'coloured outline' but you've already quoted me.
Oh, the shame.

marhawkman
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Re: Exploration

#12 Post by marhawkman »

Xenon_K wrote:
eleazar wrote:
JamieK1981 wrote:Well, i would prefer to explore planets manually, that way, i can explore, colonise and move on.
"Auto Exploration" might eventually be an option, but it certainly won't be mandatory.
I agree, I think it should be optional. Auto explore can be very handy. Or at the very least make robotic ships capible of auto explore, as humans can forget or be lazy. :lol:
It'd probably also result in several cases of "SURPRISE SPACE KRAKEN!" followed by "I need to build a new scout ship...".

Happens rather often in the current version. I imagine it'd be even more common if your ships ventured into space on their own...
Computer programming is fun.

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