With the glitch to get double colony capital and using the console to bypass the idle colony button, you get double building queue. :p

To DARCA,

In GC2, as you know, starports are needed to produce ships -- that's basically their purpose; factories provide manufacturing capabilities for the planet and civilization.  So, you could say that starports are a dedicated type of factory, or at least they create the second queue next to the social project queue.  The slider in GC2 allows the player to control how much production is directed to military (ships) and to social projects (planet development) in either queue.  Your suggestion of differentiating production from factories, in my understanding, seems to be the mechanic of the dual queue the Developers are attempting to avoid.

I like having ships produced separately from social projects, so I support your idea of differentiation in production.  It seems several of us are offering different versions of the same concept -- how to get the Developers to keep the "dual queue" concept of GC2, with a single queue mechanism in GC III.  That's why I suggested, following the lead of EvilMaxWar and others, that we could have ship building starbases as artificial planets, to keep the single queue change, but have an option of a ship-dedicated source not to impede planet-side social project building queue.

If the Developers want to move away from sliders, that's why I suggested these artificial planets would simply be subsidized by their respective civilization / empire.  I've also rethought my idea of how to enhance military production speed -- make it population sensitive, so moving workers from planets to starbases would increase the ability to produce ships faster.  It's a different method without needing a slider, and will require more player strategizing; (maybe even a bit more "realism" by needing to send workers to build ships off planet).

Bottom line, as you said earlier and I just repeated, we all seem to want something very similar to what GC2 provided for production queues, and we will wait to see what the Developers do with our ideas!

Can't say I had much of an opinion either way before reading through this thread, some really well thought out views here and much better concepts than I could think up .

Having played the game some more and having a think about it, while I actually don't mind the current single queue system at all and wouldn't be down about it staying there is something really appealing about a system such as the one described by EvilMaxWar, yes it is more complexity but I think the depth it adds is nice...would like the think that a more elegant system could be thought of perhaps without more additional sliders however that overall dual queue design (perhaps weighted to impact the early-mid game the most) sounds great.

When it comes to it though I trust in Stardock's judgement for the time being, it is early on and a fairly fundamental aspect of the game, I am sure whatever direction is picked a lot of thought will (or has) gone into it.

I think we're compromising when we don't know how the devs are going to react. We want things how they were and we should say it plainly, and let SD work out the details. I am guilty of this to.

I am out of ideas, I just want two planet queues again without all the complications. Good luck SD don't let us down.

DARCA.

Current thought is to move ship production off world. You'd build a shipyard and multiple planets can send resources to them (with distance affecting efficiency).

As long as "Extra" production can build multiple ships per turn, so that we can use swarms of tiny ships, then that sounds awesome!

Perhaps have basic ships like colony ships, transports, fighters and the like be built on planets, but heavy warships like frigates and battleships be built in the shipyard?

The single queue sounds good now, I don't think it was bad I just preferred the dual queue, NOOOOO! We'll quit our complaining, we promise, the alternative is even less galciv than before! Please! ...can you add tactical combat while your at it?

DARCA.

You know, if there's a way for me to modd any ship be built on planet, I don't care what happens.

I have gotten good at re-coding. So whatever come my way. I'm ready.

DARCA.

Thanks for letting out a hint Brad :) 

That somewhat eases the speculative tension that was building up in this thread I think.

My main interrogation is still how the amount of resources to be sent to the shipyard will be determined.   My suggestion of a slider for the production ratio to be sent seems to not make unanimity so far. 

Talking of which. Why exactly are some people reticent to using a slider? I am curious about that.

I am now wondering the same thing now too. (it seems more questions come than answers sometimes around here. ) will it be one per planet or system? And if production could be sent,( if that's the way) why can't it be on planet? Is sounds like it could work there too. IRDK, I can't wait to play.

DARCA

This would work for me. One of the unique things about the GC series compared to other games I have seen (and particularly the CIV series) is the separate queues for manufacturing and ship building. It would be a real shame to remove this uniqueness.

Thanks Brad for that insight. I do like the shipyard idea in space. It will help to create a lot of units in a huge world, and let players who do not secure the majority of planets still be competitive. In ship building.

The extra slider makes things a little messy for the UI

I, too, am grateful to Brad for clarifying that we will be able to build ships without delaying social projects.

Certainly, I am not against sliders as a means of controlling production, and believe them to be easier, as well.  But I was trying to think of control methods consistent with the idea that the Stardock team appeared to be doing away with sliders.

I, for one, am satisfied if the internal mechanics of the game takes care of resources to these space-based shipyards, but I would like some control to speed up or slow down production.

I do not think it would be that bad.

If the percentage of production to be allocated to shipyards is indeed determined by a slider, or knob, or little +/- arrow buttons like in Civ IV, it needs to be placed somewhere convenient and where it wont needlessly interfere. Maybe it could be placed in whatever Main Screen is planned for the shipyard, the way Brad Put it out it appears as though the shipyard might indeed be a type of Starbase, as we had been suspecting. 

There currently is a '' Coming Soon!'' Starbase Options button in the Starbase windows, so maybe that is the untold destiny of this button

But personally I think the best place for this might be right by the wheel in the Economy screen and the Govern planet screen.

