View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007850 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - New Features | May 15, 2012 12:52 pm | Jun 22, 2012 8:25 am | |
| Reporter | GrimerX | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.034 | ||||
| Summary | 0007850: Add "Enable auto power management" | ||||
| Description | It looks like you have the pieces for this (see 0003712), can you automate it? Turning reactors on/off is one of the minor annoyances I routinely run into, especially given the different efficiencies of the reactors. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
| related to | 0003712 | resolved | keith.lamothe | Power generator Automatic Hamster defect |
| has duplicate | 0008604 | closed | Automatically manage Power Plants |
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Oh boy, you've almost opened a can of worms here. Chris (X4000), the lead dev and founder, IIRC, has long stated that he would like at least one resource in AI War not to be fully automated. Right now, energy is that resource. The problem is that the current implementation has been shown to be a glorified "change giving" problem, which is not very fun to figure out how to manage at all, but just annoying. (Strangely enough, in the general case, when energy per Mk., the number of marks, and the efficiency drop per duplicate mark on a planet is arbitrary, it becomes NP hard. Only certain subsets of values turn it into a trivially solvable problem) Thus, the hamsters were introduced. Its a nice band-aid to the problem, greatly aiding the most mundane part of energy management (finding a good efficiency reactor to turn on, or a poor efficiency reactor to turn off), while still keeping it somewhat manual (you have to ask for it yourself) This tedium in the system the devs have known for a long time, but try as they might, they couldn't think of a system that didn't have even worse problems. There was a discussion on the forums a few weeks back about how to keep some form of a resource management "puzzle" in the game without it being tedious, but again, no-one was able to find a new system that didn't have even worse problems. However, IIRC, the consensus was that a overhaul/"rejiggering" of the system should be made rather than making it fully automatic. But still no better system has been proposed. |
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I don't mind opening cans of worms, it's kind of my day job ;-) I think the problem is to have an interesting problem to solve, you need to make a decision about resource allocation. And it has to be constrained so you don't have runaway resource production. Right now the metal/crystal is not a decision other than the efficiency of production -- there are n metal and y crystal asteroids in a system, period. I can't really tune the rate without spending knowledge. I think you need at least 3 resources to make it interesting, and you have those, but they're not interchangable (in terms of investment in production). I'm not sure I would want to manage that though, unless 1) I had very big levers (to avoid micro-managing) 2) There was a strategic aspect to it, which affects my planet-taking decison. With metal/crystal there is some of this already given that the number is fixed per-planed and determined at universe gen time. The different kind of asterodids in Zenith are probably closer to the kind of mechanic that is interesting -- I have to make choices there, and they are durable choices. Anyway, I don't have an answer for it but glad there was a discussion about it, means something useful will come of it. I wish I had more time to spend :-) |
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If you want, I can try to dig up the last forum conversion about this if you want to review it. |
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I wouldn't say no to that but I can probably find it on my own too :-) |
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Personally I think the way energy is done now is perfectly fine. I don't think it's a ton of micro to shift click a couple buttons every once in awhile, and it does add some strategy to the game (not much mind you, but for example if you're under attack, you've got to decide whether you want PLENTY of extra energy in case of a blackout, or to save resources for heavy re-production). The only thing that bothers me is the occasional time when the game auto-builds more than 1 energy reactor of a certain type in a system because the first one got blown up :( |
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I can't say I see the "strategic" element in energy production currently. I have a single mk I and II on auto build on every planet and deactivate mk II's when I have more than needed. Or build a mk III somewhere if I don't have enough. It would be kind of nice to not have to manually switch them on and of to save some resources. As there's no reason I can think of to keep them on. Something where "enough" energy is produced and you wouldn't have to fiddle with the power generators would be nice in the current state of the game, I think. Unless there's some kind of change in how they work. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 15, 2012 12:52 pm | GrimerX | New Issue | |
| May 15, 2012 12:52 pm | GrimerX | Relationship added | related to 0003712 |
| May 16, 2012 10:43 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| May 16, 2012 10:43 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| May 16, 2012 11:11 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0024302 | |
| May 16, 2012 4:20 pm | GrimerX | Note Added: 0024345 | |
| May 16, 2012 4:29 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0024346 | |
| May 16, 2012 4:33 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0024302 | |
| May 16, 2012 6:03 pm | GrimerX | Note Added: 0024356 | |
| May 19, 2012 11:00 am | Wingflier | Note Added: 0024487 | |
| Jun 18, 2012 10:26 am | TechSY730 | Relationship added | has duplicate 0008604 |
| Jun 22, 2012 8:25 am | snelg | Note Added: 0026027 |
