Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Mysterius

As for the scouts, well... i can see all the planets in the system with their associated resources. So yes, it's scouted ^^.

If you can see the resources of a planet it has been scouted. If you send an Exploration Ship to a system and interrupt its mission and send it somewhere else, the planets it didn't visit will say Resources: (Unknown).

It sounds like you have found a bug, especially with the Desert Planets. With Volcanic, go through your Colony screen and check for a planet with majority Shandar, if you don't have a planet with Shandar as the highest population then you can't build a Shandar colony ship to colonize. I guess thats not a bug, but perhaps something that should be fixed as mentioned before.

I think it's too easy to get the race bonuses from other races especially if they change it so you can use a non-majority race to build a colony ship from one of your planets. It would be nice if you had to have a certain number of that race in your Empire (say 500M) to get their bonus and planet types. So for example you can't use your population of 10m Ackdarians on one planet to colonise all the Ocean planets across your territory.

I have noticed this bug as well. I build colony ships that have the volcanic or ice ability and find planets to colonize with them by using the galaxy map and checking known resources. Items like Dantha fur and incense are specific to Desert worlds, aculon to Volcanic, ivory to Ice, etc. Since the AI will not colonize in a system owned by someone else I try to get colonies in uninhabited systems. The expansion planner does not show any of these planets as colonizeable and neither does the potential colony list in the galaxy map filter screen, however you can colonize them. As a kind of bonus you become very familiar with all the resources... Thanks -J

I also have this problem, I usually play securan, on a 1000 or 1400 galaxy. and after I have explored a x% amount of the galaxy, (never noticed how much before the problem occurs), all I can colonise are continental, desert and marshy. and I do have races that are able to colonise ice, volcanic and ocean. If I get a race that can colonise ice, volcanic or ocean early in the game, I do have the ability to colonise via the planner, but after a while of either exploring or colonising. I am only able to find the planets by looking through resources and instead of sending a constructor, manually sending a colony ship.

Deldk : i couldn't have explained better. That's the exact problem i have.

When you zoom out to galaxy view do the systems with colonizable planets that aren't viewable in the expansion planner have that dotted ring around them?  That might be an easier way to find them than searching the resources in the galaxy map window.

ORIGINAL: Deldk

I also have this problem, I usually play securan, on a 1000 or 1400 galaxy. and after I have explored a x% amount of the galaxy, (never noticed how much before the problem occurs), all I can colonise are continental, desert and marshy. and I do have races that are able to colonise ice, volcanic and ocean. If I get a race that can colonise ice, volcanic or ocean early in the game, I do have the ability to colonise via the planner, but after a while of either exploring or colonising. I am only able to find the planets by looking through resources and instead of sending a constructor, manually sending a colony ship.

interesting, I don't play with such large galaxies due to load/save times. Maybe it is a problem limited to larger galaxies.

If you have a save game where such an issue is occuring (and you can quit and load such save and the issue remains) then you should submit the save game (along with the name of the specific planet for which it happens)...
Codeforce is very quick to fix those, especially since they began issuing hotfixes... I would often see a hotfix within 24 hours of submitting a save game with a reproduce-able problem which solved said problem.

simple soloution would be to make more filters for the colonization screen (like type of planet or distance or alien civ, etc.)

I do not think it wise to show all planets in that screen, less you want a cofee break every time you open the screen.

ORIGINAL: sograth

simple soloution would be to make more filters for the colonization screen (like type of planet or distance or alien civ, etc.)

I do not think it wise to show all planets in that screen, less you want a cofee break every time you open the screen.

it does take quite a while to open... and to refresh after each change.

