Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

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

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JdH
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Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#1 Post by JdH »

Hi, I stumbled across FreeOrion recently and played some games.

Overall I like it and see a huge potential in this game.

I only won 2 games out of about 20 (some I canceled for testing reasons).
The reasons I lost most games: The AI just overruns me at a certain point with seemingly OP Meteor ships. I don't like playing aggressive in such games. I usually want to build a decent set of core planets and then improving and wining by tech lead. The huge external slot count and structure points of meteor ships seems to be liked by AI. I rarely fight against AI not using them (perhaps every AI not using them gets obliterated by meteor ships...). On top of that, you get cheap good armor alongside researching meteor-ships.
In one of the games I won (at least I think to, didn't get any message about it, but researched the 50k tech) I got spammed by all those black craken etc. I had no chance to defend against a huge flood of them while also defending my borders to the growing threat of AI.
It was a huge plus for me to figure out how to display the whole Tech-Tree and setting search paths to points of interest (mainly research boni early). I think the display Tech-Tree should be redesigned to place techs according to their total research points needed in tree. That way one could easily see, if a tech is expansive to get (with all pre-techs) or not. Perhaps I would be too much to consider all Pre-tech and use max(pre-techs) instead.
Another trouble I went into is not finding colonizable planets. I play as a toxic race: Plenty of Terran/Swamp planets nearby. I play as a swamp race: Insert random planet type not beeing swamp here. In plenty of games I didn't even find one planet I could colonize before AI or monsters stopped my way or researching at least 2 of the size improvement techs.
The galaxy generation (or the start point selection) should be improved to be more fair. At least there should be a reachable colonizable planet for every start (at least if we continue to start with a colonization ship).
The colonization system is confusing. I research subterranean habitation and can then colonize a planet I couldn't before? - I thought hostile environment was the problem in first place. More on this below.

I have many more thoughts about the game, here is a short list:

Starlane length & Travel times
I think you can travel to fast (or the star systems are to near to each other) with the standard ship speeds. I'd like to see traveling between starts taking >= 1.5 turns without pumping ships with engines. Making placing engines into ships a valuable investment.

Ongoing battles
I like that space battles are not necessary resolved in one turn. But I think fleeing is to cheap.
But never mind, it's just a placeholder, isn't it? Just waiting for the real combat system.

Troop Ships and Invasion
I think Invasion is far to easy / cheap. Either ground battles should take more than 1 turn, increasing the build times for Troop Drop modules (reflection the training time of soldiers) and/or making them cost a lot more resources.

UI
The game needs to remember window positions between sessions.

Colonization
That was one of the confusing parts I had to get into. Am I right that there is only something like size (meaning the max population)?
I'd like to have something like size and usefulness, meaning the max population and the amount of population that can be fed by that planet. We could then use the logistic mechanics to even out the differences and add starving or growing to a planet.
That's just a quick thought and it would have problems with more species.
I think colonizing would be much more intuitive and interesting if you don't have to check every few techs if you actually can colonize all those planets around you now. Instead you need to establish outposts and start terraforming on most planets (say hostile).
While you could colonize poor planets from the start with excess food from your home planet.

Logistic
It was something hard to figure out how it works. And I'm not sure if I get everything right.
Say I have P1--P2---P3. And every planet has a logistic of 3. If I build something on P3 will it use production of P1?
If not: There must be an easy way to determine what planets contribute to production.

One time a planet didn't connect to others, but one further away did. But I found nothing why. No visible anomalies or enemies (the other planet used the same deep space junktion) etc.

Ok, thats it for now. I hope it is not too confusing.


PS: crashes.
Sorry forgot to keep the locks. But It either crashes early or never. Some crashes seem to be somewhat reproducible:
Start new game => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => select tech => crash
Start new game (same settings) => turn => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => play until finished without any problems
I'm on Win 8.1 x64. Perhaps I'll keep the logs in future.

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Dilvish
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#2 Post by Dilvish »

The FO Quickstart Guide is in the middle of a much needed update, and still has a bit of outdated info, but I think you would still find it a very helpful read that answers a fair number of your questions.
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JdH
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#3 Post by JdH »

Wow, thanks. Must have missed it between all the other outdated informations in forum and wiki :oops:

Having read it now, it would have helped me indeed with a few starting problems (viewing whole tech tree etc.).
And it answers my Logistic question with no, all connected planets are involved.
Well, if that isn't outdated since it is talking about food all the time :)
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MatGB
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#4 Post by MatGB »

I've removed lots of the references to food, but not got all the way down the page.

