General Feedback

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

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Trill23
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General Feedback

#1 Post by Trill23 »

Hi, love the concept. However, game play slows waaaay down as time continues and empire size grows. I am running quite a fast system, but FreeOrion grinds to a virtual halt pretty soon. Is there a reason for this?

Also, as the empire grows it becomes very difficult to track which planets have which buildings on. Is there a way of listing, say, all the planets that have a stargate on them (or are building them) instead of having to just click on each one to find out (when I can not remember)

Lastly, it would be great if there was a way of setting up a standard set of buildings that each of my planets should work towards owning. Then, instead of having to select each type every time I capture a planet, I just select the construction bundle. In this way I could ensure that every planet I own automatically builds certain things as tech becomes available, such as industrial centre, solar generator, stargate, basic shipyard, etc... It would save a lot of time!

Cheers!

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: General Feedback

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Trill23 wrote:However, game play slows waaaay down as time continues and empire size grows. I am running quite a fast system, but FreeOrion grinds to a virtual halt pretty soon. Is there a reason for this?
Yes... Many of the calculations of properties of objects in the game depend on all the objects in the game universe, which can lead to the times taken to do the calculations depending on the square (or higher power) of the number of such objects.

However, what version of FreeOrion are you playing? If the answer isn't the latest test builds, then try the latest test builds. It may be substantially faster, due to various optimizations that have been implemented since v0.4.3.

Regarding queuing lots of copies of the same set of buildings, the idea in FreeOrion is that you shouldn't need to. See here and various other threads discussing buildings and wonders for discussion.

Trill23
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Re: General Feedback

#3 Post by Trill23 »

However, what version of FreeOrion are you playing? If the answer isn't the latest test builds, then try the latest test builds. It may be substantially faster, due to various optimizations that have been implemented since v0.4.3.
I am using v0.4.3
Regarding queuing lots of copies of the same set of buildings, the idea in FreeOrion is that you shouldn't need to.
I take your point on that for most buildings, except that it can be really useful to have all new planets build the production enhancement buildings once they are captured.

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Dilvish
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Re: General Feedback

#4 Post by Dilvish »

Trill23 wrote:I am using v0.4.3
So any old save games you have won't be compatible with the latest test releases, but I'm sure you'll find it well worth your while to upgrade.
I take your point on that for most buildings, except that it can be really useful to have all new planets build the production enhancement buildings once they are captured.
Hmm? What specifically are you thinking it is good to build at all new planets?
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Trill23
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Re: General Feedback

#5 Post by Trill23 »

What specifically are you thinking it is good to build at all new planets?
Well, I'd head for whatever production buildings there are like Industrial Centre / Gas Power Generator / Solar Generator / black hole power gen where possible for starters.

The other thing is that when there are lots of planets, I find it very difficult to remember what races are on what that I own. This would be useful for specifying new colony ship builds for the various specials / planet types that are around. Being able to see a drop-down list of races and the planets they are on would be kinda cool too.

Ever thought of creating a library / university building to enhance research?

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Bigjoe5
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Re: General Feedback

#6 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Trill23 wrote:
What specifically are you thinking it is good to build at all new planets?
Well, I'd head for whatever production buildings there are like Industrial Centre / Gas Power Generator / Solar Generator / black hole power gen where possible for starters.
Industrial Centre and Solar / Black Hole Power Generator affect all planets within supply range of where they're located. There's no benefit to producing them on every planet, unless you have no supply lines.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

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MatGB
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Re: General Feedback

#7 Post by MatGB »

Trill23 wrote: Well, I'd head for whatever production buildings there are like Industrial Centre / Gas Power Generator / Solar Generator / black hole power gen where possible for starters.
Only gas giant generators are per system, so you only need to build each of the others once per empires, specifically to avoid players needing to remember a big buildqueue as most of us find it deathly dull (I'm playing a bit of FreeCol at the moment, and while I love the strategy of the game nearly as much as FO, new towns require so much extra work it gets repetetive quickly). It is very rare that you need to return to a system to order the building of new stuff unless it's a shipyard system where you're building warfleets or you unlock new tech, at which point you select the best system and move on.
The other thing is that when there are lots of planets, I find it very difficult to remember what races are on what that I own. This would be useful for specifying new colony ship builds for the various specials / planet types that are around. Being able to see a drop-down list of races and the planets they are on would be kinda cool too.
There is the Objects search menu which lets you call up lists with a variety of options, plus the census tells you what you've got (but not where). Objects is planned for improvements over time IIRC but that sort of coing is way beyond my skills.
Ever thought of creating a library / university building to enhance research?
Enclave of the Void can be a mid game tech if you plan your research appropriately (I always forget) and gives an awesome bonus, there's no building before that in the queue that ups research but it's not supposed to be easy to learn how to blow up solar systems and collapse stars into black holes ;-)
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Trill23
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Re: General Feedback

#8 Post by Trill23 »

Hi Bigjoe5- I was under the impression that industrial centres et al stacked, there was nothing to say they did not do so.

Another building that could be worthwhile auto-building where possible could be the terraforming group.

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MatGB
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Re: General Feedback

#9 Post by MatGB »

Trill23 wrote:Hi Bigjoe5- I was under the impression that industrial centres et al stacked, there was nothing to say they did not do so.
The tech that unlocks it sort of implies it, but the building itself looked fairly clear to me last time I went through looking for stuff to fix

Code: Select all

Initially provides a bonus to [[encyclopedia INDUSTRY_TITLE]] on all [[encyclopedia SUPPLY_TITLE]] line connected planets with Industry by 0.2 per Population
I didn't think it needed clarifying, however it is a bit terse and could probably be written more clearly—how d'you think we should rewrite it to be clearer?
Another building that could be worthwhile auto-building where possible could be the terraforming group.
I would love it if we could automate or at least have a helper for that in some way, even a search function that lets you find planets that aren't Good for their populated species would make that easier once you unlock the tech.
Mat Bowles

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Trill23
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Re: General Feedback

#10 Post by Trill23 »

Hi MatGb I guess something to say that these buildings do not stack - same as is said for gas power generators (although if there is a break in supply lines it might be useful to have a couple scattered around for regional bits).

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MatGB
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Re: General Feedback

#11 Post by MatGB »

Actually yeah, it's clear it affects everywhere, but not that it doesn't stack.

I rarely, if ever, build ICs, I just wait till my nearest neighbour has built one on their homeworld and take that, far more efficient ;-)

I'll add it to the list of things to fix in the next pass of the language file, there're severeal effects and things that could be clearer that I mean to work on at some point, this is one of them.
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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Geoff the Medio
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Re: General Feedback

#12 Post by Geoff the Medio »

MatGB wrote:There is the Objects search menu which lets you call up lists with a variety of options, plus the census tells you what you've got (but not where). Objects is planned for improvements over time...
In the latest SVN, the columns in the objects window can be somewhat customized by right clicking. They can also be resized, but that currently requires editing config.xml manually.

The objects can also be sorted by each column by left-clicking, although it's a bit quirky with the sorting for numbers because it sorts by the text representation, not the numerical value, so 1000 comes "before" 999 since the first character "1" is less than "9".

In future it should be possible to set up custom columns, although it might require some script-writing to do so, as a UI to write a custom ValueRef would be... complicated... and storing them in the Options DB more so.

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