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My Thoughts

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:21 pm
by ndjamena
The first time I tried to play I had no idea what I was doing, second time it started making sense, third time I only made a few mistakes.

Point 1 - I actually like the single player mode without the AI active, maybe you could make a mode without AI players at all, sort of like a sim galaxy.
Point 2 - As the game progresses it takes longer and longer to do anything, I don't mind waiting between turns but later in the game it can take ten minutes to change a planets focus - my solution, when you change a focus, rather than automatic recalculation, a calc button appears so if you want to see what has changed you can, but a lot of the time I don't care so ten minutes is far too long to wait.

I don't know if it has been suggested but wormholes would be interesting, both natural and artificial. You could research wormholes, make two ships at the same time and place, have them go at about the speed of a colony ship, when they arrive where you want them - instant wormhole.

When (if?) finished this game will be great:)

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:51 pm
by Geoff the Medio
Are you exaggerating, or did you actually time out ten minutes just to change focus? What size galaxy, and what sort of computer (CPU, RAM) are you using? I wouldn't be surprised if it took a few seconds, as there is potentially a lot of recalculation to do, but ten minutes is ridiculous...

Edit: If you're playing with 500 stars, you might want to switch to a smaller ~100 star galaxy.

An option to set the number of AI opponents would be good, and the option to continue playing even after all AIs are defeated, or if there are none to begin with.

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:11 am
by ndjamena
3.2 Ghz pentium 4, 2GB DDR-400
500 stars, 4 armed galaxy

I just timed it at a little over 15 minutes.

Note, I'm not complaining about the amount of time it takes, I just wish it wouldn't do it automatically every time a focus is changed.

The expansion is the entire game for me so lessening the star count lessens the game.

Recently I've built a lot of Artificial Black Holes and Miniture Suns which has boosted my labor significantly. I'd like to turn some of my balanced worlds into miners to compensate but at half an hour each world it is prohibitive. Also note that I am far from finished with this map, I'd love to keep going but I've got a lot of time and a lot of patience - just not that much.

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:02 am
by eleazar
ndjamena wrote:I just timed it at a little over 15 minutes.
How many turns into the game?

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:34 am
by shrinkshooter
You claim you're almost done with the map. Does that mean you've checked out all 500 stars and colonized almost every planet possible? I mean 15 minutes is a long, long time, and your computer is no weakling. Is it a weakness of the FO program? Or is it just that this guy has expanded way too much and there are too many calculations needed? Even so, I find 15 minutes to be totally insane...

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:45 am
by ndjamena
I said I was far from finished with the map. Iv'e explored all of the stars, inhabited most of the Terran planets, and would love to colonise all available planets, but I'd have to leave everything at balanced or spend an insane amount of time.

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:51 am
by ndjamena
Is there noone who plays this game on Single Player? Surely someone must have encountered this problem before.

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 4:21 am
by shrinkshooter
I have, but considering the game isn't even completed I played just to get a feel for it and that was about it. Without any AI to fight against or any goal to strive for, these games lose my interest; otherwise you're just outwardly expanding without end, and once you fill the whole galaxy...well, nothing happens. It feels like a waste of time to me, so I've never even come close to doing what you're doing, especially not on the scale you're doing it.

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:56 am
by m_k
Could you tell us which version of the game you used? At least the increasing waiting time between turns vanished some time in the newer versions.
Another thing is, that this could be related to some of the numerous memory leaks in the game, have you tried saving the game and then loading it again, possibly with restarting FO, or even your computer?

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:02 am
by Geoff the Medio
ndjamena wrote:Recently I've built a lot of Artificial Black Holes and Miniture Suns which has boosted my labor significantly.
I just committed an updated buildings.txt that reordered a few of the buildings' effects group conditions. This might / should improve calculation times, and should be compatible with previous versions, so could you replace your buildings.txt (in default under the main FreeOrion directory) and see if there's any improvement?

http://freeorion.svn.sourceforge.net/vi ... iew=markup

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:32 am
by pd
eleazar wrote:How many turns into the game?

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:38 am
by ndjamena
Turn 420 at the moment.

My complaint wasn't that it took so long but that it did it automatically when a focus was changed. Playing it the way I do means long waitings between turns, and I accept that.

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:37 pm
by eleazar
ndjamena wrote:Turn 420 at the moment.

My complaint wasn't that it took so long but that it did it automatically when a focus was changed. Playing it the way I do means long waitings between turns, and I accept that.
We realized that turns started to process longer as the game progressed, but i doubt anyone else has played to turn 200. I might have gone a little past 100 turns once, not necessarily with 500 stars.

Even 15 seconds of wait time after changing focus on a decent system is too much.

How long are is it processing between turns?

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:14 pm
by marhawkman
I had one game where, just for testing purposes, I ran things all the way up to turn 1002. But this was me generating a new turn without doing anything over and over.

Re: My Thoughts

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:46 pm
by ndjamena
Can you get to Singularity of Transcendence in 100 turns:)

Does version 3.0 mean anything? It is the only number I can find.

Anyway, after restarting my computer and changing buildings.txt it is down to a little over two minutes to change a focus, I can live with that. Thank you.