0.5 release

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LienRag
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Re: 0.5 release

#76 Post by LienRag »

A graph would indeed be nice, but at least having goalposts (1 more Colony, 10 more, 100 more - and also 1 less, 10 less, 100 less to help getting out of emergency situations) would allow the player to have some idea of where he's going.
Imho if we have these in the Pedia like Geoff suggests, it's good enough to proceed with the release, and a graph can be added later.
A "Game hint" should be added to guide the player towards this pedia entry, too.

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Oberlus
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Re: 0.5 release

#77 Post by Oberlus »

I guess the best tool for the player would be a calculator, with three fields: number of extra non-exobot colonies, exobot colonies and outposts.
That's not for the Pedia.
Anyone could use a spreadsheet for that, as a workaround for current UI.

The idea to add calculations for +1, +10 and +100 extra colonies (or +1, +5 and +25) seems worth it. I'll look into it some day...

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LienRag
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Re: 0.5 release

#78 Post by LienRag »

Yeah, a calculator would be useful too.
Do we already have one somewhere in the UI ? I don't think I ever saw that.

For the upcoming release, I still believe that having goalposts in the Pedia (or elsewhere, I mentioned the Pedia only because it's a possible place and because Geoff suggested it too) is an acceptable substitute for either the graphs or the calculator.
But that we do indeed need something to address the problem.

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Oberlus
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Re: 0.5 release

#79 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Sat Jan 21, 2023 12:44 am Yeah, a calculator would be useful too.
Do we already have one somewhere in the UI ? I don't think I ever saw that.
None whatsoever. UI doesn't support that.

Apart from a Pedia page (Influence, Influence Upkeep or whatever we have already), I see no place in the current UI for the IP upkeep predictions for +1/+10/+100 colonies.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: 0.5 release

#80 Post by Geoff the Medio »

There's not really a feasible way to add info to the pedia that does a calculation relative to the number of colonies owned by a particular empire currently. Named valuerefs can be included, but those don't get any context info when being evaluated and rendered, so don't have a way to access info about a particular empire in a game. That could potentially be made possible, but not before the v0.5 release.

I also considered adding tooltips on colonize buttons or planet influence meters, but essentially the same issue applies.

Another possibility is to make the influence costs formula also count planets that have been ordered colonized as if they were colonized. This requires some additional parser support, but probably less so than the above options.

https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/pull/4380

Maybe sufficient?

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LienRag
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Re: 0.5 release

#81 Post by LienRag »

No, that's not sufficient at all.
I doesn't allow to plan ahead for how many planets you can colonize (especially problematic when one wants, as I did, to settle planets in order to have them produce Influence - and then cannot predict if they will finally produce more Influence that they rise the global cost for the Empire), and it won't include conquests.

It's not my decision to make, but is releasing a version that will appear as a mess to many players, especially the occasional ones, actually a good idea ?

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Re: 0.5 release

#82 Post by Oberlus »

In Stellaris also there is no way to plan ahead in detail. If you (e.g.) invade a planet of lithoids with no mines then you need minerals from somewhere else to feed them, so you get into a sudden huge deficit. There is no way at all to foresee this except knowing the game mechanics and making estimations on your own.
There is no way the game can know how many colonies the player plans to have and when. So at the end of the day what LienRag is asking for is a calculator.
It's easy to have one in a spreadsheet.

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Re: 0.5 release

#83 Post by wobbly »

LienRag wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:03 pm No, that's not sufficient at all.
Well you seem to know where the scripting is and where the source repository is...

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: 0.5 release

#84 Post by Geoff the Medio »

If you just want a table of costs given numbers of planets colonized or outposted, then I think making yourself a spreadsheet might be a reasonable solution. There's no practical way to precalculate how many planets in arbitrary conditions of techs and policies and focus settings and species and likes and dislikes etc. will balance influence production over many turns. I also question how much you can plan all that many turns ahead anyway in a game you haven't already dominated the galaxy in... or why you'd need to plan everything in detail before starting any of the colonizing as presumably you don't preproduce all the ships or produce all the colony buildings on the same turn.

I suppose I could add colony buildings under production to the count as well... Not sure if that info is currently accessible, though.

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Re: 0.5 release

#85 Post by Oberlus »

The main problem is when you start invading planets in a spree and "all of a sudden" (after several turns) you go from +10 IP per turn to -20. If you react timely, switching planets to influence focus and building independence decrees on the less interesting planets, it is doable without any spreadsheet.

