hi, iam from germany sorry for my bad english .i wait very long for the second part of this game and what are you make is very cool.i have load the version SupremacyTest_20071125b and i ask me, why are the turns so long the game when i quit the turn??

Your English is much better than my German so do not worry about that. I have also noted that is takes a long time to process a turn. It worries me about what will happen with a multiplayer game, large fleets and developed empires. Do we need to simplify the game or is there something else that can or should be done?

The only thing I can think of is to reference certain codes more or something like that in order to decrease the overall needed amount of code (No, I really don't know too much about this so I imagine I got my guess wrong). I have a friend that is a computer science major (yes I asked if he wanted to help and no he doesn't) and he always talks about how his programs do the same job as other peoples while being a lot shorter. Essentially, his programming motto is to work smarter not harder.

With the new UPdate when making a new game the Selections do not come infront of the Menu...
Example:

I click to choose a smaller size Galaxy the OPtions are Behind the Menu box and are not visable... although if i click in the general area if should be at the selection is made.. this applies to all the "new game" menu selections.

@Thunderchild-akira: How long does the turn processing take, and what size galaxy are you playing on? I recommend using a small or tiny galaxy for now. Turn processing on a small galaxy takes about 3 seconds for me.

@FoxURA: My code is generally rather concise and reusable. The turn processing logic executes almost instantaneously, but there's a bottleneck somewhere and I haven't tracked it down yet. Things get a lot more complicated when you're doing a lot of multithreading and client/server operations.

@carlr: I've seen that bug myself on very rare occations, but I think it's a rare glitch with the Microsoft libraries and not Supremacy. You should be fine if you restart the game. Worst case scenario, you can use the keyboard to make your selections.

I'm in uni at the mo and was away from the computer last night (I went to see Bill Bailey at the Cardiff International Arena ) so I haven't had a chance to download the latest update, but I certainly will when I get home. I've got some building and image updates for you as well, Mike.

I've noticed that Supremacy seems to slow down quite a bit (And the glitches increase in number) if i'm also running MSN at the same time. I try to avoid doing that, but if i'm running tests for Mike then I need to do it. The glitches that I've noticed in these circumstances usually involve not being able to click buttons - but as Mike said, reload the game and it works fine.

For these reasons though, I'd recommend that everyone else turn off MSN when they run Supremacy - in fact turn off all background programs if you can. Less programs mean more power, meaning faster turn processing.

Still, I constantly run a modelling program called Folding@home in the background, yet Supremacy runs with absolutely no slowdowns or problems. A turn takes an average of 3-5 seconds a turn on an early tiny map - as Mike said. The game does start to slow down as you play more and more turns, but I don't think it is an excessive slowdown and I don't often run the game long enough to notice. Still, if people think it is, keep posting about it and let us know what systems you are running the game on, any error messages, program clashes, etc. This will help Mike to trace the problems.

I will time the turn next time I have a chance to get at my home system. It is the newest download, running tiny galaxy and on an Athelon 64 generation system. It is a lot more than 1 to 3 seconds. There is nothing running in the background.

takes nearly 5mins to process turn 1 on a small galaxy over here, somethings gone wrong somewere mate.

Our relative motion is so great that it is warping space-time. Three seconds turns into five mmmiiiinnnuuuttteeesss.

Good lord yes, that's horribly wrong. Have you downloaded previous Supremacy releases, and if so, do you recall how long turn processing took before?

If people could please post their average turn processing time after the first 10 turns or so, I'd appreciate it. Please specify if you have a single-core or multi-core processor.

A lot of people have said that turn processing takes a while, but I always assumed that meant "several seconds" (more than 3 seconds but less than ~10 seconds). If you're seeing significantly longer times than this on a small galaxy, please let me know what times you're getting, because until now I've been completely unaware of this.

When I get the time I will try an uninstall reinstall for 3.5 and Supremacy as well.

I doubt that would make a difference, Kenneth. I never saw any performance differences between .NET v3.5 Beta 2 and RTM.

