I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

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truepurple
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I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#1 Post by truepurple »

If we took on my ideas here viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12077 about populations moving on their own, some of this would be unnecessary

All this is simply for the sake of cutting out nightmarish micromanagement, only tech is competitive with how nightmarishly micromanage-y it is. Setting up the right ships (remember the 3 pop tech latter on) to the right places and making X ships from the right places, figuring out which race should go where because eventually every bleeding planet and asteroid can and should be populated for best success and getting them there along with remembering what is going where and where the ships and planets are in the first place.... OMG.

Also it makes the game very unforgiving, if you choose wrong, well tough shit, the planets permanently that race till the end short of some latter game genocide tech which represents yet another thing to manage. Or say you lose a place you haven't set a population to yet by the AI and it does a dumb one, because it's AI.

1. No independent races can be colonized elsewhere. If you take over a enemy players planet, those too can not be colonized elsewhere. If you make a colony ship on a planet not of your race, it will be of your race. I don't care if that "doesn't make sense", the idea of KISS isn't realism! Outposts can only turn to your races colony. We could even eliminate the bot race tech from the game.

2. All ships you make are populated by the best pilot race or robot race for the robot ship of any race in your nation, doesn't matter what actual planet you make it on. Alternatively we could just make your start empire race pilot all ships, better for balance. Or wait, possibly each special indie race planet with good piloting you control steps up your pilot skills by one. But only once per race and not from enemy player races.

On a note separate from species but very much related to the topic.

3. Once you make a ship lines structure, you should be able to make those ships from any planet with a shipyard you control. It's already a pain that there is a dizzying amount of ship line types and weapon lines to choose from and the game doesn't allow ship upgrading (oh yeah, allow ship upgrading, maybe it can be done automatically!) But each ship type needing multiple of it's own structures in the case of some of the higher end hulls in the location your building them from! Very much a PITA! Maybe higher end ships will need orbital shipyards in the systems they come from. Plus you can't obsolete ship lines because you can never know when you might need the older line nearer to where you need the ship that you can't spare resources building its special structures for. As a result the ship build list can become cumbersomely long.

Also if a planet you control has a shipyard, all planets in that system should be able to make all ships that shipyard allows, since what race is piloting the ships won't be a thing, that will just save one more click/thing to think about, over and over.

And while we're at it, it would be awesome if we could choose a planet to colonize, and have the game set the ship to production, set its path packaging a guard ship with it if ones available, go to the planet, set it to colonize the planet, all on it's own. If some of that would be problematic (and keep i mind this would be optional for saving time at least some of the time) at least some of it should work fine. Like a colony ship automatically colonizing your selected planet when it gets there. So many times I find I forgot to colonize a planet and the ships been sitting there for awhile and I got to revert saves. Same with making base outposts and colony's in the same system, finally got produced but forgot to seek out the planet and set it to colonize/outpost

Wait a minute, we could take this a step further even, we could eliminate the colony and outpost ship altogether! We choose a planet to colonize or build a outpost on, and then have a military force there of X amount of attack strength. Then we set production on making a colony or outpost, the ships must remain there till production finishes. And for planets within systems we control, we just set production of new colony or outpost! That would really make things simpler in this regard, and would likely be easy to program. Well we could have both options for other systems if we lack the ships.

And outposts converting to colony's should take more resources than just producing the colony ship directly, thus people wouldn't be motivated to go the more micromanage-y route to make a outpost then set it to turn to a colony. And once you get 3 pop colony tech, it should apply to all new and existing ship, no special module for it, also to converted from outposts colonys would also start that way.

P,S, None of this is a "demand". But all of this is stuff you probably want to take serious for improving how fun the game is.

wobbly
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#2 Post by wobbly »

Indeed. Removing half the game would reduce the amount of micromanagement.

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LienRag
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#3 Post by LienRag »

wobbly wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 5:26 am Indeed. Removing half the game would reduce the amount of micromanagement.
At least it's not a demand, but a pure (logical) recommendation...
There's progress !

