galaxy map information modes/overlays

[eleazar]

Can someone provide a screenshot of what the detection radii currently look like in a situation with lots of detecting objects, i.e. lots of settled planets and ships? It would be helpful to see how it all looks at once.

[pd]

Here are a couple of things:


(click to download an archive containing 3 photoshop files)

detection.psd - There's the homeworld with a detection meter at 5 and scout ships with a detection meter at 1.
detection2.psd - There's the homeworld, a colony and two enemy planets with varying detection levels
detection3.psd - Same as above, but weaker detection for the player's colonies.

Hope this helps.

[eleazar]

Thanks. It doesn't really serve my original purpose of showing how understandable a bunch of overlapping detection radii are, but it is a great basis for making mock-ups,

[Bigjoe5]

Hence my suggestion that only one empire's detection radii be shown at a time...

[eleazar]

{img}psychedelic empire detection radii mandala{/img}

Hence my suggestion that only one empire's detection radii be shown at a time...

*Writes note to self to be specific about requests for screenshots, and not assume mind-reading.*

I kinda took it for granted that overlapping multiple empire radii would be a mess, and at least in this example it's even worse than i'd though it would be. By careful counting i see only 6 circles, but you get the impression of a whole lot more.

What i was really looking for, but apparently not specifying, is the appearance of a bunch of planets from the same empire and ships moving through starlanes. In PD's example you have at most 2 or 3 sources of detection in one empire. In practice we'll easily be dealing with dozens in the same part of the galaxy by mid-to-late game. What seems kinda complicated with 3 detectors, will be quite different with 50. I'm hoping somebody can just load up an old save-game with lots of colonies in place.

[Geoff the Medio]

What i was really looking for, but apparently not specifying, is the appearance of a bunch of planets from the same empire and ships moving through starlanes.

I thought I should note that I'm pondering whether to make ships that are moving *not* have visibility ranges. That is, a ship (or anything else) would only contribute to an empire's visibility if it was in a system, and thus not moving, for a whole turn.

The reason for this is that there are cases where a ship can be close enough to a system to see into it if careful tweaking of movement pathes is used, but wouldn't be able to see into the system if other movement pathes are used, due to the spots along the starlane the ship happens to end up due to its movement rate and the length of the starlane and what systems are near point along the starlane but are further from the starlane's endpoing. I'd like to avoid making this sort of micromanagement of move pathes useful. Also, sometimes a ship can be moving towards a system and be almost but not quite there, and thus get a peek into the system the turn before arriving, whereas it would arrive in the system without a sneak peak if the ship was moving just a bit faster. This could also be manipulated the careful micromanagement of move pathes.

This thread shouldn't get off topic to discuss this issue, so if someone wants to discuss it, please find or start another more appropriate thread.

[pd]

I'm hoping somebody can just load up an old save-game with lots of colonies in place.

I was trying to provide something like this. Unfortunately new colonies are not automatically detectors. There's only one building - the Observatory - that increases the detection meter. For some reason however it doesn't work with all my new colonies. I had the impression that it only worked for colonies that are in a certain range around the homeworld.

I'm not quite able to decrypt this:

Code: Select all

    effectsgroups = [
        EffectsGroup
            scope = Contains Source
            activation = Source
            effects = SetMaxStealth Target.MaxStealth - 10
        EffectsGroup
            scope = And [
                Planet
                OwnedBy TheEmpire Source.Owner
                WithinDistance distance = 200 condition = Source
            ]
            activation = Source
            effects = SetMaxDetection Target.MaxDetection + 10
        ]

[Geoff the Medio]

I'm not quite able to decrypt this:

Code: Select all

        EffectsGroup
            scope = Contains Source
            activation = Source
            effects = SetMaxStealth Target.MaxStealth - 10

The planet where this is built has lowered stealth.

Code: Select all

        EffectsGroup
            scope = And [
                Planet
                OwnedBy TheEmpire Source.Owner
                WithinDistance distance = 200 condition = Source
            ]
            activation = Source
            effects = SetMaxDetection Target.MaxDetection + 10

Planets owned by the same empire that owns the planet on which this building is located, and that are within 200 distance of this building, have increased detection.

Has nothing to do with the homeworld.

[pd]

Thanks for clearing this up. Could you perhaps also have a look at this savegame? The observatories on Asvis and Menkab don't work and also can't be scrapped. It seems like the building process doesn't finish.


edit: Could it be that the items in preunlocked_items.txt(the observatory in this case) are not considered when loading save games?

