newb questions on design workshop

[Adalbertus]

TKG, the pattern isn't that consistent to me. I found white designs where I currently had no unit, and vice versa.

I'd still recommend using the "obsolete" button. If you delete the design, you're going to delete all existing units of this design. If you don't obsolete old units, you'll keep all the crap in the city build screen, which I enter more often than the unit workshop.IMHO, it's a good idea to see if you've got the money to upgrade the single 2-1-2 recon rover to 8-1-2 just to clean up the workshop.

[Method]

i'd recommend not using the "obsolete" button. IIRC, this doesn't delete the unit from the workshop, it just eliminates it from the build screen, and puts it in the "obsolete" section of the workshop scroll. if you want to retire a unit design (often you havn't even built the unit) press the upgrade or retire button. this will get rid of the old design from the workshop list

see below: units in white are obsolete, but some are still active. in grey are obsolete, but none are active. all else are just normal units. by pressing the "obsolete" button, you're not getting rid of the unit, it's going in the grey or white section. these are just clutter so i'd recommend dealing with them

[Adalbertus]

Re: newb questions on design workshop

Originally posted by lord of the mark
I also dont like the design workshop interface - its hard to see the existing unit categories in the slot listing at the bottom of the screen.

Your're not the only one here.

Some silly questions:
If i upgrade a unit, will this obsolete the old unit? Or will it still let me build the old unit till i manually obsolete it? I suspect the latter.

Two things to distinguish: Upgrading an individual unit (via CTRL+U or SHIFT+U, don't remember at the moment) does not obsolete anything. Your unit simply becomes a unit of the design you upgraded to.
In the worshop you can upgrade all units of a given type. This removes the old design (but you keep your units, who now have the new design). You can redesign the old unit, however, if you wish to. Upgrading the entire class from the workshop has the advantage that you don't lose the units' turn.

Do you tend to alway obsolete units that have been "superseded"? In Civ2 i didnt have any choice, the game automatically did that (warriors obs by phalanx, etc) Here im tempted to keep the old unit around (might need a cheap unit - im not really checking whether the old unit is really that cheap - too much overwhelming stuff anyway)

Depends (finally I said it). I don't upgrade from the most simple crawler design if I'm going to use them for crawling. Then I make frequent use of shells (cheap trained units) which go obsolete from time to time. Perhaps you also don't want to upgrade police units if you ran low of money. Otherwise I try to have at least one of weapon or armour at best for the time given.

All in all how do you keep the design workshop and the build menu manageable?

The most important thing is: Don't let the computer automatically design new units. It's horrible enough that you are forced to when you get a new reactor. Then I try to upgrade obsolete designs if I've got the ?nergy credits left. And sometimes I give new names to units I plan to use for a longer time (especially the Worm Guard with 3r resonance armour and hypnotic trance, which becomes obsolete with the 8r armour only). Don't know if that fits your needs.

Hope that helps

[lord of the mark]

the one feature that probably has taken me the most getting used to in SMAC is the design workshop.

Im getting used to the new designs when i get a new military tech (well thats easy - just click done) and ive designed some of my own units when the workshop AI wasnt putting stuff together quite the way i wanted.

I still tend to have very cluttered build menues. I also dont like the design workshop interface - its hard to see the existing unit categories in the slot listing at the bottom of the screen.

Some silly questions:
If i upgrade a unit, will this obsolete the old unit? Or will it still let me build the old unit till i manually obsolete it? I suspect the latter.

Do you tend to alway obsolete units that have been "superseded"? In Civ2 i didnt have any choice, the game automatically did that (warriors obs by phalanx, etc) Here im tempted to keep the old unit around (might need a cheap unit - im not really checking whether the old unit is really that cheap - too much overwhelming stuff anyway)

All in all how do you keep the design workshop and the build menu manageable?