Starfire Spreadsheet Mod 7-2 Out! More bugfixes!

[Xveers]

Edit:

Skip the conversation to get right to the post with the working link!

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=578&p=5669#p5669



Original Post:
Well, not quite hot on the heels of my latest work, but it's a definite improvement!

http://members.shaw.ca/victor-daivon/Starfire/UltraMod6.xls

The upgrade features everything that the Mod 5 has, with a few tweaks here and there to improve playability. The big improvements here are some bugfixes to bring the spreadsheet closer to hewing to proper code with EVE. One bug kill I'm happy about is with Counter Threat Response. That took a full evening of code factoring and cross referencing. Much swearing was had, but it was complete

I've done a bunch of other bugfixes here and there, but honestly I can't remember what else. Oh, new survey page. Neater, easier to read/organize.

Coming soon!

As per the discussion earlier with Cralis, I'll be doing some work on the CFN section to make it proper. As it is right now, for multi-month shipping in my spreadsheet you pay that cost all up front. ULTRA is supposed to have it on a per month basis (IE you pay the month you use). This makes multi-turn shipping effectively a bit cheaper, as it's easier to handle a lower expenditure being paid over multiple months instead of all up front. Myself, it honestly makes little sense, but then the credit a government has is pretty decent (though what happens if you don't pay on month two? "Alright kids. That's it. I'm turning this colony fleet right around. No Proxima Centauri for anyone!")

But I digress. One of the things is that when I do make this modification, I'll also be adding the ability to pay emplacement costs beforehand (since they primarily represent the hardware assets to keep the population alive). So that'll make shipping and colonization a little bit cheaper. I'll also be redoing the Fleet Orders page in the future. Cralis showed me a better way to do it. Neater, more flexible.

The other big thing: A couple people commented on the construction page and how Marvin's is better. I took a look on the downloads page and I can see a few of em that were updated to Ultra. I'll be looking at those more in-depth soon enough. But as a note, it seems to use a good chunk of macro commands, so I may not be able to actually replicate it on my sheet (as my last poll indicated that about half my users who responded did not like Macros).

[Xveers]

Okay, Malek showed me a few little issues with the spreadsheet. One is with ST colonization by T races (I had a mistake in the spreadsheet... probably an artifact from older rules), the other regarding population rounding. The first issue has been fixed, the second one will require a bit more than a little tweak. It's buried in a bit of nested code and I want to make sure it won't break anything, so it'll take a little bit longer to fix. But it's just a rounding decimal issue. Definitely not mission critical.

I'll probably delay the next update a bit, unless someone runs across an even worse problem. Next update will at the least include a modified fleet command page, and the optional table on how NPRs view their borders. Oh, and an improved CFN page.

[mavikfelna]

So any progress? I'm waiting for the update before I try starting a new game.

--Mav

[Xveers]

So any progress? I'm waiting for the update before I try starting a new game.

--Mav

I got sidetracked by other things over the last little while. I fixed the ST colonization issue pretty easily, but the rounding one is crimped by an Excel limit. I'd love to input a rounding command, (there's nothing in formatting for that) but Excel limits you to 7 nested brackets, which is a limit I'm hitting.

If you want Mav, I can send you the current version. There's not too much different from what you have now however. I have some dev time scheduled for tonight however, so I'll see about getting something happening tonight

[Malek]

So any progress? I'm waiting for the update before I try starting a new game.

--Mav

I got sidetracked by other things over the last little while. I fixed the ST colonization issue pretty easily, but the rounding one is crimped by an Excel limit. I'd love to input a rounding command, (there's nothing in formatting for that) but Excel limits you to 7 nested brackets, which is a limit I'm hitting.

If you want Mav, I can send you the current version. There's not too much different from what you have now however. I have some dev time scheduled for tonight however, so I'll see about getting something happening tonight

I said it in one of PM's but in case you missed/forgot it. I think the best way to go around nesting limit would be to move "overpopulated" notification to it's own cell. That should remove one nest-in and I think that even in case of overpopulation we should know how much pop there actually is on planet, as rules seem suggest that PU above maximum can be taken off and moved before end of turn (what led me to that conclusion is line just above L1.04.1 in case you're wondering).

[Xveers]

I said it in one of PM's but in case you missed/forgot it. I think the best way to go around nesting limit would be to move "overpopulated" notification to it's own cell. That should remove one nest-in and I think that even in case of overpopulation we should know how much pop there actually is on planet, as rules seem suggest that PU above maximum can be taken off and moved before end of turn (what led me to that conclusion is line just above L1.04.1 in case you're wondering).

Hmm.. I had read your comment on the overpopulation limit, but I hadn't really considered L1.04.1. Mainly because I didn't know about that exact citation (I just assumed that the population hit that roof and stopped growing). Mind you, in populations above 1000 PU you have spare colonists to go around already, and frankly I think even the TFN of old would have a hard time realistically moving even one PU off a very large world (considering at that size one PU is the equivalent of 500 PTU, and one PTU needs 10 Qv to move).

