12-27-2021, 10:56 PM
I'm very sorry about that! I love to answer questions, too, so there's always that option.
My apologies about escaping commas - I didn't think that was a problem (I thought I'd quoted all strings) so I'll have to check into it.
Getting lost in the data is easy when you first start. After a bit of practice you can comfortably spot the raw data you need directly in the report, but it's not particularly easy to put it all together. That's why I built the GTac Assistant (back when I was just a player; the first versions were even before Windows). It helps you manage that bounty of data (both current and historical) much more easily.
One really major part of GTac is the mapping system, of course, which lets you see nearly all that data in a graphical way. It comes with some built-in maps for the basics, like where your colonies and shuttle routes are, but it also lets you design your own (from those basics or from scratch). With custom maps you can combine bits and pieces of other things together into a single view and helps you with organizational and strategic planning. You'd be amazed at what you can show with it -- for a simple example, how about the location of all your warfleets bigger than 500 SSD and boxes around each of them showing how far you expect them to be able to move in a turn. Double-clicking on stars also gives you access to location specific information such as the history of what's happened there, ships located there or nearby, ranges to other locations, and other such details. Right-clicking on the ship lists gives you access to a menu of various commands that you can issue directly to that ship without having to type in anything - which can be very helpful for beginning players. And of course you can save your map definitions so they update themselves with fresh information every turn.
Another helpful piece I called the Empire Status Report. It looks really trivial at first but packs an awful lot of information in a little bit of text. For instance, it lists all the shuttle routes that you've defined, what colonies aren't being shuttled to at all, what shuttles don't have enough cargo space to pick up everything on that route, where you've got overlapped or missing ships on each leg, where the ships can't get from place to place in single hops, etc. It tells you a lot of information about the very things that gave you problems, and that's just one aspect of this report.
Of course, you're allowed to enter and edit your orders directly on your PC (with prompting assistance) and have it upload them to the web site for you. But before you do always run the error-checking process on the turn to tell you where you might have made any number of mistakes, from syntactical problems and typos that refer to significantly wrong ships or stars, to mis-designing ships or running out of money to spend in a particular location.
In general, with just a little practice it can really help you play the game and in less time and with more enjoyment.
You still have plenty of free play time available on the site. I'd like to suggest that you sign up to play in one (or more) of the currently-filling galaxies out there. They'll be a while before they fill up enough to start and you can use that time (as your New Year's resolution, perhaps?) to start up a solo game and try out some of the fun stuff whenever you have time to give it, since solo (practice) games don't run on a fixed schedule. Once you get used to doing things in the game system and using GTac to make your play easier you'll be able to start creating and trying out both economic and military strategies that you think will work against future human opponents.
Do you think you might give it another try?
My apologies about escaping commas - I didn't think that was a problem (I thought I'd quoted all strings) so I'll have to check into it.
Getting lost in the data is easy when you first start. After a bit of practice you can comfortably spot the raw data you need directly in the report, but it's not particularly easy to put it all together. That's why I built the GTac Assistant (back when I was just a player; the first versions were even before Windows). It helps you manage that bounty of data (both current and historical) much more easily.
One really major part of GTac is the mapping system, of course, which lets you see nearly all that data in a graphical way. It comes with some built-in maps for the basics, like where your colonies and shuttle routes are, but it also lets you design your own (from those basics or from scratch). With custom maps you can combine bits and pieces of other things together into a single view and helps you with organizational and strategic planning. You'd be amazed at what you can show with it -- for a simple example, how about the location of all your warfleets bigger than 500 SSD and boxes around each of them showing how far you expect them to be able to move in a turn. Double-clicking on stars also gives you access to location specific information such as the history of what's happened there, ships located there or nearby, ranges to other locations, and other such details. Right-clicking on the ship lists gives you access to a menu of various commands that you can issue directly to that ship without having to type in anything - which can be very helpful for beginning players. And of course you can save your map definitions so they update themselves with fresh information every turn.
Another helpful piece I called the Empire Status Report. It looks really trivial at first but packs an awful lot of information in a little bit of text. For instance, it lists all the shuttle routes that you've defined, what colonies aren't being shuttled to at all, what shuttles don't have enough cargo space to pick up everything on that route, where you've got overlapped or missing ships on each leg, where the ships can't get from place to place in single hops, etc. It tells you a lot of information about the very things that gave you problems, and that's just one aspect of this report.
Of course, you're allowed to enter and edit your orders directly on your PC (with prompting assistance) and have it upload them to the web site for you. But before you do always run the error-checking process on the turn to tell you where you might have made any number of mistakes, from syntactical problems and typos that refer to significantly wrong ships or stars, to mis-designing ships or running out of money to spend in a particular location.
In general, with just a little practice it can really help you play the game and in less time and with more enjoyment.
You still have plenty of free play time available on the site. I'd like to suggest that you sign up to play in one (or more) of the currently-filling galaxies out there. They'll be a while before they fill up enough to start and you can use that time (as your New Year's resolution, perhaps?) to start up a solo game and try out some of the fun stuff whenever you have time to give it, since solo (practice) games don't run on a fixed schedule. Once you get used to doing things in the game system and using GTac to make your play easier you'll be able to start creating and trying out both economic and military strategies that you think will work against future human opponents.
Do you think you might give it another try?