markb50k

i see your issue: in the new code, ships that are not in a fleet are basically not looked at by the code for orders, so please add it to a fleet first then the orders will be processed. sorry about that, i mentioned it before, but might not have mentioned that no orders will be processed.

lol, ok i will look at it but, no, it shouldnt be any different. what is the status of the order.

TRADE ROUTES The way I see this working is like this - build mines, plants, etc on the planet surface - definitely get a transpo agreement so your goods moves immediately around from production location to storage location - have cargo ships get goods from planet surface, and take the goods to warehouses in orbit, on repeat. - have other cargo ships going from planet to planet, picking up goods from warehouses you could also have the cargo ships do the enter atmosphere / exit atmosphere themselves but it will add time to the trip obviously Comments from user comments: - a macro economy is definitely something I would like to look at adding in - only mines NEED to be on the planet surface, all other structures CAN be on the planet, but do have space counterparts. - user to user selling. i am really trying to figure out ideas on how to do this fairly, probably what i will end up doing is running this through the embassys. Like, allow your embassy on planet X to purchase a ship from another users embassy on the same planet. The seller establishes a price that the code will make sure only varies from the nominal price of a ship by some percentage (that would prevent fake accounts from selling stuff at 1 credit for their master account). Perhaps put a wait limit before the highest bid is taken, so that you cant coordinate with another player to put something on the market and then boom they buy it.

Planets are so huge, and the sizes of your forces are so small, I could never logically come up with a real good strategy of planetary control, so I basically treat planets as an open zone for commerce and warfare if you choose. The planet will go on whether you are there or not, but based on what you do in the game, your relationship with the planet will be easy or hard. So, with that said, there is no way of actually controlling a planet. Sure you could have military control on the sector where you destroy all enemys there, but the planet is never yours. You could keep destroying your enemies structures on the planet that it becomes economically infeasible for them to attempt to have a presence there, but that is as far as it goes. So there is really no taxation that you get from the planet. Here are some other things I can explain PLANETARY RELATIONS (more info) ok, so you start off as NUETRAL with every planet and you have zero damage. If you establish an embassy, the money for that embassy create positive relations, just as if you sign agreements, or buy/sell goods, or pay for the planet to build stuff for you. That money doesnt translate into a 1 to 1 point gain with the planet. Currently, the money is converted to relation pts on a ALLY=1/2, NUETRAL=1/5, ENEMY=1/10 basis, meaning that if you establish an embassy, the cost is 100K, meaning you immediately get 20K relation pts if you are currently NEUTRAL with the planet, or 10K if you are enemy. So obviously it is important to establish as many relationships as possible with planets before you start waging war. Costs of agreements (for reference) ESTABLISH EMBASSY = 100K BUILDING RIGHTS = 50K TRANSPO RIGHTS = 30K TRADE RIGHTS = 20K So also realize that any money that changes hands between you and the planet, provides positive relation points in the same manner, reduced by the relation factor NOTE: I dont have any code for you to be ALLIED with planets yet, and not sure i will. DAMAGE REDUCTION (towards GOOD) Each cycle your relationship is improved with a planet by a certain amount automatically. ALLY = 5 pts NEUTRAL = 3 pts ENEMY = 1 pt As points are added and subtracted to your relationship, if they ever go to positive damage (towards BAD) a bad mark is added to your relationship. if its the first time that bad mark is set to 1. What does that mean? First, the planet is automatically set to an ENEMY of you Second, you are put on probation, meaning that after you have repaired your relationship with the planet to negative damage (towards GOOD) and keep it there, it will take some period of time before the planet automatically sets you back to NUETRAL. The first time you go ENEMY to a planet, after you repair the relationship, it will wait 100 cycles * (# of bad marks ^ 2) to auto NEUTRAL you. so... First time, 100 (1 * 1) Second time, 400 (2 * 2) Third time, 900 (3 * 3) Fourth time, 1600 (4 * 4) etc You also get a SYMPATH bonus of 5K if you are ever declared war upon So in the beginning of the game, with you signing a lot of agreements and such and as long as you dont start attacking ppl right off the bat, it would take a while to go to ENEMY with a planet especially if you establish trading with it. And if you do go ENEMY with a planet, the probation period after you go back to negative damage (good) is pretty short, and you would have to go ENEMY a few times before it becomes something really silly. DAMAGE INCREASING (towards BAD) If you declare war on somebody you get 10K added to your damage, normally this wont put you immediately in ENEMY with a planet unless you have never dealt with them. Also if you cause damage to other ships in a planet sector, you get damage added. If you are currently ENEMY, each damage pt translates to a relationship damage pt. Here are the ratios ENEMY = divided by 1 NUETRAL = divided by 3 ALLY = divided by 5 So as long as you stay above neutral you can do alot of damage before going to ENEMY. Im putting in code so you can see your current DAMAGE rating with planets and your bad marks and probation period countdown INTERACTING WITH OTHER USERS i have code that is disabled right now that would allow users to GIVE OBJECTS, GIVE GOODS, and TRANSFER FUNDS to other users, but until I can do something that would automatically prevent collusion and cheating I will keep it disabled.

