Report-related suggestions

[Bryan Jarvis]

Can we make a fleet flagship in BOLD or other way to tell?  That way I can scan to see what flagships I have.


Also, in the turn suggestion page, sometimes it suggests more than 50 actions.  It's hard
to count which ones would be left behind.

It would be cool if they were
A) numbered
and
B) have a select check box out to the left of them so that one could either select all, or
a subset of the suggestions and have them copied over to the turn page.


Thanks for your patience while I figure this thing out!
Bryan

[Davin Church]

Re: Suggestions

I don't like the idea of making "suggested orders" too easy to use, because I really don't WANT people to be using them.  I made them available mostly to help newbies figure out what their turns should sorta look like in the first couple of turns of their very first game.  After that point, nobody is ever "supposed" to be using suggested orders.  As I mentioned before, I think we need to do something to discourage people from using these orders all the time.  Consequently, I'm not terribly fond of making it EASIER for them to use (although the GTac program gives you lots of the capabilities you're asking for).

[Davin Church]

Re: Flagships

If you're talking about a flagship being one that has other ships joined to it, then that's certainly a possibility.  However, from the game's point of view a single ship by itself is also a flagship (of a fleet of one), so in that sense you probably don't want extra highlights for that.  Certainly you can tell those ships as ones that have "orders" at the end of the line instead of "Joined To..."

Also, I want to be careful about highlighting too many things at once.  If every other line is flashy in some way, then the report quickly becomes too cluttered to read.  So if you've got lots and lots of "flagships," that could be a bit of a problem.

What do you think about carriers?  Since those have "assigned" ships, they're technically flagships, too.  Did you need those shown specially, too?  And what about sub-fleets?  A flagship to a group of ships can itself be joined to a larger fleet.  Is the guy in the middle a flagship by your definition, or not?

Why/how is highlighting flagships important to your play?  Over the years, I haven't heard of such a suggestion before which tells me that it might be something different that you're seeing.  Personally, I don't much care to have groups of ships brought to my attention because I tend to look at every one individually anyway, so highlighting would get in my way more than help (the way I do things).

[Bryan Jarvis]

Well, I will admit that while I've downloaded and installed the GTac program and
explored it some, I'm not always in front of my home computer when I have a moment
to make a turn. 
I also discovered a feature in GTac this morning that I didn't realize was there - Double-clicking
on a star in the map gives a huge wealth of knowledge.  Prior, I saw the tool tip that pops up
when you hover over a star, so didn't realize there was more. 

'm near the end of the second solo game and I plan at least a third one where I start to take more
control of the situation, so that is where my real education in Galac-Tac will begin...

[Davin Church]

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to update my GTac documentation lately.  There's a number of new things out there that need more description.  If you feel like it, you may write up additional documentation that I can include with the older stuff I already have in GTac or the web site.

NB.  When you've double-clicked on a star on the map, go to one of the lists of ships and right-click on a ship to see what you get.

Also note that the maps are fully customizable.  You can put a marker on each star that had a combat last turn, or change the way that your PCs are displayed, or show what systems you've got scouts en route to, or find where all your large battle fleets are.  It has extensive possibilities (and I'm working on more options).  If you build a map design that you like, be sure to Map>Save it so you can use it again next turn.  Maps are automatically updated with current information every turn!

The mapping facility is the most important and most useful part of GTac.  Do check out everything you can do with it.

Also note that GTac lets you enter orders (and helps keep you from making typos) and can upload them to the web site for you.  In addition, it can also download anything you typed into the web site when you're away from your home computer.  So you can do some things away from home and have GTac grab them and consolidate the actions when you get back.  It can also download the suggested orders directly into GTac for you, too, and allow you to edit them there.

You may also wish to check out GTac's "reports".  It can give you a summary of numerous things going on in your empire, including how big it is.  There's also a "spending" report that operates on your currently-entered actions for the upcoming turn - it tells you how much you've spent so far at each PC, how much you have left, and if your actions will fail for running out of money.

Of course there's also the Ship Designer tool that helps you play with new designs much more easily than with the web page.  Overall I think you'll like GTac once you get used to using it.

I've also invited anyone that's interested to write a GTac-like application for smart phones.  Anybody that wants to tackle that is encouraged to do so, and I'd be happy to publish it on the web site for others to use as well.