Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

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1630 days, 17 hours, 23 minutes ago

Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2:

The editors are using this thread to document their changes. In addition, if someone sees documentation that is in error, missing information, or could use some help, please feel free to post that information here.

Part 1 of this thread (http://planets.nu/#/activity/1715309) has gotten to be over 500 posts long, and it's time to roll over to a new thread. Please use this thread and not the old one.

1630 days, 15 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> it's time to put together a detail page on happiness and taxes, with the equations

The page is done, but I need some information/verification from Joshua before I link it in.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/taxes-details

1630 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> The Crystals and Siliconoids each have some interesting happiness quirks, Crystals especially. You might want to take some time to verify. I'll trust your work, though -- if you're satisfied, I don't plan to make any special effort to proof it.

The information is in the taxes details page above. I believe it's correct, but please feel free to verify.

----------------------

Do you have a template Race page yet? I'd like to review it when it's ready.

Also, what sections of the rest have you completed? I'd like to do a final edit for consistency and to add the location links at the top.

----------------------

@Xray,

> There was a query about a guy having trouble with the lfm code (set to planet and ally ship, but ship was unable to acquire minerals. Is the lfm code restricted like nuk and att? I couldn't find anything about it.

From the Friendly Codes page (http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/friendly-codes):

> Starships that have the exact (case-sensitive) same Friendly Code will not fight each other under any circumstance. The three exceptions are the Friendly Code mkt, ntp, and lfm, which do not prevent combat even if they match.

----------------------

@Singularity,

> On the checkbox page ships also wake up from double tick if they are a terra former and the planet reaches optimal temperature.

Fixed.

> I also think the checkbox page should be in the toc under star map > checkbox rather than buried under planets > planetary interface > checkbox. Its such a useful feature that all new (and old) players should know how to use it.

I'll have a look at that. I think it should be linked into planets, starbases and starships, as those are the objects that it works with.

1630 days, 5 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey, W. All of my projects are temporarily on hold due to a family emergency. Bad couple of years for us, it seems.

I'm redoing text, and will create an integrated whole for each race, if all goes well. Nothing is ready for review. Since I'm afk for a bit, though, there's nothing to prevent you proofing the present pages if you have spare time; it could be a while before we get a finished project, after all.

1630 days, 2 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'm going through the pages one at a time, looking for consistency. I see a distinct lack of it, as some of this is written in 2nd person and some in 3rd. How should it be?

I got to the Races page, and saw that there's way too much there. This needs to be shrunk down to 1 or 2 things that make the race unique. The Races page is supposed to be a teaser. To get the real data, the user should go to the individual pages.

1629 days, 17 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I found another problem with the Races page. The YouTube clips have a start time, but no end time. I'm working on this now.

1629 days, 17 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The above two issues with the Races page have been fixed. I'm fixing the links now. Opinions?

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/race-advantages

1629 days, 16 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The Races page is finished. The racial advantages were trimmed down to the two advantages that I felt defined the race. Also, the racial advantage links were removed, the race links were corrected, and the video links now have a start and stop time.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/race-advantages

I believe that the new page size is just about right. As always, opinions from users/players are appreciated.

1626 days, 18 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

I just encountered the 'combat-races' page. The information in this page is redundant. At most, this page needs links to the actual advantage pages. I don't actually see any significant need for it to exist.

What was the intended purpose of this page? Once the Race pages are done, can I purge it?

1626 days, 17 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've got a whole lot of catching up to do, W. I'll take a look, but right now I'm just putting together a list.

If I recall correctly, it was created as an alternate template for a nested-links advantage format, and as such it would have value only in preserving the discussion base. But don't act on that until I get to it.

Anything you can think of that would be a priority?

1626 days, 17 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Anything you can think of that would be a priority?

A template for the new race pages. Once you finish the template, it can be looked at by others to verify, while you're temporarily looking at something else.

1626 days, 17 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yeah; that's new product. I can review changes at times when I'm incapable of creating, so at those times I'll cycle through the list.

1626 days, 17 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Also, I've encountered several places where the header was incorrect.

The first entry should be the referenced-by/references lines. These should be exact, with no commas, so that they can be machine readable (possible future enhancement).

If an author line is appropriate, it should be AFTER the references.

The next item would be the TODO section (being moved to the TODO page), with possible discussion of specific items in that list.

After that, should be the new location header (I'm putting those in now), followed by the page text, and ending with the Back button.

1626 days, 11 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I don't like the location header at the top. I don't like it at all, really, but if we must have it, could we put it at the bottom, below the Back button?

I'd be delighted to put in some of the work moving them.

1626 days, 11 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'm still hunting down my Race Pages work; I make a mess when I drop everything all at once, apparently. Do we have a link where Dotman was getting the ship pics? I don't want to just steal them off a secondary site.

Mean while, I'm going back to the overall review. I'm going to do what I can to tighten up format as I go.

1626 days, 11 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

...found the ship pics. :o)

1626 days, 10 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I don't like the location header at the top. I don't like it at all, really, but if we must have it, could we put it at the bottom, below the Back button?

This was briefly discussed with Dotman 2 months back:

> I propose we use the old fashioned technique of having each page list its position in the menu at the top. For instance, the top of the Mine Sweep Page, the first line would be:
>
> Starships > Missions > Mine Sweep

There was no negative response at that time, so I'm rolling it out.

For comparison, please check any manual that's been converted from PDF to HTML. They all have a location line at the top. This is SOP for what we're creating.

1626 days, 10 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Perhaps so; I see them in Apex quite a bit, and they're very useful when separated from the text. Personally, I'd been hoping that it had been forgotten, and that the Back button had been adopted in its stead.

I'm opposed on aesthetic and functional grounds primarily because it's difficult to distinguish them from the body of the text. Perhaps we could experiment with horizontal lines bracketing them?

1626 days, 10 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

(You missed me while I was gone; I can tell. :o)

1626 days, 10 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> it's difficult to distinguish them from the body of the text

I agree. I'd like it better if we could break it out a bit more.

Does this look any better?

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/battle-simulator

> You missed me while I was gone

Yeah, but my aim's getting better ;)

1626 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Not so much "better" as "marginally less bad". What about using a different color?

I was sure there was a code in HTML5 for a horizontal line. Let me see...

1626 days, 10 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Perhaps the "" tag?

1626 days, 10 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

{hr}

1626 days, 9 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

How's this look?
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/dashboard-reports

1626 days, 8 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The HR tag isn't new to HTML5. It's been around for a LONG time.

I think that page looks OK.

1626 days, 8 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yeah; I'm more at home with Basic or C, possibly SQL. Surprisingly inept at anything else, largely because I'm so very absent-minded, I think. Unless I use it, it's gone.

So what do you think? Horizontal lines OK? Alternately, I'd be content with a separate color or putting it on the bottom or something. Just so it doesn't blend with the text; that's all I ask.

And it is quite a useful device; I rather like it, on sober reflection.

1626 days, 5 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'd be content with a separate color

I don't like to mess with colors, unless there's no other acceptable solution.

1626 days, 5 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Not very platform-independent, is it?

Hmm.

Right, then. If the lines are OK with you, let's do that. Top or bottom?

1626 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes ago

happy daze

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Look at the Intro pages. Top works OK, and it's the normal place to find this sort of information, so I think it's the best place to put it.

1626 days, 4 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Looks much better.

Hm. How many are you, I wonder?

1626 days, 4 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Look at the Intro pages. Top works OK

Agreed. That's the section I set up for demo.

1626 days, 3 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK. I hit the Advantages page (http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/dashboard-advantages). All the racial advantages are children of this page, so it'll take some time to move on past this.

The problem is the section for Campaign ships. Do we really want one page per campaign ship? That's a LOT of hulls to create pages for. As an alternative, we could direct the user to the ship list. Opinion?

1625 days, 19 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Probably a third of these ships are vessels with some unique special ability. Ships like the Sapphire and the T-Rex (C) need complete guides somewhere, and a single page is not too much -- but on the other hand, it's already rather onerous going through the present pages of this guide.

Let's start with a list of the ones that we absolutely require and go from there.

1625 days, 18 hours, 35 minutes ago

ville kauppinen

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Just type on (C) ships : "Practically useless. Don't waste your advantages."

1625 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Ville+Kauppinen,

> Just type on (C) ships : "Practically useless. Don't waste your advantages."

While I can believe that your statement may be valid, that sort of information doesn't belong in the main body of the documentation. If you'd like to write a "Lizard Campaign Guide" containing that information, plus other useful information for Lizarf Commanders entering the Campaign games, we'd be happy to publish it.

1625 days, 18 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> Let's start with a list of the ones that we absolutely require and go from there.

OK. I'll start putting together the list. The short version of the list is that any ship with a special ability needs it's own page. In addition, it might be useful to have a page for any ship that has advantage points and can be disabled, but perhaps a table would be good enough for this.

1625 days, 18 hours, 8 minutes ago

ville kauppinen

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Nah, you've way better fingers, motivation and more freetime so I'll leave you to it :D

1625 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I happen to agree, Ville, but then I'm outside -- I haven't played Lizards much since the 90s. It's cool and all, but it's not likely to fool too many people.

Still, W is right -- not what we do here.

Speaking of W being right: That's perfect. Actually, two tables -- one for abilities, one not -- might be ideal, or a table for each race if it gets too long.

1625 days, 17 hours, 54 minutes ago

ville kauppinen

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yeah, if you want to be honest include that:

(c) devices do NOT:
- chameleon ship name
- chameleon ship id

so they are unlikely to fool about umm.. nobody, unless you keep it on indefinitely in which case it burns ridiculous amounts of fuel.

But thats my contribution, end of communications.

1625 days, 17 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Now, see, THAT we can put in. Thanks, mate -- we'll do that.

Ship Name isn't too bad; I can do that myself. Ship ID, though -- that's pretty crippling. But I don't see any way to do it effectively.

1625 days, 17 hours, 49 minutes ago

ville kauppinen

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

forgot mass. You cannot disguise your T-Rex as S-FRG, mass will give it in.

1625 days, 16 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Nah, you've way better fingers, motivation and more freetime so I'll leave you to it

I've never played Lizards, or ANY Campaign game. If you can give me the highlights, I might be able to turn it into a guide, but it will require some of your time to proof the guide before publication.

As the Campaign abilities are unique to Planets.nu, I'd like to see a guide for selecting Campaign abilities/ships for each race. Any takers?

1625 days, 16 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Actually, two tables -- one for abilities, one not -- might be ideal, or a table for each race if it gets too long.

I'll see what I can do. Right now, it's time to replace a bad alternator.

1625 days, 16 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Finally got a chance to review "feds-test".

I approve of a lot of the innovations here. One of the approaches that I've been considering is that of nesting some of the detail pages, and that ship table is about perfect for that model.

The other model that I've been working on is a modification of the present narrative page, with in-line conversational links and an expanded and revised detail description. I dislike the emphasis the inline links place on terms, though; it interrupts narrative flow.

I'd been working on a third model for these that's kind of a blend of the first two, but I've scrapped it as unworkable as well as far too long.

The final design, I think, ought to be very similar to your test page. We're going to go with a single ship pic on the bottom and a stack of links just like you have. I'm thinking we can use the ship pic as a break and then put the link to the ship list subpage below. I'm wondering if we should also do a separate subpage for the advantages available to each race. I've done models for each, and despite the added complexity from increased subpages, I think it may well be worth it.

1625 days, 16 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I dislike the emphasis the inline links place on terms, though; it interrupts narrative flow.

It avoids replication. This is important, as it means that when we need to change a description for any reason, it's in ONE PLACE. If the description of something is in two places, the odds are that both won't be changed.

I encountered this issue with the "lay mines" and "lay web mines" missions. My "solution" was to add several comments to each of the pages. That's not a good solution, but it's all I could think of that had a chance of working.

> I'm thinking we can use the ship pic as a break and then put the link to the ship list subpage below.

I don't like the subpage. It creates an extra page (actually, 11 extra pages) where there's no real need. As long as the race pages end up not much longer than the ToC, the page isn't too long.

> I'm wondering if we should also do a separate subpage for the advantages available to each race.

Why? The list of advantages isn't that long. I think it serves as a teaser of sorts. By moving them into their own page, the child page is very small, and the race page loses important information.

If we decide to have a sub-page for the ships, let the image be the link.

Please remember that additional pages have a cost. That cost is in increased complexity and decreased performance. As we get more pages, the system slows down. An example of this is that I've noticed that the "save" function is much slower now than it was when we started this process.

1625 days, 15 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hrm. I've noticed that. I'd wager the multiple versions of each page also slow things a bit.

I wonder if we ought to repurpose some of the old and undeleted pages in order to attempt to help address this.

Right, then -- if we're to have advantages on the main page, we ought either to separate the Campaign advantages from Standard. I'm still of the opinion that a complete ship list is far too long for an introductory page, which these are meant to be.

I'm going to go back in my archives and see if I can track down some of Joshua's messages on the subject.

1625 days, 15 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I wonder if we ought to repurpose some of the old and undeleted pages in order to attempt to help address this.

I don't think so. I think we should get Joshua to delete those pages from the DB, and purge the old versions. Unfortunately, the best time to do this is when we're "Done" (I'll call that version 2.0).

> I'm still of the opinion that a complete ship list is far too long for an introductory page, which these are meant to be.

"Meant to be"? By whom? The page is what we make it. If we can put all the relevant information into the page, and it's not too long, then we don't need a child page. For the individual race pages, the details are in the various ships, abilities and guides.

1625 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

This is from one of @Joshua's notes to me, and it's what I'm using as my base guideline for the Race pages.

>Regarding the race pages.. what I really want to do is work on developing and enhancing the original universe of the Echo Cluster. To write the stories of the races so to speak and to build up the picture of the Planets universe. With a fun, but serious approach. I want to create a "real" world. An environment where a real Sci-fi series could be born. While I enjoyed reading your speculative races I felt they were just a little too much on the "make fun of ourselves" side. That has definitely been a hallmark of Tim's and I want to keep that flavor but there needs to be room to feel the intensity and anxiety of a real space war moment broken up by periods of lighthearted comic relief in the true Star Trek sense.

