Constructor Micromanagement

Aye, the rally points are quite clumsy. I was using the Civilization Manager's Governor's panel to work with them for deploying Constructors to starbases, but it was still pretty tedious.

While playing I thought of a governor system to help with managing starbases. It doesn't require any major changes to the current starbase/contructor system but would still greatly simplify things. I think the changes might be simple enough to include in a patch, but I'm not a developer so I can't say for sure.


Basically. add a special governor section for each type of starbase (Military, Economic, Influence) in the Civilization Manager screen. Each section would list all available upgrades for that kind of starbase; the player can "queue" what upgrades he/she thinks is necessary for that particular starbase type and arrange them by priority.

On the details page for each starbase (double clicking the starbase on the main map) you can check a box if you want that starbase managed by the governor system. On the main map, each starbase that is being managed will be highlighted and will have number by it; the number representing how many upgrades there are until the queue is full. When a constructor is sent to and reaches a managed starbase, it automatically constructs whatever upgrade is next on the queue and one is subtracted from the number.


To give an example, lets say I have a basic non-upgraded economic starbase next to each one of my planets. I go to the economic starbase governor and queue up all of my desired upgrades; first Ray-Shielding, Combat Armor, then Missile Defender (for defence), then Starbase Factory and Adv. Starbase Factory (for the econ bonus), and finally Battle Stations (for some offence capability). I then activate the governor system for each of my econ starbases; on the main map they are all highlighted with a the number 6 by them (six upgrades queued up for each one). As I send constructors to each one each upgrade is automatically built. From the main map I can easily tell how many consrtuctors I need and where to send them. When a new upgrade becomes available, like Massive Scaling Center, I can simply go to the governor screen and add it into the queue. The main map is updated automatically, so I know each starbase now needs one more constructor.


This system would give an at-a-glance status on all of the typical starbases in a person's empire and eliminate the hassle of selecting each upgrade from a menu when the constructor arrives. The starbase governor system is totally optional, so if you have a starbase that needs special attention you can just disable the governor and manage it manually.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions? I tried to keep it simple enough so that the devs might actually consider implimenting it. If a dev is reading this: even if my above suggestion doesn't sound good, please do something about constuctor management! It's the only major flaw I can see in this otherwise awesome game.

I dunno, I think you all make a big deal out of nothing.

When constructors are complete, I send them out of spaceport. I collect them into groups (7 for mining resources, etc) and fleet them up. Then I send them to whatever resource/starbase I want them to end up at.

After I get them all outfitted with production, I fleet up 30 more and send them for defense/offense, all just one at a time.

It does not seem that hard to keep track of. And I never have used rally points.

I have posted this before but I agree, the constructor phase is the most boring part of the game. I would rather they were like planets once established and you could just spend money to improve. I get it over with as soon as possible. Max out my mining bases for extraction only. I build very few econ bases around my key planets. Tech capital, manu cap and econ cap and maybe a few when I can build a econ to cover multipul planets. Econs only help you spend money, not bank it.

I build my trade routes all from my manu cap and put trade boosters bases along the way.

I never add a defence or offence modules to any unless I'm clicking to fast and do it by mistake.

When at war, I rarely loose any bases as the AI is more concerned about protecting the 4 or 5 planets I'm taking every turn then attacking my starbases.

I honestly don't find myself spending that much time managing constructors, to be honest. It's a bit troublesome, but I was exaggerating earlier.

I only used the rally point thing once, to see how it worked. Wasn't too bad, but doesn't really matter that much.

And building defences first? That's a waste. If the starbase gets attacked during that time and you have no ships there to help it, it's dead, no matter what defences are there. Put Battle Stations on a base and it'll be able to at least fend off the attackers. Then perhaps put some defence systems on.

Otherwise, I'd focus on improving their respective specialties. Like production boosts for Economy, mining enhancements for Mining...

I really would only bother with defence first for bases if they're in a pricarious region, like along a border with a threatening empire.

It's really not that bad, but I suppose it'd be nice if it could be simplified.

Problem is, to do that would require AI coding to automate something that the player normally controls. Granted, the AI opponents handle their own starbases, but I assume it's a different matter when it comes to player-run things.

Yeah - I spend ages on it. I've just stopped attempting to build influence starbases now. I used to have stacks of colonies churning out constructors - but it took ages to set up and a nightmare to figure out how many ships where enroute to which starbases.

The developers have known for ages that lots of people find all their time taking up by what is basically a boring bit of gameplay. As they've not done anything about it in previous patches (not sure what could be done with it) I very much doubt that its ever going to be solved - its just going to be one of those annoying things you look back on when you remember the game!

I tend to agree with the people who complain about the constructor management... I for one don't like waiting for 7 to be ready when I could start getting the returns on each one as soon as possible... but at the same time, its pretty boring to have to constantly be dealing with constructors to begin with. In Civ you can automate workers, but in GalCiv2 there's not much you can do as of now to eliminate the tediousness of the constructor management.

I always end up with extras that I thought I would need at a starbase that end up just being useless, and I have to find somewhere else to send them, and it just bogs down the gameplay aspects that I really enjoy.

