Suggestion - "stacking" spending orders

(Ordering things before you have the money for them)

from Sins Forums

Several times towards the end of a game I have found myself generating sufficient resources that when I was actively managing a battle I would have stockpiled lots by the end of it, even when I had spent down to zero before the battle started.

Why not allow you to "stack" orders even when you don't have the resources for them and only have them execute when there are sufficient resources to build things? (On a "first in, first out" basis). Before a battle starts I could start some expensive techs or request the building of reinforcements so that while I was fighting my empire would be automatically sending me reinforcements as soon as it had enough cash to do so.

I'm not suggesting that you should be able to borrow resources and build things before you generate the resources yourself (though a sufficiently expensive 'loans' system might be interesting)

9,835 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Yes I also would like this...
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Two issues I can see with this: first, your queueing order could get messed up if you order big ticket items and then inexpensive ones. Say you add a 3000money capship to your queue, and then add a couple 400money frigates. You'll raise the cash for the second first - do they get built first and delay the capship, or does the money sit unused until the capship is saved up for? That's a decision the player might wish to have some immediate control over.

The second,and bigger problem, is that needs can change in the middle of a big battle, and you'd have to "de-spend" your money so you could focus it on other things. For example, you're trying to conquer Empire A just beyond Chokepoint 1, and suddenly at Chokepoint 2, Empire B launches an attack that really needs some frigate defense. So transferring your queued construction to the facilities that are closest to Checkpoint 2 is required, otherwise you'll get maimed there.

If you have to leapfrog between frigate construction screens and research screens to remember the order that you had requested your build/queue in and reverse it all, it would be really distracting. So maybe a series of decals across the screen bottom, each representing the next thing that will be built/researched as soon as you raise the money, would be a good way to handle rapid cancellation of build queue orders. Clicking the "cancel" option on any decal would cancel it and any further build orders so you could reallocate your construction queue elsewhere.

Anything that influences the GUI is generally a pretty big feature change, so this likely isn't easy to do.

-- Retro
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
The decals idea is a good one, Retroboy - and not just for this purpose. It would be good to be able to mess around with the production queue even without 'going into the negative'. If decals couldn't be fit at the bottom of the screen, an additional button somewhere that would take you to a full-screen production queue should be do-able and would be useful.

Even without any UI changes this could be implementable as an "advanced user" option to be used at the user's own risk.