That's the reason I abandoned the "speculative-races" project and moved on to the next two generations of the pages. The present version of the texts that I have is a minor narrative expansion of the originals. Certain aspects of those were worthy of further consideration, specifically the "Old Empire" plot model, and what I'm currently working on is a single narrative thread. We also have, as a possible jump-off point for the sub-fiction, the "story" on Planets Mag, thus:
http://www.planetsmagazine.com/newsandstories/editorials/wilful-suspension-of-disbelief-the-story-of-nu/

1625 days, 13 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

While it's good to have the information from Joshua, I don't see that it has anything to do with the number of pages required to provide the information for each race.

The Advantages list is short. I see no gain in putting it into it's own page. The Ship list might be a bit larger, but I'd like to see what it looks like when it's in-line before we make any decisions on placing it into it's own page.

1625 days, 13 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yes; I did rather drift off-point there. This is one reason I like to double-proof my writing.

The place I was going with that is this: I'm probably going to be using a fair amount of text space for each of these if I'm going to be expanding at all on the story. The text as-is is moderately extensive, and while there was a fair amount of kludge to trim out, the present content will likely require expansion rather than compression if it's to contain anything of a narrative.

I'm going to continue refining as I go, and I've begun inserting single ship images. Meanwhile, I'm recommencing the overall review of the documentation pages. Hopefully, I'll pick up some more bits and pieces that I can mine for story ideas.

With regard to pages and subpages: As always, the final form will follow the final function. Everything will depend on the final form. In the interim, I'll continue to refine the present content until it approaches my composition.

1625 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The description of the lists has been added to the Advantages page, along with some sample data. Only the first few have links set up. Does this look OK?

1625 days, 12 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I think that's the way we'll want it set up, yeah.

Once "dashboard-advantages" is complete, we may end up relocating some (or all) of this stuff, depending on how deep we go into website documentation vs. game documentation. I seem to recall us starting that discussion toward the end of the old thread. Speaking for myself, though -- I've got plenty to do just now. :o)

1625 days, 12 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've added ship blurbs up through Evil Empire; I'll do more later tonight. I was thinking Golem for Bots, Falcon and Rush for Rebels, and Cobol/Virgo for Colonies. Should be cake, apart from the structure.

Found a lot of mess in the text that I didn't expect. Ah, well; one thing at a time.

1625 days, 11 hours, 52 minutes ago

xray

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Sorry to backtrack here a bit, but more about friendly codes. I see the page has been adjusted for certain particular instances, which is good, but I still have questions about the friendly codes not detailed on the page.

Please note that I am not coming here to this thread to look for answers. When I don't know something I look toward documentation. I know you're all working hard on that so I'm coming here to point out questions I have that have not been answered in the documentation (in the hopes that it'll be updated and much more thorough at doing the job it's supposed to do).

From the friendly code page ( http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/friendly-codes ) there are two notations with respect to ship/planetary FCs:

1. Ships/Planets with same FC won't fight (except Nuk and Att).
2. Ships can travel through minefields with same FC as planet.

Questions not answered by the FC page:
If an ally has the friendly code of a planet, does that give them the ability to transfer anything as if they owned the planet or is transfer restricted as per a non-owned planet?

If an enemy manages acquire the friendly code, what advantage is that to him (other than the obvious wrt minefields)? Does it give him full "transfer" access to a planet as if he owns it or is access restricted as in a non-owned planet?

Regarding the lfm code information that was added:
"lfm: (Load Fighter Minerals) Races that can build free fighters (Robots, Rebels, and Colonies) can use this Friendly Code to load the appropriate mineral and supply ratios to build free fighters. This willonly function for beaming minerals and supplies from planets that are owned by the player, or planets owned by any player with a full alliance."

(first, please note that "willonly" should be two words)

From this I gather that a rebel Gemini over a fully allied planet will be able to use this code to beam up materials from said planet, regardless of the planetary friendly code. However, from recent discussion, it seems both the allied planet and the ship must have the same lfm code. Is this correct? If so, what about case? Does 'LFM' on the planet match 'lfm' on the ship?

I hope I'm not being too nit-picky here and thanks for all the hard work you're doing!

xray

1625 days, 11 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> we may end up relocating some (or all) of this stuff

That will require changing the location header in the child page. I don't advise that. There are a LOT of child pages here. If their "home" will be elsewhere, then we should put them there.

At most, I think we might want to break this out into race advantages and ship advantages. I should finish the table before we make that decision.

I expect very few ships in the last group. The only one I can think of that really belongs there is the Sapphire. I believe that the special features of all the other ships are covered by their advantages. In fact, if we add a "Web mine immunity" advantage, even the Sapphire won't need special documentation. I'm still in the dark about the Godzilla, as Emork hasn't gotten back to me.

1625 days, 11 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Xray,

> "willonly" should be two words

Typo fixed.

1625 days, 4 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The table of ships with advantages has been entered. There are a LOT of ships in that list :O

1624 days, 18 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> I was sure there was a code in HTML5 for a horizontal line

I went to the Editing HTML page to add the HR tag, and found that it was already documented there.

1624 days, 18 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

:o) Already worried about early senility. Fortunately, soon after I start worrying about it, I get distracted and start worrying about other things.

I think I may end up rebuilding Starbases today, if I get the time. Ideally, it should match Planets and Ships, with a dedicated interface subpage -- one page to describe form and the other function, if you follow.

Still wondering about site, leaderboard, and officer/homeworld documentation. I suppose it's within our purview, but I've got enough to do at the moment.

1624 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'm going through the race advantages today, adding the location header. While I'm in these pages, I'll fix any obvious errors and typos.

Please review the Advantages page, and tell me if you think the starship advantage list should be in another page.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/dashboard-advantages

1624 days, 17 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I just did an experiment. It looks to me like the friendly codes stand out better when they're in upper case than when they're in lower case. Do you agree that we should make that change throughout the documentation?

1624 days, 17 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Upper case codes involving numbers can sometimes lead to misunderstanding. Example: mi9 vs MI9

1624 days, 17 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Upper case codes involving numbers can sometimes lead to misunderstanding. Example: mi9 vs MI9

Not when the SAMP tag switches it to a fixed-width font.

1624 days, 17 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Does anyone know whether or not the giving-ships-away page is valid and live? There's a comment that it's no longer needed, but the title doesn't tag it as such.

1624 days, 16 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's valid. I don't know that it needs to be replaced; it contains information that isn't in the Friendly Code page, and so it's not strictly speaking redundant.

1624 days, 16 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK. I'll check the links then link it into the Friendly Codes page. I'll also link thy Hyperjumping page into the Friendly Codes page.

1624 days, 16 hours, 13 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Typo: The friendy code pages says "MF#" where it means "MD#".

1624 days, 16 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

No giving away planets with friendly codes here at Nu. You have to beam down colonists and ground assault.

1624 days, 15 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Emork,

Thanks for the information. Fixed.

@Gnerphk,

Huh? Please provide a reference.

1624 days, 15 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I can't provide a negative reference without a lot of work. All I can do is tell you what I know here: One can give away ships via friendly code, but not planets.

Of course, this is confusing because I posted it in the wrong thread; it's an accidental non-sequetur. Sorry about that. :o)

1624 days, 15 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

I just added a section at the bottom of the Questions for Joshua page that I think you might like.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/questions-for-joshua

1624 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

:o) I do rather like the section.

It's those very inconsistencies that establish the fabric points from which the underlying fiction of the Nu Wars is being woven. The "Action News" world uses my "Suspension of Disbelief" framework to explain things like the flat map and the multiple simultaneous wars.

1624 days, 14 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Suspension of Disbelief

If we can reduce the inconsistencies, this becomes easier.

1624 days, 14 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I really wish politicians had that attitude. :o)

1624 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I really wish politicians had that attitude. :o)

I refuse to argue about the colossal stupidity and ignorance of the average politician.

1624 days, 7 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Copy/Repasta:
I've done some more fiddling around with the top navigation bar. In the present format, it's really growing on me.

Do me a favor: Leave the Race sheets alone as far as this bar goes. I'm still playing with models (with the icon vs. without the icon et cetera). We'll do that section last.

I'm gonna finish the first proof cycle. After that, I should be able to present at least something for a semi-final interim race sheet.

1624 days, 7 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

New Pasta (Al Dente):

Would you say the Engine Efficiency label between the two engine tables here (http://play.planets.nu/#/howtoplay/starship-engines) is necessary? I can't decide whether to remove it or further highlight it.

1624 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

One more thing, @W:
I've reached the working conclusion that bracketing the lines and link stack for the nav header with paragraph tags is redundant, and going forward I've taken them out. Can you give me a good reason not to remove them throughout the document?

My information (second-hand) is that the paragraph tag (or something similar) is automatically triggered by header tags, including most tables, some font/color changes, header font tags, and lines.

1624 days, 6 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I can't decide whether to remove it or further highlight it.

Remove it.

> Can you give me a good reason not to remove them throughout the document?

Time. They neither help nor hurt. I'll exclude them moving forward.

1624 days, 6 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

-As good as done.
and
-Excellent point. :o)

1624 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Ship building & advanced cloning

I've not tested this personally but according to the advanced cloning page (and other discussions I remember) it is possible to make a clone in the priority build phase (of PQ games) as well as during the first ship build phase. Other campaign phases are shown in host order so I think this should be included for completeness. So perhaps host order should read:

28. Priority builds - PQ system (& Advanced Cloning - Campaign)
29. First ship build (& Advanced cloning - Campaign)
30. Normal Cloning

I don't think we need to say "NEW PRODUCTION SYSTEM" explicitly in phase 28 any more as the vast majority of players here now know of it. It just adds clutter.

Further under the PBP system there probably should be a mention of there being two sub-phases in phase "29. Normal ship build". You could say:

29. First ship build
A. Priority (PBP) builds [but not in PQ system]
B. Regular builds

But i think it would be clearer if you just wrote the two things together to say:

28, Priority builds - PBP or PP systems (& Advance Cloning - Campaign)
29. First regular ship builds (& Advanced Cloning - Campaign)
30. Normal Cloning

I appreciate that throughout the last 20 years the first ship build phase has always been thought of as PBP builds and Regular builds in one phase, but I think it's much clearer (to new players and old) if it's broken out as two host phases.

Any comments?

My thoughts:

Before updating host order we need to be really really sure about when advanced cloning occurs as the host order page is critically important.

The PQ PBP and cloning and advanced cloning pages will all need tweaking too.

Should all the phases in the host order be hyperlinks to the relevant pages? It might clutter it a bit, but would also be useful

1624 days, 6 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yeah; so we've had this discussion. My conclusion:

Host Order is Joshua's. It's the only piece of authoritative documentation we have on the Host. We can't see inside it, so all of our information and evidence is subjective, judged by results. As such, we have neither the authority nor the expertise to modify it.

Instead, we're gradually building a second "commentated" Host Order page, a version of which MAY someday be made available to the reading public.

As it happens, I've been revising the current documentation on the build phases and subphases. When it's complete, I'll post the new version. There's still a bit left to research, however.

1624 days, 6 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

(Incidentally: Regular cloning happens as an intrinsic sub-subphase during the first Regular Build primary subphase. It's not a separate step.)

1624 days, 5 hours, 42 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Ok @G. I'll wait to see the commented Host Order. I was just getting my head around Advanced Cloning :)

Btw, /agree re your Amazon blog.

1623 days, 9 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've finished the children of the advantages page.

I believe that the following ship advantages could use some help:

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/chameleon-device
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/chunnel-stabilizer
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/cloaked-fighter-bays
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/educator
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/emorks-spirit-bonus - As per Emork, some of this is the bonus, some is the Godzilla.
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/gambling-ship - Opinions?
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/stargate

1623 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Do we still need this page: http://planets.nu/#/admin/docs/ship-abilities

1623 days, 9 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Educator ships can raise the level of a planet up to a maximum of Representative.

1623 days, 9 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Tom+N,

Fixed.

1622 days, 18 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Thanks, @Sing. :o)

@W: I'll check these eight pages out. In general, we've elected to have pages for abilities instead of pages for ships, but since we're likely to require some ship pages as well, I'm going to recommend we err on the side of duplication and redundancy. We may also be well-served to repeat ourselves from time to time.

(That was a small attempt at humor. It was also a serious suggestion.)

1622 days, 17 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK -- some specifics:
- We do still need the "ship-abilities" subpage. It's a link to them as a child of Starships, which is the appropriate parent. It ought to be updated; I'll make a few brief gestures in that direction while I'm there, but it does need some explanatory text which I'm going to designate as a longer-term project.
- dashboard-advantages: I see what you mean about those last two ships. I'm going to go with explicit redundancy (see above). I doubt very much whether there will ever be any other ships with the Spirit Bonus or the Sapphire's ability, and one only pays a single cost to activate each vessel, so perhaps we ought to do only a single article for each of those two. Same holds true for the Stargate, I suppose, but not for all aspects of Campaign Chunnelling, which is its own highly involved art form at this point. As well, there's the Tantrum Liner to consider. I'll spend some time on it and we'll see what happens.
- I'll go through the others individually; if there are major changes, I'll leave a note within.

1622 days, 17 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Dual header standard proposal:
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/chameleon-device

Some children DO have two parents, after all. Heck, I've got four.

1622 days, 17 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Dual header standard proposal

I don't like it. I think it would be better to have the Advantages page link to the ship advantages page, and move all the ship-specific advantages from the advantages page to the ship advantages page. This gives a clear path for all pages.

The ship advantages page would be a child of the starships page, NOT the advantages page.

1622 days, 16 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> We may also be well-served to repeat ourselves from time to time.

I'd like to decide this on a case-by-case basis.

WRT the Godzilla, there are some features is has because of the Spirit bonus, and some others that it just has. The second set is what another race would see if they were able to take it. It's important to document these two sets separately.

WRT the Sapphire, I think that we can add a Web Mine Immunity advantage to it, and not need a special page for the ship.

1622 days, 16 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hrm. You know, these four ships are designated unique. We'll never see another "Emork's Spirit Bonus" ship, not even if he wins another championship. I think perhaps we should simply retitle the advantage pages for these to the ship name and add a bit more info. We need to keep them, since the shiplist references them, but we don't need to keep them the same.

1622 days, 16 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> We'll never see another "Emork's Spirit Bonus" ship

No, but we might see another Spirit Bonus ship for another race. I like to keep the options open.

1622 days, 16 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I looked at the four ships you listed. Of these, I believe that the Godzilla is the only one that needs special handling. The others are all described adequately in their advantages, or could be.

1622 days, 16 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

WRT the dual header: Take some time to think about it.