Ok, I am planning on enabling the economic portion of the game, and I wanted to start giving you guys info on how it all works... HOW DO YOU GET RESOURCES All resources will originate from planets. They are the only source. As such, by extension, other than the initial ship(s) you get when the game restarts, all things you build will use resources gotten from a planet. Each planet has an abundance rating for the three lowest-level resources in the game: ORE, MINERALS, and OIL. Based on that level, it will be determined how easy it is to mine those resources from the planet, how costly it will be to buy/sell those resources from/to the planet, and even whether you can even buy them at all. It also will be taken into account when you ask a planet to build a structure or unit for you, since the resource makeup of a ship will determine its price. Obviously, you will see that prices will be different planet to planet for the same things. That said, there are realistically three ways you can get resources: - BUY from a planet. Certain units can access the planetary market and using money from your treasury you can purchase materials. In turn, you can also SELL to a planet. The price of a resource fluctuates based on certain attributes of a planet, which each planets differs on: resource abundance, population level, technology level. All of those factors are used by the engine each turn, along with how much of a certain resource the planet has in its own coffers, to determine a price. generally, lower level resources will be far less costly than each level of resource above it. I will explain the different resources later on down. - MINE from a planet. If you have made the necessary agreements with a planet, you can eventually build your own factories and mines on a planet (or have the planet build it for you for a price). Each turn your mines will extract a certain amount of resource from the planet depending on its abundance rating. To make higher level resources, which are needed to build ships and stuff, you will have to construct higher level factories. - SALVAGE from wreckage. After all the work has been put into a nice shiny ship, and it has been destroyed by nefarious forces lol, you can salvage the wreckage of the ship and take some of the resources that made up that ship (cargo in its hull and other ships onboard contribute to the amount of resources in the wreckage). HOW DO YOU GET PLANETS TO DEAL WITH YOU? To summarize, for any planet that you want to deal with, your LEADER must first pay the planet to ESTABLISH AN EMBASSY. The cost of the embassy is a base cost that is affected by your current standing with the planet. In fact everything you do with a planet is affected by that relationship. I will explain the relationship part later. After you establish an embassy, the embassy can then get certain agreements with the planet in place: BUILDING RIGHTS allow you to build structures on the planet yourself (using construction ships) and allow you to order ships/structures directly from the planet. If you see a planet has nice abundances you would want this right, because if the planet has high abundances, your mines will produce more resources per turn. TRANSPORTATION RIGHTS allow you to not have to worry about distances between your factories and your warehouses, where the resources are kept. You dont need this right, but if you dont have it, you will have to physically move your stuff around or make sure all your stuff is physically very close to eachother. I believe the distance is 2000m on the planet surface or 5000m in space/orbit. TRADING RIGHTS allow you to buy/sell resources to/from planets and allow you to contract a planet to produce resources for you. For planets with very high prices or very low prices of certain resources, obviously you would want this right so you can take advantage of the price differential and make profit. WHAT AFFECTS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH PLANETS? Each planet has a certain relationship with you. The health of the relationship is determined by the "damage" you have incurred against that planet. Things that make your relationship worse with planets (add damage): - declaring war on a person who was not at war with you will add damage with every planet. - causing damage to other ships in the planet sector causes damage with the planet at that sector Things that make your relationship better with planets (lower damage): - you get a small sympathy bonus from all planets if you are declared war upon. - the monetary value of anything