What i miss most when playing the game is some kind of planning feature. I colonize a new system and think about what i could do with wich planet and what improvements may be fit best. The problem is that you cant note it anywhere.



This is how i think it could work. Under each planet (or maybe inside the planet view) and on the right side of the System you get a Box. The Box for the planet is to choose if you want to colonize them, if yes you can choose what type of planet it should become and what kind of improvement this planet should get. The Box on the right side of the system is to choose the improvements for the system. For choosing all Improvements that are available to use with your current race (researched or not). Now if you look into your system you can see what you had planed for it and get a better progress without rethinking what you wanted to do with the system all the time. To make it easier to work with thinks that have done could get removed so you get it as an todo list. It could also be possible to link this plan to the system AI so it starts to build the system exacly like you planed (with a good population). It could also be used for the "player" AI to plan there systems, currently near all of the AI systems end up as Dust production systems with all possible improvements enabled.



What do you think about this idea?

Or get a bit of memory? I don´t see a problem that the current queue can´t fix.

TheManInRoomFive wrote:
Or get a bit of memory? I don´t see a problem that the current queue can´t fix.

If you have 20+ Systems you cant memorize everything. And the queue cant give you memory hints, if you want to add improvements you dont have access to yet, you cant add them, if you want to terraform a lava planet into a tundra you need several steps wich you also cant queue. If you dont have a tech yet you wnat to use (for terraforming for example) you run into forgetting it until you get the tech available. Just to give some examples.

Having an development planner that we can save would be nice.

TheManInRoomFive wrote:
Or get a bit of memory? I don´t see a problem that the current queue can´t fix.

lol rather funny.... I have to say though, it might be a good idea to add some form of planning feature. It's not difficult at first to keep track of what's going on inside your systems because there aren't that many, but if you're having a good run and your empire starts to increase massively in size then you can start losing track of stuff.



ALso, I noticed that a colonized world gets a blue icon in the system box even if it's colonized but nothing has been built on it yet. Perhaps we could have the blue planet icon blink if no exploitation has been constructed on it yet?

Yes Xebov, maybe my first comment was a bit harsh, and i apologize for that. But I don't like a game where everything is automated for you. And all you have to do is skip turn. I know it is not exactly what you are proposing, but i cannot help but feel that this is some of the things that you need to be good at in this kind of game.

I feel the OP does point out an important problem with the game as it is. A way to save and load pre-set queues is one of many possible solutions but I think it's the problem we should be talking about.



right now there are quite a number of system improvements that just aren't worth the huge maintenance cost, especially to some races. the governor AI has been improved a lot so far but mostly in the way of bug fixes. it still builds lots of stuff you really don't need. for example: trade bonus improvements even though they're only going to cost you money to operate. that'd be okay behaviour if the governor was set to trading but the pre-sets don't really feel like they do a lot of anything yet.



I also think that (given you're not going to want every single 'improvement' you unlock) the current interface for building things becomes rather inconvenient in the mid game and especially later on. We have multiple rows of fairly small icons and you have to mouse over each of them for a fairly sparse tooltip that doesn't always tell you everything you'd want to know. I, at least, don't always know exactly the effect of an improvement when I can build it, and I don't quite enjoy having to search for the few improvements I do want from a huge list for every colony.



These issues became a lot more frustrating now that in the current version money doesn't just fall off trees. I do think we're at a good spot as far as dust income and expenses go for having maintenance cost at all implies it's a design choice to have players pick and choose their improvements. it's just that the current interface isn't quite adequate at the moment, and the lacking governors don't help with that. Right now I'm playing a game where I found micromanaging my colonies was eating away too much time so I set every colony on auto-production (playing as the sowers so yeah) and now I'm faced with my economy completely tanking because my govs have been building expensive trade improvements everywhere that don't do anything, so now I've gotta go across all my colonies to scrap everything and continue the game without govs. less than fun, imho. (man, I would love to be able to program the govs myself :/)



The empire management screen certainly is great for easily giving orders to various systems, but at the moment it's severely lacking. if only I could select multiple systems and give the same orders to them all. It's also a big annoyance you can't give orders to inspect a moon/colonize a planet/change exploitation/terraform/fix anomalies from the empire management screen. if you can't trust your govs to do their job sanely you're left with having to trek through all your colonies, click every single planet just to "check" whether or not a moon has been explored yet or not! I know a lot of people love the game because of the minimalist interface, but more advanced windows would be extremely helpful.

i don't think macroing build queue is a good feature i don't want to play a game where i set bunch of parameter and wait for the game to resolve.



this game is about managing if you automatise managing there is no game anymore. just watch stargate instead



at least i agree that governors are annoying building useless structures.

Xebov wrote:
If you have 20+ Systems you cant memorize everything.

Works just fine for me - you have to check up on systems every few turns anyway to ensure that everything is going as planned, or to colonize/exploited more planets within the same system since these can't be queued in some situations.

Ok i understand that some fear that this could end up in a "plan and let the AI build it" way. Maybe some missunderstood the Idea behind? The Basic idea is nothing more than having a place to plan the System and write it down so you can rememebr what you planed even if 50 turns passed. The part with the AI is just an Idea how it could be extended, and theres no need to extend it this way for players, but it would open up a way for the AI (the AI "Player") to build more Usefull Systems and be more strategic, as they currently only use the Basic System AIs wich lead to Systems of not that good quality.