Seriously though, I know it's not going to happen (at least in FreeOrion) since it's contrary to core game mechanisms, but natural spread of species (more or less managed by the Empire) would be nice, and multispecies planets also...

Ophiuchus
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#4 Post by Ophiuchus »

Combining species traits and ships is a good thing. It would be actually great if different species ships played a little bit differently/had a different feel instead of even more conformity. Choosing the pilot species should be a tradeoff. There are some smallish things like that in the game (e.g. you could prefer Fulver over a great pilots species because they have extra-fuel).

I made a dash at it with different target preferences for different species (e.g. trith would target noise-thinking species first, proud species pilots would attack the most dangerous enemies first, efficient species would try to maximise the damage, ambitious pilots would try make the highest number of skills). That would have some tactical effect and you could lure the enemy to attack the wrong targets (by building a ship which is not important but will be attacked first by the enemy species). But the impact would not have been strong usually, so if it mattered once in a while I think the majority of people would not get it.
truepurple wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:37 pmAlso if a planet you control has a shipyard, all planets in that system should be able to make all ships that shipyard allows, since what race is piloting the ships won't be a thing
I agree on the first part. Having to select the planet for choosing the ship species is not good UI and reusing a shipyard building for all species in a system sounds legit. Would need a new UI mostly (instead of choosing a planet you would click the shipyard for building ships and for changing the species). Not sure about details though (e.g. an enemy fleet blockading the system). Can of worms as usual.
truepurple wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:37 pmit would be awesome if we could choose a planet to colonize, and have the game set the ship to production, set its path packaging a guard ship with it if ones available, go to the planet, set it to colonize the planet, all on it's own.
Yes, we should offer some commands besides "rally to" depending on the ship layout ("establish colony on", "build outpost on"). Consider this a missing feature in the long run. For priority: your other suggestion is much better and we consider colony ships to be rather a corner case/workaround.

Grouping of multiple ships into a single fleet in production screen would also be nice.
truepurple wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:37 pmfor planets within systems we control, we just set production of new colony or outpost!
"we control" == "supply-line connected"; thats planned actually. just not easy to implement as i hoped initially.

its good to see that you start getting the game
truepurple wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:37 pmAnd outposts converting to colony's should take more resources than just producing the colony ship directly, thus people wouldn't be motivated to go the more micromanage-y route to make a outpost then set it to turn to a colony.
You got that exactly backward. You can build outposts in advance and choose the species for colonisation when you are outposting. It would be different if you could stockpile colonisation capacity (e.g. investing PP in colonisation and buying colony ships with that stored PP (without stockpile extraction limit)), but such a feature wont happen.
truepurple wrote: Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:37 pmAnd once you get 3 pop colony tech, it should apply to all new and existing ship, no special module for it, also to converted from outposts colonys would also start that way.
I think i agree. It is certainly more user friendly/less shocking - also good for ship design (no redoing of all your colony ship designs). Note that "converted from outposts colonys" already start that way (i.e. 3 pop).

Some might object to the "stockpiling" part of that mechanism (people building lots of colony ships and holding of colonisation, waiting for the turn after the tech is researched.

We could ease that incentive by giving all small colonies a one-time boost (+1 pop for colonies <3 pop, +2 pop for colonies < 2 pop), - but it is hard to explain fluff-wise.
If you open up a dedicated thread for this topic like "Get rid of cryo colony part" we could proceed.
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truepurple
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#5 Post by truepurple »

Let's go over the effects of being able to manually spread different species as one likes.

1. It greatly reduces any uniqueness of the race you choose at the beginning, (not just ship piloting Ophiuchus) Your race sucks on research, production, whatever? There is a native or enemy race for that. Especially it becomes irrelevant of your beginning species is tolerant or intolerant of different planet types. Just find and conquer spreadable native species and the right planets for them.

