OFFICIAL: Economics Discussion

[markb50k]

let me look at those requests in detail and see if there is something i can do.  Thanks!

[Idle_Scholar]

A few more bugs:

 

Ships have two copies of enter orbit in their fleet orders menue

The trade screen can't handle buying and selling in the same transaction. It only gives one cost and then executes one action. In my case I sold orea and bought metal, but it only sold the ore.

[Idle_Scholar]

A few more bugs:

 

Ships have two copies of enter orbit in their fleet orders menue

The trade screen can't handle buying and selling in the same transaction. It only gives one cost and then executes one action. In my case I sold orea and bought metal, but it only sold the ore.

 

edit: the second 'bug' might well be due to the planet having no metal

[markb50k]

two enter orbit orders.. hmmm ill check

 

buy/sell same transaction.. it SHOULD work, but maybe you are right about the planet having no ore, obviously you cant buy it.

[markb50k]

fixed double ENTER ATMOSPHERE entries (second one was supposed to be EXIT)

[Idle_Scholar]

The contract goods order appears to be rather broken.

[markb50k]

gonna need a TEENY bit more info than that, please

[markb50k]

Fixed the error you get when you click OK on the Contract Goods screen.  will put out new zip.

[Idle_Scholar]

I can't seem to get my Depot built. I have all the resources and the money but each time it gives me the 'could not locate resources' blurb under the order.

[markb50k]

checking it out.. its a rounding issue.. fixing...

[markb50k]

think i got it fixed... your DEPOT is on order and should be showing up soon.

[Idle_Scholar]

The depot got built, but I then ordered a CC7700 and its not turned up. The resources have been used but no new unit

 

edit: I've now tried to build a CPC, but it tell's me that no depot is present.

Edited July 26, 2008 by Idle_Scholar

[markb50k]

ok, ill take a look.

[markb50k]

Idle: I fixed the DEPOT NOT FOUND error.  you just had some ships show up.

 

About the CC7700.  You had the same problem with it not detecting the DEPOT, unfortunately after it had the issue, you cancelled the order, after it was already paid for.  I dont have code that gives refunds, so next time dont cancel out the order if you see its in progress.  Sorry about that.

[Idle_Scholar]

Can I have the ability to buy and sell to other players? As far as I can tell I'm further along in my economy than most and it'd help stimulate interest in the game if I could start supplying others with ships.

[markb50k]

the code for that already exists I just need to enable it, but I want it more controlled than the current code.  I was going to work on it, but until I see interest and people actually wanting to buy ships, I didnt want to put in the somewhat large effort.

 

So, are there people even playing?

[Idle_Scholar]

Well apart from me I know there's one other. The problem is three fold.

 

1) It's quite slow. Even if you invest wisely and put in as much time as needed it'll still take a week or two before you have an economy capable of building a depot

 

2) There's too high an entry requirement for the fun bits (i.e. fighting). You have to build a depot which takes ages and then you  can get capital ships. The vehicle assembly plant is useless by itself seeing as you need to re-arm and re-fuel all the ships it can produce.

 

3)There's way too much micromanagement. Every time you have to build something you need to enter all the ammounts by hand. Seeing as you need to build hundreds of structures to get a functioning economy that can produce medium to large capital ships this is probably what's putting a lot of people off.

 

What I'd suggest is you implement a defult setting or a button in the contract builder that automatically uses your resources to build the thing and hires enough work teams for it to be completed in under 10 cycles. The other thing is to either give everyone a depot and a modest income (say 1000 per turn) or invent a cheaper depot that can handle small capital ships (as defined by that chaps ship chart).

[Eldanesh87]

I agree with the idea of implementing a function that allows you to auto allocate the maximum available number of resources to a contract, it would save alot of time earlier in the game.

 

Also one thing thats been annoying me alot is the way small craft are produced devoid of all fuel loads, it means that i need to do alot of micro managing just to get them into orbit and into the capital ships waiting in orbit which are too big to enter the atmosphere.

[markb50k]

i can fix the no fuel part pretty easily.  it was intended that they would have fuel right off the bat.  ill fix asap.

[Eldanesh87]

Another thing ive recently just realised is that the goods produced by one of my propulsion plants wasnt showing up at my embassy. i realised it may have been a bit far away from the embassy so i put a wharehouse nearby it and the goods are showing up there. however, if i want to use them in contracts at the embassy i have to transfer them over to it, which im having to do every turn. would it be possible to either have an order where i can tell the wharehouse to automatically transfer all its cargo to the embassy every turn non-stop or to have it so that in the contract structure/units screen not just cargo at the embassy is shown but all cargo at wharehouses within a reasonable distance of the embassy? That way i dont have to keep trandferring all my cargo just to actually make use of it - it really slows down the rate at which i can produce anything

[Idle_Scholar]

Have you purchased transportation rights? You need them to auto transfer over large distances. You can also set the transfer cargo order to repeat and have it execute every turn.

[Eldanesh87]

I have the transportation rights but the main issue is that its not the same ammount of cargo needing transferring each time. it usually sends some to the embassy each turn too but its quite random; the ratio of cargo sent to embassy and cargo sent to wharehouse is not a constant. basically i need to tell it to transfer all cargo each turn, not just a specific amount. Is that possible as things are?

[Eldanesh87]

Ok turns out if you tell the wharehouse to repeat the order it just waits until it has the needed amount of cargo to fill the transfer order, so you were right in that it does work! Still not perfect as i'll have to change the amount it transfers each turn as i add more factories and so on, but its not a major issue. Sorry to have brought it up!

[Idle_Scholar]

I think whats ideally needed is some code that extracts the resources needed from any unit in the fleet and subfleet.

[Eldanesh87]

Yeah, I was actually expecting to see the resources i had at the wharehouses on the contract screens. but i dont know how difficult it would be to write that code and it might not be worth it seeing as the repeat order function does work, i was just being a noob