Production lines getting changed? :(

[ChristopherC]

I fully expect and want my 'governors' to develop my DEAs, economic areas during planetary colonisation, but (and is perhaps it a feature of all the MODs I have added?) they are now changing my instructions for the ships I want built. They build smaller ones when I want larger and I suspect they even try to build ships I have listed as obsolete!

I am just checking at the moment whether the 'lock' icon at the head of the production list, if 'locked down' will resolve this matter and keep the governors obeying my imperial will! I hope so! It can be kinda awkward if I am really in need of a mighty battlecruiser but get served up with a puny destroyer! Maybe spies are at work?

Incidentally, I know this would be probably too complicated to do but I would love a MOD which allowed you three production lines, one for planetary improvements, one for ships and one for soldiers! That way, you could start building up big armies and fleets more quickly.

PS. I do like SpyOpsMod133a and I thank the MODDER for updating it for MOO3 1.2.5 as it allows the production of more spies but in trying to install it using the install programme incorporated in the zip I crashed my system when I tried to reboot. I had a very worrying few minutes trying to reboot again which fortunately I was, thank the Lord, able to do and the MOD seems to be working alright now Maybe, instead of installing it directly with the install program provided I should have unzipped and then copied and pasted over? Anyone have any thoughts on that? Do's and don'ts for me in the future?

Still, with all the MODs I have installed I guess incidents like that are a risk you have to live with. Anyway, as I have said in other threads, the game is now changed out of all recognition due to the improvements the MODDERS have provided. Much more enjoyable and I am still playing it even though Haegemonia beckons!

Live long and prosper.

[Daz]

Never happened to me? Could it be the mods?

Are you sure the stuff you are building isnt bein built in one turn and the governor puts something else in the prod line?

[ChristopherC]

Many thanks for the reply, Daz. Yes, the MODs could be contributing factors. But I will hold onto them since generally they make the game so much more playable and visually attractive.

Interesting suggestion of yours about stuff being built in one turn. Hmmm....

There is a lot about MOO3 which it takes one ages to work out and you get that 'ah that is how they do that!' moment. Perhaps, when you set the budget to limited war, as I have, they expedite building stuff as you suggest.

But one thing the AI does do which is damned irritatingis that it will build keep building ships you have marked as obsolete! I guess you would have to scrap them for them to stop but then sometimes, you may want to keep obsolete ships in reserve for emergencies?

Live long and prosper.

[Daz]

Are you sure about the AI building obsolete ships? If they were not cleared from your building queue then yes. But if you cleared them from the building queue AND none of them have already started being produced, there shouldnt be any left in the building queue.
Again, never happened to me, and I play without the mods (yes I am a masochist.... )

I keep obsolete ships as police ships for systems with pirate caused unrest...

[bakalov]

In 1.2.5 there is an option to remove a ship design from all queues simultaneously. This feature was a good start for a better user interface that allows macromanagement .... only a start though ....

[ChristopherC]

What is that option, Bakalov? Is that the option 'Clear from queue'? If that is the case, I always wondered what that option did!

Oh, and I think I have discovered something else quite important to share with everyone, whether it is due to all the MODs I have added or something else, I dont know, but if I save a game I do not save new ship designs so the only way to save new ship designs is to leave games saved only by autosave does! Anyone else have that problem?

Daz, I respect your Puritanism but it is the MODs which have kept me hooked to the game. They have made the game much better looking and more balanced and I am grateful to all the MODDERs which produced them. I wish I had the skill to MOD myself. I would, for one thing, add two separate queues for both ships and soldiers and thereby speed up the building up of my forces.

Live long and prosper.

[bakalov]

Yep, the same option. They could have made it better if they did allow to switch one design for another, though ....

[Daz]

man chris, you got youself a messed up version of moo there.

Anyway, i'll have to try out the mods....

[ChristopherC]

I went for everything, Daz! A real smorgasbord of MOO3 MODS and, amazingly, everything has apparently more or less worked with everything else as advertised!

The only bad moment I had was a problem with installing the Spies Mod, which increases the number of spies you can have. There is an integral install option but I had real problems with that; I am not sure why. I certainly wish I knew! But I am no programmer to be able to work things like that out, unfortunately. I rely on install programmes or just copying and over-writing, which fortunately is all that is required for most of 'em. Anyway, that problem with the spies MOD gave me a few heart-pumping moments, I can tell you, in trying to reboot my Operating System, and having had a heart attack recently, I can do without those! It is the one thing we all fear, isnt it, that 'oh-oh, I wish I hadnt done that moment!'

On the whole, though, I am very happy with the MODs. No purist me!

The graphics MODs make an originally plain looking game much more attractive! The diplo mods make the diplomatic responses of friend and foe a little more reliable and the race balance MOD was badly needed as it restores a much needed balance whereby, as I understand from one of the correspondents on these boards who has been very helpful to me, Stormhound, previously humanity had had the dice loaded against them every which way. Being human myself and naturally humano-centric I am never interested in playing any other race!

I am not a programmer but I really wish I was as there some other things I would still like to MOD, including creating two separate queues for ships and soldiers.

I dont know which MOD caused this weird problem to which I have referred but on the whole I am a happy man. I would have given up on this game long ago if it hadnt been for the MODDERs. My respects to them all!

MY one big gripe is that even if the 'suits' now control the business, as some complain, surely they can see it is in their interest to commit to a game with patches and add-ons, for which they can obviously charge, for a couple of years, at least; such as Infogrames are doing for GalCiv and, prevously, Firaxis did for Alpha-Centauri-SMAC. My all time favourite game, both in concept and in the flexibility the scenario editor allowed.

Actually, my vision of the future some two generations from now, say, is that your computer will be so sophisticated, you will say to, literally say to it, construct for me a space strategy or a historical game with this or that feature and this or that balance, and it will be able to construct programs using the Net to do so. On the other hand, a few more generations on from that the computers may be giving us the orders as they are doing in recent Hollywood films!

Live long and prosper.