Single core Athlon64 3000+

Huge Galaxy

1st Turn, 2min 45 seconds, 1min of which was Diplomacy and another minute of which was downloading game state

Medium Galaxy

1st Turn, 15-17 seconds

Tiny Galaxy

1st Turn 1-2 Seconds

Regards Wolfe

The 25 november release gives EDITOR me error The type initializer for supremacy.resourceManager threw an exception.
Fresh install vista x64 and net 3.5 rtm the game itself work fine no slow turn times the small galaxy size ~2 sec take turn cpu dualcore E6600 @ 3,3Ghz and folding@home running background at 100% cpu usage.

hi, i have a dual core petium and windows xp so when i make my turns on a tiny galaxy,then the time between the turns are ca. 50 sec. but here is nothing running in the background.Why?

Wow I can't believe the times are so bad for people!

For what it's worth, this is what I get:

Pentium 4 540 Processor @3.21Ghz, 2x Radeon 9250 Graphics, 1Gb RAM.
Tiny Galaxy, Dense Systems, Dense Planets, Many Minors
Game Creation: 35 seconds.
Turn 1: 4 seconds.
Turn 10: 4 seconds.
Turn 20: 5 seconds.
Turn 30: 5 seconds.

I'm definitely not encountering any problems...

Mike, I noticed that your latest update still contains a resource cost problem for the Fed Construction Ship. I've updated the necessary file, and zipped it with my building and image updates, Sut sharepoint is down at the mo and even Mediafire is painfully slow at the moment. I'll try uploading again tomorrow.

At tiny and small the turn time is not noticeably long, at max 3 seconds, and this is up to turn 30.

But once we go medium, it's about 5 seconds+ for each turn.

I loaded up an old version, SupremacyTest_20070931, and tried Huge, it took under 2 seconds to process turn 1. Hmm ...

This is vista on Raid0 w/ c2d e6600, 2gb ram & ati1900xt 256mb.

Well, looks like I'll be doing some serious profiling this week... d'oh.

I just lost my connection to the game server and I had just built my NX-01, turn 15

Here's the log file.

d'oh... whatever caused that error occurred during an asynchronous operation, so I don't really get anything useful in the stack trace :-/. I should probably add some additional logging.

On the upside, I did some profiling last night, and I managed to find a few hotspots that can be made more efficient. It's funny how it's always the simple little things that end up causing you the most grief :-/. I made some preliminary changes and saw a significant drop in turn processing time on a huge galaxy, and I'm just getting started . I ought to be able to speed things up a lot more, particuarly at the start of the game (the galaxy generation process).

I'm glad you found ways to optimize already, do you have any suspects for the long turn times? D'oh indeed if it helps you to track it down, the server disconnection happened during the turn processing. I was running uTorrent in the background and downloading a bunch of things, maybe that affected something. I'll tell ya if it happens again, and if it happens under the same conditions.

Oh, I checked out the new editor, looks really good. I like the icons

Edit:
I forgot to say I really like the game so far, it's progressing well! I'm glad the terraforming is gone, the less micromanagement the better. I was sceptical of the fuel system as I haven't seen it in other games before so I naturally had some doubts, but it actually works and is much more realistic! I'm in love with it!

I don't know if it's been reported yet, but on the Inbox/Outbox section of the Diplomacy screen, you can bring up the right click menu but then you can't use the buttons to go to another screen. I used Esc, F1, F2 etc instead so it's not a game stopping bug.

Well I am playing as I post I have below a few suggestions I want you to hear and a few issues that I have come across so far, tell me what you think:

• 1 - "Double-clicking minor race systems"
  I understand the diplomacy is still work in progress but I have a suggestion, is it ok to make it so a double-click on a minor race inhabited system would go to the Make Proposal screen with that minor race? it just seems logical and intuitive to be able to access the make proposal screen from the galactic map by double-clicking their world, just as double-clicking on your own worlds takes you into the system management screen. It would streamline the micromanaging process a lot, and ultimately make it more fun to play. Please put it in! And also when turn summary pops up after a turn, through double-clicking the message "We encounter the blah in sector blah."?
  
• 2 - "Add a '+' sign for positive values"
  This is a minor thing, but in the empire info and requistion summaries (galactic screen) it was for me initially ambiguous which value showed the per turn and which was the stockpile. I think it was the lack of a positive sign, "+", on the positive per turn values, that confused me at first, it was clearer when the negative figures started coming in (which were red and had a "-" in front) as I built ships.
  
