Planning star upgrades in advance

Hey Lenin, Thats not how we roll in the forum. I like all feedback and suggestions!

The idea is not even that crazy. I do think it kind of sux to not be able to automate this and perhaps if I think about It I could come up with a simple interface.

In the meantime ThornEel, if this really bugs you perhaps try a turn based game. Take the time out of the equation.

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Sorry, guys, I was out of order there - alcohol induced irritability…

Hey there, just registered to the forum, to add - if you plan on adding this feature, why dont you also add a feature for planned Carrier movements?

I’m just facing this problem, i get an attack, defend it, and when it happens im not at home, so i cant use those ships until im back, would be sweet to be able to say, hey ppl, why dont fly to xy in 4h, there u drop all ships, than u fly to etc etc etc

=)

Waypoint Orders

You can give your carriers specific orders to execute at each star along its path. Orders are carried out as soon as the carrier arrives at the star. You can collect and drop a specified number of ships at each star.

Use the Garrison order to drop or collect a variable number of ships at a star so that the number of ships left behind equals the number specified.

You can add a delay that will prevent a carrier from starting a hyper space jump.

Carrier actions are not sorted in a particular order, so if two fleets arrive at a star in the same tick, there is no guarantee that one will drop ships off before the other tries to pick them up. To ensure this happens as expected you should make sure the pick up happens a tick after the drop off.

Oios, didnt know this, thanks for those informations Jay! =)

What I am doing for the moment is searching for near-full games, so they will start soon, at a convenient time of the day. I’ll also try turn-based games some time, as well.

Just for nitpicking, it could be useful to be able to program carrier paths that are not yet possible due to distance - the carrier would wait until the Range tech is high enough, then proceed to jump. It could be occasionally useful, though probably not very often…

I’ve tried the same thing (searching for nearly full games). I’d really like to try another 64p game, but that’s already a ton of effort and no way am I going to combine that with a strange cycle time. In that case “nearly” full is a little harder to gauge, as the signups seem to accelerate towards the end, so what I’ve done is to sign up when a game is looking almost full and it’s going to be a reasonable start time for me for a little while, and then leave the game if it hasn’t started “in time”. Only tried that twice, and mis-timed it each time, then decided it wasn’t a great time for me to start a 64p game after all, but one day I’ll get on one.

Seems like it would be much better to have at least some of the 64p games start at a published time, and folks could sign up right away for the game which would be at a reasonable time for them. I imagine a big part of the signup acceleration towards the end is folks trying to get a game that will start at a good time for them.

@JayKyburz , I’ve seen the random starting time issue come up before, and I’ve posted about it before, and I’m curious: is a per-game set starting time something you want to avoid because it might split the community, and/or you have some other gameplay reason why you want to keep it, or has a set starting time just not seemed worth implementing? Seems like it would be pretty simple, instead of the game starting when full, it would be when isFull sleep(time to start time), then start.

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My view has always been that the production time just doesn’t matter that much. The quality of the stars around you is very random. Your proximity to the other players is random. Why not production as well.

The alliances you make and break is what will win you the game, not being able to spend your money a few hours faster than the next guy!

Well, i’d say micromanagement is also a little part to win the game, and being able to get those upgrades some ticks faster than your neighbor gives you a slight advantage, and this has also a little snowballing effect.

Just to give my little opinion, cheers :slight_smile:

Good to know, I guess the problem for me (and maybe this will be true for others?) is my personality – however minor the advantage, I’ll be resistant to giving it up. So, if I actually just couldn’t log on at the cycle time that’s OK, but as it’s merely a (large) inconvenience, I’ll be tempted to and either actually do so, or I’ll reluctantly not log in but I’ll experience some worry over “maybe I should have”. Furthermore, so many people do log in at the cycle time that it’s a great time to actually try to have diplomatic discussions with some back and forth which finish quickly. That’s probably a bigger advantage than the actual ability to spend faster, compounded by the fact that folks will line up their science purchases to finish techs on production, so that’s the best time to trade for that reason as well.

The worst was a time which was just a little late, but still workable, I’d log in consistently, but I got my wife quite annoyed with me. So, as it stands I mainly just join turn based games, but I do have the workaround of trying to game the start time of the realtime games, and bailing out if that fails, for when I want to play the realtime.

Anyway, thanks for the explanation.

I’d agree with @suffusion that a fixed start time would be desirable, perhaps it could be an option in user created games? If friends r getting together for a game, they ll likely all be in the same time zone anyway… There are other features I d like to see first, but this would be nice, and likely easy to set up. (maybe we should have another vote on features, I saw you did one one G+ in days past)

I also have been known to look for nearly full games to get a desirable or at least reasonable start time (us obsessive types). I never thought of quitting though really, but now I understand why some people may be quitting so early in a game…

To be clear, I don’t quit after the game starts, I leave the game if it hasn’t started during my window of reasonable (for me) start times. As I understand it, this shouldn’t have an impact on the game. But yes, that could be why other people are quitting.

I will actively quit games if they have production between 2 to 7am.

It’s not just not being able to spent credits efficiently. Players are more likely to build carriers and later warp gates after production. This leaves you more likely to be attacked while sleeping. It also effects diplomacy because the best time to do trading is also a few hours before production, especially if you have banking or experimentation. People will really want the instantaneous bonus and are more likely to give you a favourable trade offer.

Why not leave the game before it starts, if it hasn’t started at a good time for you? True, you miss some games this way, but you know how unbalancing quit players are.

I suppose this means an unintended consequence of blocking re-joining a game one has left could be an increase in quit players once the game starts, if others are thinking the same way.

I don’t have premium membership, this means if I want to play interesting games I need to wait for other people to make them. When I see a game with interesting settings I will join it, some times it can take several days to fill. If I quit early I can never rejoin it even if it does eventually start at a good time.

When I do quit I message everyone saying why I am going to quit before I do.

@JayKyburz even if we could convince @AnnanFay not to take the above approach, for each person who talks about doing something there are probably several others doing the same thing – I think reducing the number of immediate quits is reason enough to at least offer the option of set start times. (and if it’s an option, I don’t see any reason not to have the default games use it, rotating the time for each game of course).

That said, Annan, in the meantime I wish you wouldn’t do that – it’s much more fun when everyone actually plays. You comment a lot so you presumably care about the game, I suggest it’s worth missing out on some games so that people in those games don’t have to deal with there being a quit player, will hopefully have more fun and play more games, giving you more opportunities to join games.

If you create your own password protected games, you can easily set the start time by simply being the last person to join.

So for example, create an 8 player game, wait for the first seven slots to fill up, the last spot in a game is always reserved for the games creator who just needs to join when they want the production time to be!

Also, force starting a game, or pausing a game, then unpausing it at the time you want will create the same effect.

I haven’t tried this yet since I’ve had a few turn-based games going (which have their own issues: Submit last, submit twice (was: Force 'next turn' in admin controls)), but thanks for the tip.

I have a hunch it would probably solve a lot of the early quit problems that people complain about if the default games had a particular start time, but with the ability to create 32 player games now, I’ll have to try this.

In the mega game I played last September, 128 stars per player, we all agreed to shift the double production times to something that worked for everyone. We simply had everyone offer a block of time that worked best for them, then picked the spot of overlap. We paused the game for about 6 hours, then let it run with the new times. Worked out for everyone.

The person we tried to accommodate the most was the final player to join. He had said he typically picks the last spot so that he could pick the time that he wanted Production to be. Since we were moving the time away from that, we wanted to make sure he wasn’t getting really screwed over.

I would like to improve this oneday. Its a popular request. But it is possible to do, just not very obvious.

I wonder if I should add this info to the FAQ.