Need help on micromanagement
 

I started playing SE4 after MoO3(which is designed for macromanagement), and find it a pain to micromanage. Now after 80 turns, I have about 100 planets, and have to check a lot of reports making adjustments.

The type of planets can not been easily identified in the main screen,especially the moons. Colonizing after the 3 colonist tecs reached makes me mad.

It is a difficult job to find out which planets' atomasphere converter should be scraped after the atomasphere converted. The same climate and value enhancement facilities.

Do you guys have any ideas to let things be easier?

Forgive my English. Have I made myself clear?

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

If you click on planets in the menu bar, or press F4, you get a list of all the planets. You can then choose planets that are empty or breathable. you can even select such planets to send a colony vessel if you have the right one nearby. ALso if you Right click on the glaxy map in the bottom right corner and then left click a particular system you can place notes. Perhaps when you build a converter you can note when it was built and when you check a year later will now it is finished, although I think it should give you a message when it has finished converting, I've never made much use of converters. There is a lot of micromanagement, but that's pretty much what the whole game is about. I think one of the complaints about Moo3 on this forum is that it expected the computer to do most of the work for you and then it didn't do a very good job.

Edit: you can from Empire status (the big crown, or F11) select ministers to do your work. I've never made use of them myself and I hear the AI is bad.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Thank you for quick reply!Really quick!

I just like the feeling of prosperous galaxy. So I take advantage of every planets to make max use.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Hello and welcome to the forums!

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

If you want to make maximum use of each planet then try capturing aliens that breath different atmospheres. You can make full use of a planet if your slaves breath the same atmosphere and so can fully populate it.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

heimheim said:
It is a difficult job to find out which planets' atomasphere converter should be scraped after the atomasphere converted. The same climate and value enhancement facilities.

If you click on "goto" from the news log report, it will take you to the planet that just converted atmosphere, hit max climate or value.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

The AI ministers are generally pathetic and definitely not trustworthy. The only minister I would ever consider turning on is the population transport minister, and then only if I don't have multiple breather types in my empire.

There are quite a number of tricks you can use to reduce micromanagement, however. As mentioned before, there is a "Goto" button on the log screen that will take you directly to the planet, sector, ship, research screen, intelligence screen, or whatever that is relevant to the currently selected log entry. This allows easy location of new colonies that need to be filled up with facilities, newly converted atmospheres that need the converter scrapped and the new space filled, newly crew insurrected ships, fleets that just fought major battles, etc.

There is a repeat orders command that is very useful for certain things. Setting a planet to launch mines on repeat will make it automatically launch any mines you ever build there. You can set a population transport to endlessly load population from a homeworld and drop it somewhere else. If you're into fighters, you can repeat launch fighters, order them all to a particular location in system, and have a carrier on repeat orders to pick them up and take them to a central location.

Waypoints are essential to managing any truly large empire in a reasonable amount of time. Press alt+number and click to set a waypoint. You can then press ctrl+number to send the currently selected ship or fleet to that waypoint. You can set space yards to automatically send any ships they build to a particular waypoint, which is great for collecting all your ships at a central location, usually a training center, before sending them to the front. If you move a waypoint (just set a new one with the same number as the old), any ships already going there will automatically change course to the new location. Ships already at the waypoint will have already cleared the order, but they're all in one place already so it's easy to find them and deal with it. Waypoints can also be managed from a subscreen of the Empire Status (F11) screen.

Pressing the space bar takes you to the next ship/mobile unit stack that doesn't have orders, great for making sure you don't have anything sitting idle that shouldn't be. You can change some settings about how this behaves in empire options. I usually set it to skip ships in fleets because I manage those through the ships screen (F6), and often have large fleets sitting around training or guarding warp points, which would be looped through once for every ship in the fleet if I didn't have that option on.