[Bigjoe5]

What i was really looking for, but apparently not specifying, is the appearance of a bunch of planets from the same empire and ships moving through starlanes. In PD's example you have at most 2 or 3 sources of detection in one empire. In practice we'll easily be dealing with dozens in the same part of the galaxy by mid-to-late game. What seems kinda complicated with 3 detectors, will be quite different with 50. I'm hoping somebody can just load up an old save-game with lots of colonies in place.

I happen to have a save game lying around with a few more colonized systems, but not very many:



It's not as complicated as I think you're expecting it to be, but it is hard to tell where you would be able to detect a really stealthy object, and where you would only be able to detect an only-kind-of-stealthy object.

edit: in the content files I'm using, unlocking a detection ship part automatically increases the max detection meters of all planets owned by the empire.

[eleazar]

It's not as complicated as I think you're expecting it to be, but it is hard to tell where you would be able to detect a really stealthy object, and where you would only be able to detect an only-kind-of-stealthy object.

Maybe "complicated" is isn't quite the right word. Sure it's easy to see what parts of the maps are blue and what aren't. But is that really useful information? If i understand right, any ships with minimum stealth will be visible as soon as they enter the detection radii, right? But that will seldom be the case in mid to late game, right? Ships will generally get some kind of stealth bonus. So the boundary of the detection radii, isn't very useful information past the beginning stage of the game.

This kind of presentation is visually pretty dominant, but also doesn't do much to make apparent where the weak and strong points of your detection net are, as BigJoe has pointed out. And isn't that pretty important information?

BigJoe has suggested elsewhere that a gradient be used to show the levels of detection. It's a reasonable idea, but unfortunately doesn't work as well as you would hope.

detection2.jpg (236.68 KiB) Viewed 2101 times

For this example i upped the opacity at the center to 50% instead of 25% the game uses. Though you can't see it, the green opacity goes evenly from 50% at the middle to 0% at the edges. I also added three additional planets as detectors, with the assumption that detectors from different systems stack, but their contributions are nearly invisible, it just blends in with the general flow. You can tell that Muscida has the highest detection, but anything but the most dramatic differences are hard to gauge. Athens, Algorab and Gemroy: which of them has the best coverage, or are they about equal? If they aren't equal approximately how unequal are they? Can anybody get the right answer in a reasonable amout of time?


Feel free to try and suggest other implementations, but i'm familiar with this sort of graphical problem from other contexts. The current rules don't allow a good, easy-to understand UI to be designed. You aren't in most cases getting the info you need.

[Geoff the Medio]

The current visibility system essential operates with this rule:

Objects can be detected if they are closer to a detector than a distance that is proportional to the difference between the detector's strength and the detected object's stealth.

In "math": objects are seen if distance < number * (detection - stealth).

...

I wouldn't be strongly opposed to modifying this to something like:

Objects can be detected if they are closer to a detector than a distance proportional to the detector's strength, and the detector's strength is greater than the object's stealth.

In "math": objects are seen if detection > stealth AND distance < number * detection.

...

Would the latter make a usable UI possible? It would at least eliminate the need (or rather, motivation) for using gradients to display the detection capability at any arbitrary location.

The latter could be further simplified to just objects are seen if detection > stealth AND distance < fixed_number, but having some visible radius around detectors that can be shown to players is probably a good thing, so that the detection rating has a clearly visible effect, which I think a variable-size visible ring does better than just a detection meter statistic.

[Bigjoe5]

For this example i upped the opacity at the center to 50% instead of 25% the game uses. Though you can't see it, the green opacity goes evenly from 50% at the middle to 0% at the edges. I also added three additional planets as detectors, with the assumption that detectors from different systems stack, but their contributions are nearly invisible, it just blends in with the general flow.

Detectors from different systems don't stack, actually. Only the detector that has the best visibility of a particular location will be used to detect objects at that location (and I suspect this is why I was told that the gradient would be so hard to implement - it would be quite easy if detectors stacked, I imagine).

In other words, if there is a detector with strength 10, 5 units away from an object, and a detector with strength 3, 0 units away from an object, the detector with strength 3 will not affect the player's ability to detect the object.

You can tell that Muscida has the highest detection, but anything but the most dramatic differences are hard to gauge. Athens, Algorab and Gemroy: which of them has the best coverage, or are they about equal? If they aren't equal approximately how unequal are they? Can anybody get the right answer in a reasonable amout of time?