The scenario that LR depicted is close to unbelievable:
In a big test game, I was able to have an Influence production superior to 100 per turn.
Then after starting a conquest rampage, I began to get negative numbers while still having Target output superior to 100.
I'm not saying that I managed perfectly, but I spend around 40 turns frantically trying to rise the Influence production, and finally succeeded but I had lost more than 6000 Influence points in the meantime, because I continued conquering, though at a more modest pace.
He went from +100 IP per turn to unspecified negative numbers. He lost 6000 IP in 40 turns, so let's assume around -150 IP per turn (that is, current production of -50 for 40 turns, down from +100).

If he had 100-equivalent colonies (e.g. 90 colonies, 30 exobots, 10 outposts, or just 100 colonies), to get -150 IP per turn you need to conquer some 20-25 planets, and only start switching foci when you get your 25th conquest.

If he had 400-equivalent colonies, you can get the -150 from colonizing 12 extra planets.

So multiplying by 4 your number of colonies implies that influence upkeep grows twice as fast with the number of colonies.

I really don't see the problem or the need for the calculator. You just moderate the speed at which you conquer stuff. No more frantic steamrolling, you need to carefully plan ahead (and LienRag loves to carefully think and plan, so he is actually pretty happy with current mechanics).

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Re: 0.5 release

#86 Post by Ophiuchus »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:36 am I suppose I could add colony buildings under production to the count as well... Not sure if that info is currently accessible, though.
We do not have anything to extract that info in a scriptable way currently. And it does not currently exist in the explicit form we would probably need (see below).

So first about accessing the count of colony building:
I think we can get the count of colony ships (and distinguish exobot). Could add a value ref for the production queue with a filter (e.g. CountProductionItems name="BLD_COL_*") to get the number of colonies in the queue (and distinguish exobot).

Similar to how ship in the queue cost upkeep, one simple approximation exists for the non-local effect: modify the BASE_INFLUENCE_COST to add upkeep cost also for non-established colonies. One would also count colony ships and in colony buildings, both built and in queue when determining the BASE_INFLUENCE_COST of existing colonies. Note this is missing the cost for the not yet created colonies though.

Aaaand actually I really strongly do not want colony ships and colonies in the production queue to have the same upkeep as an established colony. And then it gets ugly:

We would need to also to add something in the UI to distinguish a future value being dependent on more than target influence.

The current calculation is implicit; every colony contributes a small part of influence. The implementation which tries to reuse that sucks: copy the universe, create a colony for every colony ship and colony building (also in the queue) in that pocket universe and then calculate the resulting target influence.

Another way: we could add a NamedReal with a well-known name to calculate the expected value and show that in the influence overview. One would have to take good care that explicit calculation matches the result of the implicit calculation.

Another way: have the build generate a lookup table with the values in 0.25 colony steps. and use the lookup table as a function of number of colonies (and make that count a NamedReal). Or simply display the lookup table it in a pedia page next to the effective number of colonies.
E.g.

You currently have 5 established colonies, 0 colony buildings, and 1 colony ship. You have 0 colony buildings and 3 colony ships in the production queue.
Also currently you have 0 outposts, 0 outpost ships, 0 established exobot colonies, 0 exobot colony buildings, and 1 exobot colony ship. You have 0 outposts, 0 outpost ships, 0 exobot colony buildings and 0 exobot colony ships in the production queue.
In whole this would give you an effective colony count of 9.25


Side Note that the "reuse" implementation feels not that ugly for colonisation using ships IMHO: the pocket universe would contain the colonies and extra colonies, but only for those ships set to colonize.
Maybe this 1-turn looking into the future pocket universe makes sense anyway (but is no help for long-term preview): simply precalculate one turn in the client and return back the values
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Re: 0.5 release

#87 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Sat Jan 21, 2023 10:28 am Apart from a Pedia page (Influence, Influence Upkeep or whatever we have already), I see no place in the current UI for the IP upkeep predictions for +1/+10/+100 colonies.
could put it into influence overview in the top of the main window
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Re: 0.5 release

#88 Post by o01eg »

I suppose including colony orders to calculation is fine as the player could order/undo order to see if he will manage result value. Adding here built ships and building ships is too much as there still change ship will be gifted or will be destroyed on the way.
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Re: 0.5 release

#89 Post by Ophiuchus »

o01eg wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:28 pm I suppose including colony orders to calculation is fine as the player could order/undo order to see if he will manage result value.
yes, i think that would be good UI.
geoff would a one turn preview be possible for 0.5 ?
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Re: 0.5 release

#90 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 2:45 pm
geoff would a one turn preview be possible for 0.5 ?
Not sure exactly what you mean, but probably not.

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