Micromanagment, Ministers and Annoying Details

You can view atmosphere columns in the colony screen by creating a new layout with the Layout button.

That would be like saying, upgrade my apple to a pinapple. They have similar names and are both fruit but are not nearly the same thing. Such is the same for mineral to monolith and space yard to temporal space yard.

the colony types are only important to the colony ministers. A mining colony would focus on mineral facs and a refining colony would focus on rad facs. A farming colony focuses on organics.

Personally, I don't use or trust ministers.

I can't really imagine what a "temporal" spaceyard would be anyway.

Since monoliths take about 3 turns, I just scrap one mineral and build one monolith at a time on any particular colony. Beware the environmental effects of monoliths, 15 - 20 of them on a world can downgrade the quality pretty fast.

Pretty much in all my PBW games I micro each and every one of my colonies almost every turn to make sure I'm getting the best out of every turn. The ministers aren't really good and I turned them on for 1 turn and they messed everything up in my empire.

Lector, I actually don't feel that there's a lot of micromanagement in this game. I build my colonies once they're colonized and basically forget. The only time I have to go back in to scrap/rebuild is when I'm implementing atmospheric modification plants, or whatever the hell they're called, and the custom layouts makes that job pretty easy. I was sure you can view atmosphere, because that's the screen I use to scrap facilities to make way for changing the atmosphere. I'll review when I get home.

i usually use the construction list that shows all planets to add items in the construction que. from that list you can select multiple colonies at one time and add items to all their ques at once. i agree upgrading from plain spaceyards to temporal spaceyards is a pain but i usually only have to do that on the 1st 10-15 planets that i colonized b4 i gained temporal spaceyards after that i just construct temporal sy 1st. also if you are trying to setup the same items in the same order each time you can make a list or several lists of items in the que and save. next time you want to build those items in that order just select that list and it adds them to the que automatically. scrapping is a little harder as you have to do each planet individually, i have tried selecting multiple planets but it only scrapped from the last one i selected. in SE:IV there was the ability to scrap all facilities of a type empire wide which was useful.

i am currently trying to combine all the components and facilities so that instead of have specific items for each race you would have 1 item that would have the ability of all of them in one. thus a shipyard would automatically gain temporal abilities once you have gain the required skill level. armor components on ships would automatically gain either organic or crystalline abilities once researched or both if you happen to have both racial traits. same thing with the ships themselves. my prefered choice of play it to take all the racial traits and take penalites to mining/farming/refining, reduce my pop growth. this way i wont have to have all 3 lists of ships nor keep track of each and every racial component and facility, with the exception of weappons of course. only thing is i dont know how to mod the scripts so the other races will use this instead of looking for the race specific items.

My idea for the temporal Space Yard is to make it's ability "increase mineral construction by amount per turn. and organic and radioactives... the amount in this will be an increase percentage in the original space yards construction rate. This makes it build a lot faster, becasue you still have your original space yard. Also it is still a benifit to research both space yard tech and temporal tech.

SEV, more than a feeling.

My idea for the temporal Space Yard is to make it's ability "increase mineral construction by amount per turn". and organic and radioactives... the amount in this will be an increase percentage in the original space yards construction rate. This makes it build a lot faster, becasue you still have your original space yard. Also it is still a benifit to research both space yard tech and temporal tech.

SEV, more than a feeling.

You have to understand that Temporal Space Yards are of a different family than regular space yards. It may seem a little counter-intuitive, but that's the way the game is set up. You can upgrade from a facility of one family to a more advanced one of the same family, but not between two families. The same goes for the Monoliths, though I agree that having to scrap is a real pain.

I don't think that there is any way to mod around this, but if enough people want it, then Malfador might change it.

For me, micromanaging gets the best from my empire, but I've never gotten to 100 planets. With 50 planets I can usually build a 500 battleship fleet in 3 years, then I get bored and start over.
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I’m with Litcube, in essence my strategy is fire and forget when it comes to colony management. The only time I go back is to add a newly discovered facility that increases the planet or system production. Racial techs are ones I tend to develop early, which decreases the need for me to make changes to a large number of systems.

If you want to avoid the superfluous, annoying confirmation nag deselecting the colony you've been scrapping things on, left-click and drag the box away from the colony list before you click OK.

It's a time backwards, joy-killing exercise in frustration, but I'm unfortunately pretty sure it's the least complicated and time consuming way to go about it.

Another useful tip is to change the roman numerals of the colony names to normal numbers, because sorting colonies alphabetically don't work quite right if you don't.

Personally I don't care if facility X is replaced or upgraded (regardless of whether a turn of production or two is lost or gained), but it a method like that should be implemented, because anything else is just a nuisance. And I'm not seeing how it serves any purpose - sort of like the obligatory colony de-selection nag that's trying so hard to stop us using the colony list.

... I always end up sounding really annoyed on here. I'm not, really. It's just that so many of the changes from IV to V reminds me of Win9x to WinXP changes. Need to look at a program file? Alright then. Here's 10 minutes of pointless navigation terror before you're allowed to see what's in the Dir. Want to scrap a facility and go to the colony's build queue? Alright then. Here's 10 minutes of pointless navigation terror before you're allowed to go to the right colony

It's very easy to get the impression designers of things like these never actually tried using them.

Imagine the pure joy of micromanaging SEV, if only the colony list had a dynamic sidebar listing all the details, scrapping without nags, and a functional construction queue. I want that almost as badly as I want faster turn resolution and an AI.

In the unlikely event that can actually be done, and one of you brilliant modders have a go at it, please consider what information's relevant to look at at the same time. Is it, for example, really a great idea to list the colony inventory where it can't be seen from the construction queue?

Finally.. Am I the only one who doesn't get how ministers work? And if they're any good, is there a quick crash course in minister use somewhere?

I would really like to be able to have the various menues remember where I was last time the screen automatically closed. For instance, Your sending colony ships to colonize from the planet window, You've scrolled down to find a group of planets that need ships... You send one ship, the window closes and you see that ship sail off... now you have to reopen the window (that's fine)... BUT now you have to go find that group of planets again.

Every window does this. Another example is when you scrap a facility in the construction window. The screen resets it's self and you go back up to the top... now you have to go find that planet again that you just scraped the facility on!!!

SEV, more than a feeling.

Ministers just run specific AI functions from the default script. A normal AI has all the ministers turned on, so this gives you the idea of what kind of job they'll do.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod