03-08-2014, 07:05 AM
And now for turn 14...
Argh. I must have fat-fingered the orders where I enlarged my new colonizer ship and stocked it with light structural units (to be used in constructing my new colony.) Instead of LTSU-2 I apparently ordered LTSU-4, which I don't have. So now my colonizer is sitting in orbit 2, burning fuel, with 15m people on it, and it has to come BACK HOME.
This gets to what is my one big gripe with this game. I should have an alert or warning when I enter a bad order. The interface does help tremendously (compared to when we used to do all this on paper), by guiding us through the order writing process. But I should have had a red flag go up when I tried to add materials to a ship that I didn't have. I would think that in real life, I would have noticed that my structural units were tech-2, not tech-4, and I certainly wouldn't have sent 15m colonists on their merry way without their supplies.
On the other hand, this player-fallibility does have an air of realism about it. Snafus happen all the time in the real world. The handful of other players in this game who have posted here seem to have hit similar snags. And one Legends player (another high-complexity PBM beast) said that even as a veteran, he generally strived for limiting himself to just one bad error per turn. And as a programmer, I can tell you that error-proofing data input can be very difficult and time-consuming.
Back to the first hand, though -- this error-prone order writing thing is potentially one of the big barriers to entry on this game. The dedicated fans will deal with it enthusiastically, but newbies will become frustrated.
Anyway, couple more things to note about this turn:
- Got pinged by another player via his scout. I haven't been probing my home system each turn, which is dumb. I need to set that up as a recurring order.
- All my aliens from the outpost have been safely assimilated into my home planet.
- My orbiter is now growing excess food in the hydroponic farms, which I need to shuttle down to the planet now and then to keep it from overflowing. Good.
- My consumer goods pipeline is falling short. After I doubled its size in the first 4 turns of the game, I thought I was good for a while, but now I see my stockpiles are running low. I am retooling some factories to CNGD production now.
- I boosted missile tech higher. Missiles are less versatile than energy weapons -- you need to pair missile launchers with the exact same tech level of missiles, the missiles are expended upon use, and there are 2 techs that can shoot down incoming missiles -- anti-missiles and energy weapons. I imagine that most players would focus on energy weapons for simplicity, versatility, etc. So I went the other way. Why? Because the damage energy weapons deliver drops over distance, while each missile that hits delivers the full punch. And you'll always hit within a certain range that goes up as missile and sensor tech advances. So I am testing a risky strategy -- use more expensive weapons that require more research, to use with ships that now need to enter battle "high" (ie: at greater distance) to maximize that edge, and hope that my feeble energy shields will hold their lasers off.
- Finally, retooled more factories into building these new missiles and more production goods.
Argh. I must have fat-fingered the orders where I enlarged my new colonizer ship and stocked it with light structural units (to be used in constructing my new colony.) Instead of LTSU-2 I apparently ordered LTSU-4, which I don't have. So now my colonizer is sitting in orbit 2, burning fuel, with 15m people on it, and it has to come BACK HOME.
This gets to what is my one big gripe with this game. I should have an alert or warning when I enter a bad order. The interface does help tremendously (compared to when we used to do all this on paper), by guiding us through the order writing process. But I should have had a red flag go up when I tried to add materials to a ship that I didn't have. I would think that in real life, I would have noticed that my structural units were tech-2, not tech-4, and I certainly wouldn't have sent 15m colonists on their merry way without their supplies.
On the other hand, this player-fallibility does have an air of realism about it. Snafus happen all the time in the real world. The handful of other players in this game who have posted here seem to have hit similar snags. And one Legends player (another high-complexity PBM beast) said that even as a veteran, he generally strived for limiting himself to just one bad error per turn. And as a programmer, I can tell you that error-proofing data input can be very difficult and time-consuming.
Back to the first hand, though -- this error-prone order writing thing is potentially one of the big barriers to entry on this game. The dedicated fans will deal with it enthusiastically, but newbies will become frustrated.
Anyway, couple more things to note about this turn:
- Got pinged by another player via his scout. I haven't been probing my home system each turn, which is dumb. I need to set that up as a recurring order.
- All my aliens from the outpost have been safely assimilated into my home planet.
- My orbiter is now growing excess food in the hydroponic farms, which I need to shuttle down to the planet now and then to keep it from overflowing. Good.
- My consumer goods pipeline is falling short. After I doubled its size in the first 4 turns of the game, I thought I was good for a while, but now I see my stockpiles are running low. I am retooling some factories to CNGD production now.
- I boosted missile tech higher. Missiles are less versatile than energy weapons -- you need to pair missile launchers with the exact same tech level of missiles, the missiles are expended upon use, and there are 2 techs that can shoot down incoming missiles -- anti-missiles and energy weapons. I imagine that most players would focus on energy weapons for simplicity, versatility, etc. So I went the other way. Why? Because the damage energy weapons deliver drops over distance, while each missile that hits delivers the full punch. And you'll always hit within a certain range that goes up as missile and sensor tech advances. So I am testing a risky strategy -- use more expensive weapons that require more research, to use with ships that now need to enter battle "high" (ie: at greater distance) to maximize that edge, and hope that my feeble energy shields will hold their lasers off.
- Finally, retooled more factories into building these new missiles and more production goods.