you buy or sell from a planet or the amount you pay for services brings down your damage - time passing will remove damage as well, although small. Every time you bring your damage down to zero, then raise it again, it becomes harder and harder to repair the damage, so try not to piss off planets too many times or it becomes impossible to deal with them. Realize however, that once you have gotten rights with a planet to build stuff, you can pretty much ignore your planet relationship as long as you use all of your stuff and never ask the planet to provide you with anything. HOW DO YOU DO STUFF? Summarized: - establish embassy with planet - get build rights - get transpo rights (optional) - get trading rights if you want to get resources from the planet (optional) - either ask the planet to build a factory for you or you build it yourself by using construction ships. the construction ships will need resources to build the factory/mine, so you either have to have the resources on hand or buy them from the planet - once the mine is built, give it a BUILD GOODS order. Each structure has limited storage capacity so it may be smart to have cargo ships or warehouses close by (or anywhere in the sector if you have TRANSPO RIGHTS). - repeat the process for any higher level factories you need that turn raw materials into the higher level resources - once you have the highest level components, use a vehicle assembly plant or shipyard to produce the units for you - NOTE you can also just pay planets to build stuff for you. if you do this, you need to have built or purchased a special structure called a DEPOT on the planet already. That is where your new stuff will show up. RESOURCES Each resource can either be produced by you or bought/contracted from a planet. BOUGHT means you buy directly from a planet, its immediate but the planet may not have any on hand because of its own economy. CONTRACTED is not immediate, it takes time, depending on how much labor you pay for, but it is guaranteed to be done. RESOURCE TYPES ORE, MINERAL, ORE Raw materials produced by ore mines, mineral mines, or oil wells Metal: Produced by combining two ORE with a METAL FORGE unit Chemicals: Produced by combining two MINERAL with a CHEMICAL PLANT unit Petroleum: Produced by combining two OIL with a PETROLEUM REFINERY unit Plastics: Produced by combining 0.6 CHEMICAL and 0.4 PETROLEUM by a PLASTICS PLANT unit Electronics: Produced by combining 0.2 METAL with 0.8 PLASTIC by a ELECTRONICS PLANT unit The last five are top level components that are the building blocks of all units in the game Chassis: Produced by combining 8 METAL, 1 PLASTIC, 1 ELECTRONICS by a Chassis Assembly Plant. Used as a component to build ships and as a component used by ships to repair hull damage. Armor: Produced by combining 5 METAL, 4 PLASTIC, 1 ELECTRONICS by a Armor Assembly Plant. Used as a component to build ships and as a component used by ships to repair hull damage. Tech: Produced by combining 1 METAL, 1 PLASTIC, 8 ELECTRONICS by a Tech Assembly Plant. Used as a component to build ships and as a component used by ships to repair hull damage and to repair shield generators (and later grav wells if i make them damageable). Propulsion: Produced by combining 3 METAL, 1 PLASTIC, 6 ELECTRONICS by a Propulsion Assembly Plant. Used as a component to build ships and as a component used by ships to produce fuel. Weapons: Produced by combining 3 METAL, 2 PLASTIC, 5 ELECTRONICS by a Weapons Assembly Plant. Used as a component to build ships and as a component used by ships to repair damaged weapons and as a component used by ships to produce warheads. Each factory type except for the mining ones (ore mine, mineral mine, and oil well) have a in-orbit counterpart so you could have hidden space facilities that are harder to detect but obviously have to be supplied to keep running. OTHER SPECIAL UNITS CONSTRUCTION SHIPS - used to build structures either on a planet surface or in space VEHICLE ASSEMBLY PLANT - land based. used to build land units and fighter type stuff and any capital ship that cant carry fighters and is atmosphere capable SPACE VEHICLE ASSEMBLY PLANT - space based. used to build fighter type stuff and any capital ship that cant carry fighters. cannot build land units. SHIPYARD and MOBILE SHIPYARD - space based. used to build any unit other than land units or structures DEPOT - land based. when you contract the planet to build you a unit, it will either show up at the depot or in orbit directly above it (if it is a non-atmosphere capable ship)