Does anyone really need to get the answer to those questions? The point isn't to show the player the detection values of his systems - if he wants to know that, he can just click on them (or bring up another overlay that floats numbers over the systems, as is done in these mock-ups for clarity). The point is to show the player where he'll be able to detect a moderately stealthy ship, a minimally stealthy ship, a very stealthy ship, etc. And to be honest, this gradient accomplishes that quite nicely - there's no ambiguity whatsoever about where any "gaps" in my detection might be, or where my detection ability is optimal. That's the info the player needs, and he is getting it. Can you give a reason why the player would consistently need to keep track of the detection levels of individual detectors, when he can already tell what his detection strength is at a particular point in space (particularly when such detectors don't actually affect the player's ability to detect objects near them due to being drowned out by a stronger detector)?

Would the latter make a usable UI possible? It would at least eliminate the need (or rather, motivation) for using gradients to display the detection capability at any arbitrary location.

As far as I can tell, this would still require displaying to the player detection levels of different strengths in different areas of space, since even if a detector can detect an object of appropriately low stealth anywhere in its detection range, therefore making the detector's ability to detect objects equal throughout its range, there will still be other detectors of lesser strength, which won't be able to detect ships that are as stealthy. This wouldn't require gradients to display, but the gradient isn't the problem. The problem (or at least, what eleazar interprets as a problem, but I think is fine) is that you can't tell what the detection levels are of weak detectors within the detection range of strong detectors, which will be just as much the case if the detection formula is changed.

IMO, there's no reason to change the detection formula; everything the player needs to know at a glance about his detection with the current formula can be displayed with the gradient, and additional, less immediately relevant information such as the actual detection values of individual objects, can be displayed via some other optional overlay.

[eleazar]

I wouldn't be strongly opposed to modifying this to something like:

Objects can be detected if they are closer to a detector than a distance proportional to the detector's strength, and the detector's strength is greater than the object's stealth.

In "math": objects are seen if detection > stealth AND distance < number * detection.

Would the latter make a usable UI possible?

That would remove some of the ambiguity, but not all. An empire would still have detectors of varying power mixed in together, and nothing by the outside silhouette of the radii to try to distinguish where the weak and strong detector are, and thus where undetected ships are more or less likely to be lurking.

ambiguity.jpg (23.88 KiB) Viewed 2088 times

Here's a simple sketch of a probable scenario. The empire has spread out from the capitol (the big bright green dot) and has surrounded itself with newer colonies with weaker detectors. The large radius of the capitol's detection is virtually invisible. You can't easily tell where detection is strong and where it is weak. With a larger empire you could quite plausibly have a more complicated situation where the whole of the empire's interior is covered with minimal detection, so there are no detection edges to see, but there is dramatic differences in the quality of the detection leading to invisible pockets or avenues of minimal detection.

You can tell that Muscida has the highest detection, but anything but the most dramatic differences are hard to gauge. Athens, Algorab and Gemroy: which of them has the best coverage, or are they about equal? If they aren't equal approximately how unequal are they? Can anybody get the right answer in a reasonable amout of time?

Does anyone really need to get the answer to those questions? The point isn't to show the player the detection values of his systems - if he wants to know that, he can just click on them (or bring up another overlay that floats numbers over the systems, as is done in these mock-ups for clarity). The point is to show the player where he'll be able to detect a moderately stealthy ship, a minimally stealthy ship, a very stealthy ship, etc.

No seriously. If you think this overlay works even according to your expectations of (very/moderate/minimally stealthed) then you should be able to easily answer my question. I'm only looking for a ballpark estimate. Though if i was going to call it "good enough" i'd expect to be able to generally distinguish 4 or 5 levels of coverage. No fair bringing it into an image editor, or staring at it for a long time.

Floating numbers by stars don't solve the problem because you would want to know (with current rules) how detection falls off with distance.

[Bigjoe5]

No seriously. If you think this overlay works even according to your expectations of (very/moderate/minimally stealthed) then you should be able to easily answer my question. I'm only looking for a ballpark estimate. Though if i was going to call it "good enough" i'd expect to be able to generally distinguish 4 or 5 levels of coverage. No fair bringing it into an image editor, or staring at it for a long time.

Sorry, I completely misunderstood your question. At a glance, I'd say that Green player has the best visibility of Algorab, followed by Gemroy, then Athens. Algorab is actually quite evident - the differences in the opacity of the green surrounding that area is easily distinguishable (less so between Gemroy and Athens, though, but I think that might be partly because you were assuming that the detectors stacked - in reality, the opacity of the green would correspond only to the difference between the system and the strongest detector, which would make it a bit easier to figure out).

And it's easy to distinguish a few other levels of coverage as well, for example, the player has better visibility of Mizar than Diggity, even though both are less visible than Athens, and Russel is more visible than any of those five. If the rules for stealth and detection don't change, this is probably the best way to display it.