There are several alerts which I think would be helpful in management of the empire. I would be very grateful if the game would automatically stop you from advancing to the next turn when any of the following conditions are true:



[list=1]

System not producing anything. (I seem to be especially susceptible to this upon colonizing a new system, but it also happens when capturing an opponent's system.)

Population growth halted in a system where there could potentially be more growth -- either through colonization, or available but as-yet-unbuilt improvements such as Psychological Insulation, etc.

System producing something that is being "blocked" (i.e. 999 turns) by lack of resource (or other reason, if that's even possible.)

Planet with no exploitation.

[/list]



That's all I can think of for now but if anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to add.



Of course some of these conditions could be intentional, or merely temporary, so the game should allow you to override the alert and advance the turn anyway, if you want. Also, I do realize that in some situations, this could result in a lot of alerts happening every turn, but even in the largest empires/galaxies, I don't think this would be prohibitive, and in any case is still quite preferable to the alternative, which is, having to load an autosave ... or worse, if you don't catch it soon enough: just being stuck with the consequences!



On the other hand, some players may like things just the way they are now (though I admit I can't imagine why!), so ideally there would be a user-configurable option to turn the use of each of these alerts on/off.



In a "first impressions" sense, I was very grateful on "my very first turn of Endless Space ever", that the game stopped me from advancing the turn because I had no research selected. Well, some time has passed and I have a lot more games under my belt now, and am quite surprised that none of these conditions are prevented -- or at least discouraged -- by a similarly helpful alert. I think it would be extremely helpful if they were added. Thank you for reading.



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(Edit: update)



Disclaimer: these suggestion did come from a 100% single-player perspective, and the perspective of someone who often likes to play games with "huge" galaxy, and once I get get more familiar with the game in its vanilla form, I'm sure I'll often tweak the startup settings to have lots of planets in-system as well. (And just for the record: at times, fewer systems/planets, as well. I like to play w/ all variety of settings!) One of the reasons for this post was just to see what the community consensus would be on this idea. I never imagined anyone could be against it, but again that is looking at it from a 1-player perspective.



My goal is never to corrupt or co-opt the game to make it less fun for anyone else, which is why, as always, I say these things could be an option.



With that in mind, it was suggested that in multiplayer these options would be picked by the host at game startup, and also that even if the host picks "on", individual players could still opt-out and turn them off if they find them annoying.



Furthermore, for my part, I'll just add that my goal here was definitely not to replace existing micromanagement "challenges" with a new challenge of having to click away 500 alerts every turn! The real idea was just to be prompted for 4-5 certain critical situation which to me seemed to be on a par, importance-wise, with the already existing alert for "no research". As such, I have put the items in each list in rough order of what I think is "critical" vs. just "nice to have". Open to further discussion, of course.



[list=1]

Hero unassigned (which I would think applies to available, i.e. non-wounded heros only.)

Automatons: industry "bank" full on system.

Transition from positive to negative dust-per-turn (I guess the alert would be most helpful in the case of a "natural" transition, i.e. when it "just happens" as a side effect of other activities; it would seem no alert is necessary when the player explicitly lowers taxes, or stops producing "convert to dust", for example. Needs a bit more discussion I guess...)

Specific milestones reached in dust balance

System producing "convert to" when there are more optimal improvements available

[/list]

I agree with much of what you posted. It can be an "on/off" option that people who dont like can just set to off if they dont like it. Personally, I want it as well.



Add unassigned heros alert as well. I had the fun situation of "surviving" a brutal fight with Emergency Shelter thinking my hero stayed with the fleet after it was destroyed and then recovered to 5%. Turns out, hero becomes unassigned and goes to the Academy and needs to be paid to heal. I know there is an alert for injured hero, but no notification the hero is not assigned anywhere. It has happened to me several times that I have forgotten to reassign a hero when those stupid Fight pop ups override every screen you are on (can that be changed too? the fight notifications can still happen, but not take over the entire screen!!!)



Also, when the empire starts losing dust per turn and another when certain critical levels are reached (1k dust, 500 dust, etc).

You might as well just turn AI governers on then. I don't know about anyone else, but i'm of the opinion that checking your systems for things like you describe is part of the 'skill' of playing the game. Sure it's annoying when you realise for the past 3 turns you've been stagnating, but a simple solution to all of your problems is just to chekc out the system overview tab (or whatever it's called) to list all of your systems, and to quickly scroll down and see if there's anything not producing or stagnating.



Also, it'd get really tiring having the alert appear after every turn when your automatons :P

AI govs are retarded and builds everything even if it wont give any bonus, just wasting dust. They also wont optimize the building queue so (ie building some industry improvements to speed up everything).

They're fine if you've alreayd got a large empire and have all the necissary things built already, and that's the only situation I can see where a person cannot keep track of his systems to know if it's producing something or not after reading all the production alerts at the start of the turn.

@ Gameslayer989

I expect some people would be annoyed, which is why I suggested an on/off toggle. Its not really about whether or not you like it, its about making the game more fun for those who would like more alerts



Further, it definately appeals to the newer players and makes it easier for them. For many of us who have been playing for months and months, its less valuable and would likely be disabled (which doesnt affect you at all).

I'm just worried that such a thing would be a direct advantage to keep it on at all times during online play, taking some of the skill out of the multiplayer. Hmmm, perhaps a compromise then. how about it can be activated in single-player at will but in multiplayer it would be the hosts choice whether this option is allowed or not before the game starts.

