Dealing with Building Conditons and Queues

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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GlasShadow
Space Floater
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2009 8:43 pm

Dealing with Building Conditons and Queues

#1 Post by GlasShadow »

Moved by Geoff. Was originally in reply to this post.

i would think it would be better to do a check on the queues before the building is entered into it. that would in itself eliminate the majority of the problems, ie. check if the building can be built and check if there are any other buildings of this type in the queues, that way if the building can be built and there are no other copies for the planet in the queues then the building is entered, i don't see the need to have multiple copies of the building queued for a planet, even though it doesn't exist "technically" doesn't really matter as whatever was selected first would be finished first and in the event that they all get built in the same turn is a non-issue if there is only one in the queues for a given planet, if the building is dumped from the queues wouldn't matter either as it would simply reset its availability when it was dumped, thereby reappearing in the build menu until the time when it is next put in the queue etc...

the only complications to deal with then is if the empire can build only one of these buildings which is easily solved by another check for the whole empire's queues,

the real problem i see is if only one empire can build the building (which in it of itself is not something i see worth doing), but something like the wonders in civ, this could be solved upon completion of the building by one empire and id resolve it out with getting something like 40-60 % of the investment back in the buildings cost, removing it from the queues, disabling it and then possible a sit-rep like so-and-so has build said wonder. another problem here is if 2 empires complete the building on the same turn, who gets it? i would suggest whoever took the longest to build it should get it which makes a certain kind of since in my mind, the logic being it was harder for them to accomplished the task and they have invested more resources in it, the determinate factor being time. that's in the event of a tie and i find it unlikely that that would also tie but in the case that it did something like the empires overall rate compared to other empires, say a rank so-and-so empire is #1 another one is #2 etc. then give it to the lesser ranked empire, as a balancing type decision, that would eliminate any tie in the very unlikely event that the first two conditions tied.

there's no need to constantly check for the buildings completion, just check when the request to build it is done, or when the planet to have it built on is selected remove the ones that aren't needed. that way only one copy /per planet will ever be made, no worry about queuing duplicates as they will never enter the picture.

as far as conditions that would make the building unavailable when completed the only one i can see of the top of my head is if the planet is lost, and in that case anything in that queue would simply be gone, as the system would be occupied and would make for hard explanation to get some meaningful return on the investment. if i am to understand that buildings aren't destroyed during the course of normal combat, the example here would be you're building a large ship and someone destroys your shipyard, there by making the ship no longer valid, in this case trigger the check off of whatever condition happened that would cause the thing in the queue being built to become invalid, example whenever a shipyard is destroyed check the planets queue for ships that are now invalid and then worry about what is to be done with them, pause construction, scrap for some return etc...

toggling and all these options seem confusing to me, i find the unavailable option somewhat annoying-and overly complicated from a beginners standpoint, i see all these building thinking whoo-hoo and then they cant be built because i didn't notice the unavailable toggle was clicked, i just find it pointless to show buildings that aren't applicable to the planet im working on, now in the research menu this is great but it was annoying to try and build some asteroid mines only to discover i had no asteroids.

just my thoughts :P .

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