Producing multiple units

Urban Ranger · January 16, 2001, 00:10

Right now a city (or base) is limited to produce only a single unit a turn regardless of its production capabilities. This needs to be fixed so a city (or base) can produce multiple units if it has the capabilities and resources to do so. This could compensate for ICS in some ways.

loinburger · January 16, 2001, 00:26

A simple solution to the problem as I see it is to combine the build queue with resource rollover. If I have let's say five tanks on queue and I have the means to produce three tanks in a turn from that city, then the next turn I will have three tanks built, and possibly a few shields already started on the fourth tank.

The solution could be improved (and complicated) by having the computer issue a warning if production is going to be wasted. For example, if I have two tanks on queue but I have the production capacity to produce three tanks in a turn, then the computer would issue a warning to me that production in city X is going to be wasted after my tanks are built. I could then add more tanks to the queue, or else I could put the Shields to Money build item (What was it called? Commerce, or something?) into which my remaining shields could be funnelled.

A simpler solution to the wasted production problem would be to have the AI automatically funnel extra shields into Commerce (or whatever it was called).

The important thing here is that the queue should be used to fully exploit a city's production capabilities.

Urban Ranger · January 16, 2001, 00:55

Regarding wasting resources.

SMAC automatically lets you to have 10 minerals left over from the current production to be rolled into the next one. MoO 2 also lets you do this, without restrictions IIRC. This of course posts a problem. Now say I have a tank unit ordered in a city, and it has resources left over, what should be done with that? I guess we need to have a new queue command: Multiple Builds. This is a modification of an existing queue order. So when I have a tank in a city queue, say, then the Multiple Builds command applied to it, the computer would try to build as many of that units as possible with leftovers going into building more of those units the next turn.

On second thought, maybe we need One Turn Multiple Builds and Multiple Turns Multiple Builds.

Cannes · January 16, 2001, 06:43

In Ctp you have the build qeues, but the excess shields don't carry over. If they just would it would be cool. Realistically you wouldn't waste the rest of the years production in a city, would you. We are restricted by game mechanics to only visit our cities once per year/turn, but if the shields could carry over it would somewhat simulate that you were making the decision to start building a tank right after you've finished building the factory or whatever...

thor015 · January 16, 2001, 15:06

I think this is a great idea. It seems that it will primarily apply at the end of the game, but shields being carried over is an excellent idea, and will be somewhat more realistic.
Good thinking!!

P.S. It is called capiltalization

Brent · January 16, 2001, 18:47

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation had multiple turn multiple builds. When you added the same ship or infrastructure to a queue consecutively, they would together only take up one slot. I don't know if this was quite what you meant, but at least it's an idea the game could use.

Boracks · January 16, 2001, 19:04

Most 4X games these days have build queues so you can plan ahead. Some even have 'standard' lists you can create. It would be nice to be able to start a city and tell it to do 'list A' and have it produce phalanx, settler, temple, caravan, marketplace, phalanx before I had to check back again.

Of course, as you do research, lists need to be updated and wonders can change those as well.

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