New player, a few snags

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ChuckStarchaser
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New player, a few snags

#1 Post by ChuckStarchaser »

Hello, new play-tester of "v0.4.8 [build 2018-08-23.26f16b0] C Make" as it appears on the top bar.
First of all, congratulations, thanks, and extra congratulations for using the Boost libraries.
Does that "build 2018" mean I'm playing a 2 years old version? I just downloaded it using Synaptic in Lubuntu.
Anyways, assuming this is NOT a 2 year old version...

My first problem is a matter of taste; un-resolvable I suppose. I played all 3 MOOs, and I like 2 the best; period. I like being able to send a ship any direction I want, not just imposed "lanes". And I like moving guys in a colony from production to research or to food, as I like, instead of having a "focus" drop-down. I also like to SEE my population, and my production, etc., rather than reading numbers. But this is all un-resolvable matters of taste, like I said.
I also find the interface not immediately obvious what is what. It took me hours to just begin to make sense of things. And the documentation I found confusing too, like, look up Stockpile Transfer, it is peppered by "PP" everywhere without explaining what PP stands for. I presume it means Production Points, but assuming that I understand nothing anyways, and so remain in obscurity about what stockpiling technologies are for.
Why is there no choice of map size, number of civilizations, etc? I don't want to meet "enemies" so early in the game. I enjoy building much more than I enjoy fighting. So now I'm going to get attacked with the old BS line "you want to play sim-city". Well, yes and no. I enjoyed sim-city, by the way; and there is nothing to be ashamed for liking sim-city. A civ type game has two main parts, building and fighting. There's nothing wrong with liking one part more than another, and therefore asking to have choices in the matter. In MOO2 I simply choose Huge map and 3 Players, in the game settings, and I enjoy a pretty long build phase.
One final matter of taste: Too many space monsters for me.

As for less taste-related matters:
Space monsters seem broken. One was stuck in flight between two systems, always at ETA 2 for about a dozen turns.
Lack of difficulty control is a bug. Or maybe it is there but I just don't see it?
The population at my home planet went to zero in about 20 turns, and here's the bugs: Lack of documentation about issues affecting population. Lack of any warning message about my population decreasing. I had no idea the population was decreasing; the only thing I noticed was my research and production going to zero for a number of turns, things taking "FOREVER", but I was looking everywhere for what was causing that, and could not tell until the planet died. It would be nice to have some consideration for new players, and include some kind of warning when something is so wrong. In MOO 2 you get warned immediately if the population of a planet goes down.
My scout ships both got stuck in Deep Space. Does this mean that fuel ran out even to get back to base? I would have expected that fuel remaining would take return trip into account; and failing that would at least have hoped there'd be a warning about going further than one can return from.

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Oberlus
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Re: New player, a few snags

#2 Post by Oberlus »

Welcome to the forums.

Yes, build 2018 means it was built in 2018. Latest version, v0.4.10 (2020), is about to get out.

There is an option "starlanes everywhere" at universe creation that will show you a galaxy without starlanes where fleets can travel to most systems (not quite all of them).

The planetary focus (instead of detailed population management) aims at making the game less repetitive and time-consuming (less micromanagement). It's in the design principles of FreeOrion, written in stone.
Showing long bars or repeated icons (for population, production, etc.) for each meter would require more screen space. Interesting that you prefer that instead of the much more functional and concise UI of FreeOrion, which in turns requires for less different windows, keystrokes and mouse sweeps. My wrists are grateful to FreeOrion GUI designers.

The documentation is improvable indeed. It is still evolving, like the game. And yes, PP are Production Points, there should be a Pedia page for that.
Hovering the mouse over any icon will display a helpful tooltip.

Actually, there is choice for map size (number of systems), number of enemy empires, AI aggressiveness (difficulty) and more, in the Galaxy Settings when you click on "Single Player" to start a new game. You can set No, Low, Medium and High Monsters there. No one complaining about long Exploration and Expansion phases here, the more the merrier, if you have the time to play it. Some players like to set galaxies of 5000 systems (50 times bigger than MoO2's Huge setting).

A monster or other ship stuck in a starlane without moving for many turns is probably a "ghost sensor" (they are barred/greyed out to distinguish from actual fleets): you were able to see that monster at some point but then it got hidden by his stealth or got out of your detection range. The GUI keeps it in the map for you to remember until you regain detection range or your detection strength gets stronger, but you can always right-click on such ghost sensors to discard them.

