Force Infinite Actions to the bottom of the queue

I would like to see this, but as a toggleable option.

I think (at least for the next game, since it would probably mean alot of work to change it in this game) there should be an overhaul of the infinite options methods in general.

Alot of infinite options (such as chain gang) tend to get increasingly worse towards the late game as their cost of "1 turn" overvalues their effect completly (chain gang itself also has the issue of not being able to keep up with food production if you want to use it to remove pops later on aswell, although that's a seperate issue). Alot of other options such as propaganda options for dictatorships are features i don't even look at very often because stopping all my industry in the system is not worth it (whereas dust/science conversion can be worth it since it scales with industry). 

Similarly, the guardian removal cost appears to be very arbitrary aswell. Things that are much more impactful, such as terraforming or building wonders require industry from you to construct and thus are easy to do for an advanced system and hard to do for a primitive one. Whereas removing a guardian from a system with 40.000 industry costs you 4.000.000 industry, because even they can't get it done in less than 10 turns. It doesn't really make sense to me and if a guardian appears on one of your systems the removal option is more of a flavor text than ever a reasonable option.

Come to think of it, the sleeper action is in a way a repeatable action, except it's not in the build queue like the others. I think if other repeatables could be introduced similarly, as an option to pick outside of the build queue (perhaps a seperate menu like the space port) then they could be more attractive. If, rather than choosing what your system does for the duration of a turn, they could be an option that selects additional effects for the system (by multiplying food or industry times 0 you could still get the classical repeatable conversions, whereas other options might no longer eat turns when they're outside of the build queue). 

I'm not sure why this was never the default. There's no reason not to do this.

Yeah, this would be great, I keep forgetting I have an infinite action at the top of my queue and I wonder why the heck my ships aren't coming out.

Yes, please!

Though alt-click does provide a work-around, the point is that when you you have an infinite action going and then decide to bulid something in that system, you should not have to use alt-click because there would never be a reason to build something "after" and infinite action so it should just automatically move them down for you.

So definitely an upvote here.

Totally a good simple and superb idea

What is somewhat amusing to me is that I suggested this very same thing six years ago in the previous iteration of the forums, along with other QoL improvements that could be made to the in-system UI.

I agree with digitalbin's idea though, rather than perma-forcing the various infinite blockers to the bottom all the time, new orders should always queue "above" the infinite blocker, but the blocker can be put anywhere in the queue.

How on earth hasn't this become a taken-for-granted standard in 4X and whatnot, I'll never understand... drives me nuts every time I encounter a game that doesnt do it.

Very good idea

Gods yes. This would make my micromanaging a hell of a lot more pleasant.

digitalbin wrote:

Completely against it in this form.

Example has already been given. You are building a ship, it's 80% finished, you are about to go bankrupt and need to produce dust. 

If inifinites were FORCED to go to the bottom it would REQUIRE you to cancel the ship. That's horrible.

Instead of FORCING I would just suggest that new build orders are added before the first infinite build option by default. Since nothing is forced rearranging would be able at all times and the more common use case of "i want to build a new building and not have to put my infinite in the back (and I don't know about the keyboard controls that already let me do it)" is also covered (and I completely agree: that should have been in the game from the start).

A good point - I forgot to make that explicit. 'Forced' is the simplest way of expressing the behavior, so I'll leave that as-is. But I've added a line with your language. Thanks for the heads-up!

Ah yes, as a vodyani player, changing all the essence production to ship production late game, with 50+ systems (I play largest map), is an absolute nightmare.

Fabulous! Simple and would be a nice nuanced addition to clean gameplay - one of those small attentions to detail that makes a well oiled gaming machine.

Simple compromise: add the feature to the options menu.  If you want the feature, turn it on.  If it becomes more of a bother than it's worth, based on your play habits, then turn it off.  Hard to go wrong when you can have it both ways, right?

I would welcome this idea - a nice QoL change. 

I have to ask though why are these actions infinite? If I could have my ideal it would be the ability to set the duration of the action to 1 to X turns, with the usual construction complete prompt when the action expires, or to infinite with the action always put to the bottom of the queue. Extra fiddliness if you want it, reduced fiddlyness if you don't.

I absolutely agree that they should go to the bottom.  Even if you want to ever put one at the immediate front of the queue to soak up some resources for a turn or two, you could just as easily alt-click it to get it up top, but most of the time I doubt people would ever use it as anything but something to do in a system where there's not much else going on.

Well... good point you touched there, Fogana. but the reason that people are placing infinite actions in the bottom of the queue is because they stop completely the process of building all other things, and most people (including me) whenever we place these buildings, it makes another problem you probabilly did not realized yet: 

Once you place a infinite action in the top of the queue, you will have to micromanage that system Again to ensure that system will produce the rest of these buildings, and most people prefer utilizing infinite actions after they barely got anything to do whit their system. Like, no more graviton research facilities to build... no utility for ships, or something like that... But if you want to place it on the top of the queue, it creates a huge trouble for everyone. 

It's not a problem, it's a solution. :)

Problem: if im building a ship (there's 3 turns left) for ex. and i need dust for the next turn, I need to be able to put my unfinished ship under the ED printer this way i don't lose my investment. 

Superb. Ask amplitude to make this a new law. :)

should have been implemented on Day 1...

Another QOL change relevant to infinite options that I would like would be moving them or the razing options away from each other. One misclick and the system I have queued to run infinitiely after a while is suddenly lost. Granted, it's my fault for not looking, but it'd be a change I'd like to see nontheless.