About the only spot I could see this being a practical concern was when a O2 planet or an asteroid belt caps out, but even then you're talking about squeaking out a few last PTU off-world (as a 180 PU/PTU O2 world would then have 1.8 PTU spare for colonists.) So I honestly think it's a bit of a niche case. About the only other thing that could actually cause an overpopulation issue is if you had a negative event that resulted in the world's HI shifting. And if that happened on a world where your max pop was actually an issue, well... unless you're EL 30 and have a spare world nearby to dump the excess population, you'll have to resign yourself to billions of civilian deaths.

In short, Yes you are correct, and Yes your solution to the problem would work and provide additional information to the player. However ( ) It is a problem that, comparatively speaking, is a niche case. I'll be adding it to my internal upgrade tracking notepad (pretty much your total post here), but it's not something that I'll be working on initially. I've been given some internal dev work from Cralis that promises some VERY nice upgrades for the CFN and Fleet management tabs (both of which get a lot more mileage). I'm going to spend some more time tomorrow working on the sheet, most notably by porting over wholesale a bunch of Cralis' stuff and inputting/formatting it in (But then Cralis and I don't have too much issue with that. It's a collaborative process; we steal the best from each other and get the best sheets we can).

tl;dr : Yes, you're right and your solution will work, but it's getting lower priority due to niche case and what I see are improvements that offer bigger, better long-term bang.

[Xveers]

More dev work continues. I've gotten the fleets and fleet orders pages more or less done. Added a new "ship design tab" that will pull most of the relevant information off it to cut down on input work (assuming you spell stuff right). At the moment, all you have to do is add in one class note, and then it'll pull down the ship's maintenance and strategic speed for you, so you don't have to repeatedly enter it. It should also do small craft the same way (just make an entry for it in the design list). Not quite happy with HOW to do small craft crew grade tho. You'd be looking at tracking grade for each and every squadron, and in a decent carrier force even at EL 8 that can be a bit of overkill. Debating adding a 3rd (!!) column in the ships tab to track said, separate from ships. Perhaps add a drop down to link squadrons to ships. But then that's getting a BIT complicated. Have to look in two separate places to see what's in a fleet. Anyone have suggestions on how to tidy that up?

Working on the CFN page that Cralis did for his own internal stuff. Nice things here. Will soon have the ability to use un-leased govt. shipping for your own shipping and colonization and not have to pay (you own them outright and aren't leasing them, so why not use the shipping capacity for free?), as well as implementing the ability to ship just the emplacement costs, or just your population. So now you can do a colonization run without having to spend everything up front! Additionally, the spreadsheet will be brought into compliance with the rules as far as paying for colonization goes. You will be charged only for that month's shipping usage, and as such you will have to pay successively for multi-month shipping. That being said, the backbone for paying all up front will remain in the spreadsheet in case this rule changes (It dosen't make a lick of sense to me, but if that's what the rules say than that's what they say).

Finally, I will after this next upcoming release, look into the populations page. Squeaky wheels and grease, of course It will also be getting an overhaul to make it both tidier and more flexible. And to address concerns that have been brought up to make it more compliant with the rules.

Cralis has been, slowly, doing some concept work on rebuilding the construction page. He's trying a different tack, and I respect that. It's not really -better- than what I have, certainly more complex. I look forward to seeing what his concepts shake down to, with the hope that I will be able to implement any optimizations he does in this spreadsheet.

I'm not going to give an ETA, but I'm making good progress and I -hope- to have it ready by end of day Nov. 3 2010. It may be delayed into tomorrow, but I hope not.

[Cralis]

Update on my attempts to do the construction page: it gets too complex to do the construction page with simple cell-based algorithms. I can simply some parts of it, but getting it to track both jobs finished, remaining capacity AND facilities used (so you don't go over on any part) requires too many cells.

I'm tempted to write custom functions but then we get into the whole VBA scripting thing. I'll probably do it for me, but I don't know if anyone using your sheets wants to use them. It won't be huge, basically only taking some input and forming an output (such as how many jobs completed, or how many facilities used) and thus reducing the number of cells I need to track.

[Xveers]

Wahoo it's done!

http://members.shaw.ca/victor-daivon/St ... raMod7.xls

There's the link if you're impatient.

Major changes include:

New Fleet Management page. Smoother, more streamlined (thanks Cralis!)
New Ship Design page! Copy an' Paste designs here! Also, add them to the data grid for enhanced functionality! (Again, Cralis)
Updated Ships page! References data from the design page for less entry which means fewer mistakes!
Updated Leasing on the Income Overview page! Add more CFN capacity with a few quick types. Less Muss, Less Fuss, more MC!
Bugs squashed! Killed a few odd ones in Leasing. Spreadsheet was looking in the wrong tables for a lot of capacity data pulling. Warning: May lead to having more Qv to use!
NPR Space Ownership added! New Empire table on the overview tab. What's the opinion of that neighbouring omnivoracity? Do they really respect your space?


Thoughts:
With the new CFN page, would it be better to change that "Turns in Transit" to a "Arrival Turn" entry instead?

Edit:
Missed a few (a lot) of cells with some formulae as stated in post below. Fix deployed, downloadable file updated!

[Malek]

Took a quick glance on the sheet. New fleet page looks spiffy but the only row 7 has formulas/dropdown lists ^^" Similar thing with Ship Designs - formulas for M. Cost go only down to row 24. Granted that both should be easily fixable but still worth mentioning