2. There is nothing interesting in colonizing every single planet and asteroid in the galaxy. There is nothing interesting in picking which species goes on the planet, you just generally pick whatever is best for the planet type and gives you what you need most. But to do that you have to look at the various race profiles every time to know which is best for the planet because it's difficult to memorize the stats of all these races and what species would fit the most population on X planet isn't even something one can just memorize. Too many unlisted/complicated factors that one has to consult the planet population profile each time.
In other words, point #2 is that this results in lots of boring micromanagement!

3. It also makes the game very unforgiving of mistakes since you can not change a planets population latter. Combined with how the tech tree works with it's redundancy and the inability to upgrade ships, FO is super unforgiving of mistakes.

We are talking about repetitive boring tasks that are not fun or engaging. I am in a game right now, I am clearly winning against the AI, but I don't want to play that game anymore, there is lots of planets I should be colonizing to different races to make sure of my win, but that's way too time consuming and tedious. Also keeping track of where everything is and where everything needs to go is headache inducing since FO lacks decent GUIs for just about everything.
Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:12 am You can build outposts in advance and choose the species for colonisation when you are outposting.
Not currently. You have to build the outpost, then next turn you can pick the species for production/colonize. That might not sound like much but even with the best GUIs it's still an additional step to do for no reason, and FO has terrible/nonexistant management GUI's so you got to remember and refind every planet to set colony production after setting outpost.
Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:12 am"we control" == "supply-line connected"
My word choice mistake, that is what I meant.

You say some good things Ophiuchus while not responding to the main part of my OP so I don't have much else to say in response to you except thanks for being polite (unlike certain trolls) As far as the 3pop colony modular issue goes, how about you make that thread. Relative to these important issues, that issue is super minor, and I am already getting shitty treatment by some for daring to suggest stuff, since you agree you can present it and they'll accept it easier coming from you.

Also to those jeering at me calling me stupid, the game guide in this very forum by CmdrKeen sticked says they play with natives off, supposedly this is half the game according to wobbly, but the person who's guide is favored so much it's sticked even being 5 years old for a game that's changed a fair amount since then.., This proves that multiple supported by the community people don't see native spreading as "half the game". I grant you that Cmdrkeen could still spread enemy player species around, but reading the guide, there is not a hint of recommendation to do so, meaning they probably don't for most of the game, if any of it.

I'd also like to point out that if population grew as a percentage only and discarded this "target population" stuff, as well as population moving around as they need on their own like I recommended here viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12077 Most of the issues I mentioned would go away. But disabling foreign race spreading would be a much easier, less radical change, fix to the current FO micromanaging hell.

If other people have better ideas to fix FO's micromanagement hell that goes directly against it's stated ideals, how about you suggest something instead of jeering at me while not really considering my ideas. Denial won't fix these issues.

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Krikkitone
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#6 Post by Krikkitone »

A major objection (1+2) seems to be that species aren’t really unique, just bundles of optimizations

Once species-empire opinions and species specific values are in place that may change

-Your starting species will matter more as they will probably start out with a good opinion of your empire

-Different species may not be good in certain locations (if they are on the border of another empire that they like, they may be more vulnerable to espionage/rebellion from that empire

-giving one species a world may decrease how much other species in your empire like you

-some species will not be compatible with your desired strategy

etc.

This should make it more interesting of a decision.

truepurple
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#7 Post by truepurple »

@krikkiton
Even if you make these countless small decisions and actions required for best success more interesting, a major point of my #2 is that it is very time consuming.

I mean going from-
Mindless grueling micromanagement that takes alot of time.
to
Adding complicated factors to consider so it takes even more time because you got to weigh in a bunch of factors, though now is slightly interesting. While also remaining just as unforgiving of mistakes that are now much easier to make.(in bold because I edited it in after)
Does not seem like a real upgrade to me. You are just improving one issue (possibly only minorly so), while making the other two issues (possibly considerably) worse.

And I have given the devs of FO alternative ideas that require less grueling time use while making for interesting decisions, but as of yet no one has given it serious thought.
Maybe you can take a look here krikkiton. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12077

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Krikkitone
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#8 Post by Krikkitone »

Most of the “time consuming” nature has to do with poor GUI.

