[raynor]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
You did originally say that the game did not do that, and it used resources to pay for facilities that never get built.

It's a bit confusing, yes?

Originally, I complained because I cleared the queue, and it didn't clear 'Repeat Build'. I ended up with three facilities in the queue with repeab build left on. The top item was a spaceport, and it built three of them.

Later in the discussion, someone pointed out that one of the reasons for multiple items in the build queue is so that you could repeat build a facility until the planet is full and then start producing units. They described a nifty neat new feature that looks to see if the planet is full. When it is full, the repeat build facility is removed from the queue, and the game starts with the next item.

The unique and quite unusual behavior that we discovered, though, is that once the game detects that the planet is full and deletes the top queue entry facility, it NEVER, NEVER checks that again. So, if you have a *second* facility in the queue, then the game will try forever and ever to build that item without successfully completing it. (And yes, it will waste those resources.)

DirectorTsaarx suggests an interesting use of this "feature" of the UI. You might use it to fill the planet, for example, with research centers and then start building the Computer Complex. The game would build Research Centers until the planet is full. It would detect that the planet is full and remove the research center from the queue. It would then begin building the computer complex.

The turn before the computer complex should be finished, the player could go "eject" the research complex. This creative approach would let you have four turns use of the Research Center before you ejected it to make room on the Last turn for the Computer Complex. (Normally, you wouldn't start building the Computer Complex unless you had an empty facility slot. Since it takes five turns to build the Computer Complex, you would have four or so turns of non-use for that facility slot.)

In my Last post, I was speaking specifically of the situation where you just have one facility in the queue. When the planet becomes full, the game removes this queue entry.

In one line of speaking, this default UI behavior may be described as the game "second guessing" your strategic decisions. It is easily possible to envision a scenario where you might want to repeat build facilities on a planet *after* it has become full. But the UI requires you to delete a facilty, issue a build order every single turn instead of allowing the repeat build order to continue and letting you just delete a facility every turn.

Now, that I've said that, this one should be easy:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickeled peppers.



[ February 25, 2003, 14:21: Message edited by: raynor ]