New ZIP Update. Download at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip Bug Fix once you are looking over orders for a ship and select one of its orders to review, you end up giving fleet orders to the ship, which wont be processed from the engine and the ship will just sit there. fixed now.

New ZIP Update. Download at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip New Features - fixed bugs with original fleet changes I put out a few days ago - NEW FLEET features - you can give orders to a parent fleet and ANY fleet below it will follow those orders as long as they have no current orders. This is great for moving lots of stuff around, setting break levels, docking,etc. - any fleet that has no orders will always be attempting to get into formation with its parent fleet - new CLEAR SUBFLEET ORDERS order that you can give to a parent fleet and it will clear all orders of the fleets below it except for current IN HYPERSPACE fleets - new WAIT ON SUBFLEET FORMUP order can be used if you are stringing a bunch of orders together for the parent fleet. The parent fleet will wait for all of its subfleets to form up before going on to the next order. If the fleet is currently Berthed, it will wait for all subfleets to dock as well. If it is not berthed, it will wait for the subfleets to get into formation position. - because of what I just mentioned, it is probably best for you to only have like fleets in parent/child grouping, meaning fighter fleets should not be under ship fleets or else they will just move around in space instead of onboard - break levels and set weapons status and warhead loadouts will be automatically copied down to the subfleets. if the child break level is lower than the parent, the childs will take effect. - SET FORMATION and VIEW FORMATION now include the child fleets and any child ships directly below the parent fleet. Im pretty sure i put some other stuff in, but go ahead and play around and see how it works. it should allow you to have to give orders to alot less stuff than before. Have fun!

in order to try and fix some of these problems I am going to be running some 1 cycle turns over the next hour or so, so I apologize if the turns start taking a shorter time than you expect.

i think i figured your problem out. your fleet should jump ahead and STAY in JUMP status, that will then make the ship jump to keep up. the old code was jumping the fleet icon then putting it in IDLE status which would bring the ship out of JUMP mode. I am now looking at Fury's problem with stuff not launching.

Idle Scholar: the fleet object will pretty much always move before the ships in it, but the real question is why is the prowler moving at sublight speeds to catch up. My only question is what is the length of these jumps? I have a minimum jump distance so people arent doing mini jumps that are really small. it is set at 50km. Are the legs of the jumps shorter than that? If so, the ship will move at sublight. if it is longer, let me know so I can look at the code.

A pretty major change is coming where now fleets with no orders will just formup and join their parent fleet. you will be able to use this to move a parent fleet and the sub fleets will move along. its much more complicated than that but I wanted to give yall a warning that it is coming.

just go to galsim.nickersonm.com i changed the website

ok, i will check out these two issues.

New ZIP Update. Download at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip Bug Fix - adding a SALVAGE order to a fleet was not working. Fixed now.

New Engine Update. No download necessary. New Features for PRIORITY TARGETS, if the ship has NO PRIORITY TARGETS, the code will search up through its whole fleet parent chain for priority targets until it finds one with priority targets and will use that. It used to do this just for its immediate parent fleet, but will now do it up the entire chain. Have fun!

interesting idea and one I will look into

New ZIP update. Download at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip New Features - Shield/Hull Strengths are now listed on unit lists and contact lists to allow you to see a quick status of ships - ENGINE CHANGE: The following ORDER TYPES will now take effect to all subfleets underneath a parent fleet, overwriting the subfleets current values: SET GRAVWELL ON/OFF SET WEAPONS FREE/HOLD SET FUEL/HULL/WARHEAD BREAK LEVEL SET WARHEAD LOADOUT Im slowly trying to add in other behavior that will have any subfleets with NO ORDERS follow the orders of its parent logically. This should allow folks to do the stuff I saw them doing in my previous post. I'll keep you updated.

the launch levels mean that the fighters must be at those levels or higher in order to LAUNCH after docking. so the break levels tell them to land, the launch levels tell them to launch. hope you understand.

