Topic: Suggestion: Switch to place production sites into "verbose mode"

Hi everybody! Finally I'm back. Can't promise much, but I'll try to participate the way I can.
bzr 6549

Here's something I'd like to discuss.
Definetely not high priotity, but a nice feature IMO:

Without placing the mouse cursor upon it, currently only the trainings facilities for soldiers show a detailed description of their last action when the status is enabled.
Some (i.e. Empire quarries) do not show this information at all. Other production sites show their productivity percentage.

While I would also welcome that soldier's training sites show their productivity rate percentage, this suggestion is about getting a more detailed report for some other sites.

I suggest that at least all production sites that produce more than one type of ware should be able to display
the results of their last program maybe alternating with their productivity percentage in their status.
I privately coined the term "verbose mode" for this, and I could imagine it, to be a switch in the production site's window.
The mouse-over action does the same thing, but it doesn't update, if you just keep your mouse position, and also you can see only one site's acticity by this method.

Pros:

• Will help to recognize currently made wares. In higher resolutions some wares (i.e. tools, weapons) are hard to identify.
• Helps newcomers to better understand what is going on.(i.e. why a particular ware is not manufactured ect)
• Supports better immersion into the game.

Cons:

• might be too distractive on screen, but then you don't need to switch it on, right?
• workload?

The following buildings would be affected if multi-ware-sites are choosen only
(but choosing all buildings may even be the better decision):

Atlanteans:

• Armoursmithy
• Crystalmine
• Smelting works
• Smokery
• Toolsmithy
• Weapomsmithy
• Weaving mill

Empire:

• Armoursmithy
• Marble mine
• Deep marble mine
• Inn
• Smelting works
• Toolsmithy
• Weaponsmithy

Barbarian:

• Axefactory
• Big Inn
• Fernery
• Helmsmthy
• Inn
• Metalworks
• Smelting works
• Warmill

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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This is an interesting idea. Generally, trying to move information away from the mouse-over seems like a good idea to me. In the same go, one might want to clean up the "not producing because economy ..." messages. Care must be taken to keep the verbose message short and to the point.

I think adding the productivity percentage (with a proper and sane definition of what productivity even means) to the building name is not such a bad idea. It doesn't take much space, after all.

As for construction sites, it is still important to distinguish between builders missing vs. arriving, precisely because not having enough builders is a rare condition for experienced players. But when you are low on building materials and just continue placing construction sites, it is actually fairly easy to run out of builders, and people need to learn that this might be a problem.

Finally, as to the technical considerations, I'm afraid that the suggested change is a bit awkward to combine with how buildings currently work in the code, because you are asking for a mixture of messages coming from the production programs and from things that are traditionally handled in C++ code (workers missing etc.). I have warmed to the idea of using Lua to implement most of the building logic, which is a major refactoring, but would probably allow to implement this change in a somewhat cleaner way.

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@WL-zocker: I'd be a bit reluctant to pack too much in there. But details can be discussed if any of the coders and "makers" likes the idea well enough to get going. I can't do it.
I'd make a proper lauchpad suggestion out of this in case it gets adopted. I'd want some more opinions first.
There may well be other implications of such a suggestion that I haven't considered.

Ixprefect wrote:

I think adding the productivity percentage (with a proper and sane definition of what productivity even means) to the building name is not such a bad idea. It doesn't take much space, after all.

Yeah, you're speaking my mind.
The mouse-over action would be redundant then, of course.
Some method should be found, too, to let the display of a skip action stay a little longer on the screen, so that you have a chance to read it.

Venatrix wrote:

Instead I would propose a third status text status: First nothing, pressing 's' for the ”normal“ one we have now and pressing 's' again for the verbose version. Pressing 's' the third time to switch it of again.

Not so sure, Venatrix. I really meant to enable "verbose" for selected productionsites, not for all.
You see, the situation I had in mind is that one e.g. Weaponsmithy is not working properly. Such things are usually due to long transportation, bad road system etc.
If all weaponsmiths are lazy, the solution is usually easier to see.
If you take into consideration that I you must leave that mode turned on for some time, and that the content will change, I really think it will totally clutter the screen.

Sooner or later WL will need a way to adjust all buildings of a specific type at once. (I'm currently thinking this over). There would be the place to switch them all to "verbose".

Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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