I'm still not convinced we need a header at all, but if we have it, it ought to be:
- consistent throughout the documents, as practicable
- generally useful in navigation
- explicit
- ubiquitous, as practicable

This improves explicit navigability, which is why I like it. We can determine which pages belong to advantages and which to ships, but we should not be slaves to definitions; they exist to serve the documentation, not the other way around.

The top parent categories could default to a comprehensive category top nav bar instead of a nested format, and the side menu would then become somewhat redundant. However, it's the present recommended format, and within that format it's the new nav header that is redundant.

I like the concept because some redundancy is good. I dislike it because it increases clutter, hard links (and therefore maintenance time), and noninformative content to the documentation. Currently, I'm leaning toward us keeping it, but I'd like to see how it works when fully deployed before I commit.

1622 days, 16 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'll be fiddling with the rest of Spaceships today. Sing out if we might step on each other's toes, eh?

1622 days, 15 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> top nav bar instead of a nested format

I'd love to go to that format, as it would solve many of our layout problems, including the ship list. It would also give us the ability to implement a collapsible menu. Unfortunately we don't have the option at this time.

Hmmm. This gave be a thought. I need to do some experimentation. I'll get back to you.

1622 days, 15 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> WRT the dual header: Take some time to think about it.

I did. I also considered the complexity of the documentation (high and increasing). We don't want to make it any worse than it is. It's my belief that if we have proper cross-references, it will be fine the way I describe it above.

1622 days, 14 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

If that's our way forward, then for proper organization we definitely need separate pages for advantages and missions. It'll involve some duplication and added cross-referencing, and it'll take time.

I don't like that model.

1622 days, 14 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

I've been digging through the JavaScript code, and found the interface that allows deletion of documents. It appears that the editor accounts have been given a security level of "1". The interface allows deletion of documentation pages if the user has a security level of "2" (also allows editing of docs).

I think that one of us should have the ability to delete documentation pages. I also believe that Joshua would be more likely to give it to you, as you've been here longer, and you're a paying customer.

Based on what a security level of "2" gives access to, it's possible that he might refuse. This would be a VERY trusted user.

I believe I have encountered a limitation of Joshua's security design. Instead of using levels, I think bit-flags would be better. That would give a finer granularity of control. This would significantly simplify the task of offloading some of the administrative tasks to another user. If he wants help making this migration, I'll be happy to provide it.

1622 days, 14 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I don't like that model.

In real-world documentation, there are often references to another portion of the document, but there is only one location in the document for an object (definition, description, procedure, etc.).

I'd like to make our documentation as close to a real-world document as possible. I believe that this will reduce the amount of confusion for readers.

1622 days, 11 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

My own ideal model is somewhat different, and varies depending on platform. It is actually mobile access that I'm considering when I think positively about top-bar and intrinsic menu navigation. Otherwise, it's entirely superfluous in my view -- as is the Back button.

But a mobile platform almost requires it, whereas the standard modern widescreen media machine masquerading as (or in some cases cleverly concealing) a useful computer is best suited to employ the side-menu navigation method.

Once it's fully rolled out, let's play a bit with a top-bar top-menu format, and I'll make a point to test it in mobile format. If @Joshua is willing, we might then use the documentation as a pilot for mobile-only access.

1621 days, 5 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> My own ideal model is somewhat different

Perhaps I've written too many technical manuals.

1620 days, 18 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Note: On the Host Order page, "Players under the FoF limit are eliminated" should be number 2.

1620 days, 17 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've been working on the ship list. What I have so far is this:

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/ships-fed

Does this work OK?

1620 days, 17 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> On the Host Order page, "Players under the FoF limit are eliminated" should be number 2.

Any idea when RaceKill happens in this list?

1620 days, 17 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I like it. Just what I'd envisioned when Dotman suggested it; I like the sublinks especially.

It would be interesting to see colons instead of dashes (": " rather than " - ", spacing important) and I'd think it would look nicer in a lined table rather than free-form. However, either of those would require a fair amount of effort for a tiny improvement in form, and I don't think it's worth the time unless you're insanely bored.

We'll link it in off the ship at the bottom of the race page once you're satisfied with it. I've got some good link ideas that won't interfere with document flow.

1620 days, 17 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> top nav bar instead of a nested format

I just checked, and we have 11 top-level groups. That's too many for a phone to use as a single top nav bar. The code would have to be smart enough to know when to use a single or a double top nav bar.

FYI, the documents are shown and edited with the following HTML objects:

html.EditDocList
html.EditDocText
html.ShowDoc
html.ShowWideDoc

In addition, the JavaScript routine "ViewHowToPlay" is used.

1620 days, 17 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

We only get so much info about the Host. RaceKill, we know, happens momentarily before FoF, but we're not entirely sure that it's Step 2, part of Step 1, or perhaps even a tiny bit later. There are some oddities that seem otherwise unexplainable. My working hypothesis is that the first four steps are rather more intertwined than we might otherwise think, and perhaps they take place sequentially for each player rather than as single independent steps.

1620 days, 17 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> It would be interesting to see colons instead of dashes

I made this change on the first and last entries.

> I'd think it would look nicer in a lined table rather than free-form

Done.

> We'll link it in off the ship at the bottom of the race page once you're satisfied with it. I've got some good link ideas that won't interfere with document flow.

I've got an idea that might work better, but I'm not ready to try it yet.

1620 days, 17 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> we're not entirely sure that it's Step 2, part of Step 1

It's not part of the current step 1.

We need to have a list of pages that specifically reference Host Order entries by number. That list needs to exist in the Host Order page as a comment. When something is changed in the Host Order, those pages would need to be checked.

1620 days, 17 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> too many for a phone to use as a single top nav bar

I suppose we could reduce the number of categories for a cell phone only subsite. Races and General could be linked under Intro, Combat under Ships, and so on. Worth considering.

But we don't want to alter this structure to be identical to a cell phone structure. Structure, as part of form, should follow function insofar as is practicable, and it should serve readability over universal, platform-independent navigability as a general rule.

1620 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>need to have a list of pages that specifically reference Host Order entries by number

Far better, in my opinion, is to NEVER reference steps of the Host Order by number. The Host Order, by definition, is going to remain dynamic in a living and developing program, and creating these references in the first place will mandate perpetual revision and maintenance that could otherwise be easily avoided.

Nevertheless, I do agree. A comment with reference lists needs to exist -- with the above caveat explicitly stated, in my determined opinion.

1620 days, 16 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>>colons instead of dashes
>>lined table
>Done.

Lovely. I very much like it.

I see the no-punctuation entry rather than colon in the top entry. It does look better than the dash.

1620 days, 16 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> It would be interesting to see colons instead of dashes

I found something that I think looks even better.

1620 days, 16 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Far better, in my opinion, is to NEVER reference steps of the Host Order by number

Agreed. We should add a comment to this effect to the Host Order page.

1620 days, 16 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The no-punctuation method uses nested tables. It's a pain to create by hand, but I think it will work best in the long run. It helped me find some leftover temporary data that was messing up the column widths.

1620 days, 16 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

For the Weapons column, should I have each weapon type listed? With an empty space or a 0?

1620 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'm excited to see what you come up with. :o)

(Sad but true, I really am quite excited by this. I need to get out more.)

1620 days, 16 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I really am quite excited by this. I need to get out more

Either that or spend more time with your Wine Cellar :)

1620 days, 16 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>For the Weapons column, should I have each weapon type listed? With an empty space or a 0?

I like the present format, using "None". The only change I'd suggest there is "Tubes" rather than "Torps", for the sake of formality.

If space is an issue ("Beams: 10"), you might want to remove the "s" throughout. But that's just a thought.

1620 days, 16 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Ooh. I do like what you've done with the Outrider there. Nice.

1620 days, 16 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> If space is an issue ("Beams: 10"), you might want to remove the "s" throughout.

The nested table will fix this. It will increase the column width by 1-2 pixels.

1620 days, 16 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> The only change I'd suggest there is "Tubes" rather than "Torps", for the sake of formality.

OK.

1620 days, 16 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I do like what you've done with the Outrider there.

That will give us 3 tables per ship, plus the one that ties it all together. So the Feds will have 61 tables to describe the base ships.

The Campaign ships will be even more fun, at 4 tables per ship (the research cost).

And you said you didn't like tables.

1620 days, 15 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I love them. I just don't like MAKING them. :o)

1620 days, 15 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

note added to Host

1620 days, 15 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey, @W: I'm rethinking incorporating the Commentated Host Order into the documentation. It's not ready yet, but... I dunno. It does contain a lot of speculation and some things that really aren't for public consumption, so maybe not. What do you think?

1620 days, 14 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>> And you said you didn't like tables.
> I love them. I just don't like MAKING them

Wimp.

> I'm rethinking incorporating the Commentated Host Order into the documentation

Now that we have a Guides section, that might be a good place to put the Commented Host Order.

1620 days, 13 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>> If space is an issue ("Beams: 10"), you might want to remove the "s" throughout.

> The nested table will fix this. It will increase the column width by 1-2 pixels.

The nested tables actually make the column narrower.

1620 days, 13 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

:o\ That's plans for ya.

1620 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's looking quite nice, by the way. Let me know when it's ready. :o)

1620 days, 11 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Let me know when it's ready

It's ready for final verification and adjustments. Please do not l;ink it in yet.

Once the format is done, I'll probably create a bash script to generate it from a CSL.

1620 days, 11 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Looking at the end result, I'm thinking that it might look better if the Tech level were expressed as a Cost. That would drop a column, giving the rest of them a bit more space.

1620 days, 10 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

That makes a lot of sense. ("Cost", not "bash script" or "CSL"; last script I wrote involved SQL and the last CSL was a socketed thunking layer on a mainframe-PC WAN.)

1620 days, 10 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

How does the rest look?

1619 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

No comments about the new format. I'll start on the shell to generate the pages. Once they're all created, I'll see if I can figure out how to include them (I have an idea).

1619 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've got several comments sitting on my cell phone. No doubt once it sees fit to recognize my network again, it'll post them... in its own good time.

Generally, I like it. In specific, it might be wise to insert a blank line between Tech and the rest of Cost -- for emphasis rather than differentiation; it'll help people track appropriately if they're scanning rather than searching for data. It's a minor point, though, and may not be worth instituting as a change.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with them.

I'm going back through my wholesale review. I'm coming up on recent projects, and there's still a few odd pages that are falling through -- duplication and such. After that...

...after that, the Race pages are going to get a temporary mashup and revision. I've got a very big project in the works and it's useless to pretend that it's going to be complete in enough time to satisfy either of us. Until it is, we'll work with what we have.

We need Add-On documentation. Some exists; I know; I saw it once. But I don't use the things, so I'm far from an expert in their implementation, much less their design.

1619 days, 5 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Also, I've come to the realization that, for organizational purposes, we really need a main "General Information" root page.

Since it's useless for any purpose except to serve artificial and externally imposed organizational systems and will likely never be accessed by anyone attempting to find anything in particular, I'd say we've got too much useless bureaucracy going on. But I'm not going to fight that war tonight, or probably ever; the mighty pine is strong because it bends.

Side note on that subject:

The "Reference" headers, however, I deem useless for machine-reading; any reasonably intelligent search code should be instructed to look inside href and external tags anyway. We wouldn't rely on the headers for that purpose if we had the capability to search automatically. However, they do have usefulness when designing revising a long page in that they impose a form of intellectual discipline, so I'm going to suggest we keep them regardless of their impracticability at the purpose for which they were originally intended.

1619 days, 3 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> it might be wise to insert a blank line between Tech and the rest of Cost

That would effect the height of every line. I'd prefer to do something with no height impact, like bold.

> We need Add-On documentation

Wasn't Dotman going to work on that?

1617 days, 15 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

From ~5 days ago,

> I believe that the following ship advantages could use some help:
>
> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/chameleon-device
> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/chunnel-stabilizer
> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/cloaked-fighter-bays
> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/educator
> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/emorks-spirit-bonus - As per Emork, some of this is the bonus, some is the Godzilla.
> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/gambling-ship - Opinions?
> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/stargate

I added some more information to the cloaked-fighter-bays page, and a comment to the chameleon-device page. There are still some entries in the gambling-ship page that appear to be opinions, and would be better off in a guide.

1617 days, 14 hours, 2 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Whisperer, I soon write a PlanetsMag article about the Godzilla and will tell all.

1617 days, 10 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Do you need to build a star base on a homeworld to get the benefit, or is ownership of the planet enough?

1617 days, 9 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The documentation says control, so I would guess that a starbase isn't needed.

--- RANT ---

IMHO, it's completely unacceptable that so few hard facts are openly available for a ship that's been around for 9+ months. Worse still, the creator of the ship chooses to provide the information to a 3rd party before providing it to the people writing the documentation. I'm half tempted to change the description to "Ask Emork", and leaving it that way.

--- /RANT ---

1617 days, 7 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Whisperer: Since you keep asking questions you can figure out yourself, please LISTEN. In google, type the following below.

site:planets.nu godzilla

http://planets.nu/post/emperor-emorks-new-ship-the-godzilla
http://planets.nu/discussion/godzilla-question-is-there-a-message-or-any-other

-------------------------

Is this a good time to mention the Redwind carrier does not have Advanced Cloak and does in fact consume fuel?

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/racesheet

And if it is supposed to have Advanced Cloak, then it should be "three ships have advanced cloak", http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/advanced-cloak

1617 days, 7 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Anytime is a good time to mention if the docs are in error. It gives us a chance to look at what's there and verify.

For example, the Redwind (basic model) certainly doesn't have Advanced Cloak, but the Storm-Carrier model does. Anyone can check that by simply going to their Officer pages and looking it up. So there is, in point of fact, a minor factual error under the "Advanced Cloak" category. Our question now (and it's an internal one) is whether to complicate things further by adding facts which have little bearing on the subject.

I will mention that your tone is not one that easily inspires gratitude, alas. But I do appreciate knowing about the pinhole in the documentation.

(Side note: I certainly sympathize with @W's rant. There's easily 150 holes in my knowledge about the Host that I'd love to have filled, and there's some formulae that I "know" but most assuredly don't trust. That's the norm here in the documentation; it's not the exception.)

1617 days, 7 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Strike that last; Advanced Cloak does actually mention the Storm Carrier as well as the improved Deth. Never mind that part of the message.

1617 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Glyn,

> Since you keep asking questions you can figure out yourself, please LISTEN. In google, type the following below

Everything that I found in the links you provided, and several others (including the results of a more extensive search than you provided), is in the current page for Emork's Spirit Bonus. You'd know that if you read the documentation, but for some reason, you chose to lash out at me.