Seriously, the first week I played without food an minerals I hated it, I missed the detail. But it took me no time at all to instead really appreciate the much bigger strategic stuff now allowed, and I no longer miss making sure my new colonies aren't starving, or just having blockaded planets die off. And I'm guessing it made Dilvish's job on the AI much easier.

Re the quickstart specifically, you're the absolutely perfect person to help me with it. Apart from the obviously out of date stuff, what isn't clear? Trying to rewrite existing text to remove outdated info and make it clearer for new players is never easy.

anyway, some other responses.
The reasons I lost most games: The AI just overruns me at a certain point with seemingly OP Meteor ships. I don't like playing aggressive in such games. I usually want to build a decent set of core planets and then improving and wining by tech lead. The huge external slot count and structure points of meteor ships seems to be liked by AI. I rarely fight against AI not using them (perhaps every AI not using them gets obliterated by meteor ships...). On top of that, you get cheap good armor alongside researching meteor-ships.
Your playstyle is the complete opposite of mine (and I've been giving more AI feedback than most last year or so, so it's gotten much better against me of late ;-). Which shiphull does Meteor use? I don't recall seeing them at all, I suspect I've normally conquered the galaxy before an A has got to them, I've always taken a speed kills approach to these games :-D

Best, and most overpowered, hull line in the game currently is the Fractal Hull, for which you need a blue star or black hole shipyard. You can also build them far earlier than the meteor (which I'm guessing is the last Asteroid Hull flagship?). Alternatively, just research the Robotic line, with the Constructed branch. Both Self Gravitating and then Titan hulls are incredibly powerful for a defensive style play, and they're quicker to build than the tail end flagship hulls. Plus, there are some nice core slot parts you can put in there, and more are planned (ideas for that welcome).
In one of the games I won (at least I think to, didn't get any message about it, but researched the 50k tech) I got spammed by all those black craken etc. I had no chance to defend against a huge flood of them while also defending my borders to the growing threat of AI.
You do now, at least, get warnings about them coming and some hints as to what to do. Normally by the time they're about I've conquered more than half a galaxy so they're never a real problem for me, but I can see your playstyle (which we have to make an equally valid choice) would have more problems with them. Believe it or not, we've toned them down a bit from before.

Apart from the hulls mentioned above, Heavy Asteroid Hulls can handle them with the right weaponry, and simply sending an expedition at the Experimentor homeworld to try a sneak capture is worth it. If you can avoid fighting any of the beasties, you only need 40 troop capacity to take it, considering a few tweaks to them soon if we can get the "Experimentor Difficulty" setting implemented.

For your approach, main advice, research some stealth techs and send stealthed scouts out to explore everywhere, knowing where the threats are is vital to a turtle strategy I'd have thought and if you spot a system with no starlanes before turn 200, try to get control of that area to take the beasties down quick before there are too many of them.
It was a huge plus for me to figure out how to display the whole Tech-Tree and setting search paths to points of interest (mainly research boni early). I think the display Tech-Tree should be redesigned to place techs according to their total research points needed in tree. That way one could easily see, if a tech is expansive to get (with all pre-techs) or not. Perhaps I would be too much to consider all Pre-tech and use max(pre-techs) instead.
We are discussing both a tech tree revamp and rationalisation, I quite like the way it's displayed currently but you're not the first to want total RP/time displayed per tech, especially for the later game ones, and I can see it would be useful. Beyond me to code it though, I can change and balance existing techs but the display improvement side is a feature.
Another trouble I went into is not finding colonizable planets. I play as a toxic race: Plenty of Terran/Swamp planets nearby. I play as a swamp race: Insert random planet type not beeing swamp here. In plenty of games I didn't even find one planet I could colonize before AI or monsters stopped my way or researching at least 2 of the size improvement techs.
The galaxy generation (or the start point selection) should be improved to be more fair. At least there should be a reachable colonizable planet for every start (at least if we continue to start with a colonization ship).
The colonization system is confusing. I research subterranean habitation and can then colonize a planet I couldn't before? - I thought hostile environment was the problem in first place. More on this below.
This can be a problem, especially for the limited pop races, and I'm not sure how to approach it for balance. And yes, Subterranean Habitation is the first tech I aim for in virtually every game I play (exception, a high industry race if I've found a habitable world immediately on game start). The logic of that specific tech with that name being the crucial early game "I can live on Adequate planets" tech isn't perhaps brilliant. But it works, making it clearer in game with better early advice is a high priority for me for the next release, a bare bones "tutorial" giving basic advice is necessary I think.
Starlane length & Travel times
I think you can travel to fast (or the star systems are to near to each other) with the standard ship speeds. I'd like to see traveling between starts taking >= 1.5 turns without pumping ships with engines. Making placing engines into ships a valuable investment.
Hmm, not sold on this as a problem, but it might make the AI slightly more competent with faster ships than it currently can be. I am considering discussing the various ship speed with an idea to rationalise them a bit and possibly slow some of them down though.
Ongoing battles
I like that space battles are not necessary resolved in one turn. But I think fleeing is to cheap.
But never mind, it's just a placeholder, isn't it? Just waiting for the real combat system.
It's a placeholder that's likely to be there for some time, the devs that were workign on that side are currently inactive, we've been working recently on the assumption the game can be completed without any combat that isn't auto resolved, and we've revamped the combat system of late as a result. It's a lot better and there are a few tweaks that i'd like but they're lower priority than they were.