Now behold my MS paint skills, I made UI demos.

-The slider can be adjusted quickly for your entire empire in the one screen where you deal with your entire economy, hard to get much simpler I think.

Put the slider to 50% and all the planets linked to a Shipyard will send 50% of the prod to the shipyard.

Slightly more polished than my earlier draft. 

-Having the same slider in the govern planet screen allows the empire setting it to be overridden in case you want a specific planet to act differently.

Useful scenario : Suppose you are in a total War with full military production mode with 100% of you production being sent to shipyards, you might still want one of your planets to be building Farms as it is currently reaching its population cap and you want it to continue growing. So you would put maybe 50% on this planet instead of using the Current civilization level of 100%. This way the planet will build those farms you need there.

Another example would be that the planet is building an important super project so you do not want all its production sent to the shipyard.

The messy UI is more for the complication (is it necessary) vs. the look. The placement and look is not the problem for me.

The next question is how the implementation will take place. For example, would the slider add any sort of benefit? Is it necessary to mitigate that control, would any benefit happen on planet side? If we build ships in space and set the slider to only build military projects, it may not be immediately obvious why our buildings have stopped.

The more levers one has to place gives a finer control, but it is also another lever to keep track of in the game.

I like the idea of a space station that has a fixed production rate and given bonuses / penalties determined by distance from the closest planet. Thus, the slider established is a fixed slider determined by placement on the map. If I want more production, then increase the production on the circle. It accomplishes the same effect.

ok

As I have said before, imho, the benefit of dual queue is to be able to quickly switch back and forth from Social to Military production on a empire level. Switching a single planet can be done by editing a single queue.  But when you have 100 planets, editing 100 queue is problematic. This is where the dual queue comes in handy with a Slider. If the military ratio is fixed, you lose that benefit, you cannot switch anything quickly, you would still need to edit stuff everywhere to put your empire in military mode.  

Another alternative could be very smart and programmable governors that reprogramm your queues according to patterns you have setted up. But if you think a slider introduces complication, that would be even worse.

In GalCiv II we had those little icons to help you immediately see where your production was going. I think those should be in the Planet Screen of GalCiv 3 too. I cannot know what StarDock is planning exactly but I would not be surprise if they just have not implemented them yet.

I agree, 4x tend to be complicated games but a good design will try to minimize complexity without sacrificing flexibility. In GalCiv 2 we had 6 levers on the Empire level as well as planet focus.  I used the Colonies List to quickly see where I had put a Production Focus, otherwise it was easy to forget where you had put specific planetary settings.  I hope GalCiv 3 will allow the same in the colonies view ( currently Coming soon!)

With such a system you can never put 100% of your production to Military, it always depend on the fixed ratio. And the ratio is the same in peace time and war time.  That is why I dont like it.  

That is where one could add military production project on the planet. (like the research project things) Then all your social production moves to military. I think some of my issue with it is the possible constant flipping the switch when I need a ship then social project. An edict would work out better, something that will create a bonus to military and penalty to social production for a minimum of 10 turns. Say "AT WAR" button.

EvilMaxWar go to the founders vault if you haven't already

I particullary like the topic sy100

That still requieres you to edit the queue of every single planets

Think GalCiv 2, most of the time you are fine with a sort of balanced budget. You are not flipping switches constantly. In GalCiv 2 I keep the 33%/33%/33% for most of the game. But I enjoy the flexibility when I need to.

That is just a dumbed down and more restricted version of the slider system imho. That is not really any more faster or simpler to use. Just more restricted.

What about having a system that includes a secondary project that progresses at a slower rate?  Let's say... whatever is second in line in the cue gets some love, but not at the full pace.  

Doing this would eliminate the need to create a different interface other than a progress indicator on the second item (or perhaps the option to only pursue the primary project.) 

Perhaps a player could chose between construction settings (on a planetary basis) between 100% primary, or 80%/20%, or 60%/40%.  In the case of having two going, running the second one would slow down the pace of the primary, of course.

For me this sort of addresses one of my long-time 4x game peeves - which is... why out of thousands (or billions) of people in a city (or planet) can they only make one thing at at time?  

Just looked at the Vault

Hope this is not an april's fool :p  Brad said to not repost what he posted there, so maybe we should not discuss it in any detail.

youre welcome e to discuss it. Just don't repost what I wrote.

Most of what is written in their is a general summary of many of the ideas presented here already.

edit: Just to be clear. I like it and would like to test it out.

I do not have much to say except that it sounds very nice! Can barely wait to see the game in action.

Well, I do wonder how a Shipyard building a ColonyShip/Transport would get the population for those ships.

-Maybe take an equal part from each worlds linked to it?

-Or maybe shipyards could have a gauge that fills up with population up to a maximum. This maximum could be increased with constructor modules.  The population is transfered from linked worlds and the speed at which the gauge fills up depends on the number of linked worlds and their distance from the base. 

-If the gauge is not full enough when you eject the ship, you would have to hit a nearby world to fill up.

The building of colony / transport ships on the shipyard would be an interesting problem. I do like taking a little from each colony connected to the shipyard.