Emork read that page, and said that it was complete, but that some of those features are for the ship, and some are for the bonus. Also, some of the features go away if another race takes the ship. Of course, you'd know all this if you kept up with the documentation threads.

Although Emork stated that he'd provide additional information, to date, he has not provided it.

Now that your ignorance has been decreased slightly, if you don't like my response, you have my permission to indulge in self-impregnation.

1617 days, 6 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Gnerphk: I was talking about in-game, but I wasn't aware there was more than one kind of Redwind. I swear before I captured it, it had red text on the info box stating what it does... then was puzzled when it used fuel after capture, checked the Time Machine, nope, just plain-Jane Redwind... seeing things apparently.

The advanced-cloak description is just poorly worded is my point, 4 ships have it then. Unless we aren't referring to variants as individual ships... however since there is Classic mode, differentiating Campaign Mode ships from the standard ones makes sense. I started writing a better version and then ran out of farks to give...

I think Deth-Specula Heavy/Armoured are mixed up also... there or in the Racesheet.

I am pleased to see it spelled 'armoured' instead of Americanized 'armored'.

Tone? You can hear the pitch of my voice or instrument? Is this a literary work? You don't like my friend Tony or my New Zealand technology magazine?

Whatever, UNSUBSCRIBED.

1617 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Whisperer: Lash out? Are you serious? Do you need a grief counselor or something?

You post questions in the Activity Feed that everyone ignores, I explained how you can search the site already once before. So please LISTEN this time, I'm trying to help you.

It's neither of our faults google removed the search-site button, I only learned myself awhile ago that you can still do that but have to add "site:website.com".

SORRY for trying to help you.... maybe I should have known better, now that I'm looking at your post history.

Also, please read your rant against Emork... and explain how that isn't amazingly arrogant and rude? Emork has taken his time to answer your questions directly before... you serve the Emperor, not the other way around.

1617 days, 4 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

A question arose here: http://planets.nu/#/activity/1835667

It seems to me that information on Planetoids might not be easy for beginners to find. Could we add a link to the Planets list for them?

1617 days, 4 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Number of times Asteroid appears in http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/stellar-cartography : ZERO.

Hint: That might be the problem.

1617 days, 4 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

In the game they are called Asteroid fields... not sure how the 'other' names took presidence.

1617 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

I have the preliminary results of my testing. Look at the Feds Test page I created. There are missing borders, and some font and color issues, but I think that can be fixed fairly easily. I was just now able to able to figure out a solution to a problem with the links (it used to load the referenced page into the frame - not pretty).

I still have some work to do on the CSS for the child page, but I think this opens up a whole new way to create documents.

WARNING: Most browsers cache the child pages far too long. If you load the above page, you may need to clear the cache to get updates. This problem also needs to be addressed.

1616 days, 17 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

The feds test page now looks exactly how I wanted it to look. I still have to do some work on the iframe, but I can do that in another page.

Does this look like what you want? When I finish the ship pages for all the races, they can be pulled into a single shipdb page. This will allow one copy of the ship information to be pulled into two different locations, so we'll only have to edit one place when a ship is changed, or a new ship is added.

1616 days, 17 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I still have to do some work on the iframe

The problem with the iframe is that the height in pixels of the embedded page must be a parameter of the iframe tag. While I've found a few workarounds for this, they all require JavaScript access in the parent, which we don't have. Is this a limit we can accept?

1616 days, 14 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I think the absence of JavaScript was a primary motivation to migrating into the present format. That's something I remember Joshua mentioning in one of the early responses, possibly in the original thread.

I'll take another look in a bit under primary refresh. My setup here permits easy access to three vastly different monitor styles plus a Chrome-based dumbphone, so if something doesn't look perfect given some strange setting I'm likely to catch it. :o)

1616 days, 14 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK: RE Planetoids -- still looking into that. I'm not a great expert on them, I must confess; the overwhelming majority of my experience has been in the Classic format. A link under Planets or the Starmap would make sense.

RE Glyn -- I think I'm just going to start ignoring him. Maybe not, though. He's irritating, but on the other hand so are ion storms, and they serve a purpose; he may too.

1616 days, 14 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> the overwhelming majority of my experience has been in the Classic format

Mine as well. We'll just do the best we can, and hope that any errors are brought to our attention.

> A link under Planets or the Starmap would make sense

As Planetoids can be populated, I put it under Planets. The home was left at Stellar Cartography.

> He's irritating, but on the other hand so are ion storms, and they serve a purpose; he may too.

Well, the Black Plague served a purpose too.

1616 days, 14 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Glyn,

> Number of times Asteroid appears in http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/stellar-cartography : ZERO.

I believe this was by design. An object should have a single name. That name should be used whenever the object is referenced. Use of two different names causes confusion.

> In the game they are called Asteroid fields.

Are they? Look at the Racial Abilities of the Evil Empire. In reality, both "Asteroid Field" and "Debris Disk" are used. I'm sorry that your world view is so limited.

> not sure how the 'other' names took presidence.

They didn't. They did, however, take precedence.

The phrase "Debris Disk" is used in the documentation because it's more commonly used in the client code, it's part of the name of a racial ability, and it's in several News items describing new features (search if you'd like - I don't wish to repeat past work). I don't know where the word "Planetoid" came from, unless it was used in Joshua's updates to the TimDocs, or in the aforementioned news items. Gnerphk would have a better idea about that (I think he did the early work on the stellar cartography doc).

A few minutes of searching would have given you this answer. Why are you wasting still more of our time for something where you could so easily have found the answer. Oh, that's right. You don't actually bother to do your research. You just harass others for not doing theirs, even when they do.

The JavaScript code can display the word "asteroid" to the user in 5 different places. It can also display the phrase "debris disk" to the user in 7 different places, and "debris disc" in 1 place. Also, the variable names refer to debris disks, and not to asteroids. These searches were not case sensitive.

I think that Joshua needs to decide what they're officially called and make the appropriate updates to the code. After that, we'll make any necessary changes to the documents. Until then, I think that my previous suggestion is probably the best path.

1616 days, 13 hours, 56 minutes ago

broseph

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

You guys can be real cock suckers to each other.

1616 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

And you have a "potty mouth." I'll take them over you any day.

1616 days, 13 hours, 40 minutes ago

broseph

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yeah I better run to church and ask for forgiveness.

1616 days, 13 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Thank you, @Broseph, but my tastes do not happen to lie that way.

Politeness is not much to require in communication. I do so require it, for my time is too valuable to waste in the non-productive.

A side note on usage: We've also chosen to use the spelling "torpedoes" where the game uses "torpedos". However, we've opted to continue calling the Rebel ship a "Gaurdian" until the designer sees fit to alter it. In the first, it's a question of grammar; in the second, it's a simple matter of consistency. These examples are used to define our limits, and we hew to them rather finely, I deem.

1616 days, 13 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> hope that any errors are brought to our attention

I gather they will be. :o)

1616 days, 13 hours, 24 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Broseph, It has nothing to do with church. I am not religious myself.

It's called recognizing your audience. Do you use filthy language in front of your children? How about other people's children, even if you have none of your own? This is an open forum, not a locker room.

That doesn't even touch on what impact it could have on Joshua's biz plan or those it could drive away from the site.

1616 days, 12 hours, 28 minutes ago

broseph

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I think you ave it backwards Mule.

Being an elitist dickhead to other players will drive infinitely more people away than 30 seconds of profanity on the main page. A social game lives and dies with polite discourse.

So if you were being rude or condescending to other players you should stop, that's what causes the real damage.

And now I must be off. Do keep it civil in my absence, I might come on once in awhile to call you names if not. :-) [Yes, I do understand the irony.]

Goodbye for now VGAP.

1616 days, 12 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> A side note on usage

This is getting to be a bit of a list. Is there any chance you could put them into a page for the Editors? Perhaps the Standards page would be good?

1616 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I stuck them into the beginning of the old editing thread, which served for that time.

But yes, I'd be quite willing to assemble what we have determined. It would be as well to formalize it; after all, standards, by definition, aren't terribly subject to change.

1616 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yehhh... no. That "Asteroids and Planetoids" just isn't working for me.

Mind if I play with it a bit? Hate to step on your toes, mate, but...

1616 days, 9 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey, @Whisperer - Apparently I already included the "Style" thingamabobbie over here. Take a look:
http://planets.nu/#/admin/docs/editorial-guidelines

1616 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Mule,

He's a lawyer. Isn't that how they greet their friends? It seems more friendly to me than something like "That'll be $500 per hour for research time and $1000 per hour of court time," which is not an uncommon thing for them to say to customers/clients. I don't even want to think about what they say to their enemies ;)

Robin Williams (as Peter Banning/Pan in "Hook"):

Research studies say that scientists are starting to use lawyers instead of rats for their scientific studies. They do this for two reasons: one, because scientists are suddenly becoming less attached to their lawyers, and two, because there are some things even rats won't do.

1616 days, 8 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> That "Asteroids and Planetoids" just isn't working for me. Mind if I play with it a bit?

Up to you. I just want it to be accurate and understandable, with everything easy to find (yeah, I know - that's not possible). We need to make sure that when a noobie is looking for something on Asteroids or Asteroid Fields that they find the Debris Fields page.

I still believe that Joshua should make the client code consistent. I'd put in a request via UserVoice if I had any votes left.

1616 days, 8 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> http://planets.nu/#/admin/docs/editorial-guidelines

I see that. I made a few additions to it.

Is this linked in yet? It says not, but I thought we had resolved all the concerns.

For the books, are you going to provide links to them on Amazon ;)

1616 days, 8 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

From your RedWind response:

> Our question now (and it's an internal one) is whether to complicate things further by adding facts which have little bearing on the subject.

The Campaign ships should be documented. I did this with the Glory Device, and it looks OK to me.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/glory-device

1616 days, 8 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> I'll take another look in a bit under primary refresh. My setup here permits easy access to three vastly different monitor styles plus a Chrome-based dumbphone, so if something doesn't look perfect given some strange setting I'm likely to catch it.

That's a much more comprehensive setup than I have available. For me, if it works on my 1366x768 display under FireFox and IE, I call it good.

Please inform me when you think the new format is OK, and I'll start generating the final data. You should also have a quick look at the actual document, and at the included document.

1616 days, 6 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK; I'll look in more detail tomorrow. Bit of a busy day today, and I'm beat.

1616 days, 4 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm beat

Been there. Done that. Had a glass of '08 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. Doing a bit better :)

1616 days, 3 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk: I took a break from the Activity Feed for a week and came back to a pile of unanswered questions. I'm the one compensating for the lack of a proper manual. I'd appreciate the documentation completed more-so than anyone else, and will probably still end up making the vgaplanets.org wiki superior and in the end people will still ask questions and I'll still be here helping them. And I'm the bad guy?

I have ZERO inhibitions, if I intended to insult someone I'd just outright do so and make sure it is clear, Joshua obviously can't even enforce Rule 2 let alone Rule 1 since this isn't the first time Whisperer has trolled someone or probably the last. Instead some lose their minds when they infer a slight against their ego.

You want insults? Gnerphk, I don't like your long winded articles, they are the opposite end of the spectrum of how I prefer information. Concise and efficient is better than your verbose prolix. I've now insulted your copyright content. The only question is if you take it personal or not... I know how Whisperer would take it. Not personal enough? I don't think you can produce optimal documentation, and I really don't like the documentation editing threads in the Activity Feed... but I've stood aside because I don't have an ego that feeds off the internet... I don't care. I imagine you and Whisperer keep seeing insults because you have never been a part of a community before and are not used to seeing others opinions... It's not the same as in RL when a stranger walks up to you and says some shiat. Frankly all I see is pathetic attempts to censor in the name of ego.

Maybe you just haven't had enough struggle in life to have put trivial things into perspective. If you go online and feel insulted when anyone voices a contrary opinion ... WHAT are you doing on the internet then? Ignoring me is your own loss, but I would actually prefer you never text at me unless you notice I'm incorrect about something... thank you for your past service to this cause.

Keep in mind I've refrained from calling you Nerf, so obviously I'm not trying to piss you off... especially since I would rather call you that due to not requiring me to double check I spelled your name correct... actually I can just add your name to Chromes dictionary, there done. I appreciate you existence, and I'm glad you contribute, but that doesn't mean I will alter my opinions to appease you. Are you the type of person that would participate in censorship? Honestly, all censors should DIAF and then have that event kept out of the history books. The only problems are the ones you imagine.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

@Broseph: "You guys can be real cock suckers to each other."

People like to play the victim card, but I have ZERO sympathy for spoiled sedentary westerners, arrogantly inferring insult just to troll. I suspect that is what this really is about, but I'm not going to ask forgiveness for imagined insults. It is also a sad attempt to point and scream "RULE 1 VIOLATION!!!" People that are powerless do not act rationally, that is how some feel when people expose their imperfection.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

@Whisperer: In the Starmap, hover the cursor over the "Debris Disk" and look at what the pop-up calls it. Possibly an ACTUAL Debris Disk from a destroyed planet has the different name, I'm not aware but I've paid enough attention to notice the game calls the standard ones Asteroid Fields... ergo JOSHUA calls them Asteroid Fields at the moment... plus most NEW people call them Asteroid fields.

I'd prefer to use the terms I learned in my Astronomy classes. Debris disks aren't blown up planets... the exact opposite in fact; dust, asteroids and comets are what a debris disk is made of, all drawn towards its own central gravity field. Over a long time a spherical region of dust will start collapsing toward the center mass... due to inertia eventually the direction of orbit of matter begins to harmonize and collapses into a spinning disk. A planet that is blown up will never form a debris disk due to inertia as it lacks enough mass to "grab" the matter before escaping. A debris disk is virtually all Hydrogen, when the center mass ignites fusion, and the the energy way later reaches what will become the surface of the new star, the solar wind blows away most of the hydrogen out past what we call the Oort cloud. Derbis disks are mostly dust and

Without a massive overall field of gravity they cannot exist... a blown up planet would most likely become an asteroid BELT around the star. Two asteroids with the same orbit are enough to be classified as an asteroid belt, however in interstellar asteroid fields they'd have to orbit something or just coincidentally have the same velocity.