Not sure what you mean by "fleeing is too cheap"? Are you meaning you think there should be some sort of parting shot mechanic or something?
Troop Ships and Invasion
I think Invasion is far to easy / cheap. Either ground battles should take more than 1 turn, increasing the build times for Troop Drop modules (reflection the training time of soldiers) and/or making them cost a lot more resources.
Agree completely. I'm currently thinking to change the minimum build time for troop modules to three turns, and to change their costs so that a) they're a bit more expensive anyway and b) they use the Colony Update modifier rather than the Fleet Upkeep modifier, but I need to do some testing to see how that works, especially as I already think Colony Upkeep is a bit steep.

I like the simplistic ground battles we currently have, but Geoff is planning a "happiness" mechanic (you can see bits of it already but it does nothing) that will prevent newly conquered worlds from doing much,, and especially not building new troop ships immediately after conquest, which will sort of do the same thing, they'd be "occupied" worlds for a bit and not fully under control, etc.
UI
The game needs to remember window positions between sessions.
Yes, yes it does. I gave up moving stuff around to suit my personal tastes too much a long time ago, and suspect I always will given test builds always get a new config file anyway, but it would be a lovely feature, this side has been getting work from some new devs recently so maybe more will happen, I love the pinned windows stuff that we've just got, for example.

(and given I accidentally hit submit rather than preview and this post is too long, part 2 follows...)
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MatGB
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#5 Post by MatGB »

JdH wrote: Colonization
That was one of the confusing parts I had to get into. Am I right that there is only something like size (meaning the max population)?
I'd like to have something like size and usefulness, meaning the max population and the amount of population that can be fed by that planet. We could then use the logistic mechanics to even out the differences and add starving or growing to a planet.
We had what I think you're suggesting before, it was removed (as I mentioned above) because it takes away from strategic planning a bit (well, it means managing each system more than we want in this game).

Currently, population is everything, and any tech that improves your population overall is a powerful tech to have, if anything I think the over reliance on population as a meter setting mechanic is a bit of an issue that I'd like to do some balancing work on.
That's just a quick thought and it would have problems with more species.
I think colonizing would be much more intuitive and interesting if you don't have to check every few techs if you actually can colonize all those planets around you now. Instead you need to establish outposts and start terraforming on most planets (say hostile).
While you could colonize poor planets from the start with excess food from your home planet.
This also has basically been removed. A game doing that would be an interesting game (and it could easily be built using the FO engine) but it would be a smaller game more about micromanagement, whereas FO is deliberately being designed as a game of galactic conquest where managing individual planets/systems is kept to a minimum. I like this, but I would also happily see a fork or a different version doing the other at some point in the future, far fewer systems and more emphasis on individual planets.

What we have is Simple, deliberately, and it works well for what the game is meant to be. We do, however, need to improve both the UI for colonisation/finding planets and the in game information about it (I use the Objects default search to give me a list of all planets and just know what my species can use from memory as I've learnt it and how the techs interact, it would be good to have some way of searching for planets of Good or Adequate status for any of my species and/or for this specific species).

I think partially your suggestion is for a different game (it's not a bad suggestion, like I said, but not for FO as is) and partially it's about substantially improving the UI in that aread, and that I agree with and want to see more done at some point.

