Alpha War 1 feedback

[Hetulik]

Hi Caleb,
First off, i'm very impressed, no major issues i can find.

I wanted to start a thread where folks can leave their feedback.

A couple items of feedback:
1) As we discussed in the game the chat and info windows can get stuck sometimes. I like how you can look through them and they will hold position, but often times it will stop scrolling with new activity. And it will be a minute before i realize i'm missing conversation or galaxy information occuring.

2) I'd like to update the gas giant graphics. There is one planet graphic that doesn't look at all like a gas giant, but in fact is a gas giant. I'd like to visually look at a system and know which planets i should head to to scoop fuel.

The last item is more of a potential wishlist item. For the "Capacity Percent" on the economic reports. I'd love to see a delta for a 12 hour period or 24 hour period. When i'm PMing, i like to look at the capacity percentage difference. For example this morning my mining percentage capacity might be 10.62% and 12 hours later i see my capacity percent is 11.39% and that would clearly let me see i can either reduce the engineering assignment, or reduce the percentage of engineers assigned to building additional mining capacity. Right now I save econ reports, overlay them, then look between the two to see the deltas in various statistics. Basically i'd like to see the rate of change for the capacity percentages over X period of time.

Also it would be interesting if i can generate econ reports for different periods i specify, versus just the last time i clicked on the econ report.

Great work,
Hetulik

[Cossid]

1) As we discussed in the game the chat and info windows can get stuck sometimes. I like how you can look through them and they will hold position, but often times it will stop scrolling with new activity. And it will be a minute before i realize i'm missing conversation or galaxy information occuring.

This is on my list of things to look into. The scrollbar is a kind of odd thing in the display technology being uses, but I think I have a couple ideas to fix this. It bugs me just as much, I can assure you!

2) I'd like to update the gas giant graphics. There is one planet graphic that doesn't look at all like a gas giant, but in fact is a gas giant. I'd like to visually look at a system and know which planets i should head to to scoop fuel.

I can't really do this. There are 3 types of planets you can scoop fuel from; Red Gas Giants, Blue Gas Giants, and Hostile Type 1. Red and Blue gas giants are giant based on their mass, hostiles are much smaller. But the further wrench is that Hostile Type 1 planets are a transition type planet. About 25% of them do not have hydrogen and are actually habitable. Those 25% cannot be scooped from, but the other 75% can. This is completely true to SE, and I actually prefer to leave it this way. Red & Blue will still be the primary source of fuel scooping.

The breakdown of planets that do (sometimes) have hydrogen is roughly this:
Red Gas Giants: 10.5% of all planets
Blue Gas Giants: 24% of all planets
Hostile Type 1 with hydrogen: 16% of all planets
Hostile Type 1 without hydrogen: 7% of all planets

So for Hostile Type 1, it is the job of the player to determine if they can scoop. Most people just went to Red/Blue gas giants in SE.

The last item is more of a potential wishlist item. For the "Capacity Percent" on the economic reports. I'd love to see a delta for a 12 hour period or 24 hour period. When i'm PMing, i like to look at the capacity percentage difference. For example this morning my mining percentage capacity might be 10.62% and 12 hours later i see my capacity percent is 11.39% and that would clearly let me see i can either reduce the engineering assignment, or reduce the percentage of engineers assigned to building additional mining capacity. Right now I save econ reports, overlay them, then look between the two to see the deltas in various statistics. Basically i'd like to see the rate of change for the capacity percentages over X period of time.

There are two issues here. The first is that this game can have various acceleration ratios, so the number of real hours means different things, and and different points in the war where costs charge could end up giving unexpected results. The second issue is that this would require the server to store or calculate additional information that will mostly go unused. Currently, I save a snopshot any time a user displays an economic report. I do plan on using this information in the future to add a graphing feature, which would probably end up similar to what you're looking for, but it will be the user's responsibility to run the economic reports to ensure the data they want is there.

Also it would be interesting if i can generate econ reports for different periods i specify, versus just the last time i clicked on the econ report.

I think this falls into the graph feature I mentioned above.

[Hetulik]

Thanks for your replies Caleb.

All your points make complete sense. I forgot about the blue/red gas giants and hostile planets. Its been quite a few years. Maybe i was initially taken back because hostile planets looked like a mars type planet instead of a hostile one. Keep it the way it is, but maybe tweak the planet graphic at some point in the future.

And regarding econ reports that completely makes sence. I can see the cost if you needed to store the data. How about if you indicated the capacity percentage change since the last time a PM report was run? Is that data you have? If so, is there even realestate to put that data? If nothing is doable in this regard thats perfectly fine. This is definitely very low priority.

Thanks,
Hetulik

[Cossid]

Yes, the data is there, but no, there is not much real estate. It would be likely that I add a graph option as a separate feature to the econ report, but it would only use the data from user generated econ reports.

As for the graphics, yes, most, if not all will be replaced.

[Cossid]

A couple items of feedback:
1) As we discussed in the game the chat and info windows can get stuck sometimes. I like how you can look through them and they will hold position, but often times it will stop scrolling with new activity. And it will be a minute before i realize i'm missing conversation or galaxy information occuring.

This should now be fixed in 0.7.0.3, please let me know if it continues to act weird.

The expected functionality should be:
If your scroll position is at the very bottom at the time new text is added, it will continue moving it to the bottom as new text is added. If it is not at the very bottom, it remains where it is (so it is still easy to read what you're trying to read while new data is coming in).

[bishop]

Just a note for future use. Home computer pretty new so no issues with the S/E install. Work computer had issues with the .NET framework install though. Tried four times with error issues. Also un-installed the older version each time. Turns out I had a registry issue and had to use a Microsoft registry fix for this program. Installed fine after that.

[Cossid]

Thanks for the heads up, was the error code 80004005 by chance?

[bishop]

No numbers. It would install about half way and then say there had been an error installing. Something like, "make sure all the needed components were installed". Also, as to which option to install, don't use what they call the "boot strap" package. Use the full install.

On a different note, anyone have a link I can look at that has planet setting info? I have totally forgotten. Thanks!

[Cossid]

http://alpha.stellaremperor.com/About/P ... ntOverview has basic summary, which probably isn't what you're looking for, but I'll link that anyway.

http://archives.stellaremperor.com/files/documents/ contains various old documents such as Pitchonomics which is probably more along the lines of what you are looking for.

[Hetulik]

Hi Caleb,
Can you put the % unemployed on the web pming screen? Its on the GUI screen, but not the web.

Thanks,
Hetulik

[MuManiac]

Im still waiting for my beer holder.

[Cossid]

Hi Caleb,
Can you put the % unemployed on the web pming screen? Its on the GUI screen, but not the web.

Thanks,
Hetulik

I have moved Bu below Housing and added a % for Unemployed

[Cossid]

Im still waiting for my beer holder.

You need to earn that

[Hetulik]

Hi Caleb,
Can you do a confirmation for abandon planet in the GUI? Seems like it would be very easy to abandon your planet as you're clicking around. I've love a confirmation button or option before nuking your planet and all your guns etc...

Thanks for your prompt response to the unemployment request!

Planetary warfare seems to work pretty well

Thanks,
Hetulik

[Cossid]

Hi Caleb,
Can you do a confirmation for abandon planet in the GUI? Seems like it would be very easy to abandon your planet as you're clicking around. I've love a confirmation button or option before nuking your planet and all your guns etc...

I will add a popup dialog when the option is chosen from the left menu. It will not happen when being triggered from command line. This will be in the next client release.