Splitting Category: Ships

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jenschou
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Splitting Category: Ships

#1 Post by jenschou »

Hi!

For new players the tech tree is quite confusing, especially when it comes to research relating to ships. One way to make this easier, that would benefit all players, is to split the category 'Ships', in two: 'Ship Hulls', and 'Ship Parts'. After such a split, both of the new categories are the two biggest categories, which to me indicates it really is time for such a split.

I have made this split, based on 7114, so please check it out.

Regards,
Jens
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en.txt
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techs.txt
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish, would this affect the AI?

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winter leaf
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#3 Post by winter leaf »

I'm not the best programmer in the world,but without an AI edit i suspect the AI would have problems researching.this would be a huge drop in the difficulty.
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Dilvish
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#4 Post by Dilvish »

As a preliminary note, your editor caused all the line endings to be changed from LF to CRLF, which at least for me on a linux system causes a diff to show the file as having 100% of the lines replaced. In general it is best if you can post a diff yourself rather than posting a complete modified file.

After fixing that and doing the compare, it looks like the only changes to the techs.txt file were to add a new category and change the category listing for some techs. The AI does not currently use the category info so changing it is no problem for it.

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Num7
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#5 Post by Num7 »

I suppose it could be split into an offensive category and a space travel category. I believe it could work that way. It's true that the ship category is huge.
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jenschou
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#6 Post by jenschou »

I was thinking about posting a diff, and looked into how to make one, but believe I need a few pointers to get that started ;-) For instance, would I need to compile the code to produce a diff, or do I just need to get SVN going? Is there a link to where this is explained somewhere?

I used Wordpad to edit the files, anyone know if it would be better to use Notepad?

To me it feels like quite a clear cut line at hulls and parts, and they are currently quite equal in size at that. Though I imagine that in time parts might grow more than hulls might, but at the moment it's navigating hulls that is most problematic.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

jenschou wrote:...would I need to compile the code to produce a diff, or do I just need to get SVN going?
Making a diff or patch has nothing to do with compiling. You'd just need a diff program that can make SVN diffs. That can be TortoinseSVN on Windows. On other systems, or for alternatives, search google.
I used Wordpad to edit the files, anyone know if it would be better to use Notepad?
Neither is acceptable. Get a proper text editor that can handle different line end styles. I like Komodo Edit.

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MatGB
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#8 Post by MatGB »

jenschou wrote:I was thinking about posting a diff, and looked into how to make one, but believe I need a few pointers to get that started ;-) For instance, would I need to compile the code to produce a diff, or do I just need to get SVN going? Is there a link to where this is explained somewhere?
I keep meaning to write it up as a post here as I found it really confusing to get started and am still learning. Use TortoiseSVN, create a repository somewhere, put the edited files into that, create a diff patch, you're done.

Trick I only found out last month: you can tell the game to use a different default directory, so you can save your changes in your SVN repo and still have the default install, very handy. Feel free to ask if you get stuck as it's not easy if you've never done this before, but is really easy once you know what you're doing.
I used Wordpad to edit the files, anyone know if it would be better to use Notepad?
I used an Open Source editor called Notepad++ which appears to work fine and has many features, Wordpad is basically terrible as it's not a text editor but a stripped down word processor, and notepad can do strange things.
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Chriss
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#9 Post by Chriss »

I am very much in favour of this change, so I've made a patch.

Unfortunately, there's been quite some changes to techs.txt since then, so I've made a patch from 7114 to jenschu's changes. Mostly, it's adding of the category, and replacing the category for all affected techs. I have no experience with merge conflicts, hopefully one of you can sort this out...

Since it does not affect the AI, can this be applied?
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techs.txt
jenschu's techs.txt with unix line endings
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[The extension patch has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

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MatGB
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#10 Post by MatGB »

My problem with this (and it's my only problem) is categorisation choices and confusion therein. Examples:

Military Robotic Control unlocks a ship hull and a part. That's fine to have it as defaulting to a hull as the part is dependent on the hull and is for the robotic hull line.

Asteroid Reformation unlocks a building and a part, I research it mostly as it's (now) a prerequisite for a strong hull and the armour part it unlocks is awesome. Monomolecular Latticing unlocks a (fairly useless) hull and a very powerful ship part. Both the latter two, now, have icons showing they unlock the part. But they're all categorised as Hull techs, and are mostly prerequisites for hull techs.

We recently changed Transpatial Drive to unlock both the Transpatial Hull and the subtantially more powerful Transpatial Drive—the latter will get a lot more use than the former, so is it a hull tech, or a part tech?

There are doubtless others, and will be more. Like I said, I'm happy to see the split but it needs thinking through on edge case choices, for me the two asteroid techs I mention are part techs but are mostly integral to hull line choices, etc.
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Chriss
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#11 Post by Chriss »

That is true. I think I've said before that for me, there are way too many hulls and parts. I just don't get them. There is no structure, no general theme that I figured to date. Some hulls in the organic line for example seem way too similar to me. I've proposed making a "theme" for each hull line, and striping them down to 5 hulls max or so, maybe even less.

Another idea: what if we split based on hull lines and assorted techs? One category robotic, one asteroid and so on? That would probably be a bit much... Maybe one for hull lines and assorted parts, one for general techs that apply to all hulls? Things like weapons, fuel, logistic and repair and so on?
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MatGB
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Re: Splitting Category: Ships

#12 Post by MatGB »

Robotic line-tech based, now with sub themes of core slots (the only non-flagship hulls to have core slots, intentionally on my part as they remain slightly overpriced and it's nice flavour) and self repair (self repair will become much more powerful very soon, hopefully as I'm getting a patch done fixing damage control).

Asteroid line—slow but sturdy hulls, location specific to build but tough and with lots of slots for a relatively low price and occasional unreliable stealth boosts

Energy line—difficult to build fast expensive ships that max out on speed and aren't at all stealthy

Organic/Xenocoordination line—flexible, fast warships that can be built anywhere that lack structure but make up for it with flexibility and some self repair

Organic/Cellular Growth line—stealthy scouts and commerce raiders, unsuited for frontline roles but good in support or for sneak attacks

Organic/both (2 hulls)—combining both stealth, scouting and strength to make expensive, but useful, warships that can be remarkably effective at sneak attacks, reconaisance en force or commerce blockades.

Basic line—slow, relatively sturdy, expensive but easy to build.

That's where I'm at with them currently, the most recent changes made the organic line distinction clearer and more obvious (I had no idea until doing it that the first two cellular hulls got a vision range bonus nor that the third could see as far as the Ravenous, awesome for what I had it in mind to make them into already, just needed stealth sorting out a bit).

Whether they need rationalisation or further work was outside the remit of the patch I just did, which was basically to attempt a degree of balance to existing designs without massively changing too much, and to bring stats in line with description or to bring description in line with stats as some were very very wrong (10 is not very high stealth, and 80 is not incredibly fast starlane speed, etc). I like the variety there and am very used to it, but I'm happy to admit it's daunting and needs splitting off in some way, I'm just not sold this is the best way of doing it.

On the other hand, it's currently the best suggested way of doing it but like you I'm still learning SVN so apart from manually copy/pasting I don't know how to get the work done applied. FWIW, I would definitely change the two asteroid armour techs into parts not hulls.
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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