Plus, as said above, improve in game info so that it's clearer in text what population bonuses do, etc.
Logistic
It was something hard to figure out how it works. And I'm not sure if I get everything right.
Say I have P1--P2---P3. And every planet has a logistic of 3. If I build something on P3 will it use production of P1?
If not: There must be an easy way to determine what planets contribute to production.
Yes, planets linked together and able to share production will have a wider supply line, generally most planets want to be linked up, but in the early game you might have a couple different unlinked clusters. The Logistics focus setting can sometimes be a very underrated friend, as can Space Elevators.
One time a planet didn't connect to others, but one further away did. But I found nothing why. No visible anomalies or enemies (the other planet used the same deep space junktion) etc.
We recently changed things so that larger planets have smaller supply distances (gravity wells &c), outposts put on tiny worlds can be incredibly useful. I addition, some species have better supply than others, if a species has "bad supply" this won't display on the meter, but average, good and ultimate all do.

It's a new mechanic and I think it might need a bit of tweaking for balance to be honest, but I do really like it. Plus, supply grows over time, a newly colonised or conquered world starts at supply 0 and grows one per turn, check the meters per planet to see where they're going to be.
Ok, thats it for now. I hope it is not too confusing.
Not at all, feedback is always useful, and I love seeing stuff from new players as a) it reminds me how much has changed and b) if I want to write up tutorial information in game I need to know what needs to be explained more, etc. So thank you.
PS: crashes.
Sorry forgot to keep the locks. But It either crashes early or never. Some crashes seem to be somewhat reproducible:
Start new game => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => select tech => crash
Start new game (same settings) => turn => turn => crash
Start new game (same settings) => play until finished without any problems
I'm on Win 8.1 x64. Perhaps I'll keep the logs in future.
You're not the first person to have reported weird crashes on Win8.1, I'm on Win7 and have no problems at all like this. We definitely need to work out what's happening but I'm making sure my next machine (which I'm speccing out right now, happy birthday to me) isn't Win8 so we need someone with such a machine to do stuff like post logs.

So please do, they're in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\FreeOrion by default, if you zip up Freeorion.log and Freeoriond.log after every crash and post them that'll help people narrow it down.

There is a Verbose Logging option in Options as well, that might be helpful but it slows the game down a bit (I suspect not too badly on a better system than mine though)
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Dilvish
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#6 Post by Dilvish »

MatGB wrote:if a species has "bad supply" this won't display on the meter, but average, good and ultimate all do.
It seems we should try to do something so bad supply is explicit in the meter. If instead of being a literal blank, bad supply were made to be

Code: Select all

BAD_SUPPLY
'''     EffectsGroup
            scope = Source
            activation = Planet
            accountinglabel = "BAD_SUPPLY_LABEL"
            effects = SetMaxSupply Value + 0
'''
Then the label gets shown in the meter detail with a zero contribution, colored white (I tested and confirmed). That seems preferable to me than no listing at all, in this case.
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#7 Post by MatGB »

Agree completely, didn't occur to me that that could be done, definitely think it should be done as it's confused me more than once.

Was planning on bringing it up at a later date as it's not a major issue, but I think possibly reducing all species by 1 (so bad supply is -1) and giving, for example, Homeworld a +1 would be possibly something worth thinking about, I think Tiny is slightly overpowered (especially with outposts), but I love the idea of doing it this way so only want to tweak the edges at some point.
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#8 Post by JdH »

MatGB wrote:Re the quickstart specifically, you're the absolutely perfect person to help me with it. Apart from the obviously out of date stuff, what isn't clear? Trying to rewrite existing text to remove outdated info and make it clearer for new players is never easy.
Well, as I learned most things while playing my experience is biased too.
The most obvious problem I would say is supply. There need to be a mayor topic for it, as it is a mayor game mechanic.
Which shiphull does Meteor use? I don't recall seeing them at all, I suspect I've normally conquered the galaxy before an A has got to them, I've always taken a speed kills approach to these games :-D
With meteor I meant Asteroid hulls.
For your approach, main advice, research some stealth techs and send stealthed scouts out to explore everywhere, knowing where the threats are is vital to a turtle strategy I'd have thought and if you spot a system with no starlanes before turn 200, try to get control of that area to take the beasties down quick before there are too many of them.
Thats funny. Until the message appeared I thought this system without starlanes was a bug...
Nontheless I invaded that planet with 50% of my fleet and a huge bunch of troop ships. As the last worm was about to die, 5 new spawned. They spawned about 5 per 10 turns before I invaded. But the spawning interval seemed to be quickened during and after my invade attempt...
Not sure what you mean by "fleeing is too cheap"? Are you meaning you think there should be some sort of parting shot mechanic or something?
Yes, that's what I have in mind.
To explain my intention a bit. I think for your playing style it's not a big problem. You attack, invade and hunt down fleeing ships later.
But for a defending player it is worse: They attack (you manage to bring enough ships in time) and they flee. But most times, you cannot afford to follow them, because you would give up an important point with possible other enemy fleets, perhaps from other empires, invading your empire.
The attacking empire (with massive amount of asteroids, see above) just flees without loosing a lot. The ships then get slowly repaired, while they wait for reinforcements.
Well most problems of those problems come from not being able to defend invasions, as they are too quickly done. I mean, it doesn't matter if you have a central fleet to help out your borders, if one to 5 planets are gone until your fleet can arrive...