If your population of one of your planets was gradually reducing until collapse while it's production and research went immediately to zero, most probably you built an Evacuation System in there, sending the population to other habitable planets (or to the void if you had no other planet inhabited by that species). Did you remember queueing that project for production? Reading the tooltip about the project (from the Producible Items list) and opening the Pedia article for it before or after queueing it? Checking out the Evacuation System building in your planet during the turns it was in effect (hovering the mouse over its icon)? If that is what happened (Evacuation), then you got a SitRep (Situation Report) when you first built it, and following SitReps about population being relocated to other planets (if there was any) on every turn. Do you check out regularly the Situation Report window, preferably every turn?

Fleets and ships have a number of icons that display remaining structure, damage, fighters (if any), shields, fuel, detection range, stealth and speed. Hovering over each one will show you detailed information (e.g. number and strength of each shot for damage). Your stranded scout was probably out of fuel, check it out. It will slowly recover (0.1 or more, depending on which ship hull it is) and you'll get a SitRep when it reaches fuel 1 (enough for one system hop) again. Showing the fuel (number of hops) minus required distance to own supply range instead of just total remaining fuel seems confusing to me. When I see the fuel counter in my car it does not discount the fuel required to get to the closer gas station.


Whenever you find something that looks like a bug to you, best course of action is to open a thread with the description of what you found and a screenshot (or several), and ideally with a save game two turns before issue arises and game logs.

ChuckStarchaser
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Re: New player, a few snags

#3 Post by ChuckStarchaser »

Thanks.

Inbetween the time I posted that, I discovered version 4.9. I would have replied to my own post, but it was pending moderation as a first-timer.

So yes, I discovered the "starlanes everywhere" many hours before I saw your reply.

Good point about micromanagement, but I always dreamt of a better solution. Micromanagement is PERFECT in the early game in MOO2; it is in the mid to late game that it becomes overwhelming, when you are founding new colonies at 2 or 3 per turn. Then it gets exasperatingly repetitious. My solution would have been to let the player automate the micromanagement by allowing the editing of model build lists. Having Emphasis doesn't exactly eliminate micromanagement, because you still have to micromanage the emphasis. Emphasize production and food first, then defense and terraforming, finally research. These phases of emphasis could be automated. Micromanagement is SOLVED when a full, lifetime plan can be applied to a planet, but it should be the player's honor to produce such a plan (or several).

Maybe you're right about numbers versus bars; maybe it's just a matter of getting used to.

Yes, I discovered those settings, aggressiveness, etc. I missed the monsters setting, though.

Good to know what "ghost sensors" means; thanks.

Yes, that's exactly what I did; I built Evacuate System thinking it was just bunkers.


I have fresh new "bugs" about 4.9. Not bugs, exactly, but they need fixing anyhow.
One is a system called "happybirthday" that was monster-infested. Fractal trees, or whatever you call it. Dyson Forest. I killed it, but subsequently there was "combat" reported every turn, with no monster to be seen on the screen... My 7 cruisers were getting no damage, but the combat kept going on and I could not settle the planet.
Second one is the next system I went to settle after that one, also moster infected, killed the critter, but I could not colonize the planet either.
First I had to go to google for how to colonize a planet, and learned that the colony ship has to be selected in the lower panel, not just the fleet. This is a bad interface, one that requires such unintuitive protocols to be met. In MOO2, you arrive to a system with a colony ship in your fleet and immediately get asked which planet you wish to colonize. In Free Orion you have to click on the colony ship's "fleet", then click on the colony ship itself, then show the planetary view, and find the button for colonize... That't too much! But even after I did those things, I still got no button. It took me about an hour and a half to figure out that the problem is that this system was outside the sensor range of my other systems. I have two things to say about that: Sensor range should not affect colonization. If my ships can get there, that's all that should be needed. Secondly, the game needs to have A LOT more context help than just tooltips. In this case, the button should always be there to colonize if you have a colony ship. If the planet is not colonizable, the button could be grayed out and have a red legend on it "NOT SUITABLE FOR HUMANS" or "TOO FAR FROM YOUR OTHER COLONIES".
And for a third thing, right now I'm faced with yet another problem I can't seem to figure out. I researched Military Robotic Control, designed a cruiser with a robotic hull and stuffed it with two plasma 2 guns (another problem; the fact they are plasma 2 doesn't show), an active radar, a ramscoop and a robotic interface. Simple. But the ship always shows as "Incomplete Design" and doesn't show in the list of things to build at my home system. I tried swapping things, radar for optic, plasmas for lasers, and nothing works; it ALWAYS reads "Incomplete Design"... I'm sure it's something stupid, but the thing is, the game needs more contextual help, all around. The text "Incomplete Ship Design" should not even exist in the program; it should have as many messages as problems may cause this, detailing exactly what the problem is, or what exactly is missing.