I would like to see the following filters added:
1. Special (only good specials though) (contains either native pop, korbebian spice, loros fruit, zentebia fluid, or ruins). This should be the default filter.
2. Planet types, one filter per type (eg: continental, ice, volcanic, etc)
3. An option to "hide" planets for which you have already queued a colony ship.
4. A checkbox to hide/view planets in systems belonging to other empires from within the expansion planner itself (it automatically hides them if you forbade the AI from colonizing/building bases in AI controlled systems, and automatically shows it if you did not. This is a nice default, but should be possible to chance... I should be able to show planets in systems controlled by the AI from within the expansion planner without disabling the AI block)

I noticed something on my last game :

While, at the beginning, volcanic, desert or oceanic worlds were displayed on the planner, some of them (volcanic ones first, then desert and even some oceanic too) began to disappear when I came to explore larger part of the galaxy. I decided to try colonizing as much world as I could. Right now, I explored the whole galaxy and founded nearly 400 colonies. And volcanic/desert/ocean worlds made their come-back on the planner as I colonized all continental/swamp available...

So I guess the problem is that the number of worlds displayed on the planner seems to be limited : once you reached the maximum number, the game seems to filter worlds displayed in the planner : Continental > Swamp > Ocean > Desert > Volcanic

5. An option to hide planets that already have a Spaceport (or one in queue)

Further thinking: Hide/Show Planets should not be a dropdown menue but a Checkbox (since some Planets are equally "good" for some races we should be able to see more than one type of planet).

ORIGINAL: smokytoks
 
So I guess the problem is that the number of worlds displayed on the planner seems to be limited : once you reached the maximum number, the game seems to filter worlds displayed in the planner : Continental > Swamp > Ocean > Desert > Volcanic

Agreed, this is what I am observing too.
 
When the colonizable continental and marshy swamp planets run out the less desireable worlds will start making their (re-)appearance. At least this is what my current game is showing. It won't show on games with a low number of stars, since there the total number of colonizable planets is quite low.
 
Note that is isn't a strict hierarchy. The game will put planets with the ultra-rare luxury resources much higher in priority (but still below all and any marshy swamp planets, with the exception of those Loros Fruit which grow in swamp). Also, ancient ruins granting empire-wide bonuses will lift a planet in colonization priority considerably (but not as much as they deserve, I think).

ORIGINAL: smokytoks
the number of worlds displayed on the planner seems to be limited : once you reached the maximum number, the game seems to filter worlds displayed in the planner : Continental > Swamp > Ocean > Desert > Volcanic

I think i would have prefered a bug than such a nonsense.

ORIGINAL: Mysterius

ORIGINAL: smokytoks
the number of worlds displayed on the planner seems to be limited : once you reached the maximum number, the game seems to filter worlds displayed in the planner : Continental > Swamp > Ocean > Desert > Volcanic

Oh god! How terrible is this system...
I think i would have prefered a bug than such a nonsense.

what he described IS a bug.
The way programming work you must perform any task via very simple instructions, one by one...
thus the task of creating a list is probably done as:
1. Create List (empty), Create Variable X, set X=0
2. Loop:
a. Get conditions of planet X and dump them into a temporary variable
b. Is conditions for planet X "owned by player"
c. Is conditions for planet X "owned by AI"
d. Is conditions in system owned by AI?
e. if b, c and d are no, then put in in the list.
f. increase X by 1
Repeat loop.

This is a SUPER simplified example and I skip a lot of steps... Now, planets obviously much each have a unique identifier (planet 1, planet 2, etc). When the galaxy is created each planet is given such an identifier number. The system of galaxy generation and numbering is thus probably:
1. Get number of desired stars set by player in game creation, call it X
2. Create X*VariableA continental planets
3. Create X*VariableB Swamp planets
4. Create X*VariableC Ocean planets
5. Create X*VariableD Desert planets
6. Create X*VariableE Volcanic planets
each one is a complex process in of itself, and each one involves assigning a number value to the planet as it is created.
Notice the order was: Continental > Swamp > Ocean > Desert > Volcanic

If your galaxy has 400 continental planets and 200 swamp planets, then planets 0-399 would be continental and planets 400 through 599 would be swamp, and so on.

Thus when the list of planets is populated it is filled with planets in this order... if at any time the list size fills up then all the extras are simply lost (or worse, cause a buffer overflow and overwrite random data!)

The solution to the bug is to increase the list size a lot, or better yet, make it future proof by creating an algorithm that first checks to see how many planets exist in the game, then makes sure the list has that many spots.
Also, it should be made to run again whenever the game editor is closed, because you could have added planets.