That's it for now. I plan to write a mayor update of what I think about what all of you wrote combined with my thoughts in near future. I'll be more focused on general gameplay mechanics and usability, than this quick reply (which was focused on some misunderstandings).
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#9 Post by vincele »

Hello
JdH wrote:UI
The game needs to remember window positions between sessions.
I'm working on that, I have something that kind of works, but is not finished/polished enough to submit for inclusion in FO trunk sources.
JdH wrote:Colonization
I think colonizing would be much more intuitive and interesting if you don't have to check every few techs if you actually can colonize all those planets around you now.
I was annoyed by that also, and had some patches to always display planet suitability in the side panel, but it was really costly (CPU-wise) to update every time we switch from system to system, I'll keep working on that idea also, but this may take longer to get a good solution... I cannot do windows builds, but if I could, I'd get you a patched build to test that functionality...
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#10 Post by JdH »

Here it is now:

Gameplay

Preamble
I play 4x games somewhat as a roleplayer. I imagine what type of people I'm playing and act accordingly. I've done this in Moo2, I've done this in Civ 3-5. I like playing some defensive, peaceful role, trying to forge powerful alliances or just trying to stay out of all business. But I'm not playing this role exclusively. Sometimes I just like to play Mongols in CiV and go to conquer the Worlds.
I like Multiplayer. But dislike most public rounds for an obvious reason: It is played as an competition, it must be fast, winning is everything. Well, that's just not compatible with my play style. Glad I had some friends playing similar to me.

At the moment FreeOrion is all about expanding by conquest. Someone said, that it is designed as a "game of galactic conquest" earlier here. I'm afraid, but that wouldn't be my type of game and definitely not what I would think hearing the game title FreeOrion.
(I know, the "game of galactic conquest" part is taken out of context, but it just fits my current opinion about the game and my worries about the future. I hope it all clears out later on.)

Exploring
I like the way exploring goes. Investing in scanners early could result in many saved scouts.
I like those parts of the galaxy where you scout valuable systems and cannot reach them, because no starlane is in sight.
But I hate finding not a single good planet with my starting colony ship cycling round my homeworld...
For Galaxy Generation I'd like to have an option to influence the mean length of starlanes and manipulate the ratio of "Empty Space" occurring in galaxy.

Expanding
By colonizing: I don't like that only population size (manipulated by research and species) is a factor colonizing. But I can live with it to minimize the amount of core mechanics the player must have in mind (my suggestion would not lead to more micro management as it just would use current supply system with an additional food production by planet quality you cannot do much about, as you cannot do much about your production rate).
But I think it is too easy to colonize hostile planets.
By invasion: Invading is too rewarding. Both troop ships are too quickly build and planets are too quickly conquered.
Terraforming: It is way to cheap! It should at least take a decent amount of time.
Oh, in the Quick Play Guide there is this nice wheel of habitability. We must implement it in game. A graphic visualization of what planets you race (or a selected race) has would be really cool instead of just looking for green size numbers.

Research and Buildings
There seem to be an overwhelming option of tech and buildings increasing production and only a few options increasing research. There are no research increasing early game buildings.
It's not rewarding for my playstyle to only have a few buildings to build (most of them are only needed once to affect the whole range of supplied planets.

What else to do besides conquest?
Obviously diplomacy and interesting victory conditions are missing right now, but as far as I know both are already planned.

Conclusion
Many things are in the making. And an important part of improvement for my playstyle would by a diplomacy system. With all the needed options to improve gameplay around not (directly) conquering the galaxy.
I'm a bit worried about the "deliberately being designed as a game of galactic conquest" part. Though I think (and hope) it was only mentioned as a contrast to micromanagement (though I really don't know how those two things correlate, especially in the given context, besides the assumption everything not helping in conquest is micromanagement and must be avoided).