You lost your mind after I corrected you in this thread: http://planets.nu/discussion/tantrum-liners-the-planets-nu-wiki-says-that-they

When I'm corrected by you, I don't act like YOU: http://planets.nu/discussion/should-a-destroyed-starbase-destroy-or-damage-unfueled

When I ask if anyone shares my view, you stroll in an try to turn it into an argument: http://planets.nu/discussion/anyone-else-agree-that-warp-0-intercept-should-be-disabled

You misunderstand very very easily: http://planets.nu/discussion/the-ingame-message-system-needs-an-infobox-in-case-someone

/\/\ule once said to you;

---------------------
Whisperer: I just noticed your comment addressed to me - : "Except that there are people, like yourself, who have no concept or what a "Gentleman" is, and probably never will."

I don't know who you are or what your problem is, but if you are going to toss statements like this around you should be able to back them up. Do so if you dare, otherwise I would suggest that it is YOU that have no concept of what a gentleman is.
---------------------

Rule 1 violation right there, I think Joshua deleted it though... am I correct Whisperer? Apparently you are never wrong even when you are blatantly wrong.

1616 days, 3 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I feel like Peter Griffin in the "poop nose" scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5E0KzLoYSs

That and "AHHHWWW WALL OF TEXT!!!"

1615 days, 22 hours, 35 minutes ago

nebulon

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Just tried to find info on cloning - possibly a section under the starbase is needed to make it clearer. Even if it is your ship at your base.
I think I found what I wanted under friendly codes. Does the starbase need any special friendly code to do cloning - does not appear to need it.

1615 days, 20 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Nebulon,

The page for cloning is http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/adv-clone-starships, with additional information at http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/cloning. I believe these two pages should be merged.

Currently, the clearest way to get to that page is through the Friendly Code page. It's also linked from the Dashboard Advantages page. When Gnerphk is done with the Race pages, each race that can clone will have a link to this advantage.

The only hard requirement of the starbase is that it not have a normal build queued. Under the PBP system, a starbase can do a Priority build in the same turn that it does a clone. We believe this is also true in the PQ system, but we haven't had the time to verify it.

1615 days, 18 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Glyn,

> You lost your mind after I corrected you in this thread: http://planets.nu/discussion/tantrum-liners-the-planets-nu-wiki-says-that-they

Starting at the beginning,

W> I'm not aware of a WIKI hosted on Planets.nu.
G> http://vgaplanets.org/index.php/Main_Page

When I was a teacher, we called that an Oxymoron. That's a response that has nothing to do with what it's in response to.

This is followed by several statements that demonstrate that you (a Canadian) know absolutely nothing about US Copyright law. The lack of knowledge shouldn't be surprising, but the tenacity of your incorrect claims is.

If I were grading your posts in that thread, I'd give them a 'D' for lack of critical thinking. I expect that the rest is more of the same, and leave grading them as an exercise to the student.

1615 days, 18 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Whisperer: WRT Black Death - I don't see that it serves a purpose, at least from a strictly utilitarian human-oriented perspective. Historically speaking, it does correct overpopulation, but only as a side-effect; that's a job that should use a scalpel. Instead, I envision a skeletal figure driving a combine harvester.

Ion storms, on the other hand, can neatly clear vast swathes of the cluster of relatively useless ships -- light vessels and those without adequate engines, for example, are the most likely targets, and comparatively few productive ships fall to them. These storms move the queue in the case of SDSF obstructions, and rather than a disease (even one targeting the weak), I view them more as an enema. (Or, for the smaller ones, a stool softener.)

It's not necessarily a pleasant thing, but it's a long ways from being the vast evil of a plague. It's far gentler, at least in small doses, and (dare I say it) occasionally necessary.

1615 days, 18 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Side note: I think the priority-build-and-clone thing can only happen between (for the default limit) 450 and 500 ships. (Not sure if it's 450, 449, or 451; likewise uncertain about 500 versus 499.)

1615 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes ago

happy daze

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yo Glyn,

While I'm new to this game, I read English fairly well, but my preferred language is C#.

> When I ask if anyone shares my view, you stroll in an try to turn it into an argument: http://planets.nu/discussion/anyone-else-agree-that-warp-0-intercept-should-be-disabled

When I read through this thread, it's obvious to me that Whisperer was asking why it would be worth the effort to make the change to the code. You didn't have all that much of a reason. Even the release note at VGAPLANETS.COM says that the suggested change was a bad idea.

I think the last batch you got from your lab was bad. You might want to try a different dealer.

1615 days, 18 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Glyn,

> /\/\ule once said to you;

No link - it didn't happen.

In this country, and I expect in yours as well, there's a concept of Innocent until proven Guilty. So far, the evidence appears to indicate that you're being excessively paranoid, or perhaps a bit too touchy.

1615 days, 18 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> WRT Black Death - I don't see that it serves a purpose, at least from a strictly utilitarian human-oriented perspective. Historically speaking, it does correct overpopulation, but only as a side-effect; that's a job that should use a scalpel. Instead, I envision a skeletal figure driving a combine harvester.

It corrects for overpopulation, and selects for cleanliness.

1615 days, 17 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hrm. That's a point, @W.

Still and all, though -- I might occasionally opt to take a senna tablet. I find it difficult to envision a situation where the bubonic plague might be the best of all possible choices.

1615 days, 17 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Editing Guidelines has been brought up to snuff and the "under review" notice has been modified. I think I may have accidentally messed something up in so doing, but if so it was small enough that I can't find it.

Taking a break.

1615 days, 16 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Grandmagates: I quoted and replied to what he said, "That's NOT a Planets.nu WIKI." It doesn't matter that he didn't mislead people at other times... he made it sound like www.vgaplanets.org isn't for Nu Planets. That is a major disservice to those of us that have contributed to it and also an attempt to discourage people from using it. Do you really think that stating www.vgaplanets.org isn't www.planets.nu is necessary? He has another motive to dismiss it, and it is obvious why.

Tim W. said it was a bad idea because it affected some add-ons, and also called it a cheat himself. Am I incorrect to quote facts? I call it what the creator calls it, it would be arrogant to do otherwise.

Educational content is considered fair-use, and anything that is a fact cannot be copyrighted ever. This is why 3rd parties can make video game manuals and use content without permission. Copyright is meant to protect creativity only.

I can copy and paste to my hearts content so long as it is free of creativity... I can't copy entire articles or how the information is organized however. Because the wiki format is so different, copy-n-paste is permitted so long as I stick to just facts. Compilations are allowed to use copyrighted content because they simply re-arrange the information in a creative manner creating their own copyright in the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co.

As a general rule people say never copy-n-paste because most people aren't knowledgeable enough to know what is fair use.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

@Whisperer: No link, didn't happen? There is a link.... remember you can search this site with google.

http://planets.nu/discussion/petition-to-change-the-crystal-immunity-rule-when-there

So /\/\ule just made up that statement? And everyone else referencing you in that thread imagined you posted something in that thread? I suspect I won't get an explanation for this.

1615 days, 16 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Well genetic differentiation was produced by the plagues that might end up helping with the modern HIV epidemic;

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-03/uol-bdw031005.php

Kinda morbid way of talking about it, "ahh fark em, were overpopulated!"

1615 days, 16 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Folks, it's not worth the stress. Have a beer or a glass of wine and thank the fates you're still breathing.

1615 days, 14 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

>> Please inform me when you think the new format is OK, and I'll start generating the final data

> OK; I'll look in more detail tomorrow

I now have a Makefile, a pair of bash scripts (I'll be reducing this to one) and a pair of CSV (Comma Separated Values) data files. The single command 'make' on a *NIX system will generate all 22 of the HTML tables (base ships and campaign ships) in a few seconds. If you want any format changes made, I'll need to know by tonight, which is when I intend to start uploading the tables and building the new ShipDB page. After that, it gets more complex to change the format.

For the campaign ships, there's an extra column between Cost and Advantages, labeled Research. That column contains the cost for the research (MC, Dur, Tri and Moly). As with the other complex columns, it's a nested table. I could probably have used Colspan and Rowspan, but I believe nested tables is simpler to generate and easier to understand.

The data files have fixes for all the known errors in the current ShipDB, but the final result will need to be verified. As I'm not using the super-small font that the current ShipDB uses, verification should be relatively simple.

1615 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's quite solid as a table.

The only quibbles I could raise even in Devil's Advocacy are just that -- quibbles, and not worth our time. Go to, man; let's get this up.

1615 days, 12 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> quibbles, and not worth our time

I'd still like to hear about them. If they're easy changes, I should be able to do them quickly.

1615 days, 11 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK, but they ARE just quibbles.

(1) Header row will need to be twice the height to accommodate the changes I'd propose for (2) and (possibly) (3).
(2) "Advantages", as a header, is incorrect usage; properly, it ought to say "Advantage Points". In any event, the "s" is inappropriate.
(3) For categorical consistency, Engines ought to be listed in the same column as Beams, Tubes, and Bays. Of course, it would be unable to be termed "Weapons" at that point, and "Components" is too wide for the column.

It's also too bad we can't easily use a colon as a data divider, but i can see the potential space problem from here.

The layout is a solid one. It performs on any reasonable display setting that I can set up here and is readable both on Firefox and Chrome.

And the above quibbles... well, apart from (2), even I wouldn't bother to make changes.

1615 days, 11 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> It performs on any reasonable display setting that I can set up here and is readable both on Firefox and Chrome

That's good to hear. I'll be testing using IE and Firefox.

> they ARE just quibbles

Understood, but I don't want to have to come back to this in a few months and adjust the format. I want all known formatting issues addressed up front, so that we know where we are, and agree that it's a good place to be.

I expect to encounter a few content issues, but those are relatively easy to fix, and I would probably fix them by hand.

> (3)

Correct, sort of. What would you do with fighter bays? I think that, of the options available, what it's set for now is about as good as it can get. Any improvement would be marginal at best.

> (1)

Header height is a trivial issue. It can be easily adjusted if necessary. In the scripts, the header is just copied to the output file. The real question is whether or not we have to change it. IIRC, each line of header adds 22 pixels to the frame height.

> too bad we can't easily use a colon as a data divider

We can. We tried it. It didn't look as good as what we have. I feel that the left/right justification in the complex columns leaves a reasonable amount of space between the name and the value, and maximizes readability.

> (2)

It appears that you think this is the most serious of the quibbles. I believe that the reason you think this is an issue is because I chose the Feds as an example. When you see the Birds or Fascists, I think you'll like it better. There are starships with three advantages. With the Points line, that gives us 4 of the 5 lines in use. I can insert some space below the Points line, but I think the link color will work well enough to isolate the actual advantages.

1615 days, 7 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Fair enough. I'll abide by your decision, and await the product.

Now the question will be that of linking it to ships and to races. I think we both have some ideas in that respect. :o)

1615 days, 5 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

A bit more about copyright since people are oblivious to the law: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150308/15581330254/cartoonist-has-no-idea-how-fair-use-works.shtml

@Whisperer: Well I'm taking your silence as admission of insulting /\/\ule, the message deleted kinda hints Joshua has already warned you.

1615 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I would prefer being left out of this one. I get myself into enough trouble on my own. :)

1615 days, 5 hours, 6 minutes ago

ville kauppinen

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

This can only be solved in battlefield, 1:1 blitz both as privateers.

1615 days, 5 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's an interesting bit of trivia: The term "trolling" originated not with a mythical bridge guardian, but instead from the well-known fishing method of placing a bit of very attractive bait on a hook and then just waiting for a fish to bite.

Of course, in a place as classy as this, we're above such things as internet trolling. We're virtuous souls only concerned with educating others; we attempt to gently guide people to a better understanding of the truth rather than insult, belittle, or demean. This is because we're intelligent and mature individuals, secure in ourselves and fulfilled in our daily lives, and we come here to relax with others who share not only our intellect but also our passion for strategy, logistics, diplomacy, and (who could forget!) space battles in the high-tech VCR.

1615 days, 4 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

/\/\ule: I don't mind nice people calling me out for being curt and callous... funny thing, nice people don't call people out.

:D

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

@Gnerphk: It appears the race icons and classic VGA logo are in violation of copyright at vgaplanets.org since they failed to document license. I'll remove them eventually if someone else doesn't beat me to it. Technically VGA Planets has always been vulnerable to derivative works lawsuits, two video game makers, and all the Sci-fi races copyright holders.

Fortunately derivative copyright is really hard to enforce, but were not really in the clear till the original copyright content of which VGAP3 was a derivative work passes into public domain, were about half way.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

\/|<: I thought a "chatty Cathy" game made up of the 11 most prolific Activity Feed posters would be an interesting battle. If NinjaBunny doesn't start posting again he'll be out of the running!

1615 days, 3 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Well I'm taking your silence as admission

When you make an assertion, you need to prove it. You haven't done so. You should have read my previous post on this subject.

This is enough. If you have a problem with me, it doesn't belong in this thread. This thread is about the Planets.nu documentation project, not about your paranoid delusions. You will receive no more responses from me on off-topic subjects.

Don't go away mad, but please just go away. Further off-topic posts of this nature shall be reported as trolling.

1615 days, 3 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

The test ship DB page is up. I have NOT verified the technical content yet, but will do so tomorrow. I know there are a few issues with Cloaking, due to the way the script converted it from a column to a named advantage. As for the rest ...

What HAS been done is formatting. Specifically setting up the sizes of the iframe. Right now, they're close to what they should be.

1615 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Oops. Forgot the link.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/shipDB

1615 days, 3 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

And I just found out that the links are broken :(

Fortunately, this is a fairly easy fix.

1615 days, 3 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Predictable.

1614 days, 19 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Quite impressive, sir. Quite impressive indeed.

1614 days, 18 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Why do you think it took 3 days to get to where it is? It's not a trivial task.

When done, where would you like the generation files to be put? I can put them into the library (same directory that has the individual tables), or somewhere else (where?). Also, Joshua might have a place he likes to put this sort of thing.

1614 days, 16 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Stick a link and descriptions under the Admin tree somewhere, will you?

1614 days, 16 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Oh -- a proposal for style standards:
. Whenever a second font is used in the middle of a sentence, whether due to a link, a color change, or a font tag, it will add a variable space before and after the changed text. For the sake of readability, it's important to keep punctuation within the tags where practicable.

It seems a minor note, but it would help.

1614 days, 16 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Stick a link and descriptions under the Admin tree somewhere, will you?

OK. I'll figure out something along these lines.

> Whenever a second font is used in the middle of a sentence, whether due to a link, a color change, or a font tag, it will add a variable space before and after the changed text

That's a byproduct of the way the editor reparses the HTML on a save. I think we should try to get Joshua involved in this before we make that change. There might be an easy way to fix the reparser.

