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Topic: Managing Toolsmithy comstruction

GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2020-10-20, 20:41

Well, for the button in the warehouse window, 'This flag's economy' would be even more confusing.

Do you have an ideas on how to phrase the tooltip? It should be as short as possible wile still giving the important information.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-10-20, 20:55

Instead of conveying this by the tooltip, we should make the existence and properties of separate economies more prominent. If the tooltip says "Configure this economy" or something like this, will someone who never heard of it yet really realize by this that unconnected road networks have their own sets of target quantities?

Perhaps a training wheel that will tell the user to cut some roads when he has built a sizeable economy, and then explains what this involved, would be more useful


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2020-10-20, 21:42

'Configure this economy'

But i would like to have the possibility to tell a toolsmithy which tool he should make the next time. Managing this through the economy settings is too complicated, imho.


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JanO
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Posted at: 2020-10-20, 23:46

Is the tooltip-text for the warehouse-button necessarily the same as the one for the flags' button? Otherwise I would just exchange "this flag's" against "this warehouse's".
But Nordfrieses suggestion is probably the better choice for this quite complex functionality. Nevertheless, changing some text in a tooltip might be less work, considered the tooltips being implemented anyways.

Edited: 2020-10-20, 23:47

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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2020-10-21, 07:16

But i would like to have the possibility to tell a toolsmithy which tool he should make the next time. Managing this through the economy settings is too complicated, imho.

I think that should be implemented at the toolsmithy.


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kaparzo
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Posted at: 2020-10-21, 13:29

kaputtnik wrote:

'Configure this economy'

But i would like to have the possibility to tell a toolsmithy which tool he should make the next time. Managing this through the economy settings is too complicated, imho.

I think this is the best way to go, even for other parts of the game. Having a "Queue" system would be more intuitive and player-friendly.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-10-21, 13:35

GunChleoc wrote:

But i would like to have the possibility to tell a toolsmithy which tool he should make the next time. Managing this through the economy settings is too complicated, imho.

I think that should be implemented at the toolsmithy.

Personally I think it isn't more complicated in the eco settings then in the toolsmithy. As you can set the ecosettings to cope for most of the things automatically, while the other implementation would be a huge UI and a lot of micromanagement.
but as long as the ecosettings still work unchanged I won't object against an addtional option in the toolsmithy


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-10-21, 15:41

But i would like to have the possibility to tell a toolsmithy which tool he should make the next time.

I'm not convinced that the benefit of such a feature would outweigh the additional complexity of the UI, wherever we decide to put it.

Most of the time there is enough iron, wood etc so the toolsmith can operate easily. And when there are shortages, setting the economy target to 0 for tools would ensure that only those tools are created that are really needed anyway; whether we first get an ax and then a pick or the other way around does not really make a difference (except in corner-cases such as minimal starting conditions).

Most of the time, if there is a shortage in the toolsmithy's supply it's due to suboptimal economy management, and a new complex UI to mitigate one of the symptoms would not do anything against the actual cause.

To me this sounds like a lot of implementation effort, for yet another complicated functionality that new players will have to learn, for a very small benefit.

Edited: 2020-10-21, 15:41

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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2020-10-21, 19:00

It's just frustrating for new for players if the game doesn't do what he expects the game should do.

I think we can all agree that the economic settings has some culprits. First of all it is not explained in detail in the tutorials, second accessing those options is a bit hidden.

Well, i am fine with managing such things in the ecosettings, if

  1. The economic settings are much more explained
  2. All Production sites get a button to show the ecosetting

I can't understand why some are always arguing with the ui. If i look into a window of a trainigscamp or a port there are also much rows and tabs. For the toolsmith i would like to see all tools he can make and beside each tool a spinbox where one can set the amount of tools the toolsmith should make. This can be shown in an additional tab. I don't think it would make the window huge. Such a window would make the game less complicated for a (new) player and the window would be kind of self explaining.

Maybe the idea is not really considered, but i just want to make suggestions to make some things less frustrating.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-10-21, 19:52

I can't understand why some are always arguing with the ui. If i look into a window of a trainigscamp or a port there are also much rows and tabs.

Very many, in fact. Which is precisely my point – the Widelands UI is already quite complex, and pretty hard to learn. Even more buttons and options would make it even harder to understand.

For the toolsmith i would like to see all tools he can make and beside each tool a spinbox where one can set the amount of tools the toolsmith should make.

What is the difference to just setting the economy targets to the amount of tools you want him to produce?


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