I use my extras to snag resources that are freed up by wars.
I usually get 40-50 extras ready just for wars by other civs, to snag econ or influence resources as they become free.

There is always a use for extra constructors. You just might have to wait, but a use will show up eventually.

the only thing I don't like about starbases is that you don't have any visual cue how far it's construction is, after you placed certain number of modules. if a number was displayed above starbases showing how many modules you can add, that would be so much helpful

I wish the aspect of constructor management was traded more for fleet management, so instead of building constructors, build your initial starbase with a constructor and let the starbase do it's own upgrading duh it is a starbase right? Not the Something armed with the Devastation beam should have more power generation and manufacturing capacity then the "Mir" LOL.

Anyway, then the challenge would be to provide logistical support, I like how the starbases allow you to expand your traveling distance. This is awesome, but it would be cool if you could do this with constructor ships as well, allowing them to have their own radius. I do this with sensor ships, rather then upgrading starbases, just make a layer or sensor armed ships, I'll even build a chassis ship with fast engines only send it out to space, and then upgrade it to a slow 1 or 2 sectors/turn ship speed but armed with a large survey area capacity. I wish you could do something similar with a logistical ship. Well just an idea, not like this area of the game really bothers me. I don't like the time spent on making constructors so much of the actual production but I can see that is makes sense. In the larger games it does get tedious but so what. It's still gotta be done.

I like Kirk00's idea. I think something is needed, and a build queue would be great. I will usually go through a starbase upgrade phase between wars, which I have many planets sending out constructors.

Not knowing if a starbase is fully upgraded is the worst part. Sometimes I know a particular starbase is fully upgraded, but have know idea which constructors are heading towards it. Then the popup comes up, "Do you want to upgrade mining starbase 4834?" Which one is that? Um...yes? It's just a waste of time(Like playing a pc game in the first place isn't, right?).

here here! I don't like messing around with constructors and starbases but find it neccessary to do so. I don't use rally points either because I feel they're clumsy. Just thought I'd add my vote to the debate!   

Then the popup comes up, "Do you want to upgrade mining starbase 4834?" Which one is that? Um...yes? It's just a waste of time(Like playing a pc game in the first place isn't, right?).

Hmm... I tend to rename starbases appropriately. Like mining starbases are named for their resource (Not directly, mind you, but on the basis of what part of your government will benefit. Morale = Medical, Economic = Economy, Research = Science, Influence = Civil, Military = Power. Power because, apparently, they involve something that's normally used for reactors - as well as the fact that such resources will increase your power), which is put in the name before the type of starbase (Mine), and both words are followed by a greek letter's name (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, etc), which is often determined by how far away the base is from my homeworld- making a Power Mine Omega, if ever I could get that many 'Power Mines' online, would be the furthest from the homeworld. The other three types, I usually name based on the nearest star. Economics are < star-name > Port, Military bases are < star-name > Defence Base (or Fort, as I just considered, if the star name is too long)... and the Influence I usually designate as 'Outpost', as they often are placed near the edges of my 'sphere of influence' in order to expand it and possibly culturally pressure other empires' worlds.

It helps to remember them, and where they are, and, hopefully, make an educated guess based on what you think you need in that area or star system.

Excellent logistical thinking for naming Starbases!   

I like long games on gigantic maps, but I don't think the constructor problem is boring so much as it is frustrating (at least since they fixed the rally point update problem a patch or two ago). I suspect what we're seeing here is just another symptom of the fact that the Stardock folks aren't able to play many (if any) long, big-map games.

Regardless of a given player's strategy prefs, it seems like some basic UI upgrades such as the starbase build queue notion would benefit at least everyone who likes big games. Even minor things like making the Rally Point window sizable would help. The basic notion is ergonomic--build a UI that doesn't force so many repetitive clicks on folks.

Thank you all for your responses; not too bad for my first thread here =D

Managing constructors doesn't become a hassle for me until I have thirty or so planets in a larger galaxy; with a two or three new constructors being built every turn it's very tedious trying to get them all to the appropriate starbases, especially as new upgrades become available. If I could tell at a glance what starbases need improvement it would help a great deal.

I agree that eventually an overhaul of the constructor/starbase system would be ideal, but that's very unlikely to happen until GalCiv3. That's why I proposed by above suggestion; it seems simple enough to add to a patch and doesn't effect the basic way constructors and starbases work (so no rebalancing needed), it's just a little bit of optional extra information and automation to help the player.

The starbase naming system is a very good idea. So far I haven't bothered at all to name individual ships or bases, but having a recognizable name should help me mentally juggle all the needs of my starbases a little better. Still, the addition of a starbase governor/queue system and some visual indicator on the map would be a great help.

The basic notion is ergonomic--build a UI that doesn't force so many repetitive clicks on folks.

I think you hit the nail on the head. A functional waypoint involves clicking the rally point button, clicking the location, renaming the rally point to something useful (clicking through menus...), double clicking on a ship and clicking rally point (hitting T helps bypass this), then clicking the waypoint and clicking OK. It's much easier to just click the ship, scroll on the map, and click where I need it to go. And with constructors I have to scroll to the starbase to see what upgrades it has anyway, so a rally point isn't practical.

