Aplha Centauri 2 Wishlist

[Chaos Theory]

sammy1339: Civ 4 proposes to overhaul the combat system and replace attack and defense values with a unified combat power, plus situational modifiers.

[Leland]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
I'd much rather have .1283257 bureaucracy drones in a city than have a 1/8 chance of getting one when I plant my next base, or need to determine its position in the global base list.

When a number is the result of division, such as for global support, the floating point number can be used internally, and the fraction (3/29 or whatever) can be shown to the player, potentially with the decimal expansion as well, for comparison to other fractions.

Breakpoints caused by discretization cause a lot of micromanagement headaches, such as checking bases to see in what year they'll grow and need more drone control, or squeezing out that last point of labs by getting as many bases as possible to produce an odd number of energy units.

You can't get rid of all fractions: turns, tiles, units, facilities, etc. are still going to be whole numbers. If only part of the quantities in the game are floating points, you still get the same headaches when transforming production into units or predicting in which turn something is going to be ready or not. It would be better to have everything as discreet quantities.

As for micromanagement, that could be reduced by a smart message system where you get notified in advance if something nasty is going to happen next turn. And whether fractions are rounded up or down could be deterministic, and there is no reason why the remainders of research couldn't be carried to next turn.

[paramir]

I feel that 2 difrent modes would be nice, one for those of us that enjoy micromanaging(only me), and one for other people

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by Leland

You can't get rid of all fractions: turns, tiles, units, facilities, etc. are still going to be whole numbers. If only part of the quantities in the game are floating points, you still get the same headaches when transforming production into units or predicting in which turn something is going to be ready or not. It would be better to have everything as discreet quantities.

As for micromanagement, that could be reduced by a smart message system where you get notified in advance if something nasty is going to happen next turn. And whether fractions are rounded up or down could be deterministic, and there is no reason why the remainders of research couldn't be carried to next turn.

Turns, when played, will be integers, but events can take place at various points between turns. Tiles, if used, are discrete and limit possibilities for unit movement to integers or at least small-denominator fractions. Units need not be discrete at all - one garrison can be large (2.7143 "units" worth) and another can be skeletal or badly damaged (.4 "units" worth). Each garrison you move will be a distinct unit, but need not be of "unit" size. Facilities need not necessarily be discrete, though there are a lot of possibilities for them.

Better information about the next turn is crucial, no matter how else the game is designed. Rather than calculating for yourself various quantities such as when a facility will be ready, that information should be readily available, and you should be able to hurry it so that it can be completed at a specified date, if that is what you need.

[binTravkin]

See an example of how our mod should be organised:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/announcement.php?s=&forumid=23

(guys have basically done the same for CtP2)

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
I am a coder. Why bother with multiplying everything by an arbitrary constant factor that might later become an irritation when you can just use floats and doubles? Space and computational power aren't an issue, and round-off error is simple to cope with.

Integer arithematic is hugely faster.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Maybe minerals should be pooled to some extent, at least under some governments. In SMAC, there are already two ways to partially effect this: hurrying and crawlers. A less micro-managed way of doing this is worth examining.

1. Pool all the minerals produced at a given turn
2. Subtract the total support cost from the pool
3. Each city may get an arbitrary about of minerals for production

[binTravkin]

Integer arithematic is hugely faster.

I think this tendency has diminished with the years passing.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by binTravkin
I think this tendency has diminished with the years passing.

Integer arithematic is still orders of magnitude faster, even though you notice the difference less and less as CPUs get faster and faster.

Anyway, integers are better because we are more at ease with them. Simple fractions are okay too I guess, just a notch below integers.

[#endgame]

"Anyway, integers are better because we are more at ease with them. Simple fractions are okay too I guess, just a notch below integers."

Computationally, or conceptually?

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Integer arithematic is still orders of magnitude faster, even though you notice the difference less and less as CPUs get faster and faster.

Not true:

From http://www.berkhan.com/manual_e/data/chap4.htm
Since the PowerPC has a very powerful floating point computation unit, these types of numbers [floating-point] can have an even greater computation speed than integer numbers.

From http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/software/ieee/
At a computation speed of one [floating-point] result per nanosecond (achievable on advanced single processors in 2001)...

[binTravkin]

As I said..

But that's not the topic anyway. We should be thinking how it is easier for user not for CPU.

[Straybow]

Except that so far every generation of chip has been offered by chip makers in models both with and without math processors.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by #endgame
"Anyway, integers are better because we are more at ease with them. Simple fractions are okay too I guess, just a notch below integers."

Computationally, or conceptually?

Conceptually I reckon. We aren't very good doing arithematic with fractions.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Not true

No CPU can do floating point arithematic faster than integer arithematic. Not even massively parallel supercomputers or vector engines.