A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

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VulcanTourist
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A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#1 Post by VulcanTourist »

It's been quite some time since I last tried to play FreeOrion, and I don't recall the game having a single monolithic build queue at the time. It seems to have one now, though. I was quickly confused and irritated by it. I doubt it will scale well to dozens, much less hundreds, of planets. It seems a recipe for frustration to allow games with a scope of 5000 star systems if a level of abstraction appropriate for every phase of that game, including the end game, can't be maintained. Is there some incomplete grand design for it that will eventually make it functional?

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MatGB
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#2 Post by MatGB »

In what way is it not functional? It's been like this since I first played which is more than 5 years ago, the design objective is you're not meant to be building things on a specific planet that often except your shipyards, and all resources are shared between all linked planets.

Works fine within that objective and while there remain a few buildings that can benefit if you build them repeatedly there aren't many.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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Dilvish
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#3 Post by Dilvish »

Can I ask what version of the game you just now tried? Sometimes folks just find access to a fairly old version. While there have not been *huge* changes to the production queue in the last few releases, the farther back one goes the clunkier it gets.
VulcanTourist wrote:It's been quite some time since I last tried to play FreeOrion, and I don't recall the game having a single monolithic build queue at the time. It seems to have one now, though. I was quickly confused and irritated by it. I doubt it will scale well to dozens, much less hundreds, of planets.
Sorry to hear you ran into what felt like excessive learning-curve pain, or rather it sounds like it just felt like plain-old pain, but I think that at least a fair portion of it was learning curve pain. I don't often play up to owning literal multiple hundreds of planets, but I do often play up to owning any dozens, and I find the interface to work just fine for that (and it seems that the other regular players do as well).

Our Quick Play Guide (which is also linked from within the in-game Pedia) has a bunch of useful info, but taking a quick glance at it now I also see that it is noticeably stale**. I just did some quick edits on it, focusing mostly on the Production Queue. Please be sure to read that section and see if it helps dispel your confusion (other sections should currently be taken with a grain of salt as they may be a little stale, but mostly still helpful). Also keep in mind that we have *tried* to keep *most* of our buildings operative across a Supply-connected region; there are some buildings that you might want to build in many of your systems, but probably not any that you would really want to build on all of your planets.

Scattered throughout the guide is also some discussion of Supply, which is an important topic. I wasn't quite content with the guide's coverage but didn't have time to reorganize and rewrite it all just now, but here are some more tips related to Supply (you can get more info from the Pedia or from searching here on the forums). The starlanes, in addition to allowing your ships to travel from system to system, also serve as Supply lines that connect your owned planets/systems. Each owned planet has a Supply meter that shows how far out (how many starlane jumps) it can connect to other systems; this meter is affected by planet size, species, some planetary and system Specials (special traits), and by your empire's technology. Supply connections can be blocked by armed enemies. Production Points (PP) are shared/pooled across supply lines; a set of supply-connected planets is sometimes called a Supply-Connected Resource Group, or just a Resource Group. (Research Points are applied to the research queue without regards to the location of their source.) In general you want to try keeping all your empire planets/systems connected in a single Resource Group to facilitate spending your PP where you most want it.


** MatGB, Is that really the current/most-recent link for fhe Quick Start Guide? I just followed the link from the ingame Pedia but it was still referring to Food and countless other stale things. I did some quick edits but it really needs more work.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

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Oberlus
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#4 Post by Oberlus »

I love the single build queue. It allows me to see all what is queued without having to iterate over each planet. I was used to other 4x games where that's not the case, FO's way is utterly better. It saves me a lot of time. Plus it is so handy to be able to blink to the planet that is doing something from the build queue. If you wanna see what is doing a planet, you select that planet from the map and the corresponding items for that planet (system) will be highlighted.
Also, learning curve? it seems to me rather straigthforward.