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Oberlus
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Re: New player, a few snags

#4 Post by Oberlus »

Planning governors were also discarded as not enough simple or micromanagement-less for FreeOrion philosophy. If you are interested in the discussion, there are years-old threads about when that was decided, and more threads were people contested the decision over the years, long before I joined this forum. No time now for searching them though.

ChuckStarchaser wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 11:07 am I missed the monsters setting, though.
There is that option for sure in v0.4.9, and I think in v0.4.8 too. It's called Monsters Frequency, two rows above Max AI Aggression setting.


The combat report every turn, if you open the combat log (there is a link to it in the SitRep), is because your ships are attacking the planet every turn, and that is combat.
I could not colonize the planet either.
First I had to go to google for how to colonize a planet, and learned that the colony ship has to be selected in the lower panel, not just the fleet.
This is a bad interface, one that requires such unintuitive protocols to be met.
In MOO2, you arrive to a system with a colony ship in your fleet and immediately get asked which planet you wish to colonize. In Free Orion you have to click on the colony ship's "fleet", then click on the colony ship itself, then show the planetary view, and find the button for colonize... That't too much!
But even after I did those things, I still got no button.
You just need to select the system on the map (to see the planets) and click on the Colonize button on the planet you want to invade, no need to select a ship unless you have more than one in the system and the one you want to use is not the one that the system auto-select. If the button does not appear despite of having a colony ship in the system, the planet will be hidden (e.g. by a ion storm that ups stealth of all objects by +40) or it will have shields that need to be flattened with armed ships.
When a colony ship arrives (or any other ship) to a system you get a SitRep with a link to the system it arrived to. Just click on it and you'll see the Colonize buttons on the planets. Similar to MoO2 without needing to say "No" if you didn't want to colonize anything there (which can happen often since you might be going through several systems to reach destination vut stopping on them for whatever reason).
It took me about an hour and a half to figure out that the problem is that this system was outside the sensor range of my other systems.
That wasn't the problem. If you had ships in the system, you had vision in that system (even if detection range of your ships there is 0 for some field effect).
If you hover the mouse over a planet that you can't detect at that moment (which will be barred like sensor ghost), a tooltip will pop-up telling you why can't you see it.
If the planet is not colonizable, the button could be grayed out and have a red legend on it "NOT SUITABLE FOR HUMANS" or "TOO FAR FROM YOUR OTHER COLONIES".
"Not detectable". Not a bad idea. The other too reasons are already shown in the button (red negative numbers when no suitable; there is no such thing as too far from other colonies).
I researched Military Robotic Control, designed a cruiser with a robotic hull and stuffed it with two plasma 2 guns (another problem; the fact they are plasma 2 doesn't show), an active radar, a ramscoop and a robotic interface. Simple. But the ship always shows as "Incomplete Design" and doesn't show in the list of things to build at my home system.
If you read the Robotic Interface Shield description, it says it can only be built by robotic species (Replicon, Etty, Exobots...). When a item (ship, building) doesn't meet the requirements to be build somewhere, it will show up in the "Unavailable" tab of the Producible Items window, hovering the mouse over it will tell you what is amiss.
No idea about why would it say "Incomplete Design" unless you mounted two items that are mutually exclusive. I'd like to quote myself:
Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 8:07 am Whenever you find something that looks like a bug to you, best course of action is to open a thread with the description of what you found and a screenshot (or several), and ideally with a save game two turns before issue arises and game logs.
Following those instructions it makes much easier to answer your doubts or address your problems/suggestions/bug reports.

ChuckStarchaser
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Re: New player, a few snags

#5 Post by ChuckStarchaser »

OMG, I was editing this post for a long time, then came time to add screenshots. It says below you can drag pictures into the edit window. I did so and instead Firefox went to display one of my screenshots fullscreen (my local file path showing in the url bar). I hit the Back button to get back here and all the text I had typed was gone. :-(

Then I came back, typed this post again as it is now more or less, copied the text often in case I lose it again. I got all the attachments done, no problem, hit Submit and had a blank screen forever, then Firefox seemed crashed; it was just the tab; I was able to close tab, but then had to google "freeorion forum" to find the link again.
UPDATE: This is about the 4th time I'm trying to post. I have a terrible connection --leased WiFi from my neighbor downstairs. Some days it's bearable... not today.

