In-game unit info index

[Fiskbit]

I'm about to be attacked by cutlasses, and I was wanting to take a look at their tooltip information, but since I don't have any and am not on any planets with any, I can't look at it. I was wondering if the game could contain some sort of ship index, showing the ship graphic, icon graphic, tooltip info, costs, and ship strength comparisons against all other ships for each ship. I realize a lot of this is in the Wiki, but it'd be fantastic if it was on-hand in the game and thus easier to access when playing a game. I figure that most of this would be rather automatic after being implemented, too, since the info is all in the game already at release time for every ship.

Definitely a nice-to-have, so if it's too much, no worries.

[x4000]

The basics of this are available if you just hit F1.  That lets you see any ship on the sidebar, with the basic info you would have (including strengths/weaknesses) if it was on your planet at the current time.  That's the concise, more actionable view.

As for something more robust, I'm not sure I would really want to take the time to build that into the game proper.  That seems like a much better thing for an outside reference.  I never found myself using the full Civpedia or whatever in CivIV -- it was nice to be able to get certain information, but for the rest it would have been more convenient in an easier-to-navigate and easier-to-search format.  It's been a while since I played that game, but those are my recollections from back then.

So anyway, I would say F1, let me know if you think more than that is really needed in-game, but I'm not overly enthused with going too overboard with something like that in-game.

[Revenantus]

Just an idea, what if I was to make a second printable reference?

I could place all the ship types on one side, and some relative strength charts on the other. It'd be a PDF so I'd be able to make it look much nicer than the wiki. I know it's not quite what Fiskbit wants but it could still be handy.

A lot of this information will likely end up in the manual somewhere (probably not the RSCs though).

Anyway, if there's a demand for it, or any other types of reference, I'll add them to my todo list.

[x4000]

I mean, I think that's really cool Rev, but the only potential issue is how frequently all this changes (as you know).  So I guess if you have a semi-automated way of keeping that up to date, like you do the wiki, then that could be awesome.  But I don't want you to get bogged down in something like that that is going to take hours per week, if you see what I mean.  If it's a one-time setup thing and then a mild ongoing time cost it is totally worth it -- but if its a huge ongoing project then I think the wiki is the way to go.  My thoughts, at least.

[Fiskbit]

I hadn't noticed the F1 thing; that solves the problem that made me bring this up in the first place. It would still probably be rather useful to have more detailed info on ships, such as with ship caps (for people who are using parasites), but F1 seems to do most of it, albeit in a little less organized fashion. Neat.

[Revenantus]

If I was to do it then I'd produce some code to take the XML data and output LaTeX formatting. It'd be 2-3 hours work to get the reference off the ground (design formatting, produce code to automatically replicate formatting), but after that it would in theory be pretty easy to maintain.

However, I don't know if anyone actually wants this available, so I won't take this any further unless the community expresses an interest.

[x4000]

Great point about the ship caps, Lars.  I'll make sure to add that into that view.

Rev, that sounds like just the sort of situation where it would make sense to do it, then, presuming there is interest from players.  Right now I don't know that there is interest beyond what is there in the wiki, so I'm totally with you on all that.

[Huw]

The basics of this are available if you just hit F1.  That lets you see any ship on the sidebar, with the basic info you would have (including strengths/weaknesses) if it was on your planet at the current time.  That's the concise, more actionable view.

 

I didn't know about this!  That's really going to come in handy, thanks!

[x4000]

You bet!  One of those little-documented features.

[Echo35]

If I was to do it then I'd produce some code to take the XML data and output LaTeX formatting. It'd be 2-3 hours work to get the reference off the ground (design formatting, produce code to automatically replicate formatting), but after that it would in theory be pretty easy to maintain.

However, I don't know if anyone actually wants this available, so I won't take this any further unless the community expresses an interest.

I was going to say, dropping the data base info into some sort of spread sheet would be easy enough to do/put on the wiki

[Revenantus]

This is actually how I manage the wiki now. The first image is the app for extracting data about either individual units or all units of a class, e.g fighters. I then paste the outputted text into the wiki page. The second is a command line utility for generating the relative strength charts, my_wiki_table is the output file and 'a1 a2 d1' means include MkI&II as attackers and MkI as defenders. There are some other flags for turrets and starships etc but I've never posted these on the wiki. Okay, so it's not great but it works.  

[Echo35]

Its just HTML, you could definitely format it all pretty

[Revenantus]

The actual data from the game is in XML format. Have you seen the wiki?

http://arcengames.com/communitywiki/index.php?title=Unit_Types_and_Tactics

http://arcengames.com/communitywiki/index.php?title=Relative_Ship_Strength

[Admiral]

If I was to do it then I'd produce some code to take the XML data and output LaTeX formatting.
...
However, I don't know if anyone actually wants this available, so I won't take this any further unless the community expresses an interest.

I'd probably use it if it were done in this manner:

Page 1: Concise eference on the main 3 ships and starships vs. everything

Page 2: Reference on the expansion ships - but perhaps just the highlights

I don't think an exhaustive reference is necessary.

I think a useful piece of information would be ratios such as:

Mk A vs Mk B health, attack, speed, etc.
Mk A vs Mk B ratios for cost effectiveness (resources, energy, knowledge)

Another useful piece of information would be boldfacing/italicizing certain information such as "best range" or "best attack" or "strongest against" and "weakest against."

A lot of the time I see some enemy ships and I want to know "What do I need to kill these most easily?" But, the tooltip for, say, Cruisers says it's strong against X. But what I really want to know is What is Strong against Cruisers?

Cheers!

[x4000]

That's what the Weak Vs. tells you!