it looks like it is back up. NOTE: I have been taking a look at how some of you are organizing your forces and I want to point out one thing again from my earlier post. Other than cleaning up your fleet display there is really no relationship between a parent fleet and a child fleet. If you give orders to a parent fleet, they do not affect the child fleet in any way. Fleet orders only rule over the SHIPS in the fleet. I tried to code in that relationship but it got way too complicated so I dropped it, but kept the parent child relationship intact for visual purposes only so that you dont have 200 individual fleets listed when you click on the top level FLEETS link. I may in the future, after this code is stable, try to put in some of that relationship, but there is none in at this time. I apologize if that is confusing, but the code changes I put in will help immensely in managing stuff and are a vast improvement over what we had before.

new zip is up with the needed files. please download at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip and extract entire contents of zip over your old install

did you extract all of the zip? there are new files in the models and specs directories for the Fleet object. EDIT: nope its my bad, i didnt include them. putting up new zip in a minute. sorry

so, if you just want to assign fighters to be based off of a fleet and be its protection, just simply give it a DOCKED CSP order if you want it to continuosly do other operations you need to use the orders list talked about before, for instance ... set hull/fuel/warhead break levels first then set all of the following orders on repeat JUMP to war zone Attack or Patrol or Defend a loc DOCK to home fleet REFUEL REARM REPAIR oh yeah, and i put some code to clear out your DB if the turn ever goes down from what you have in your ini file, like when i do a db reset, but its probably a good idea to delete your U#.ini file and your U# directory before logging in with the new GUI

New ZIP Update. Download at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/galsim.zip New Features Its pretty late so I am just going to summarize all the changes - Fleets are now very important and are the only way of giving many types of orders - Ships that are not in a fleet are not able to detect, fire weapons, really anything. - Each fleet can be given a formation pretty easily - ESCORT order can now be given to escort a ship OR a fleet - DOCK order can now be given to land on a ship OR a fleet. if set to dock on a fleet, it will land on any ship with space within the fleet - i decided not to go with the SUB FLEET idea kicked around earlier. Each fleet has the same capabilities as any other. Fleets can be listed under other fleets but it is strictly an organizational thing to clean up your display. If you want a fleet to have a position in a parent fleet formation you need to assign the one fleet to ESCORT the other one. - only a few types of orders can be given to ships directly, they are mostly admin like orders like diplomatic orders, and cargo orders (Dump, Transfer, etc). These orders cannot be given to fleets. - numerous GUI changes including highlighting of fleets in lists so that they are distinguished from ships - if you remember you could assign a ESCORT then DEFEND order where the ships would react within a range then return to their escort position. You can now do that with ESCORT then ATTACK orders, which gives some same behavior only without the range. - basically ships that dont have something to do will constantly try to get back into their position within their fleet - added WARHEAD break level (1 to 100) percentage of warheads onboard at which ship will break out of its current orders - all break levels, weapons free, weapons hold, warhead loadout is all now done ONLY at the fleet level - priority targets can be done at FLEET and ship level. if ship has any priority targets set up at its level, it will override the Fleet targets - brand new order called DOCKED CSP which is the first fully automated order that you could just leave alone and let it up. you set a ship to base out of (i would recommend setting a fleet as its home), a range to react within, and hull, fuel, warhead levels to LAUNCH at. That combined with the break levels create a continuous behavior of the ships in that fleet where they launch when at a certain prep level, defend their areas, when hitting break levels dock, rearm, refuel etc, and launch again continuously - probably a bunch more stuff but i cant remember. so try it out and let me know if there are issues. - oh yeah, each ship now has a more detailed status that is listed on its display instead of in its order list like before. - oh yeah, again, ships that now have no fuel will still kick out of many orders, but they will be able to get back to formation at limp speed (1/10th of normal). Have fun!

The GUI seems fine, so I will probably release it today. Since there is some fundamental changes in how orders are processed i want to make sure there are no issues with that, which shouldnt take too long with all of you helping test it. once that is done and you guys dont make me do another fundamental change LOL then I can start the economic piece. Hopefully this week?

Ok, I have finished (I think) the GUI code and will be doing the following I am going to clear the database of all ships and reset each user to just their Leader. since it is such a huge change I am going to test the code out a bit by myself before releasing it so you wont be able to login for a bit. Hopefully that wont be too long.