The attached screenshots all relate to the ship problem.
Sorry; I can't attach them, now; I keep getting "HTTP error".

Anyways, you say that I can't make the ship because it is a robotic hull, but so is the Robotic Outpost and I can make that one no problem. Exact same hull. Why?
UPDATE: I took the Robotic Outpost and started adding one item at a time to see when I'd be unable to make it. It was when I took out the outpost and plugged in the Robotic Interface. So, problem solved now; it wasn't the robotic hull that was the problem.

As for the planet problem, I went back to it to try and get screenshots for you, but this time the planets were not grayed out and I was able to start a colony no problem. I have no idea what is going on.

By the way, this business of PP transfers and stockpiling is absolutely, 100% inscrutable. Nothing in the documentation explains it in plain words; it's all jargon through and through. I read pages like 7 times over, see if it might make sense after some repetition, but nope.

At that planet that my ships were attacking the planet, I went back there and the planet's red bar got shorter, but not to zero. Only one ship in my fleet did a unit of damage; the rest could not damage the planet. Over the next 50 turns I kept producing more and more warships and sending them there, but the bar got shorter but not to zero, and no matter how many ships I got there, only one ever hit the planet.

Why does a planet need to be attacked in the first place?

I'm uninstalling this game; I can't stand the complete absence of tips to explain what is going on. I understand a complex application like Blender 3D, or a library like Boost, requiring people to read manuals, but I cannot condone a GAME being so inscrutable.

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Re: New player, a few snags

#6 Post by Ophiuchus »

ChuckStarchaser wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:13 pmAt that planet that my ships were attacking the planet, I went back there and the planet's red bar got shorter, but not to zero. Only one ship in my fleet did a unit of damage; the rest could not damage the planet. Over the next 50 turns I kept producing more and more warships and sending them there, but the bar got shorter but not to zero, and no matter how many ships I got there, only one ever hit the planet.

Why does a planet need to be attacked in the first place?
Only if it is shielded/has defence. Sounds like the first shot took out the tiny defenses - that should be written in the combat log (which is text, not bars).
ChuckStarchaser wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:13 pm I'm uninstalling this game; I can't stand the complete absence of tips to explain what is going on. I understand a complex application like Blender 3D, or a library like Boost, requiring people to read manuals, but I cannot condone a GAME being so inscrutable.
Sorry to hear that. The game is in alpha stage at 0.4.x
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

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Re: New player, a few snags

#7 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 8:07 am Your stranded scout was probably out of fuel, check it out. It will slowly recover (0.1 or more, depending on which ship hull it is) and you'll get a SitRep when it reaches fuel 1 (enough for one system hop) again.
Not in the 2018 build IIRC. Having that sitrep warning was a huge improvement in gameplay actually.

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Re: New player, a few snags

#8 Post by LienRag »

ChuckStarchaser wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:13 pm By the way, this business of PP transfers and stockpiling is absolutely, 100% inscrutable. Nothing in the documentation explains it in plain words; it's all jargon through and through. I read pages like 7 times over, see if it might make sense after some repetition, but nope.
Yeah, Stockpile is an awful mechanism, and certainly not KISS.

I played Sly (the main example of distributed empire and Stockpile-depending gameplay) and quite liked it though, so having a mechanism for distributed empire is probably a good idea.
And actually, Stockpile is quite well designed for that, it's just not KISS and going against the main concepts of the game (supply, distributed production in supply range) which makes it very confusing, especially for new players.

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Re: New player, a few snags

#9 Post by wobbly »

Stockpiling is fine, just needs a pedia entry that makes actual sense instead of reading like a technical manual from the 70s

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Re: New player, a few snags

#10 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:59 am Stockpiling is fine, just needs a pedia entry that makes actual sense instead of reading like a technical manual from the 70s
Suggestions are very welcome. Could even make it into the 0.4.10 release
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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Re: New player, a few snags

#11 Post by wobbly »

I'll see if I can come up with something better. Is there a guideline to pedia entries posted somewhere? Or is it just a matter of copying the existing format?