1614 days, 15 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

You think he'll appear for that? My impression was that he liked to save personal intervention for occasions where there's a major issue -- floods, plagues, false messiahs, that sort of thing.

Though he was oddly silent during the last plague...

1614 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

If he can get us the code that does the reparsing, or even point us to it (I haven't had a chance to dig through the entire JavaScript client), I might be able to find and fix it.

1614 days, 8 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

http://help.planets.nu/privacy-policy

Alberta isn't a state... not yet anyhow.

1614 days, 7 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

notwithstanding the unspoken policies of both the provincial PC's and Wildrose.

1614 days, 7 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> http://help.planets.nu/privacy-policy
>
> Alberta isn't a state... not yet anyhow.

That document was ported directly from the old system. It came from Joshua & whoever helped him. We have not changed the content, and have no intention of doing so, except at the explicit request of Joshua.

As far as the editors are concerned, that's a legal document, and we're not lawyers. Therefore, changing anything in it without direction from someone who we feel is authorized to do so is outside of our purview.

1614 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Bacchus: I hate them both. Social Credit party for the win... if were going to have welfare, make it fair.

1614 days, 7 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Whisperer: So your solution is to ignore it and not inform Joshua? Why do I waste my time trying to help?

1614 days, 7 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've emailed that fact via the contact link at bottom of page... kinda doubt that will get results... you should feel warm and fuzzy I brought it to the documentation crew... that implies I thought you'd have greater success.

I doubt a lawyer wrote it... most likely used an American legal disclaimer and adopted it for this site. I recall Joshua is like in Africa right?

1614 days, 7 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> So your solution is to ignore it and not inform Joshua?

That's not what was written.

> I recall Joshua is like in Africa right?

Wrong.

1614 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Last I heard, he was traveling. He does monitor these threads, though.

That particular document and the Host Order are sacrosanct. We don't make changes period. This is a self-imposed limitation, but it's one that everyone agreed on. It's the reason that I'm working on a separate document for the "Annotated Host Order", which contains notes to clarify some of the little details -- it'll be put in a different section, with a disclaimer attached to show that it's less reliable than the "official" documentation.

Side note: International copyright law is a totally different animal than domestic, especially in our case. We err a LONG way on the side of caution in the documentation. I personally dread the day that Disney (for example) comes along to mess with us. And that right there is a major reason that I don't mess with the legal disclaimers on the site; I'm nobody's hero, at least not outside of the game.

1614 days, 7 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Whisperer: You didn't say what you'd do... that is why I put a question mark on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritius

Ah, it was Mauritius apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritius

1614 days, 5 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Now, that's hardly polite. He didn't broadcast it, after all. (It's also long out-of-date, as I recall.)

And no; we don't always say what we intend to do. I hesitate to speak for Whisperer in specific, but that one's kind of a "gimmee".

1614 days, 3 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/shipDB

I just finished verifying the Feds against the "racesheet". So far, I've found a few extra commas, resulting in the data being placed into the wrong field, but that's all. No incorrect values have been encountered.

I also ran into a question. It's obvious that if a ship has both the Cloak and Advanced Cloak advantages, only the Advanced Cloak advantage needs to be displayed. The question is how we would like the Recloak Intercept advantage to be displayed. Just display the Recloak Intercept advantage, or display both?

1613 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk: Speaking of copyright, some of these articles are taken straight from Donovan's. Although I'd leave re-wording everything for a bit later, you probably already decided that.

The Ion Storm article should mention Advanced Cloak ships can in fact Cloak in Ion Storms, and become immune to them in the process.

1613 days, 12 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> some of these articles are taken straight from Donovan's

Part of the "marching orders" we received from Joshua was to not copy articles from elsewhere. TTBOMK, this has been followed by all of the editors. It would not surprise me if some of the older documentation was copied one way or the other (probably Tim's old documentation copied to Donovans).

> Ion storm ...

We'll look into that. Thank you.

1613 days, 11 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Donovan's quoted widely from original documentation, confirm. I maintain a couple of hard copies for reference. :o)

1612 days, 14 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> It's obvious that if a ship has both the Cloak and Advanced Cloak advantages, only the Advanced Cloak advantage needs to be displayed. The question is how we would like the Recloak Intercept advantage to be displayed. Just display the Recloak Intercept advantage, or display both?

Ideas?

1612 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I would like it to just be re-cloak for clarity and to avoid confusion?

1612 days, 13 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

A ship with "Advanced Cloak" doesn't have the ability to merely "Cloak". No combination of orders, ownership, or friendly codes will make it so.

Both. Recloak Intercept stacks with Cloak and mandates it, but it doesn't include it. The Deth can merely Cloak, and indeed must do so separately.

1612 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Ra,

I understand, and would also like to avoid confusion, but I believe that Gnerphk's statement is a stronger argument.

1612 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK

1612 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I tested the new ship database pave on the http://help.planets.nu/ link, and it was useless. The white text on white background just doesn't work. I need to hard-code the background color into the tables.

1612 days, 5 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

help.planets.nu -- interesting. I wonder when that showed up.

1612 days, 2 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> help.planets.nu -- interesting. I wonder when that showed up.

It was referenced in the news item. These are the static pages. I don't know how often they're generated. I think this is where we should point users when they ask questions, as I don't believe any login is needed for them.

1611 days, 14 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/shipDB

I just finished verifying this page, and no technical errors were found. A few commas were missing, causing the information to be put into the wrong column. Also, the links were broken and the background color needs to be set for the static copy of the documentation to function properly.

WRT the links, I need to specify a full URL. Due to the login incompatibility between http://planets.nu and http://play.planets.nu, I can't link to the documents under either of these trees. I'll have to link to the documents under http://help.planets.nu, which requires no login. Depending on which copy of the documentation the user is reading, this could have the effect of changing from a dark background to a light background. I don't see any way around this. If anyone else does, please advise.

I'll be updating the data and scripts today, and generating a new set of tables.

1611 days, 14 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Please justify the following: "I need to specify a full URL." Why not use a standard tagged HREF sublink?

Presuming it is truly required, one possibility would be to create separate versions of shipDB for each format. Since the text would be invisible (white-on-white) at help.planets.nu, a manual redirect link colored background gray to blend with the background at play.planets.nu ("For a differently colored version of this page, click this link." and the entire string is used as the anchor to avoid using two colors) would be the best way that I can see to move between versions.

However, our mandate as I understand it is to create files under play.planets.nu, and management is not generally in the practice of updating the old site. Given that, I would advise tuning content exclusively for the present system.

1611 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Somehow cut this without repasting:
help.planets.nu is evidently an afterthought, and is likely useful for Luddites and users of non-rich browsers. Care should be taken to serve these people, but it should be secondary to using the main system here at play.planets.nu.

1611 days, 13 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Why not use a standard tagged HREF sublink?

That's what's being done now. Click on a link and the reason will be instantly obvious.

I'm not willing to have two copies of the tables, configured for different states (static pages vs. dynamic pages).

> I would advise tuning content exclusively for the present system

I do not plan to "tune" anything, beyond a single CSS value to set the background color. This will be the same color as the background at http://planets.nu and http://play.planets.nu (#303030), so it will not even be noticed there.

1611 days, 13 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I saw the error; I'd thought a different reference tag was the culprit. So this is a product of storing a portion of the page in the library, eh? Hrm -- unintended consequences for the win.

I'm quite willing to have two copies of the tables if it makes them function, clunky though it be. I'm entirely unwilling to have a major page on the site redirect people to one or the other without giving them an option, but if we're absolutely forced into that position, we ought to opt in favor of play.planets.nu rather than the static pages.

But, rather than make the choice, I'd opt for either two tables or none (much though I dislike the latter).

Thing is, a disparity between versions of the documentation brought on by an alteration of format or code is a problem that is, I believe, above our pay grade. If it can be made to work through instituting minimal changes in method, that strikes me as acceptable. As such, forcing a background color does make sense.

1610 days, 4 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

As I was wandering through Friendly Codes anyway, I took another look at the SAMP codes in context. I was initially opposed, but it's growing on me.

If you have no objections, @W, I might play around with this a bit -- specifically the PBx, GSn, and similar codes; I'd like to fiddle with the display on those for clarity.

1610 days, 3 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I took another look at the SAMP codes in context. I was initially opposed, but it's growing on me.

I expected it would.

> I'd like to fiddle with the display on those for clarity.

Clarity is good. Go for it.

1610 days, 2 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Took a sweep through.

When I get a sec, I think all of these codes that activate a specific ability should have links to the relevant page; otherwise, this is just a ball of unrelated text. It's a p.i.t.a. task, though, so if you're bored... ;o)

1609 days, 20 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'll have a look at that later today.

1609 days, 15 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Added the S and CODE tags to the EditingHTML page. I still need to add the IFRAME tag, but I intend to wait until it moves into production.

1609 days, 15 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

That's probably very wise. It's something we would NOT want the unskilled (me) messing with.

1609 days, 10 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'd like to fiddle with the display on those for clarity.

It looks better, but you missed some. I'll get them.

1609 days, 8 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I think all of these codes that activate a specific ability should have links to the relevant page; otherwise, this is just a ball of unrelated text

I believe I got most of them. How's it look?

1607 days, 16 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

There was a question about the Aeries and the NAL Friendly code.

I was looking at the client code today, and noticed that the NAL FC is enabled for hull IDs 97, 104 and 105. This is the Merlin, Neutronic Refinery and Aries. While I can't say when it was added, it appears to be intentional. This makes me more inclined to believe that it's real and intentional.

1607 days, 15 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Aye; I'm with you so far. However, the question remaining to me is: Is it enabled in all forms of the Aries, including both Standard and Classic play?

1607 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

(I don't look at the client code. I'd be tempted to fiddle.)

1607 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Is it enabled in all forms of the Aries, including both Standard and Classic play?

According to the Client Code it is, but the actual changes are done in the Host code, so that's a Joshua question.

If not, then the Client Code needs to be fixed.

1607 days, 15 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Any feedback on the FC page?

1607 days, 15 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I fiddled around a little more myself -- cleaned up some typos and such. I'll go back in again this evening, I think; I've been doing a bit of research. I like your changes.

I'm wondering if we can simplify the "MDx" series of codes for clarity and ease of reference.

1607 days, 15 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm wondering if we can simplify the "MDx" series of codes for clarity and ease of reference.

Yes.

1606 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The Starships > Missions page is missing the "Land and Disassemble" page. IMO it is still worth calling it "Land and Disassemble (Formally colonise mission)" for returning players.

Also on the ship missions page the "Beam up x" ship missions are listed as "Gather missions". I think using two different names might be confusing to beginners.

1606 days, 14 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

RE Colonize: On it; good catch
RE Gather missions: Interesting point; quite possibly valid. We'll discuss it.

Thanks!

1606 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes ago

nanning

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

In the Ship missions I miss "Land and Disassemble", also in the PQ description it is not mentioned if you get 1 PP for LnD. If not, it might be wise to mention this in the PQ article, as well as in the LnD mission description.

1605 days, 15 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

WRT Gather Missions, I agree with Singularity. As there's no ability to search for a term (like "Beam Up Fuel"), the names of the missions have to match what the user sees.

1605 days, 15 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Nanning,

> In the Ship missions I miss "Land and Disassemble", also in the PQ description it is not mentioned if you get 1 PP for LnD. If not, it might be wise to mention this in the PQ article, as well as in the LnD mission description.

As you get 1 PBP/PP for recycling a ship, I believe you should get the same for a Land and Disassemble of a ship. This was removed in TimHost V3.22.026 (for no documented reason), and has remained so ever since.

I checked and found that you don't get a PBP for that mission, so you probably won't get a PP either. I don't have a PQ game where I can test this.

1605 days, 15 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I think it should stay like that.

Recycling a ship is limited and can only be done at a star base. Therefore you recycle the components and get your 1 PBP / PP.

Landing a ship on a planet is I think an act of desperation.

Either scrapping ships so other races cannot have it. Or an expensive way to get the minerals onto a planet to possibly build a star base etc.

So that's why I think it should stay like that and not change.

1605 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Singularity,

> Also on the ship missions page the "Beam up x" ship missions are listed as "Gather missions". I think using two different names might be confusing to beginners.

Would it be OK if we just changed it to "Beam up -X-", or do you want separate lines for each material to be beamed up? I'm only considering a change to the list, not the actual article.

1605 days, 14 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Documentation of Bugs.

There are some bugs in the code that have been around for a long time. This sort of bug should be documented in the appropriate page, and called a bug. It is not a "feature", unless there's a valid reason for it to exist.

When documenting a bug, the bug should be preceded by a comment along the lines of:

> This is documentation of a longstanding bug by (username). If an editor believes that this is not a bug, please inform me, and we'll discuss it.

In addition, an explanation as to why it's a bug should be included, unless the bug description makes that obvious.

If the bug documentation is removed after the discussion, that documentation should be added to the comment, along with the reason for not calling it a bug, or for not documenting it.

1605 days, 14 hours, 10 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@W

How about "Beam Up Missions" as the link on the ship missions page, and as the title on the Gather Mission page? The letter X might be misinterpreted in other languages.

I wouldn't list all 5 beam up missions on the ship missions page as that adds clutter and would have five hyper-links all pointing to the gather mission page.

If we do rename the mission link and the Gather Mission page to Beam Up Missions you need to include the fact that it is called "15. Gather Missions" in the host order.

1605 days, 13 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I fiddled around a little more myself -- cleaned up some typos and such.

I just took a look at the results. It continues to improve.

I noticed a consistency issue that I think we should address. I'm seeing FC parameters of 'n', 'x' and '#'. These are not used in a consistent manner.

I'm thinking that the 'x' should mean "Use any character here", the 'n' or '#' (pick one) should mean "Use any digit here", and the 'p' should mean "Use any player slot here".

These would, of course, have to be documented near the top of the FC page.

Opinions?

1605 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> If we do rename the mission link and the Gather Mission page to Beam Up Missions you need to include the fact that it is called "15. Gather Missions" in the host order.

Actually, I'd probably change the primary name in the Host Order as well. The term "Gather Missions" would, of course, be kept as a synonym for a while.

1605 days, 13 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Singularity,

Done.

1605 days, 13 hours, 9 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@W very nice. Thanks :)

1605 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@W
>I'm thinking that
>the 'x' should mean "Use any character here"
>the 'n' or '#' (pick one) should mean "Use any digit here"
>and the 'p' should mean "Use any player slot here".