In the Planets (F4), Colonies (F5), Ships (F6), and Construction (F7) screens, you can sort by any column by clicking on the top of that column. Each sort preserves the previous ordering where possible, so you can sort by size and by minerals value within size by clicking first on minerals value and then on size. Sorting by the picture in planets and colonies sorts by size, largest at the bottom. Sorting by item under construction in the construction screen puts all idle construction queues at the top. Clicking on any item in these lists takes you to that item; for construction queues, it takes you to the construction queue screen, not the place where it's located. You can add items to many queues at once by shift-clicking on a number of queues and then clicking the Multi-Add button.

If you're ever looking for a particular planet or system and don't have a convenient goto button for some reason, right-clicking on the galaxy map brings up a screen that includes a Goto System button that brings up an alphabetical list.

If you have a default build order for new colonies of a particular type and size and are getting tired of all the clicking to set it up every time, you can store it as a premade queue. Set it up once on a new planet and click the Fill Queue button. Click to add a new type, name the type, and click ok. From then on, you can add that exact sequence of items to any construction queue that has the capability to build them all by clicking the Fill Queue button and selecting the appropriate type. This is particularly useful for setting up Ringworlds and Sphereworlds to fill up their entire facility space, but be careful not to select those queues for smaller planets - you'll get one error message you have to click ok on for every facility in the queue beyond what the planet has room for.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

My recommendation for reducing Micromanagement is to look at difrerent mods. For example, look at FQM: It massively increases the number of planets and moons for you to colonise. The one multiplayer game I played under that mod led to micromanagement hell within a few dozen turns because I had so many damn planets. Not that I dislike FQM, mind you- it creates some great maps, but be prepared for some very dense empires.

Personally, I play Proportions. While an average empire in an unmodded game might well have every single planet and moon within eight systems of the homeworld colonised after a hundred turns, a proportions empire after the same number of turns would probably have just a few dozen well-developped worlds in strategic places- although they could easily express control over the same number of systems as in the stock game.

Just my 0.02 local currency.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Another way to reduce the management burden is to use a small map.

I really like micromanagement, but on a large map it can be difficult to control every little thing.

Welcome to SE4!

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

I agree with antonin, if you want to micromanage then play on a small map where it matters. On a large map its not going to make much difference if every planet and moon is at full rating.

Oh and I fully support and endorse the welcome from the narf-o-matic zombie mouse. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Grains!

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Grainy cheese? It wont catch on I tell you!

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Thank you.
I will try everything you told me this weekend.

When I send a ship to a target location, is there any easy way to know whether it can reach with its current supplies?
I always have supply problems, especially in using "send colony" order in "Planet Menu". Because they have orders, the "next ship" order will skip them, until I find ships filled with screen, which have already been out of supplies for a couple of turns.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

I'm afraid that one requires some calculation. First, figure out how many movement points it's going to take to get there. It helps to turn on ship movement lines in the F2->Options menu for this. Assuming you have movement lines turned on and the ship selected, count the squares from the destination to the last square with a lower number in it, add that lower number times the ship's movement per turn, and add the ship's current remaining movement points for this turn. For a ship with 5 movement per turn, none left, and the following movement line in the final system:

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The movement points required to get there would be 3 + (6 * 5) + 0 = 33. Multiply this number by 10 times the number of engines on the ship. The result is the required amount of supplies for the trip.

A ship with full supplies and no supply storage from anything but the engines can move 50 squares before running out of supplies.

To find ships that are low on supplies, browse the ships list (F6) and look for a barrel with a yellow or red bottom under the name. Yellow indicated less than 1000 supplies, red means no supplies.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Another option is to research Solar Collectors, which will supply your ships with, at the highest tech level, 150 points of supply for each solar collector component per star in the system each turn. For example, say you have two level 2 solar collectors on your colony ship, and are in a system with 2 stars. You would get (100*2)*2=400 supplies. 100 for the component, multiplied by 2 for the number of components and 2 for the number of stars. This number of bonus supplies would last a colony ship for 8 moves, and you're unlikely to get ships with no supplies.

Re: Need help on micromanagement
 

Another way to reduce micro management is to enable only colonize homeworld type and only colonize breathable type.

Makes for a very different game.