What is the order of actions when ticks happen?

I’m a fairly new player with about a week of experience in this game. I am playing quite many games at the same time so there has been some action already. I do like to plan, calculate and optimize things so I think this game will suit me well.

Now the actual question. In what order things happen when the turn “ticks” forward? This is interesting when things are about to happen at the same time which seems quite common. Mainly the order of the following things is what interest me.

  1. Ship production on planets
  2. Science production on planets
  3. Money production on planets (if the turn is production turn)
  4. Combat
  5. Checking if research is ready
  6. Experimentation (if production turn)
  7. Banking (if production turn)
  8. Carrier movement

So if I finish weapons research, move ships and produce on the planet at the same time while enemy arrives there and it happens to production turn and I get another level of weapons from experimentation (yeah, unlikely scenario but still) when would the combat happen? Would I have the same weapons level as in previous turn or one or two levels higher at the combat?

Also another question just for clarity. The game is turn based game with 8 hours jumps. Does it do 8 x one hours turns in a row or one 8 hours turn when everyone has returned their turns?

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This can be found from the FAQ section of ingame help, I believe it should answer most of the points:

  1. All carriers move, and if they complete a jump they do garrison transfers.
  2. There is a combat at every star with enemy carriers in orbit. The winner claims the star.
  3. Industry then produces new ships.
  4. Each player conducts research.
  5. If this is the last tick of a galactic cycle, players earn money, then scientists conduct experiments.
  6. The game tests to see if anybody has won.

And to clarify the questions game goes in 1 hour ticks, there are just 8 of them in a row when the jumps are set to 8 hours. Weapons bonus is not yet usable when the fight happens on the same tick as experimentation gives you the bonus which gives you a new level of weapons. You fight first and the weapons level go up after that.

Thanks

On this topic, I’ve been wondering what happens when 2 of your own carriers arrive on the same star on the same tick. If one carrier does drop all, and the other does collect all, will it collect all the dropped ships?

@GDHeka No problem!

@PandaBear That is a bit more complicated and not documented. It seems to be about the game’s internal ship ID’s. The ID is not shown anywhere, but if you remember in which order the carriers were built or if you experiment with them, you might find out which one goes first. Never bothered to actually investigate it further. Maybe I’ll name all my carriers in the next game by the tick number and additional index or something to find out. :wink:

Interesting… well I’ll find out on the next cycle of a game I’m playing so will report back later.

WRT to the “drop” issue - check out this thread where I filed a bug report.
There’s general agreement that the Drop should happen first - markwkidd summarizes well:
“No sane fleet commander with a Collect All order would depart a star on their way to war without waiting for the reinforcement fleet that they knew had a Drop All order for the same star on the same tick. Such a commander would be better off working in the kitchen or as a member of the janitorial staff on a hospital ship. Therefore, I support HULK’s proposal.”

Jay has been a bit more active on NP so hopefully this one will bubble up to the top of the list.

P.S. A related thread about an extremely rare corner case of same arrival at unoccupied star from exactly the same distance.

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In case anyone is interested, it was as Dysp thought - the collect all carrier (which was created before the drop all carrier) did not collect the dropped ships. If I get a opportunity to test what happens if the drops all carrier was created first I’ll report back again.

Can you please also perform another test for me ? I am curious about that rule.

I suspect that garrison transfers happen after combat, not before combat.

I just seem like to me that when enemy ships are in orbit, the ownership of the star is in dispute, and not settled until after combat. Can you please test this ? Thanks !

In the thread I linked to, @eDave probably nailed the current algorithm and what it should be.

 Currently
     If Carriers at Star  
        For each Carrier        
            Process Orders (Drop...........Collect) 
        Next Carrier
     End
    
 Needs changing to:
     If Carriers at Star  
          Process Orders (Drop.........Collect)       
             For each Carrier   
          Next Order
     End

BTW, this is just the “simple” case of multiple carriers from the same player arriving at a star owned by them. I.e. this is doesn’t handle combat (with possibility more than no players) or arrivals of differing players … although I’m guessing that algorithmically, those all should be resolved first and then you can simply do the loop above with who is left.

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In the Help under carriers:

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.

I would like to see this changed personally. Drops should definitely be processed before collects. At least IMO.

Yeah, I did do drops first the pickups second, but a few people reported all kinds of strange bugs so fraked out and reverted the change and planed to get back to it later. I just haven’t go back to it.

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Is the above drop order still how this is done?

Google links this as the first result when searching.

In 2015 March, Jay and @Dysp changed the code. Carrier drop orders are now processed before carrier collect orders. 1 tick delays are no longer necessary.

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I thought as much but wasnt sure. Thank you for confirm