A Little Thing That Annoys Me

Sprayber · February 9, 2001, 11:28

You know, when your at the screen that shows all your bases at once and what they are producing. If you have more than 10 or so bases and you click on one to go to it in order to change something, why can't it take you back to that base instead of going back to the top? I mean it's not a problem if all of your bases can fit on the screen without using the scroll bar. But if you have say like 25 or 30 bases then you have to spend some time scrolling. Anyway, not too big of a deal but it gets annoying sometimes when you would like to be doing something else. Am I nit picking?

stuntman19 · February 9, 2001, 12:06

I don't ever expand much over the first efficiency warning without improving my SE setting, so I never get this many bases. I think there are more experienced players than I who could explain this, but I don't think such a large number improves research rate at a certain point. So in other words it's a quality vs. quantity and at a certain point the efficiency just holds you back no matter how many labs you build in the new bases. You might try gifting some new or captured bases to friends to keep them happy.

Myronides · February 9, 2001, 12:34

Well, I often bild (and later on conquer) much more than 30 bases, and I sandly have a small screen, it fits only 6 bases. This thing gets to my nerves as well, cause I want to check reguralely all my bases in order to have a good idea of my empire as a hole, but I 'm afraid I haven't find anything to do about it so far...

Sprayber · February 9, 2001, 22:57

I rarely build over 15 bases of my own, but I end up capturing many more. Sometimes I place a base because I want to claim a specific strip of land or landmark. I usually play an aquatic faction so my important bases are seabases. My land bases are to take advantage of a particular stratigic point or landmark. As for handing over bases. I do this depending on the game. Sometimes I just like to see my color all over the planet.

I play on huge maps so by the time I start down the path of war my enemies usually occupy large tracts of land. I am a big fan of actually trying to make something of captured bases. But sometimes it is better to give the bases away.

cbn: I knew you could do it this way, but never tried it. I think from now on I will do it that way. Thanks for reminding me.

Myronides · February 9, 2001, 23:09

Not the same thing though. I offen wanna check some of my bases, or in a particular order.

cbn · February 10, 2001, 01:34

Sprayber

I share your frustration with that feature using the F4 list so I only use that list as an overview. For a detailed look I go into one of my cities and use the arrow keys to go through each and every city until I get back to the beginning. At one time I would have thought of this as too much of a PIA but now I look at it as the only proper way to manage. It only takes a couple of minutes and you would be amazed at the amount of increased energy and production a little micromanagement can bring.

Stuntman19

I have to disagree with you a little. Although you are correct that the inefficiency and drones for new outlying bases can be a problem, there always seems to be ways to make having more bases effective. Sure inefficiency may kill energy production for that outlying base but this can be combatted by using specialists OR you could focus the new, outlying bases on mineral production-- producing probes, military or crawlers.

Once I have a core of bases I can accept that these will be my major science centres , SP builders etc. But it is really nice to have a ring of less important outer bases (from which any science or energy is a nice bonus) to protect the core of the empire and to use for military builds.

Maybe its a bad strat but I usually classify a base early based on available terrain. Some bases in rocky terrain may never get beyond size 2 or 3 (nor do I want them to) but can punch out and support large numbers of military units (using the crawler approach). These bases may never get any infrastructure other than Rec Commons. Others, (particularly ones with access to oceans) get a lot of rush built infrastructure . They then pump out the crawlers and trawlers and the energy haul is multiplied through the infrastructure.

The only reason I have for not building far more than the 15-30 that I typically build is simply that I get lazy and can't be bothered to administer that many.

Just a different viewpoint--

cbn

Misotu · February 10, 2001, 15:31

Sprayber, way back when we were compiling a list of bugs/requests for Firaxis (before that became somewhat, er, pointless) this was the first enhancement I requested. It's a silly design flaw, and easily fixed.

It's OK to rotate through bases using the arrow keys. But, like Myronides, I often want to do it in a particular order (say best labs or best minerals) or, for example, access all the bases building hab domes to rush them. In these cases, cycling through the bases is really not that helpful

Sprayber · February 11, 2001, 06:38

Misotu and Myronides: I see your point. There have been times when I wanted to do that but just ended up taking the time to go through the whole list.

So I guess you just have to take the time or limit the number of your bases. It couldn't have been that hard to fix it, but I guess they had other things to worry about. Thanks for the comments.

stuntman19 · February 12, 2001, 17:59

Myronides

If you switch your screen to 1024 x 768 from 800x 600 you should be able to get more than 6. You will also see more info on some of the other screens. You might have to adjust your front size a bit also. The game supports both and I'm not certain if one or the other might have more crash problems however.

Morganstern · February 14, 2001, 16:19

For what it's worth, I agree with the comments on this minor but still significant annoyance. It makes no sense to send you back to the top of the list. Particularly in the latter stages of mid-game and the late game, I use the list a lot, and this is an annoyance. You'd think they would have easily corrected this in a patch.