Deploying colony ships

from GalCiv3 Forums

the mechanics of sending colony ships to colonizable planets is pretty bad.

In another space 4X game, they had it done really well -- you could do it one of two ways --

There was a screen that displayed all known planets.  That display had a toggle for whether to only display the colonizable ones.  It also showed you how many idle colony ships were floating around your empire, and which planets already had colony ships en route.  You could sort the list by planet size/class/etc., and just say "send a colony ship" to those desirable planets without one already en route.    The nearest one (I would argue to calculate "nearest" as "fewest turns away") would be dispatched automatically.

Also, if you were inspecting an individual ship, you could give it orders to "colonize", and be presented with the aforementioned list of colonizable planets, sortable by distance/class/etc., and choose to send it to the nearest or most desirable planet that did not already have a ship en route.

Right now I go cross-eyed trying to remember which planets were which and which ones I'd intended to colonize with which ships, etc.  The above would help a *lot*.

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It's interesting to see how diff. people have problems with diff. aspects of a game like this.  Me for instance, I have minimal trouble remembering planets when I've got a map (the main view) in front of me, but for the life of me I can't keep my worlds' purposes straight!  One trick I've resorted to is mnemonic names, unique phrases that suggest what the planet does, so I can scroll down my list and just see it.  Problem w/ that is I have to reuse those over and over, which may lead to confusion again from one game to another... also it's less fun when I have an empire full of cheesy pop culture references, or out of place literary references.

 

Were this a futuristic game, we could expect all manners of in-game amenities to address these chores.  As it is, may I suggest a notebook?  or you can hold your breath till the developers choose to bail us air heads out but I predict you'll only end up with a greatly increased lung capacity, or dead :<