Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Heretic Apostate" data-source="post: 770261" data-attributes="member: 696">There are some suggestions, that seem reasonable to me (not being a programmer <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ), about how to fix some of these problems.  The biggest problem, in my opinion, seems to be getting the viceroys to build the military items you want.  As has been mentioned, the viceroys just LOVE building transports and ground units, at the expense of your combat navy.  So there are several suggestions on how to tackle this.First suggestion:  An empire-level military build queue.  Toss a bunch of ships in there, and the viceroys, when it comes time to build something in their military queue, will look at your empire-level queue and grab whatever they can build in a reasonable amount of time.  This is a great suggestion, because it assures that the ships you want will be built, since you generally don't care what planet is building what, just as long as it gets built.**********Second suggestion:  On the planet-level military build queue, list the items by type (planetary defense, shipyard upgrades, systemships, orbitals, indirect fire, and so on, all the way down to the ground combat units and ground support units).  Each header should have a checkbox next to it.  If the box is unchecked, the viceroy won't build that type of ship, building, or ground unit.  This should prevent that Psilon research planet from attempting to build a bunch of Marines, for instance.**********Third suggestion:  Prevent the viceroy from building shipyard upgrades on their own unless the industry for the planet is at a certain level.  No point in building 10 shipyard upgrades if the planet only has two industry DEAs, right?**********Fourth suggestion:  Have sliding-scale reserve limits (starship and ground unit).  These limits would have a base amount.  For instance, it might be 4 transports.  Once there were 4 transports in the reserve, the viceroys would lose all impetus to build more.  But 4 transports, while enough when you've only got one planet, surely isn't enough when you've got 20 planets, right?  So, as you expand, the limit slides up.  Let's say the limit for transports increases by one for every 20 pop points.  Twenty planets will probably have 120 pop points (planets still being developed).  So the empire would now want 10 transports in reserves.  You're planning on going to war, so you increase your military budget (from Peace and Prosperity to Limited War, for instance).  Well, at this point, the reserve limit should increase, as well (+10% for Peace through Strength, +30% for Limited War, +60% for Total War, +100% for Holy War; all numbers in this example are just suggestions).  So now, your reserves will soon hold 13 transports.  Not bad for 20 planets, considering most of them are newly settled.At this point, there's been no actual need for you to tell the viceroys what to build, and no need to worry about the viceroys going crazy on their building.  But what if you, personally, happen to like ground invasions?  Here's where some imperial decision-making comes in.  On a new screen in the Empire tab, you choose the level at which you want to emphasize each type of mission ship and the ground units (I'm not certain if you'd list all types of ground units; maybe just ground combat and support).  You'd be able to set their emphasis at anywhere from 0% of default to 200% of default.  This would affect the limits on the reserve, not the actual reserve itself.  So, you like ground invasions, you set Ground Combat units to 200%, and your Transports and Support Units to 150%.  This means your transport limit is now 20 transports.  And then it will stop.What does this mean?  Well, want to update your fleet?  Scrap excess obsolete ships.  Or even better, build task forces of them, to throw at the enemy.  Once the reserves drop below their set level (based on economy, size of empire, and personal preferences), the viceroys will start building again.  And since you would have obsoleted the old designs, your reserves will be filled with the latest and greatest design.  This means that each time you build a task force from the reserves, the viceroys will rush to replace them, so that your reserves are always full, but not to overflowing.The more I think about this suggestion (mine, as you might have guessed, as with the "shipyard upgrades matched to industrial power" suggestion, above), the more I like it.  No idea on how to balance the numbers, however...**********Note that, at any point in time, you can override the limits you've placed on the viceroy of a planet.  Want that Psilon planet to start building Marines?  Fine, plug them in, even though you've explicitly prohibited that viceroy from initiating any Marine recruitment.  Want to bump the shipyard capacity up a notch, even though it'll take 30% longer to build ships of that size at this planet?  Go right ahead.  Already at the reserve limit for missile ships?  Toss a few more on the planet, the viceroys won't care.**********Even better would be to combine all four suggestions.The viceroys, when they have the opportunity to build something in their military queue, would check the empire-level queue to see what you want built.  Since it's listed in the order you want built, the only ambiguity would be on when the best industrial/shipyard planets would get to your biggest ships.It would compare the ships you want against their shipyard capacity.  Since shipyard upgrades (as built by the order of the viceroy, as compared to the emperor) are based on industrial power, it'll be able to build the biggest ship size it's capable of in a reasonable amount of time.However, if you've strictly prohibited this colony from building that type of ship or ground unit, it'll have to skip on to the next item.Once your empire-level build queue is empty, and the viceroy is looking around for something to build, it'll compare the reserve levels against the build preferences from the text files, and build the most needed item allowed to bring the reserves up to level.And suppose the empire-level build queue is empty, and the reserves are at or above their limits?  Then the viceroy will just shrug and not build anything.Anyway, I'm hoping that, given the number of times I've posted the mix of these four suggestions, the developers would implement them in the patch.********************Just an FYI:  They're working on the first patch right now.  There is no definite release date.  The first patch will be a data patch, by which I assume they mean fixing bugs in the text data files, as well as maybe expanding on areas left not as complete as might be desired (for instance, tossing in one of the Encyclopedia mods made by the fans), as well as adjustments to things like (I would assume) data-driven AI aggressiveness (the part not hardcoded) or build preferences.  Later on, they're going to put out the first code patch, which would be the hard part.</blockquote>

Verification