Construction bottlenecks...

[CypherLH]

Hello,

I'm a new player brought in by the 33% sale. LOVING this game so far. Been doing a lot of reading, watching the lets plays, etc.
My first game is going well so far, economy seems to be doing fine..have 6 colonies and a fleet at each, etc. But I keep getting paranoid about my economy. Is there ANY way to tell what, if any, construction bottlenecks I have other than just constantly visiting the construction screen and monitoring the completion percentages? This is driving me batty. Even though things seem ok I can't shake the feeling that I am missing something or that I'm expanding too fast and approaching bankruptcy, etc. There doesn't seem to be any easy way to tell at a glance whats going on with my resource availability, the overall health of my economy, etc. Am I missing something?

Secondary Question : Is it possible to let the AI manage civilian ship design while I handle military ship design? It seems like its all or nothing unless I am missing something.

[Panpiper]

Check your expansion planner (second button on the left of the top menu bar). If you have a greater demand for any resource than you have as a stockpile, then you have a bottleneck. (If it is a luxury good, it is just reducing your potential income, not creating a building bottleneck.) Also, if you have a decent stockpile, but due to overall galactic demand, the price of that good has been bid up beyond the minimum price, it will increase the maintenance costs of all your ships and bases, so you'll probably want to build more mines for that resource, just to mitigate the effect on your own costs. If you have no stockpile shortages and both your State and civilian economies have a decent positive cash flow, then your economy is doing just fine.


> Is it possible to let the AI manage civilian ship design while I handle military ship design?

Yes, check the "research and design" section of your "Empire Policy Screen" (forth button from the left in the top menu bar).

[Jeeves]

There is a whole row of buttons at top center screen. Click on each of them to see what it does. I use the expansion planner more than anything, but check the empire summary screen quite often too.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[gargoil]

ORIGINAL: Panpiper

> Is it possible to let the AI manage civilian ship design while I handle military ship design?

Yes, check the "research and design" section of your "Empire Policy Screen" (forth button from the left in the top menu bar).

I have always put everything I suggest - I like micromanaging. But letting the AI design private sector ships is intriguing. So how do I do this? Do I set the AI to automate Design of all ships then deselect my State designs?

[CypherLH]

I guess I'm doing it right then, it sounds like I have pretty much doing the things you recommend. I just wish there was an alert whenever I have a strategic resource bottleneck that is blocking construction so that I can be alerted to either cancel the construction or build more mining stations. Not a show stopper though, LOVING this game.

[CypherLH]

I looked at the policies and it looks like it just has one drop down to turn automation of design either on or off. It doesn't look like it lets you set this by private or state. I must be missing something?

[Panpiper]

You are probably not using the latest patch. Download the Distant Worlds - Legends v1.7.0.16 Update (assuming you are in fact playing the full game with the Legends expansion).

[CypherLH]

I have the Legends expansion and the latest patch. It still seems like all automation or no automation for design, still not seeing how to make it different for state vs. private ships. I must be missing something still.

[Theluin]

Below the various drop-down menus regarding research there is a list of all ship types.
Next to each name is a check-box. Those ship types that have the check-box marked are designed by the AI (You have to set design to fully automate for it to have effect)

Hope this helps [:)]

[CypherLH]

ohhhhhh...I feel dumb now So I set the drop down to 'fully automate' and then uncheck all the state ships? If I want to manually control the design of all state ships but let the AI design civilian ships I mean.