Bruce Hake

Join Date 05/2003

Basic UI Questions

moving ships

I've read the user's manual several times, and I've done the tutorial, and I've studied the key bindings, and nowhere is it explained how to move ships once a game has gotten complicated.

In most 4X games, one can select a unit and hit a button that means "finish up preset path." That seems to be lacking here.

In most 4X games, there's a button that means "finish up all preset paths." That seems to be lacking here.

Therefore, the most efficient way I've found to control all my ships is (a) to make them all "stationed" at a planet or starbase, or moving along a preset path, then ( to scroll through the list of ships in the Resource Details display, clicking on ships that are marked as "idling" or "moving," then right-clicking at the end of the preset path to get a ship to move for that turn.

But this is very tedious and inefficient, for at least three reasons. First, you have to specifically move each unit every turn. Second, if a unit has a long preset path, there's a lot of time for scrolling the map every single turn for that one unit (even when the map is zoomed all the way out. Third, the list of ships in the Resource Details display shows every single ship, including all the ones that are stationed. So there is a great deal of scrolling past stationed ships, each and every turn.

I don't remember the controls in GalCiv2, but I don't think it was anywhere near this tedious.

The list of starbases in the Resource Details display has tabs that let you show (1) all, or (2) just shipyards, or (3) just starbases. That's very useful. I hope an upcoming patch will add tab settings like that to the ships display, so I can suppress the stationed ships.

I've played every version of GalCiv, all the way back to the original OS/2 version, which I think was the best of all because it was so novel and it was the only good game ever programmed for OS/2. I expect to devote a lot of time to GalCiv3, but I hope the issues above can be addressed.

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Not sure if I understand your problem, but hitting "end turn" will cause all your ships to follow their preset paths.

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Larsenex

Join Date 04/2009

+212

Ship organization and UI fixes will be heading out the door in a patch next week or so. Better ship and fleet management will be in that patch.

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Glad for immediate answers. Great to know a fleet management path is on the way. In my game the Turn button does not always move every ship with a preset path. I just tested this for 15 minutes, and it often does, but it seems that if you manually move a ship and then add a preset path, you have to hit Turn twice before the ship moves. That slows things down quite a bit.

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A ship has a set amount of movement points per turn. If you use them manually the ship can't move until next turn regardless of whether you set the ship on autopilot or not. IOW ships with preset paths move at the end of the turn. You can notice this by choosing a ship set on a preset path and see that it has all of its movement points of that turn still left which, of course, allows you to take control of it and move it manually at that same turn. I think this is quite a logical approach.

There is a minor problem with the system, though. Because the automatic movement happens at the end of the turn you have no chance of moving that ship until the next turn. Thus, if you don't want to lose movement points you must set automatic paths to end so that they cost exact turn amounts which is hard to do with longer paths as the path turn counter stops showing after 14 or 15 or so.

A minor annoyance but an annoyance nonetheless...

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No, I don't believe that is correct. I just tested this at the start of a game. For all three starter ships, I right-clicked to a nearby star. That moves them as far as they can go and establishes a preset path to the star. At this point it's the end of turn 1, all three ships have moved their maximum, and each has a preset path. If you then hit Turn, it becomes turn 2, but none of ships move. You have to hit Turn a second time, making it turn 3, before the ships move. Especially at the start of a game, this makes a HUGE difference! If you move each ship manually every turn, you move much faster. Later in the game, when you have lots of builder ships going to remote locations, it may not matter very much, but it's critical for early expansion. Please correct me if my observation is illogical, but I'm pretty sure it is accurate.

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Yes, the setting of the path immediately executes the move for that turn. Treat it as a manual move, if you like. The next moves after that are all executed at the end of the turn after you hit the turn button but before the next turn starts. However, the eventual result is the same regardless whether you move your ship manually or using the path automation.

Count the turns it takes to reach the same destination result. Suppose you are moving a 4 mp ship to a destination 12 hexes away.

Option #1: Manual movement

Turn 1: You manually move the ship 4 hexes and have now traveled 1/3 of the distance. Your ship has no move points left. You hit "turn".

Turn 2: You manually move the ship 4 hexes and have now traveled 2/3 of the distance. Your ship has no move points left. You hit "turn".

Turn 3: You manually move the ship 4 hexes and have now reached the destination but your ship has no move points left. You hit "turn".

Turn 4: It's the start of the turn and your ship has full move points and it sits in the destination awaiting your commands.

Option #2: Setting a path to the destination

Turn 1: You set the path to the destination 12 hexes away. Your ship moves immediately 4 hexes and has now traveled 1/3 of the distance. You hit "turn".

Turn 2: Your ship has full move points left. You hit "turn". The ship moves 4 hexes and has now traveled 2/3 of the distance.

Turn 3: Your ship has full move points left. You hit "turn". The ship moves 4 hexes and has now reached the destination.

Turn 4: It's the start of the turn and your ship has full move points and it sits in the destination awaiting your commands.

--> The outcome from both options is that at the start of turn 4 you have a ship in the destination with full movement points and awaiting your commands.

You aren't losing anything by using the path automation.

(That is, assuming you set the path so that the path distance is evenly divisible by the movement points. Which you should do.)

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Petri, Thanks. I've confirmed that you are correct. This will save me a great deal of tedium! It's been something like 10 years since I played GalCiv2 for thousands of hours; I'm amazed to be confused about such a basic detail. Incidentally, I confirmed this just as you said by starting a new game, scrapping two ships, setting a path for the remaining ship to a point 16 hexes away, and then moving there both ways. As you say, both ways on turn 5 you're at the destination with full movement points. I still find this a little mysterious: one more sign I'm getting old.

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Petri Kokko,

I agree with Bruce. I am new to this game, because I just bought it this weekend. I love it. But, it is very confusing how auto-moving the ship works. I just kept manually moving the ships, because they didn't auto-move on me. After you set a destination, they should auto-move at first before the next turn, if movement points are left, not at the end of the next turn.

I wish that it would be considered to modify this slightly, maybe even make a way to show AUTO-MOVEMENT of all with colored path. Yes, now it is, if you click. Be nice to select ships that don't have auto-movement, then move them manually.

Basically, it feels a little hard knowing which ships are auto-moved and which are not, because I didn't true the AI system to move them for me.

But, let me play some more and see if I can fully understand what you said.

Thanks.

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