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Re: New player, a few snags

#12 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 4:30 pm I'll see if I can come up with something better. Is there a guideline to pedia entries posted somewhere? Or is it just a matter of copying the existing format?
There is no official guideline I am aware of. Look for "stockpile" and "production points" and "PP" in the en.txt
I just tried to do some minor improvements PR-3109 - please have a look.
Also there could be e.g. an encyclopedia entry missing or similar. So all suggestion/improvements welcome.

I am just trying to think of renaming the stockpile would help clear up the confusion.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

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Re: New player, a few snags

#13 Post by drkosy »

At the moment I play my second game and didn't run into big problems getting into the game. So I have to say: The crew did great work! 8)
I love that nice planet and systems views in MOO2. It just feels so revarding, if a system with 5 planets get fully transormed to gaia and you see them all overing in space :)
On the other hand, this is a game completely free of charge, so I'm just grateful for their work. Maybe there will be time to work on the opics later on...
One is a system called "happybirthday" that was monster-infested. Fractal trees, or whatever you call it. Dyson Forest. I killed it, but subsequently there was "combat" reported every turn, with no monster to be seen on the screen... My 7 cruisers were getting no damage, but the combat kept going on and I could not settle the planet.
Three things here:
1.)You can switch the behaviour of you fleet. The upper right corner of the fleet window shows a fist as symbol. That means the fleet will attack everything it could. Click on it to change behaviour. The fleet will no longer attack the planet, you will no longer get the message.
2.) Happybirthday is a native race in the game. Robots that are programmed to sing "happy birthday" to themselves. You cannot colonize the planet because the planet is already full of population. You have to send troops there and conquer the planet.
3.) Sometimes you will run into native species that have enhanced cloaking technology with makes it impossible to scan the planet in the early game. Your fleet will attack the planet nevertheless witch is indeed an strange behaviour (but maybe fixed in 0.4.10 - I play 0.4.9). Just invent better scanner or build an lighthouse.
I don't want to meet "enemies" so early in the game.
If you don't like enemies, go to the "empire" symbol (the yellow crown) right click on the empire you meet and go on "suggest peace" (or what it's called in english - I play german version). No computer player refused that for me (aggressive setting). That gives you time to build your empire :D
Want some fresh experience? Try Kosymod

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Re: New player, a few snags

#14 Post by wobbly »

Ophiuchus - that wasn't the entry I found confusing. So I came back to the game after an absence & stockpiling had been added in. I click on the production icon, I mouse over Stockpile Transfer & I'm presented with this beautiful entry:

Code: Select all

PP allocated to the transfer project are added to the imperial stockpile. The amount to transfer and how many times the transfer should repeat can be specified.

Only PP that are produced in the same supply-group (and none from the imperial stockpile) are allocated to the stockpile transfer project.

Surplus PP (PP not allocated to anything on the queue) at this or any other location will be transferred to the stockpile with or without a stockpile transfer project on the queue. PP allocated to a stockpile transfer are sent to the stockpile, even if there are additional items later in the production queue.

For example: An empire wants to draw PP from the stockpile in a secondary supply-group, in which there is insufficient PP being generated. To do this, the stockpile needs to be filled from the primary supply-group. The empire has 100 PP industry in the primary supply-group, its stockpile use limit is 10 PP and it wants to have 10 PP always available in the stockpile. The build queue contains items on planets in the primary supply-group which need 120 PP per turn, so all available PP would be used.
To be able to use the PP in the secondary supply-group, the empire adds to the top of the queue a 10x Stockpile Transfer project on a planet in the primary supply-group.
Because the Stockpile Transfer project is above other primary supply-group projects in the build queue, it is fully funded and will increase the stockpile by 10 PP on the next turn. To ensure a continuing transfer each turn, the repetition of the project is set to 99 times.
It's heavy on the technical details, it's a massive wall of text, but at no point does it explain what the stockpile is. Try reading this with no idea of what the stockpile is. It must be worse if you're not even familiar with the basic game or how to navigate through the help. Perhaps this needs a link to the the stockpile meter entry? That would be a good start.

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Re: New player, a few snags

#15 Post by defaultuser »

ChuckStarchaser wrote: Thu Jul 16, 2020 11:27 pm Why is there no choice of map size, number of civilizations, etc? I don't want to meet "enemies" so early in the game. I enjoy building much more than I enjoy fighting. So now I'm going to get attacked with the old BS line "you want to play sim-city".
You need to spend more time with the setup screen. Number of star systems and AI opponents are selectable.

PS: people don't like it when you assume that you know what they'll say, especially something that's an "attack".

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