As of now, I plan to help improving FO. And if the point comes, and I hope it won't, the point of no return where I cannot see the game improving for my taste anymore, I'd gladly rethink the option to fork FO.
But that's in a distant future and probably a different life ;)
(I most likely won't have the time for it anyway)


Usability Details

Pedia
I think we should manage everything into main categories. The, for beginners, important "Game Concepts" is garbaged by "Field", "Field Type" etc.
Most of those should go into Top categories like Galaxy->Planets, Galaxy->Field Types.

Another point I stumbled across playing are the exobots: There must be a link form the "Exobot colony origin" to the species "Exobot". And I think the text of "Exobot colony origin" should be more clear, that it is a colony ship and not "establishing" the exobots on the planet the colony origin is build on.

Supply
I like the approach of supply to reduce micromanagement. But as it is a mayor gameplay machanic of FreeOrion I think it should be more accessible:
Attachments
Top: current<br />Bottom: Suggestion with supply allways in view
Top: current
Bottom: Suggestion with supply allways in view
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Putting a system-best supply indicator in the system resource summary seems like a good suggestion.

Otherwise / in general, there are plans and work being done to add other things to do besides build ships and fighting with them, and other things to consider when doing so.

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vincele
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#12 Post by vincele »

JdH wrote:Exploring
For Galaxy Generation I'd like to have an option to influence the mean length of starlanes and manipulate the ratio of "Empty Space" occurring in galaxy.
I like that idea very much, this should allow one to easily tweak the game to be more colonize/supply-oriented without changing too much things.
JdH wrote:Expanding
But I think it is too easy to colonize hostile planets.
I'd say too easy to colonize hostile and too hard (expensive) to colonize appropriate ones.
JdH wrote:By invasion: Invading is too rewarding. Both troop ships are too quickly build and planets are too quickly conquered.
I'm of the same opinion, but would say that it's probably by a very tiny small amount of balance.
JdH wrote:Terraforming: It is way to cheap! It should at least take a decent amount of time.
Yes, making this more costly would make colonizing by another own empire's species more interresting early on.
JdH wrote:Oh, in the Quick Play Guide there is this nice wheel of habitability. We must implement it in game. A graphic visualization of what planets you race (or a selected race) has would be really cool instead of just looking for green size numbers.
Another good idea, looks like fun for a code newcomer...

In that doc, it mentions food production, have I missed something or is this currently not implemented ?

As you can guess from above, I've got a similar playing-style to yours...

I think the planet defense techs are too costly for beatniks^Wpeaceful-style players. It looks like it's easier to defend with ships than with planetary / systems buildings...
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MatGB
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#13 Post by MatGB »

Vincele, you're hardly a newcomer now but if you could do the necessary backend code for getting that wheel into the pedia I'll happily write up the entries for it.

Food was in the game, it was removed, I missed it for all of a week then decided I loved what the game was without it. Like I said above, there are lots of other games that FO could be, and I'd love to see a fork/different version at some point that's about much smaller galaxies with a lot more resources/emphasis on colonisation, etc

But even if I wanted to bring food back, I doubt you'll get much headway with the other devs (there are undoubtedly old threads on the discussion(s), never read them, don't need to, too many resources/focus settings breaks the KISS model they (we? I like it too) are aiming for.

If you want to see what it was like, download 0.4.0 or I think 0.4.1, it was definitely gone by 0.4.2.
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vincele
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#14 Post by vincele »

MatGB wrote:Food was in the game
Thanks for the info, I was wondering if it was from the past or for the future, because it is clearly not currently in. I've no intention to go back that route, there's enough to do with what's in now.

But I'll probably toy with the python side of things for the universe generation idea, should be simple enough to do.

I'll have a look at the wheel of habitability, if no one beats me to it. But only when I'll finish some of my current pile, though... I've got some code to submit for RFC, so that it can eventually go in and my quilt stack of patches go smaller.

Edit : Maybe we want to update the quick start guide to reflect current reality, for the 0.4.4 release...
All the patches I'll provide for freeorion will be released under the GPL v2 or later license.
Let's unleash the dyson forest powa!

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MatGB
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Re: Feedback v0.4.4-RC4-7641-Win32

#15 Post by MatGB »

Re Edit, already on it, that's the more-than-half-done version, the top half down to the end of the "How Do I" section should be completely accurate now, the bottom half I'm toying with splitting off into separate pages as it's already a bit long.

My edit: and it's in need of new pictures, need to get them done and to Geoff, it used to be when you started you saw all stars, but had to explore to find the starlanes and what was in the system, that was changed, hence the weird looking "galaxy map at beginning" pics that make no sense to current reality.
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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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