Gameslayer989 wrote:
I'm just worried that such a thing would be a direct advantage to keep it on at all times during online play, taking some of the skill out of the multiplayer. Hmmm, perhaps a compromise then. how about it can be activated in single-player at will but in multiplayer it would be the hosts choice whether this option is allowed or not before the game starts.

Your suggestion seems reasonable to me - I dont do MP at all. As long as it can be turned on/off I wouldnt really be bothered nor would most players but I would think that it should be a config for the individual rather than the host. Anyone on MP who is just responding to alerts likely isnt a good MP anyway and likely wouldnt last long (regardless if the alerts are on or off).

Everyone forgets to do things sometimes. Having the alerts is definatly an advantage over people who don't have alerts on for the rare case when the alert reminds you of something. Becuase of this it would be imbalanced, Albeit a tiny one, to have them turned off. The only solution to this is, on a MP game, to have either all of them using it or none of them using it.

@egronis: Yes, unassigned heroes is another one I had thought of but forgot. And as for the dust alerts I hadn't thought of that, but I would probably use those as well.



@Gameslayer989:



A prompt to help players manage these conditions is a far stretch from just using AI governors. While I long for the former, I rarely if ever do the latter. (In fact, these alerts are exactly the kind of playability feature I am looking for, so I can keep up my intensity and focus, on the important things, and not have to resort to using AI governors!)



Having to do the "full empire scan" manually every turn is something that really sucks the fun out of the game for me, and it's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Especially late game, when, in Endless Space and games like it (e.g. Civ) -- the majority of my focus tends to switch from econ/administration to combat. There is actually enough other stuff one needs to scan to play optimally (which I will soon address in another thread) without simple matters of production/population/etc. being a part of that.



I agree with your point about Automatons. That is something that would probably require some customization to get it to work smoothly. Now that you mention it, though, for Automatons, an alert when a planet is full on "banked" industry would be also be helpful.

Gameslayer989 wrote:
...the only situation I can see where a person cannot keep track of his systems to know if it's producing something or not after reading all the production alerts...

I already gave one example of a time when this can and does happen to me: new system colonization. Another example is when you capture a system from an opponent.

Gameslayer989 wrote:
I'm just worried that such a thing would be a direct advantage to keep it on at all times during online play, taking some of the skill out of the multiplayer. Hmmm, perhaps a compromise then. how about it can be activated in single-player at will but in multiplayer it would be the hosts choice whether this option is allowed or not before the game starts.

Well, my first response to this is, of course: how can it be an advantage if all players have the capability?



For that matter, why have an alert for idle research if not for these other aspects of empire management?



Those purely logical arguments aside, though, my more personal and emotional argument is simply that: while I can understand how you would think keeping up your empire scan translates to "skill" in multiplayer, I personally do not agree. That is just not what the fun of the game is about, for me, whatsoever. I derive the fun from the more contemplative aspects of strategy, not the administrative minutiae.



Which brings to mind another idea, for example, that you might want an alert when a system is "stuck" producing "Convert to dust" or "Convert to science" when, in the meantime, more optimal improvements have been researched and are now available. But here we get into territory where, for this to work optimally, would require a highly customizable and/or magically intuitive system, to know when to alert vs. when things are "running as intended". Along those lines, you would want to turn on such an alert system on a case-by-case (i.e. planet-by-planet, queue item-by-queue item) basis. Or, I could envision some variant items in the available production options, for "Convert to dust/science", such as: "Convert to science until next research is complete" or "Convert to dust for 5 turns", etc.



But I digress. Although I must point out, when I say "there are going other things to manage", this is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about, because there will probably never be a perfect automatic alert/mgmt system for these kinds of situations.

eqronis wrote:
Your suggestion seems reasonable to me - I dont do MP at all. As long as it can be turned on/off I wouldnt really be bothered nor would most players but I would think that it should be a config for the individual rather than the host. Anyone on MP who is just responding to alerts likely isnt a good MP anyway and likely wouldnt last long (regardless if the alerts are on or off).

I haven't played any MP yet but would tend to agree that these alerts are not going to win the game for you. It seems like there are probably plenty other things to macro- and micromanage to be victorious.

Gameslayer989 wrote:
Everyone forgets to do things sometimes. Having the alerts is definatly an advantage over people who don't have alerts on for the rare case when the alert reminds you of something. Becuase of this it would be imbalanced, Albeit a tiny one, to have them turned off. The only solution to this is, on a MP game, to have either all of them using it or none of them using it.

I agree that is probably the only way to strictly enforce fairness: to give everyone access to the capability, with the decision made by the host. If individual players want to then still opt-out, let them. And ideally this would be something that each individual could turn on/off at will, on a turn by turn basis (assuming it was enabled by the host in the first place). In the simplest sense: just another option in the game's menu, just like "use vsync? yes/no" etc.



Disclaimer: these suggestion did come from a 100% single-player perspective, and the perspective of someone who often likes to play games with "huge" galaxy, and once I get get more familiar with the game in its vanilla form, I'm sure I'll often tweak the startup settings to have lots of planets in-system as well. (And just for the record: at times, fewer systems/planets, as well. I like to play w/ all variety of settings!) One of the reasons for this post was just to see what the community consensus would be on this idea. I never imagined anyone could be against it, but again that is looking at it from a 1-player perspective.



My goal is never to corrupt or co-opt the game to make it less fun for anyone else, which is why, as always, I say these things could be an option.



Thanks for reading/responding. I will update the original post with some of these points.

Fair enough. I'm perfectly ok with this being an addition in single-player