• 3 - "Ship building mouse-over annoyances"
  This is more serious as it still kinda bugs and wont go away. In the build ship screen, I mouse over a ship and see the ship stats, I see some of it is off the screen and require a scroll-down, so I proceed to to move the mouse over to the ship stats panel to scroll, but on the way I inadvertently mouse over another ship and the ship stats panel have changed to reflect that "choice". So I have to go back and try do it again but carefully. And it's really annoying!!!!! And it's the same if I want to click on "Description" and read the nice description that's been put in.
  
• 4 - "Extend the auto-assigning of newly available labour"
  I noticed newly available labour go into Food automatically if there are available slots, but they do not go into Production if all food slots are filled. I know an argument exists that that period should be the nurturing phase as your system is just developing, but it becomes a bit of a hassle when you have over a handful of systems that are developing, and you have to check whether newly available labour is assigned or not every turn. I still think the less micro management the more fun.

Back to playing-testing it a bit more

Interesting system there, Strings!

...

Mike, I watched the turn processing info and I noticed that "PostTurnOperations" seems to stay up for longer than most of the other info that flashes up onscreen. Most of these go so by fast you don't get a chance to read them, but I was clearly able to read the post turn operations one. Downloading an updated game state is still the longest one to process though. Perhaps there is a minor bottleneck associated with the post turn operations part of the processing?

...

I've got some comments to go with Strings points above.

• Strings is right - the right-click menu buttons are not clickable when in the inbox/outbox section of diplomacy. Using the F buttons or Esc was the only way to go back.
  
• I don't know if this would be possible, but I definitely like the idea of clicking minor race systems to open diplomacy with them. It would certainly make diplomacy easier, but it would have to be a double-click option rather than a single-click option to ensure you could still check out their system.
  
• I agree, the incoming resources should have a + sign next to them, and they should also be written in green if you're making more of a resource than you're using. This would definitely make it easier to understand whether you're looking at your stockpiles or your income, especially for noobs.
  
• The same thing applies to the buildings. It would be better if objects were "selected" by single-clicking on them, rather than a mouse-over. Double-clicking then puts that object in the build queue. That's how BOTF did it as well.
  
• I didn't realise this was the case - but I did notice that new labour units aren't always automatically assigned. I just tested it and this is happening for me too, Mike.

I've also got some other points of my own that i've noticed:

• If you've built an outpost, the symbol for it is an "S". However, in BOTF, Outposts had an "O" symbol and Starbases had an "S". If you clicked on these symbols, the planets part of the screen would then change to show info about the starbase. Is it possible to implement this, Mike?
  
• I just tried building Ice Breakers in system Sol, (It's one of my new population growth structures, which include Water Purifiers, Ice Breakers, Desalination Plants, Atmospheric Condensers, and the Advanced Irrigation Network) and I did not notice any physical increase in the population growth rate, Mike. I also noticed that the overall growth rate for the system stayed at 4%, and Pluto still had a Planetary growth rate of 2%. I know i've discussed growth rates with you before, but you never replied to whether buildings are taken into account in your population growth equation - and looking at this, it seems they aren't, which renders the buildings themselves useless.
  
• Could we implement buildings to hold your stockpiles, or do people think that this is a step too far? We could set it so that a system is capable of holding a small amount of each resource without needing such a building, but after that you need to construct one to be able to stockpile more. I don't mind making the buildings as part of my updates, but i'd need the necessary options to do it, eg. a box to select the resource that the building is capable of stockpiling and a box to specify how much of that resource that the building can hold.
  
• If you order a ship to move, save the game, quit, then reload. ALL movement orders for ships are cancelled. It looks like the game isn't saving movement orders. I've tested this a few times to make sure.
  
• I've noticed a problem with the way the editor works. I've set it so that Deuterium plants can be built on either Oceanic or Gas Giants. However, I can only build them in systems with BOTH Oceanic and Gas Giant planets. I can change it so there are two different types of buildings, but this problem is going to affect a few other buildings that have multiple requirements and/or building "locations" as well. The only way around it would be to somehow include an and/or option in the editor.

I can't think of any more for the moment. I'll keep trying though.

Lol, information overload for Mike today.