Edit: haven't realise this now but, micromanaging 5k planets? Sounds like trolling to me.

defaultuser
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#5 Post by defaultuser »

Generally there are only a few planets at any one time building something. You can get the individual queue feel just by selecting systems and seeing which, if any, build items highlight.

Not really seeing the problem.

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Vezzra
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#6 Post by Vezzra »

VulcanTourist wrote:It's been quite some time since I last tried to play FreeOrion, and I don't recall the game having a single monolithic build queue at the time.
Although I only joined the project as active contributor in 2011 (shortly before the 0.4 release), I first encountered and played FO far earlier (I think I already tried the 0.2 release). As far as I can remember, FO always had the one global build queue.
I doubt it will scale well to dozens, much less hundreds, of planets. It seems a recipe for frustration to allow games with a scope of 5000 star systems if a level of abstraction appropriate for every phase of that game, including the end game, can't be maintained.
That doesn't make sense to me - what do you suggest instead? Separate build queues for each colony like in most other 4X space games? How is that supposed to be better/less frustrating in a game with 5000 star systems? I'd expect that to be a nightmare. Separate build queues only make sense with a low number of systems/planets, unless of course you enjoy excessive micromanagement.

That said, while you can create maps up to 5000 systems, this isn't recommended. The game is designed to work reasonably well with maps up to 500 star systems, anything beyond that you can try for fun, but don't expect things to be balanced/work well.

NaIch
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#7 Post by NaIch »

The single build queue is great. Its exactly what i have dreamed of in all MOO games so far. You can build anything, even the most expensive ships, in reasonable time because all of your planets work together. But having some automatisms would be great too. Having a "custom standard queue" for buildings you want on every planet that get appended on the empire queue for every planet autmatically would save a lot of mouse miles and clicking. They would be only build if some PP's are left after constructing the important things at the top of the list. Buuut - all nice things have a downside - i think its lot of coding. The callbacks for the buildings that are left for construction for every planet and then updating the empire list at the begin of every turn or change of your "custom standard queue" is surely a pain. Maybe this would also slow down the whole game. But this would definitely be a great tool to have.

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Oberlus
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#8 Post by Oberlus »

NaIch wrote:Having a "custom standard queue" for buildings you want on every planet that get appended on the empire queue for every planet automatically would save a lot of mouse miles and clicking.
Note that there are few buildings that you can build in every planet (i.e. shipyards, drydocks and some upgrades, concentration camps, starlane bores, bioterror facilities... I think I left few out of the list), and certainly there is no building that you should build on every planet:
- Shipyards+drydocks are only needed in one planet of each system where you expect to need reparations of combat fleet.
- The shipward upgrades for constructing high-end hulls are necessary only in the very few planets where you plan to make your main production facilities (either a single one in the center of your empire and away from enemy lines, or a few ones close to the current frontlines, but I prefer the first scheme).

That's another of the great features of FO: no no-brainer micromanagement needed.

The buildings that for me need more mouse miles and clicking are the colony buildings on outposted planets. But that is not meant to be automatised since you want to choose which species will inhabit each planet.

Anyway, it could be handy creating a sort of conditional automation for certain stuff (like building exobot colonies on every asteroid belt once outposted, building gas giant generators in the first gas giant of each system, building one outpost base for every unowned planet on a colonised system...) that you can enable or disable.

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MatGB
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#9 Post by MatGB »

NaIch wrote:Having a "custom standard queue" for buildings you want on every planet that get appended on the empire queue for every planet autmatically
Please name any/all buildings you think should be built everywhere.

We'll either reword the descriptions or rework the building so that that's no longer the case, it's a specific design objective that there shouldn't be any such building.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

defaultuser
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Re: A single build queue for all (linked) planets?

#10 Post by defaultuser »

The closest building for every system would be scanning facility. It's one that sometimes forget to start and as it cheap but takes 5 turns it's annoying to have forgotten. But even then I probably wouldn't use it.

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