A better waypoint system isn't my biggest concern though, I just want something to help me manage my constructors and starbase upgrades better (but if they do that by revamping the waypoint system that's fine by me).

I make heavy use of the rally point system to deal with constructors. Each resource mine I have gets a descriptive rally point (Military Mine 1, Influence Mine 3, etc), and I also create a generic rally point for each of the starbase types (Military Base, Economy Base, Influence Base). During every game I have some low PQ planets that I specialize to do nothing but pump out constructors for the entire game. All of these planets are set up for the ships to rally at the same place, say Military Mine 1. When I have finished upgrading that base, I go to the Governors tab, and update the starship and colony rally points to the next starbase I want to upgrade.

I create the generic rally points because I will generally have multiple economy bases in a game. In this case, when I have finished upgrading a base, I can simply move the location of the rally point to the next base without having to go into the Governors screen!

A few constructors will get confused when changing destinations and simply stop, but I look at that as having a rapid response team ready to respond to where they're needed.

I found building starbases way too tedious and time consuming. So...I don't do it anymore. I build them sparingly and only add the modules I need to increase their effectiveness. To defend them, I put a nice heavly armed fleet underneath them.

When you do upgrade a starbase, fleet up your constructors first. Assuming you have all the techs, you can upgrade an influence starbase to fully effective in one fell swoop with a fleet consisting of 11 constructors, 7 for a mining starbase.

Something needs to be done here. I've had games where I completely forgot I had a resource off in a distant land and never improved it. (often the AI wouldn't even get around to attacking it)

I don't tend to build defense on starbases, so that helps with the overall micro-managing...

Personally I see two problems :
1) Rally point system should be improved. Right now you can't say everybody building constructors go here without going to each planet to change it's rally point.

2) Give me a way of seeing what the status of all my bases is, and ideally add a key that when you select it with a constructor active, pops up a list of existing star-bases and there stats (and how far away), pick one and auto-pilot there.

I've stopped upgrading my starbases completely in my game now, I'm just too frustrated trying to manage them all. I think in future games I might try Uatu's method of having only a few planets building the constructors; that should help me oragnize them better. I'm also not going to bother with econ bases anymore, maybe just a couple for my very high production planets.
Please Stardock, give us some way to better manage starbases and constructors!

You can't really blow off the resource mining starbases. You pretty much *have* to add all the mining modules to them. It makes a big difference in your ratings and has a significant impact on the game.

One thing you can do to help keep track of starbases is to use the planet/ship list. There's a selection for showing starbases. It shows all of them in the universe, but since there's usually not too many of them, it's not hard to click through and check on your own. It would be great if there was a selection for "my starbases". That would be a big help.

Personally, I use influence starbases a lot for flipping planets and econ starbases once in a while to boost production. You can pick and choose the modules depending on what you need to do with the starbase. For example, if you're only looking to boost the value of a trade route, only install the trade modules, don't install the starbase factories. If you already have some influence on a planet, just install the 5 most effective influence modules instead of all 11. Makes things a little bit easier at least.

Another thing I do is keep fleets of constructors on-hand. I just dedicate a few turns to building constructors every so often then park them all in a particular sector so I have them on-hand in one place when I need them. It's a lot easier than tyring to manage them on the fly.

Right now you can't say everybody building constructors go here without going to each planet

You sort of can, depending on what all your planet rally points are set to when you start building a given type of ship. Try experimenting with the Governors tab in the Civilization manager. I've been using a small set of rally points & the Governors tab for a while, and adding CraigHB's tactic of collecting several fleets without using them has really helped me cut down on constructor tedium in my latest very long game.

I'd probably use lots more rally points if the little window was sizable and the list box a bit smarter, e.g. able to filter by rally point type & able to move the main map to the selected rally point.

You know what I think would kick ass, I think if constructors would automatically form fleets, what do u think about that guys? I mean form the largest fleet size your logistics could support. And and and... how about this. If the AI would always leave say two or maybe just one constructor outside the conglomerate fleet? Huh huh what do ya all think? That way it wouldn't be such a pain in the ass to move the gobs of constructors you have to do get em to the starbases.

I find this part of the game tedious also. I'm still a starbase nut, I build tons of them, mostly Econ for planetary groups or Influence to flip neighbors. A few Military ones at galactic "choke points". When the turn comes and seven or more of new constructor messages cue up I sigh.

I like the Starbase Governor idea. It does say (or I thought I read it somewhere) that can you automate ships coming out of a planet to muster at rally points, but so far I've yet to find it or figure out how its accomplished.

One simple improvement would be a "Auto Upgrade" button on the planet governor for Constructors created. Of course its makes more sense to put it on the Constructors themselves but that would necessitate clicking on each and every one and activating it, which would be almost as much work (if not more)

You know what I think would kick ass, I think if constructors would automatically form fleets, what do u think about that guys? I mean form the largest fleet size your logistics could support.

Use a 'fleet' rally point.