On Matress' points, I can add that:

Desalination plant I built didn't have an effect for me either.
Saving game does indeed not store orders, but interestingly stores waypoints.

We should abandon those planet utilities it is repetitive and boring micromenagent for every star system. Advanced Irrigation Network in 24th century?
Purification Works? We are going to have Congo, Cameroon or Chad as minors?

I wouldn't call them boring, they're quite creative inventions of Matress'. It is only repetitive if it forces the player to do something every turn, which these buildings do not. Building them is an option, and a valuable one for inhospitable planets. They do make systems with lots of hostile planets and very low growth rates a bit more "usable", instead of just ignoring them and moving on. However, hostile systems often have low population caps too, maybe these structures can raise the cap slightly too? I think having 5% growth wont help much if the population cap is just 20.

But yeah, you're right about the the Advanced Irrigation Network, it doesn't sound sci fi enough

Huge galaxy in Supremacy has at minimum 2300 star systems

Can we have one building for all utilities , some kind of "Sustainable Design Center"- responsible for designing physical objects and the built environment to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability. It ranges from the microcosm of designing small objects for everyday use, through to the macrocosm of designing buildings, cities, and the planets's physical surface. It is a growing trend within the fields of landscape architecture and engineering... onee note more, hmm we need graphics for each building, more buildings more graphics

That doesn't sound very trekky either. But you're right some systems can be ignored, you shouldn't find every system inhabited.

I just realised, after thinking about having those structures raise the population cap too, that they are basically the terraforming options, slightly modified and in disguise! Hey MOE you sneaky romulan

But at least you can queue up your terraforms now I think I prefer it if they stayed in the game.

Yes, sneaky Matress, bad Matress .

They can stay in game but in other form or way, six same buildings is to much for each new system I' d prefer one buildnig like Terraforming Control Center, you know what i mean building name for now is irrelevant.

Err as far as i was aware terreforming is still in but just not implemented yet?

Is that correct MStrobel?

Regards Wolfe

Actually I didn't create them, Strings - the population growth buildings were created by Dafedz - there is an entire section on them in his Database. I just implemented them in the game.

The Utilities

The growth buildings were originally intended to work by providing water supplies for specific types of planet. There would have been population limits depending on the planet type, but Mike said he would not implement this and he didn't like the idea of having water supplies anyway.

Because of this, I changed the bonuses to a growth rate bonus, but I didn't change their names, which is why they are still water-based. They are all pretty low-tech structures though, which is why they also don't sound very scifi. The advanced irrigation network is actually the most high-tech of the structures though, because it is built on Barren planets. I could easily change its' name though

• Ozone Construction Satellites (Eliminate Cosmic Radiation by stimulating the production of Ozone in the upper atmosphere via laser beams from space)
• Tectonic Inducers (Use Nuclear explosions to generate heat in the core of the planet, generating Tectonic activity to produce massive volcanic eruptions that would produce huge quantities of water, Carbon Dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, which would in turn help to generate an atmosphere and heat the planet's surface)
• Magnetic Infusions (Generate a magnetic field powerful enough to eliminate the atmosphere-destroying effect of the solar winds)
• Photosynthetic Generators (Genetically engineer plants and bacteria that produce gases to create a breatheable atmosphere)
• Atmospheric Converters (Convert the Atmosphere into something breatheable, rather than using domes)
• Aquascaping Project (Create Oceans etc)
• Biosoil Seeding Project (Put genetically engineered bacteria in the planetary soils to remove contaminants and make them suitable for growing crops)
• Atmospheric Control Systems (Generate weather patterns by redirecting solar winds and thermal currents)

...Actually, thinking about it, I could make it so that ALL of these structures are in for Barren Planets. We could have it so that Barren planets are uninhabitable until you've built all these structures. Mike would need to add in an option where you can select a planet type to become habitable, but I doubt that would be difficult as there is already an option to make Moons habitable. (The Dome Construction Project still hasn't been added yet coz there is a bug with it or something though)

Alternatively we could just go with Zeleni's idea of having one overall structure, but I like the idea of giving the planet types more buildings to give each one specific bonuses. I just don't think BOTF had enough planet-specific structures.

...And as you guessed, I do like terraforming - and believed the same as Wolfe. This is the first i've heard of the idea being scrapped.