Feature request: notification of insufficient raw goods

[tour86rocker]

IIRC, the original Col would warn you if you were trying to produce a manufactured good but had no raw goods to do it with.

It would be a great help if this was including in Civ4Col. It would also be helpful if it notified you when when your building is producing some of the item (hammers, rum, bells, whatever), but would produce just as many if you moved one guy elsewhere (ex: when there's less than enough lumber for one carpenter, and you have two or three carpenters assigned...or when there's zero lumber and you have even one guy assigned)

Of course if there's already an option for this, just tell me and I'll go to time out.

 

[Conditional Zenith]

I was wanting this too. I have wasted may colonist turns through not knowing there were no materials available. From memory, freecol has gone further and gives you a turns warning that it will happen, not just telling you that it did.

 

[tour86rocker]

Yep. I played FreeCol quite a bit so sometimes I hesitate to say for certain where I remember a feature from. But to be fair, the FreeCol folks had a goal of sticking as close to the traditional gameplay as possible.

That said, there's nothing like the charm of the original, and this new one has grown on me in the last week.

 

[MadMaligor]

If Im not mistaken there is a visual cue for this...

the color is changed to red in the box showing what your making for that city on the main map.

For instance, if you dont have tools to produce certain buildings it will build with the wood you have avialable but will remain a highlighted red (beside the city on the main map) until you have the neccessary tools in stock. It will even move on to the next project and when you do ship in or make enough tools it will then ask you if you want to finish off that building.

 

[Conditional Zenith]

That only applies to buildings when you lack tools (if I am not mistaken). We are talking about any production (eg. hammers, cigars, rum) when you run out of the raw material needed to produce that.

edit: what tour86rocker said right after me

 

[tour86rocker]

I haven't noticed that. Are you talking about how the Name turns red when you're not producing enough food?

I'm talking about for ALL raw resources +tools though. Things that you're processing into others, like ore->tools->guns

I'm accustomed to a message to warn you because sometimes I'll set extra people to work, knowing that at some point the resource will be depleted (say you have only one colonist and you're alternating him between lumberjack and carpenter).

 

[Jabie]

It would be nice if the tools were used up right away (if you had them) and then handed back if you decided you didn't want to build that building. Damn sight easier to remember.

 

[tour86rocker]

I apologize for not posting this in General, it wasn't immediately clear to me that there WAS a General, I thought there were just subforums.

 

[Krupo]

Bonus tip - F1, or whatever the colony screen is, has a bunch of submenus.

These are great little 'power player' features which deserve more focus than... the absolute NONE the game gives them unless you dig around.

The one I speak of is one of the colony management submenu screens - it'll show cities with red/yellow values of goods that are either over-stocked already, or in danger of over-stock. Check it out.

I didn't end up using it much (some clever colony/wagon train management helped), but I can totally see it making your life easier.

Don't get me started on the victory screen not properly scaling to use the space granted by a 1900-ish resolution monitor.

 

[Conditional Zenith]

Yes, that helps, but you have to go and check the screen, it doesn't notify you.

 

[Krupo]

True - I think the Snoopy/Dale patchmod adds a notification.

 

[tour86rocker]

Krupo, since when? Is there a new version of the patch?

 

[Krupo]

It's up to 1.05 now.

From the 'readme':

INTERFACE:
NEW * Warnings: Out of raw good for processing warning.
NEW * Warnings: Almost out of space warning.​

 

[tour86rocker]

I see. I would love a notification that "A carpenter in Jamestown has insufficient lumber to be productive". Or does this notification pop up in such cases? Say there is 2 lumber being produced per turn (zero in storage), but there are two carpenters (who each want to use at least 3 lumber per turn). Is there going to be a notification every turn that there is insufficient lumber?

If I can think of any cases where this wouldn't catch the problem I guess I'll post. I'm currently on a vacation from my "good" computer so my participation here is likely to decrease dramatically for now.

 

[Dale]

The raw good missing notification in PatchMod will only popup if you have assigned a manufacturer and there is no stored raw good and no raw good production.