Matrix Games Forums

I have a out 12 mines in the queue to be built by my 8 construction ships. For some reason though, several of them will complete a project and then go idle. I switched "auto" on and off but nothing happened. How do I get a construction ship to pick up the next job in the queue? Should I have them on manual or auto?

The Que is not distributed evenly, I have four of six constructors that get all the jobs that I Que up and the other two are usually left to their own devices unless I'm manually controlling everything. And if a constructor is not doing anything but another has a que of 7-8 it won't pick up any of the jobs.

Hmmm, well that makes sense. Not sure why it's designed like that.

I think the jobs are assigned when you queue them up. So constructors built after you queued the jobs have nothing assigned to them. Try stopping them then giving them auto-orders again, I think that helps them see the jobs available.

Jim

As said, jobs are assigned when you press the button. And it does "queue the nearest constructor....". And if you order a bunch of mines in the same area, guess who gets all of the missions? The closest one.

When doing automated constructors and interfering, I may queue some missions manually (by selecting and ordering constructor) to move more than one into the area. If doing manual constructors, I don't queue a whole lot, I rather pay attention to idle constructors. And if I queue, I check the constructors and redo things if they don't spread out in a somewhat decent manner.

Would be nice with a menu where you could move around the priorities - manipulate which orders are more critical at a given time.

Either you let the AI handle it, or you take care of it yourself. The expansion planner has special button to send available ships (that are idle). If you have to construction ships, and you know one is west, and the other east (working), and need a silicon and a steel source...

You can first find the silicon source in expansion planner, take note whether it is west or east. Then queue the nearest. Steel sources are plentiful, so pick one over to the east, where you know the other constructor is closest...

Or locate the targets in other ways, use the left side constructor list. Pick the one nearby, ctrl-right click the source "queue next mission - build gas mine at...".

My grief with the expansion planner is otherwise that I have never quite nailed the pattern of where "point 0" of the distance metric is. It could be something about selected item, but I am not sure [:(]

ORIGINAL: mikeCK

I have a out 12 mines in the que to be built by my 8 construction ships. For some reason though, several of them will complete a project and then go idle. I switched "auto" on and off but nothing happened. How do I get a construction ship to pick up the next job in the que? Should I have them on manual or auto?

The button is queue the "nearest constructor ship" ...

The AI does not distribute -> dumps the task on the nearest constructor ... Depending of the position of the locations queued you could end up with all of them on the same ship ... (example when queuing stuff on a new area that is a bit of distance from your established space -> chances are one of your constructors will be closest to all the new locations (analytic geometry))

Also does not redistribute from a constructor with long queue to constructors that go idle // get built latter ... Not ideal ..Can definitely work around it if you know how it works (move a few constructors in the new area spread around theN queue mines which should be spread on your constructors a bit more balanced)

A queue on random constructor button would work in early//med game - but late game on huge maps it would be pretty bad ...

Ok, now that I know how it works, I can get the results I want I think.