>Opinions?

To summarise the codes that use variables are:
GSn — (Give Ship n ) -> player slot
MIn — (Mine Identity n ) -> player slot

Xnn - (Disable super spy) -> any char
MFx — (Mine Field Universal code) -> any char

MD# — (Mine Drop Number) -> numeric 0..9
PBx — (Priority Build) -> numeric 1..9

And I agree they are inconsistent.

I checked on http://www.donovansvgap.com/help/friendlycodes.htm to see where they were historically, and they were both different and inconsistent!

They have them as: gs* mi* (no code listed for super spy) mf# mdN PBx

My thoughts:
“PBx” is in common usage amongst VGA Planets players. I don't think that should be changed at all. Would “MDx” be acceptable for mine drop? That would then make the two of them consistent. I don't think the inconsistency of 0..9 and 1..9 warrants different codes.

Using “Xxx” is internally inconsistent - The first X can be upper case 'X' or lower case 'x', the other two can be any characters. Mixing them together is going to be confusing.

What about “X??“ and “MF?”, or “X**” and “MF*”, or “X__” and “MF_”?

“GSn” and “MIn” already look nice and are consistent with each other. Do they need to change? “GSn” is also pretty close to common usage too, although looking at Donovan it has changed over time.

Other opinions?

1605 days, 12 hours, 10 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Historically the MFx code has been called the "Universal minefield code" whereas in the docs we are calling it the "Global minefield code". Any reason it changed?

1605 days, 12 hours, 6 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

On http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/priority-build-points it lists the friendly code as "pbN"

and on http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/queueit lists the friendly code as "pb1".

Both should now be "PBx" or whatever we decide on in the above discussion.

1605 days, 11 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yes, @Singularity; this one's been under discussion.

So here's what we've agreed on, from time to time:

n or N can refer to a number, but not a number/letter
x or X can refer to a number or a letter, but should not be used for an exclusive numeric

In addition, internal consistency is being worked on during the ongoing content review. To put that into context: Because I'm not doing this full-time, I've been working for the past five weeks or more (taking time out for brain surgery and recovery; she's fine now, thanks, but there's still a lot of doctor's visits) on a FIRST DRAFT revision. I'm scanning for textual errors and presentation inconsistencies, but I'm not polishing.

As such, my major priority is that the information be correct and understandable. Consistency is secondary to the present task, though it's being discussed and adressed when practicable.

1605 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

:o) @W: Apparently, I missed your post saying just exactly what I just said. Sorry; didn't mean to ignore you. Expect more posts from me in the next few minutes, too.

1605 days, 10 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

General opinion: Consistency is the acme of mediocre minds.

It's also important for the purposes of creating meaningful documentation.

It follows, therefore, that I'm really the wrong person to be writing meaningful documentation. (I'd go so far as to say that @Whisperer is also somewhat hampered by his excellent mind. I mean that as a compliment.) However, I'm willing to bend a bit from my personal law of:
. "Every choice must serve the flow of information first and bow to internal consistency third, even if there is no #2 priority."

Nevertheless, I assert that the context and usage in the "queue" page is excellent and functional, that converting it to PBx would reduce readability by removing an explicit example, and that in general the institution of a blanket mandatory statement saying "This must always be" can only serve to decrease the value of the documentation.

Therefore, I vehemently oppose the specific change you suggest in "queue", @Singularity, while I do recognize the likely value of consistency internal to the Friendly Codes page.

1605 days, 10 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>Documenting of bugs

I believe this is an inappropriate use of the "How To Play" documentation. However, I agree that there ought to be a publicly available buglist. Technically, the decision of whether to include one here is above my pay grade.

I think instituting it would be impolite, and I have a horror of that.

Let's ask permission and see if we can integrate it with the present working internal bug-list documentation. There must be some, after all; GMI is a functional information-service organization.

1605 days, 8 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

ToC: I'm thinking that "Colonize" and "Asteroids and Planetoids" could be moved to a second line using the BR tag or similar. This could narrow the ToC bar on the left, giving us a bit more working space.

I hesitate to use BR but I think here it's appropriate since we need to avoid the spacing issue of the P tag within a list item.

Thoughts?

1605 days, 8 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

I have no intention of documenting all the bugs, or of creating a bug list. I do, on the other hand, feel that it is appropriate to document anomalous behavior, when it causes confusion for the people playing the game.

If I see multiple comments about a specific bug in the newsfeed in a span of a few weeks, and the bug has been around for a while, I believe that it should be referenced in the documentation. As it's a bug, the reference should note that, as it will make better sense when it's finally fixed.

If Management (Joshua et al) say that it's a feature, and choose to provide a reasonable explanation as to why it's a feature, then the documentation should be updated with that explanation.

There are now two documented bugs described in the custom game creation page, and a third (mineral amounts) should be added once we have the time to research it properly.

1605 days, 8 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OH! My apologies, @W; I'd misunderstood. We should certainly document known persistent bugs in the appropriate location.

Not sure mineral amounts is a real bug, TBH, but that's part of the research, I guess. I've deliberately avoided that discussion so far.

1605 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Not sure mineral amounts is a real bug, TBH, but that's part of the research

And I think I've figured out how to do the research. I'll generate 2-player small-format 150-planet games with me playing EE and the computer playing Robots. The Dark Sense will provide the information quickly. All I would need to do is log the data for 100 planets per game and compute the averages. That should be close enough to do the job.

I believe I know how they're supposed to work. All I need to do is gather the data and verify. If it matches, it's easy. If not, then we need to figure it out.

> ToC: I'm thinking that "Colonize" and "Asteroids and Planetoids" could be moved to a second line using the BR tag or similar. This could narrow the ToC bar on the left, giving us a bit more working space.

That's fine, but it won't actually change the width of the ToC bar. The width of that bar is set in the code at 300px. To actually change it, we'd need to get Joshua involved.

This is a valid use of the BR tag. It's used elsewhere to do the same thing. I'd add the Terms of Use line as well.

1604 days, 6 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The ToC has been updated, but I think I need to look at the LI indents.

1604 days, 3 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK. I think the indents in the ToC are a bit better.

1604 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I like.

1603 days, 5 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I just saw the Host Order excerpt in "queue". It clarifies the article a lot.

We could remove the numbering, as you said earlier, but in its present form it adds a great deal to the article. Even better, since it's quick and simple, it makes for a handy reference right in the body of the text. That's better than my idea for those pages, which was a nested article along the lines of the "Host Order of Combat".

Ideally, you were right; we shouldn't have numbers out here. In this case, though, it does greatly add to readability. I say we let it stand and to heck with the zero-maintenance ideal.

1603 days, 5 hours, 54 minutes ago

happy daze

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Then we need to document, in the Host Order page, that changes require updates to that page.

1603 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

This keeps getting more complex.

1603 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've been wondering about something.

Why is there a build phase before the movement/combat phase? All that's really needed is the build after the movement/combat. What does the first build phase deliver that the second doesn't?

1603 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

So about the ToC and the top nav bar:
I've been thinking about this for a while. Since there's been no response to my query about a dedicated mobile-oriented documentation set, I'm guessing we won't be able to do this on our own. I could host it on my own blog site, but (1) I'm not sure it would handle the traffic, and (2) there's the whole copyright thing.

So instead, I've been toying with a ToC organization that would permit a reasonable number of base root pages, like "Intro", "Dashboard", "Starmap", "Planets", "Ships", "Starbases", and "Misc", but that's still seven trees. (In that model, Combat would fall under Starships.)

We could merge Planets and Bases and put the entire Misc menu under Intro, including all of Setup.

I think it's a valuable concept, and it would be a shame to give up on it. Likewise, it's important that all the pages have a uniform look to them except where that's counter to readability. Also, once launched, it would make the standard site docs universally compatible with a mobile version by the simple expedient of removing the side nav menu.

That it's a difficult task is a minor detail. The more pressing one is redesigning the ToC in a way that is both instinctive to navigate, logical in structure, and easy to follow. And that task will take a lot of work as well as (I foresee) some serious arguing between us.

Thoughts?

1603 days, 5 hours, 42 minutes ago

nebulon

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Is it for New ships at a base for extra combat?

1603 days, 5 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'd prefer a system that allows the ToC page to be specified.

1603 days, 5 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Nebulon,

> Is it for New ships at a base for extra combat?

I assume that this is a response to my question about the first build phase.

The only way this could provide extra ships for combat at the base would be if the base has Primary Orders of fueling ships. Even with this, the new ship will only have beams, making it far less effective than it would be if the player was allowed to arm the ship with torpedoes or fighters.

1603 days, 5 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Done, @Happy. You can't see it, but in truth only an editor really needs to.

>Why is there a build phase before the movement/combat phase? All that's really needed is the build after the movement/combat. What does the first build phase deliver that the second doesn't?

I've put a ton of thought into this, and I can go on for pages. But I'm essentially a kindhearted soul so I won't. ;o)

There are four distinct answers (yes, this is the SHORT version).

(1) Original TimHost: This was created before PBP. Ships were built at both times in order to permit players who recycled or lost craft in ion storms to build replacements and still let combat losses get replaced by fighting players. It's far more complex than that, but that's enough to go on. You could simplify it by saying that it was deemed "programmatically necessary" when dealing with array-based system-restricted hard ship limits.

(2) Original Classic Planets Nu: The early program mimicked TimHost, and a lot of extra features (the PBP system, cloning, ion storms, Glory pops) were designed to interweave with a two-phase four-step build procedure. The first phase in this system permits saved priority to take precedence over earned priority, and the two distinct processes permitted instant replacement of combat losses -- essential for many basic tactics. For example, the first phase was capable of pumping out rapid-response emergency reaction builds that could help defend a base against sudden unexpected fleet assault. In order to permit both that and instant replacement -- both essential in any marginally believable system -- having separate build steps both before and after combat are a logical necessity.

Another example is that Glory pops and Loki decloaks were instituted to bracket the build phases in an intricate and reasonable order, and to modify the build steps would be to needlessly destroy this rather elegant system.

(3) The PQ System: This actually runs on a modified two-phase THREE-step system which defers combat priority replacements until the following turn in order to permit standard builds post-limit given sufficient combat. Rather surprisingly, it actually works; the queue is still easily constipated post-limit, but occasionally something moves. The new system is still being reviewed, but I'd say (cautiously) that it's a rather clever improvement on the previous (PBP) system.

TL;DR:
(1) Programmatic necessity
(2) Elegant complexity
(2b) Continuity
(3) Efficiency

1603 days, 5 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>the new ship will only have beams, making it far less effective than it would be if the player was allowed to arm the ship with torpedoes or fighters.

I've always thought there ought to be a flag to permit torpedo loading of one round per tube. In historic instances of this (see "Prince of Wales vs. Bismarck") speedy launches often precluded effective ammunition and armament trials before combat, which could be approximated by a one-round loadout. This is also borne out in MTB launches, Dunkirk, sub armaments in 1941 Luzon, the Hunley trials, and many many other rushed-prep situations.

1603 days, 4 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>I'd prefer a system that allows the ToC page to be specified.

I'm afraid I don't quite follow. You mean a total overhaul of the present display format?

1603 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I mean that instead of a single fixed ToC, that the ToC be able to be specified in the page. If no ToC is specified, then the default ToC should be used.

1602 days, 4 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey, @W: Could I impose on you, when you have a free moment, to add a column to the "weapon-destruction-power" page? I hesitate to, as I'm likely to mess up the tables.

Torpedo tubes add mass to their ships; 2,2,2,4,2,2,3,2,3,3 respectively for Mk1-8.

1602 days, 3 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The table has been updated. It took all of ~2 minutes.

1602 days, 3 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I just saw the Host Order excerpt in "queue". It clarifies the article a lot.

Are there any other pages that would benefit from this sort of information? Obviously the PBP page would. I expect the Loki page would as well. Others?

1602 days, 2 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Lokis and Glory Devices share a timing tree with Movement, so a single unified "Host Order of Cloaking" subpage would probably be best.

It's important to note what exactly happens when a priority-built Loki is auto-refueled pre-combat at a site where a Glory device set to "trg" was chunnelled in on top of a cloaked Privateer Meteor squadron.

...well, actually, it isn't; I just changed my mind. Now that I write that out, I'm pretty sure we should leave that for the reader to figure out. If you can't memorize the timing in the Host Order, no amount of detailed if-then trees will do other than confuse the issue.

So strike that. No Loki or Glory explanation can help; it's too complex.

Movement and Shipbuilding are about it, and Movement doesn't need numbers; that would only serve to overcomplicate things. Just the four-part automatic movement resolution sequence that we have in the Annotated Host is plenty, and that's best presented in an A,B,C,D format anyway.

I might set up a "Host Order of Movement" subpage instead of "Cloaking", though. Someday, when all the race bios have been revised.

1602 days, 2 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Thanks for updating the table. I figured your skills are sure where mine are crude and potentially clumsy. :o)

1601 days, 21 hours, 57 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hi guys, the page on defense posts (or the details pages) should mention that they modify the ground defense value.

1600 days, 10 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hi guys, I added a changelog page to the documentation that I'm going to *try* to keep up with. It could use some help format-wise though.

1600 days, 10 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Does it fill automatically, Beefer?

1600 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

No, I have to add things manually. You don't want to see all the comments for refactoring and that stuff.

1600 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I think all it would need is to have another field on the edit screen for the edit reason. This should be a mandatory field.

1600 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK; I'll add in the basics. I presume we'll want this available to the users, so I'll find a spot on the tree and put in the navigation stuff. Give me a sec.

When I've got a ton of time on my hands, I may go in and clean up the useless or duplicate tags left over from the previous HTML version. On the other hand, if YOU have time... :o)

1600 days, 10 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK; we're in. Is the black text at the bottom deliberate?

1600 days, 9 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

No, I pretty much just copied the release notes over from the other side as they were. Feel free to do whatever you like (or not) to make it look good. I wouldn't say it's in any way urgent.

Thanks for getting it in the nav tree too!

1600 days, 9 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

No worries, mate.

Yeah; I think I'll put that off. Working on a few other projects at the moment.

1600 days, 6 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>> Is the black text at the bottom deliberate?
> No

It was a STYLE attribute on a bunch of tags. I removed them. This gives you a lot more space to work with.

I'd like to suggest that you break this up into the "pre-release" work and the "post-release" work. Additionally, I think that each major release should get it's own file. This is because the page appears to get stuffed into a DB field that's about 64KB.

