Bug Related To Timing of Selecting A New Technology To Research

from GalCiv4 Forums

When you click on the icon to go to the next turn, there is a series of events that occur before you can do something with a ship in the next turn:

  • any ships that have pending moves will execute those moves
    • if one of those ships surveys a ship graveyard, whatever the graveyard held will be displayed
  • if you have any ships on treasure hunting, research, or resource hunting missions and those missions complete, you will see those results
  • if the technology you are researching gets completed (either naturally or by research provided by a research mission) the window informing you of this appears with a button in it you can click to select a new technology to re4search
  • all other civilizations will do whatever they want to do INCLUDING communicate with you about gifts, trade, or war.

The bug that I have encountered is that, if I click the button to select a new technology BEFORE all of the other activities that can display a window have completed, I cannot get out of the technology selection screen no matter what I do.  Even the Escape key does not work.  I can click around the various technology options, but the Done key does not work and double-clicking on a technology does not work like it usually does.  The only way out is to use the operating system to close the program.

I suspect that the problem is that another window has been opened behind the technology selection window and the program is waiting for a response in that window (which you cannot see) before it will let you close the technology selection window.

I strongly suggest that you take a look at prioritizing the sequence of windows that need to be shown to the user.  In this case, there is no reason I can think of why the window related to the completion of a technology should not be the LAST window to appear before the user begins the next turn.  I do not pretend to know or understand all of the complexities you have to deal with in the code, but the way it works now is unacceptable due to the fact that the user gets stuck with no way out.

galactic civilizations iv
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Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Some players when they completed a research project because of a survey result such as a +25% to research event result want to be able to change their research project RIGHT NOW before the turn starts so they can have the next project chosen to get the benefit of additional events between the turns.

When you are doing and getting multiple surveys by many ships, you can get multiple +25% results on the same turn, and if one them finishes the project, they want to get the next project chosen to get the benefit of the additional +25% results. Otherwise they end up losing the results (or at least they think that they do) of the additional +25% results. So they are trying to select the Technology Window to change to the new project as SOON as possible (in fact they are trying to do sooner than is possible under the computer programing)

What we need in GC IV is a way to que up multiple research porjects, so that one finishes the next is started immediately. Also once you start doing a lot research and getting a lot of research boosing results from surveying, it could be possible for you to finish more than one research project on the same turn.

I can remember in some games, such Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri doing 3 or 4 or even 5 Research projects (and high level expensive ones at that) in one end of turn.

 

Added: For example, in my current game of 0.65, which I just started Thursday (Dec 16th), on about t51, I just had THREE Mysterious Hardware (the +25% to current research project) results/events on the SAME turn. It only took one of those events to finish my current research project and the other 2 events/results got wasted, because there was no current research project active to use them on. If I could have had my next research project qued up, they could have been applied to it.
If the research project took 6 turns each of those +25% research events/results would have been worth 1 1/2 turns of research points, if the project would have taken 8 turns, each of those results would have saved me 2 turns doing research.

If I just started a long research project, those 3 Mysterious Hardware results could have saved me 75% of the research points needed for it.

(This was added Saturday morning).