Being able to select a planet and say
I want X species and Y focus on this planet, and have the game automatically queue the appropriate Colony Ship / Outpost+Colony building
Would help

Also some means of “Switching” Species (resettling the originals instead of killing them) would be good…especially if species-opinion keeps track of whether you are giving them better worlds or worse worlds. That would make the decisions less irreversible

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Grummel7
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#9 Post by Grummel7 »

The more discussion about micro managment I read here, the more I ask myself: have you ever played a game like civ, where you can more than a hundred cities, each with their own build queue? And engineers to terraform square for square to improve you cities... That is what I call micromanagement!

If you just want to play space fights, don't play a 4X game! :mrgreen:

truepurple
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#10 Post by truepurple »

Grummel7 wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:50 pm The more discussion about micro managment I read here, the more I ask myself: have you ever played a game like civ, where you can more than a hundred cities, each with their own build queue? And engineers to terraform square for square to improve you cities... That is what I call micromanagement!
I've played Civ2, Civ3, Civ4 with expansions, Alpha Centauri with expansion, MoO2, Galactic Civilization 2, Endless Space 1 & 2, I've played many of these titles for significant amounts of time. Others probably in the 4X genre alone I've played I can't recall at the moment.

First, more a hundred cities in most civ games? BS most of the time. Also Civ games tend to artificially put negative consequences for getting too big, though the real issue is the stupid food into people system. Also for the large amount of cities you do get (which isn't exactly worth copying) Civ games come with lots of useful macro-managing-UIs, FO has none to speak of.

As far as converting tiles.
A. not all Civ games have that, Civ3 lacks any workers/engineers, changes to tiles from technology happen automatically. B. Workers can be automated too at different levels. C. Most of the decisions about what workers do are interesting most of the time, you don't feel like you're mindless grinding, unlike FO.

Also if you grab a native town or a enemy player town, that town is simply your nation. Any nation specific structure already built is converted to basic or destroyed and any structure special to you that they built ordinary of is turned to your special structure.

Or let's take MoO2, there are natives in the game. They are just really good at farming and can not be transferred anywhere else, they can't even be assigned to anything but farming.

You want to pull the "comparing FO to other 4X game" card on me, you should be better prepared and more knowledgeable.
Grummel7 wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:50 pmIf you just want to play space fights, don't play a 4X game!
Who said anything about just space fights?
Krikkitone wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:12 pm Most of the “time consuming” nature has to do with poor GUI.
To a degree. First,
So like we are going to have to do with zero macro-managing-GUI for now and disabling foreign species spread etc. mentioned previously in this thread, is a easy temporary fix. For more long term solution outside of GUI's, see my other idea I've linked to at least twice in this thread. Also as Grummel inadvertently pointed out, even with good macro-GUI's, too much is sometimes too much. The GUI would also have to give you all the native stats at a glance so you can make smart decisions, a tall order even now, much-less when we add even more complication to the mix.
Krikkitone wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 8:12 pm Also some means of “Switching” Species (resettling the originals instead of killing them) would be good…especially if species-opinion keeps track of whether you are giving them better worlds or worse worlds. That would make the decisions less irreversible
That would help with issue 3, and only issue 3

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LienRag
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Re: I recommend we disable species moving for much greater game simplicity and reduced micromanagement.

#11 Post by LienRag »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Jul 12, 2021 9:12 am I made a dash at it with different target preferences for different species (e.g. trith would target noise-thinking species first, proud species pilots would attack the most dangerous enemies first, efficient species would try to maximise the damage, ambitious pilots would try make the highest number of skills). That would have some tactical effect and you could lure the enemy to attack the wrong targets (by building a ship which is not important but will be attacked first by the enemy species). But the impact would not have been strong usually, so if it mattered once in a while I think the majority of people would not get it.
I disagree, for big battles the impact would be quite important so it is certainly a very good idea.

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