Status of systems not presently seen

[Karibu]

Furthermore, I think it is not difficult to make the code check if there is this "old sysem view" information on the computer when you open new turn. If it not found, it is simply not included (and your galaxy view is like it is today). This way you can play when you are travelling and not beside your own computer (so when playing your turn any other that your own computer, you just will not get the "old system" information). Granted, this puts travelling players little different position than those who do not travel, but it is still manageable to play. At the end, Travellers do not get any LESS information than today, others just get little more.

[Asmala]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
And just were did you get those numbers? A hat, I presume. You have no idea how MM implemented those objects (and neither do I) Ship names must certainly be included, as they can be seen. And all of the data you can see for ships, including damage they have if appropriate. It is a bit more than you would imagine...

Not exactly from a hat. I thought what information I see about enemy planets and ships and calculated how much space I need to store that information. Ship names would need a lot of space, at least in some circumstances. 2000 ships with 20 characters names would take 40 kb or less depending what letters are allowed to ship names (how many bits you need per character). I think it's not necessarily to have ship names, class names are enough. And why the damage ships had should be saved? You never see it if you don't have a ships/units with long range scanner in the system.

17 KB per player... you also have to factor in the fact that every empire has to have data stored for whether all those ships/planets can be seen. And then you have to store 21 different Versions of what is in every single system (and then more if neutral races get created mid-game through intel or events). 1 for the actual data, and one for the Last thing every race saw for that system. It gets much larger than just that 17 KB. Sure, you can have optimizations and have an empty byte storing a bool for unexplored systems. But as soon as they become explored, you have to start adding data whenever stuff is seen.

Information you need for a planet:
resource values 3 bytes
population 2 bytes
coordinates 1 byte
owner 1 byte
total 7 bytes

Information you need for a ship (name not included):
class 1 byte (I assume classes are stored somewhere so you need only the ID of the class)
coordinates 1 byte
total 2 bytes

For units the class are replaced by number of the units and the type of the unit (fighter, satellite...)

Then it's saved for every empire every system they have visited but not see at the moment. To go over 5000 ships and 1000 planets you have to see a very large area. And if you see more than 5000 ships and 1000 planets the savegame file are probably some megabytes, so it's not a big deal if it goes over 17 kb / player.

[DavidG]

Fyron I don't understand why you keep dumping on this idea. It is an excellent idea. Let MM decide if and how it's to be impelmented. It clearly is possible without affecting the transfered file sizes.

[Parasite]

Please don't forget the ability to modify that data. You infect a planet with plauge and know it is losing population. You see a fleet of 100 ships then 100 ships appear at the warp point and (hopefully) get destroyed. I would want to remove that old fleet from the information.

[Fyron]

Not displaying ship names removes some of the RP aspects of the game, so removing them would be a bad idea. They need to be kept.

Not displaying the damage of ships for these overviews is also a bad idea because that is criticial information. If you saw that ships were damaged, why should you have to forget it? That makes no sense. It is extremely useful information when you have it. Unfortunately in stock SE4, the long range scanners are not very useful. But, there are mods that change that.

The data for ships would be much, much larger than 2 bytes. Quite a few for the name, and then 1 for every single component on the ships, to tell if it is damaged or not.

Also, do not forget the fact that it is entirely possible to see the same ship in a whole bunch of systems as your Last visit, especially if you are being followed by them. Do not forget about the worst case scenarios... they make a huge difference.

Originally posted by DavidG:
Fyron I don't understand why you keep dumping on this idea. It is an excellent idea. Let MM decide if and how it's to be impelmented. It clearly is possible without affecting the transfered file sizes.

Please show me where I ever said it was a bad idea or that I did not like the idea. All I have said is that it would increase the size of savegame files by quite a bit. Not in the beginning of the game, but once you start seeing more and more of the map, the extra data to store builds up.

[ December 02, 2003, 21:03: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Not displaying ship names removes some of the RP aspects of the game, so removing them would be a bad idea. They need to be kept.

Not displaying the damage of ships for these overviews is also a bad idea because that is criticial information. If you saw that ships were damaged, why should you have to forget it? That makes no sense. It is extremely useful information when you have it.

Huh?? So now when that info is totally lacking it is better?? I think Asmala was talking about systems you don't have a current view off wich now show nothing. If you could currently see the system then the all info would be displayed as normal. Systems with an old view could easily just display some basic info.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Asmala:
nformation you need for a planet:
resource values 3 bytes
population 2 bytes
coordinates 1 byte
owner 1 byte
total 7 bytes

I think you need to shrink your estimate a bit. Surely the resource values are already stored in the game file and are visible if you have explored a system. (coordinates too).