possible to buy planet structures on multiple planets in one shot?

Sadly not. Micromanagement headaches are the bane of large games. The closet thing would be get to know the Colony's screen well, it makes the process bearable.

This should be fairly easy to implement I would think.... and would be VERy beneficial to most players.

Make it like when someone groups more than one unit in an RTS, make this the same thing for planets...

i.e. - let me hold shift as long as I have shift depressed, I can select multiple planets... oh wait.. then how does the game know which hex on the planet I'm filling w/the building... ooooooooh... I stumped myself...


ideas anyone?

One non-coder's guess as to why it doesn't work that way already: planet maps matter individually in terms of total tile, avaialable tiles, and bonus tiles. A batch system like that would need to be able to support fairly complex rules, or at least a basic "don't build anything on a bonust tile" option.

As another biggest-map fan, I surely feel the pain of the OP. My unfulfilled wish in this area is for a system to let you define build queue lists, e.g. Early Game New World, Mid Game New Hostile Environment, etc. This post makes me realize that the devs probably resist that b/c they don't want to hear all the griping about "why did the game put a stupid Industrial Sector on my Precusor Library?"

All they need is an upgrade manager. I've posted so many times, and have yet to understand why there isn't more support for it.

A prioritized list of what should be upgraded would be a great start. Ideally the answer should be more like the old GC, where you have 3 or 4 different names for governors. Then you assign your planets to one of those govenors. You could have one that is research focused, another for econ, another for production, etc.

All it would do is re-order what was being built according to your list. (also could allow you to switch the focus on a group of planets as well)

THAT's the other thing I was thinking about... now that should be easy enough to implement.. and would make big games MUCH easier.

how about just a "buy all for these planets" selector/button.

Is that easy to do/mod?

If nothing else it shouldn't be hard or time consuming to give us some very basic build queue options. Such that we can define a queue such as "factory-factory-research-starport-research...." with the stipulation that it will not place the buildings intelligently. IE just place them left to right top to bottom or something like that.

One step further would be to just avoid bonus tiles altogether, and then beyond that you start getting into scripting some sort of routine that would place the buildings intelligently, which multiplies the work by tons.

I suspect not simple to implement quickly, however I remember in Stars! that you could create a build template. Maybe a global govenor to set a simple template. More complex subjective templates/rules could be difficult to show in one govenor window, but some effort should be made to this end if possible.



Should be easy to implement,

for each objPlanet as planet in planets
if objPlanet.improvements.Exists("Emptytile") then
dim objTile as improvementtile = objPlanet.improvements.GetTile("Emptytile")

objTile.markforbuy = true
end if

for each objPlanet as planet in planets
for each objtile as improvementtile in planets.improvements

if tile.markforbuy = true then
total = total + costofimprovement
endif

next
next

So next you ask user if total is acceptible for 10 purchases, give lease options etc

If yes they get bought if no clear the markforbuy flag.

Simple



I would also like to see a upgrade x improvement to y improvement. sometime you aquire a tech that is not as good as the one you have e.g. a factory at 6bc and 12mp however I might want to upgrade that with a 3bc and 10mp (Torian tech tree I Think) halve your costs and only 16% loss in mp.. Thoughts anyone

Stars! had queues that you could save and reuse.
It had a good AI (relatively speaking)--though not much eye candy.
The whole game could fit on a floppy.

I also would like to ability to manage my upgrades. Sometimes I get upgrades
that I don't want and that bankrupt my economy. Then I have to go through
and delete the "upgrades" one at a time. Takes a long time.

I keep wondering whether the devs could replace the first two tabs in the build queue area with a pair named "Active" and "Inactive" along with buttons or a context menu command to let you do things like make Industrial Sectors inactive after you get the tech and later make them active when you're ready to pay for the upgrade costs and increased production spending.

In my naieve world, the game would just cancel all those automatic upgrades if you made a building inactive before any production had been spent on upgrades. New buildings in progress would switch to the active type in their class.

Hrmm .. i've no idea what the below code means, but it looks close to what I want it to do!

Can someone actually turn this into something usable, or write a quick HOWTO as to where this should be implemented? This might actually get me to start playing GalCiv again!

Thanks!