Also, the DD/MM/YYYY format looks bad. I would like to suggest either MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD (sortable).

1600 days, 5 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I happen to use DD/Mon/YY myself, even though I know it'll break some computers. :o)

The size of the document is rather large; we might nest a subpage or two off it for archiveable material.

1600 days, 3 hours, 36 minutes ago

happy daze

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> The size of the document is rather large; we might nest a subpage or two off it for archiveable material.

That's what I thought I wrote. If BB agrees, and supplies dates for the breaks, I can split it up for him.

1600 days, 3 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

:o) You're letting your slip show again.

Let's just shunt off the Alpha stuff for now and call it good. The new site came into full in that many-month span where "Lots of updates" is all the information we have, and it would be rather a useless (and vacant) document if we split it off there.

1599 days, 17 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've added a section in the Questions for Joshua file about known bugs. This is primarily for minor bugs that we encounter while documenting or testing that are not documented elsewhere. At some point, these may be broken out into another file, but I don't see the information ever becoming linked into the main documentation.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/questions-for-joshua

With the addition of a 4th section to this document, I added some quick links at the top.

1599 days, 17 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I updated the documentation administrative interface. I believe it's now got the appropriate information to allow it to be linked in at the bottom of the ToC as something like "Editor Information".

1599 days, 16 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Starting a controlled test of the Aries, and to determine exactly what the various Minerals settings on the game creation pages do.

1599 days, 15 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Starting a controlled test of the Aries

I have verified that the NAL Friendly Code works on the Colonial Aries in a standard game. As a standard game is the least powerful, I strongly believe it will work just fine on the EE Aries (Campaign). As I have no way to verify this directly, and as I've verified that the Client code says it works, I'm willing to say that it does work.

Considering the above, I believe we should update the documentation to say that NAL works on the Aries.

> determine exactly what the various Minerals settings on the game creation pages do

This will consume more time that I thought. Apparently the Dark Sense mission provides no information on unclaimed planets (I thought it would). Because of this, I need to visit each world to determine the mineral content.

1599 days, 14 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> the Dark Sense mission provides no information on unclaimed planets

The documentation now provides this information.

1599 days, 13 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey Doc Team,

To save you some testing efforts, here are some things that I have tested and verified in a classic, non-campaign, old fashioned PBP game (and that either contradict current docs or are missing from them):

-Gather missions won’t work on planets owned by someone else unless you match the FC of the planet (regardless if the planet has defense posts or not)

-All cloning takes place in its own step after the first build phase, not as part of the first build phase. If normal build is ordered, no cloning will occur.

-Cloning happens in the ID order of the _ships_ being cloned, the ID of the cloning SB does not matter.

-Priority queue kicks in, when the number of ships > 0.9 * ship limit. Ie. in normal game, when there are at least 451 ships in the game (451st is built in normal queue). I think that is a bug and the equation should be “greater than or equal to” instead of “greater than” because now the lowest ship limit setting is 10 and in such a game there can never be a priority build. Not a big deal, though, but it made the first try to test these a bit difficult.. :)

-You can _not_ both priority build and clone the same turn, even if you get to priority build in the first build phase and there are free ship slots in the cloning phase. I assume there is some check to prevent the same SB from building more than one ship per turn (this is explicitly stated for advanced cloning, but must be a global setting).

-A while ago, there was discussion - that is already lost in the feed - about super spy and the possibility of spies being caught. I was curious about it and pulled all player messages of several finished games with a strong Bird and found no messages about spies being caught as part of the “normal super spy” (there were many "spies caught” messages when they had changed the planet’s FC). Thus, I’d be fairly confident to say that the super spy cannot be detected unless they try to change the FC.

Lastly, the “combat host” page says that the third Loki decloak phase exists just for brand new Lokis. I’d say that’s a bit limited view on the issue and it would be better to say that it is there to allow SB refueled Lokis to decloak.. :)

PS. BB, thanks for the change log.

1599 days, 12 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'll go through these. One or two of the things you mentioned, it's been suggested that we leave alone for right now; presumably, some sort of changes were pending.

I like your statement about the Loki item particularly. It's a good insight; my commentary was based on the intent of the developer in reinstating the step, but it's certain that a couple of interesting tactics could be employed using this.

Concur about the gather missions. I'm working on a general revision of the article and that's part of it.

One of your statements, I've experienced and done differently. I actually HAVE done a priority build and a clone at the same base on the same turn. It was in Classic, but I did it in two different games quite some time ago. That's not to say that the game hasn't been changed since then, mind -- merely that I've done it. I know people who've done tow-drop chunnels, too.

Incidentally: The Host Order is tremendously simplified surrounding the build steps, phases, and sub-phases. Certain of these overlap; I'm confident that cloning occurs (or at least has occurred) both immediately before and immediately after the first standard build phase depending on circumstances. Advanced cloning is its own animal and lives by somewhat different rules -- and I'm convinced that not all of these rules are by design.

I'm intrigued especially by your priority-build bug contention. That would explain a lot. Let's ask BB to look into it.

1599 days, 11 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

(Or @Joshua, of course.) :o)

1598 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

We need to document the new "UNLOAD" button on starships. We also need to document the change to the "Lay web mines" mission (you can now select the various MD* FCs from the Mission tab).

I can see that keeping up with BB's enhancements and fixes could take up quite a bit of time, but I'm glad that these are appearing.

1598 days, 16 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

That seems excessive to document a button that is pretty self explanatory... an in-game pop-up would make more sense... doesn't unload fuel etc.

Normally documenting a user intreface is done with pictures and coloured squares... I'll be doing that for the Wiki either way.

1598 days, 16 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> That seems excessive to document a button that is pretty self explanatory

Not really. When documenting a UI, it is best to document everything. This gives the reader the feeling that no stone was left unturned. It also makes it simpler when a button's function changes. This is one of those things that you learn after writing a few technical documents.

> an in-game pop-up would make more sense

A change of that nature requires assistance from the developers, and increases the size of the JavaScript client application. If the entire UI were documented like this, the app would grow by at least 100KB. IMHO, it's not worth the cost.

> Normally documenting a user intreface is done with pictures and coloured squares.

Agreed. We haven't gotten that far yet. I should discuss this with Gnerphk, and determine how we want to go about this. Thank you for the reminder.

1598 days, 16 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I should discuss this with Gnerphk, and determine how we want to go about this

Discussion initiated off-line.

1598 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Regarding the hotkey documentation:

Hotkeys is one word, no capital 'k'. The hotkey button 'r' is listed as 'Mark turn ready', but it should be 'Mark ship/planet/starbase ready'.

I hope no hotkey exists that marks your Turn 'ready'.

------------

Hotkey 'c' and 't' should be combined as "c or t" or "c, t".

------------

Suggestions:

Your monitor is your screen. The browser is the window containing the JavaScript Client GUI child-windows/frames. Don't call things 'screens' inside software, it is incorrect.

Now 'window' is not usually used when referring to the child-windows to avoid confusion. However correct container or frame as a term is to use, I find 'panel' makes the most sense to joe-blow and programmers.

Starmap view (as it applies always should be first), Ship panel, Planet panel, Starbase panel... thus close panel. Now everything else we can call a menu or dialog box... I prefer menu.

"c or t Select Transfer Target menu"
"x Close current panel"

A lot of the "open" are uneccsarry or should be 'Toggle' instead of 'Show', "q Toggle 81-ly planet connections".

Also "Use the "Time Machine" to show the previous turn" is overkill, "Show previous Turn" is better and less confusing.

1598 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Not sure if this was on purpose or just old Tim docs , but the Starmap is referenced as 'Starchart' on the Starbases intro:

http://play.planets.nu/#/howtoplay/starbases

1598 days, 13 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

That last is a relic of a renaming debate we had in the early days of the documentation project; it seemed to be the opinion of certain people that this would be a proper avenue in which to fix the game rather than document it.

I figured, since the game called it a "Starmap", that was probably good enough. However, the original page name is tough to change at this point, considering the massive number of references throughout the documentation.

During the ongoing review project, I'll be visiting every active subpage and looking for typos of just that nature. Cleaning them up when someone else spots them is, however, easier, and I appreciate being notified.

1598 days, 13 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The usage on "Hotkey" versus "Hot Key", "Hot-key" and "HotKey" is still new enough to be malleable. We use "HotKey" and will, after the review, hopefully employ it throughout. Likewise, I use "eMail" in some of my standard communications -- it's odd, perhaps, but not inappropriate.

You make some interesting observations about usage. I've had people (fairly recently) talk to me about their "terminal" and some output "fanfold". That last took me a second.

I presume from some of these observations that you're Canadian?

At the moment, I don't have time to debate all of the items of usage that you brought up, @Glyn; I will just mention that you misspelled "unnecessary" in your post. ;o)

A couple of these items are cogently expressed and even potentially useful. While I don't agree entirely about "window" usage, for example (they're ALL windows), it's nevertheless true that imprecisions can cause confusion. When I do the HotKey page review, I'll keep your list handy.

1598 days, 10 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@W: Experimenting with the top-bar nav model on the top tier pages. It's going to be changed a bit, but if you want to take a look, check out the top Starmap page.

I already see a couple of improvements to make, but they'll keep. I'm deep in the ToC at present.

1598 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> Experimenting with the top-bar nav model on the top tier pages

I looked at it on my phone. That's not what I think of when someone mentions a Top Nav bar. Give me a bit to put it together, and I'll see what I can do.

> (stuff responding to Glyn)

So, what's the problem with Fanfold? It's easier to figure out than Chatter Rolls.

@Glyn,

> Starmap is referenced as 'Starchart' on the Starbases intro

That needs to be fixed.

Items like this will continue to linger for a while, as there's no document search ability. Yeah, there's Google, but that's not the best choice for highly dynamic documentation.

1598 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk : Technically the hold-shift one isn't a hotkey, but a context one... it however is a hot key as well as all the rest... BUT....

Saying 'hot keys' includes multiple-key shortcuts... normally we call them shortcuts or key bindings in general... but saying 'hotkeys' eliminates multiple-key shortcuts and means specifically single-key shortcuts... it also implies what program gets focus. Key bindings is analogous to shortcuts and 'hot keys'... but some will be misled to think key binding implies rebind-able keys, so while correct to use, it tends to mislead people.

A shortcut on your computer is a specific term different than a short-cut you take home... and a short cut you take on your computer is in fact anything you do to save time. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

As a Canadian I'm forced to program spelling colour as color. It doesn't matter what your English teacher says about spelling something if that something is a computer term. Calling multiple-key shortcuts 'hot keys' was already a compromise, Microsoft was clear what a hotkey was. You can use it so fast it gets hot... thus why everyone wanted to label their crappy multiple-key bindings also as 'hot keys' when gaming keyboards came out with extra hotkey buttons late 90's. Not all computer terms are like this, a lot are trademarks that have specific capitalization such as M$'s StickyKeys... but almost all the terms start at these big software companies which always pick one method of spelling it for the sake of naming conventions.

Now your unique capitalization of HotKeys and eMail are both trademark-able... why use a trademark-able capitalization?

"Glyn puts the HotKeys℠ in yo eMails℠!"

༼ ಠ ͟ʖ ಠ ༽

http://i.imgur.com/0o17qOV.png

1598 days, 9 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Starship panel... Starship screen.. Starship command...Starship viewer... Starship widgets... hmmm.... not sure which is best anymore.

乁⁞ ◑ ͜ر ◑ ⁞ㄏ Hmmmw... I'll decide when the time to overhaul the Wiki comes. Laterz.

1598 days, 6 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yeah. We need to figure out what terms we need, agree on what they should be, and make sure that all the pages refer to them properly. This is a very time consuming task.

1598 days, 3 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

And it's part -- but only part -- of what I've been doing with the review process. I do wish I had more time for it, but I'm going through fairly methodically.

My main focus on this run-through is factual; subordinate to that is narrative flow. I am also looking for usage and linguistic consistency, but only as a side project; it's much easier and more pleasant than if we were to establish a usage committee, submit proposals, and undertake the task in a properly organized fashion.

In strict point of fact, I think I'd refuse to participate in that sort of project. It wouldn't be any fun. (So call me "Red".)

1598 days, 3 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

>> Experimenting with the top-bar nav model on the top tier pages

> I looked at it on my phone. That's not what I think of when someone mentions a Top Nav bar. Give me a bit to put it together, and I'll see what I can do.

Have a look at http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/TopToC

That's what I think of when someone mentions a top nav bar. If it weren't for the side nav bar, it would work well.

I noticed that you're working on the ToC, adding a 3rd level. I think that's too deep for the nav bar. While the pages can go that deep, I don't think that the nav bar should go to that level of detail.

1598 days, 3 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@W: Missed your phone comment RE "top nav bar". It's also not what I think of, but given our limitations it seems marginally functional. More to the point, it's consistent in format with the arrow-driven navigation.

However, I've got no wish to dismiss anything you want to put together, mate; my own technical skills are rather rudimentary in this particular arena. I write prose, occasional poetry; I code C, occasional assembly.

1598 days, 3 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I pulled the nav bar off of the web. Nothing original there, except the content, and a few adjustments to the settings. I added an attribution in a comment.

To get this nav bar implemented, we'd need to get Joshua to make a small change to the JavaScript client. Fortunately, the new code is slightly simpler (no special case for "wide" pages). Also, it gives us more space (width) for the pages, making most of them look better.

The best part is that it uses lists, like we're used to using, so the change is simple for the editors. It is, however, limited to two levels. A CSS expert (not me) could probably add a third level.

I can provide the changes for the client if you can convince Joshua to use it. Alternatively, he might want to write it himself.

In researching this, I found a possible alternative to the use of an iframe for the ship tables. Some more testing is in order.

1598 days, 3 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

RE the ToC 3rd level: I'm attempting to eliminate some parts of the third level that had previously existed there while combining certain superfluous general headings. In so doing, I'm experimenting with various organizational methods. I'll likely be forced to abandon the project only partly completed; I'll pick it back up at my earliest convenience, however.

Ideally, I'd like to eliminate about 50% of the entries in the ToC. In practice, however, I'm coming to the conclusion that oversimplification would be far too easy, and I'm unwilling to fall into that trap through an overzealous attitude toward my artificial ideal.

1598 days, 2 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I just found a 3-level dropdown menu. I'll see if I can make it work for us. Do you see any need to move beyond 3 levels?

It should be noted that the small amount of space that the dropdown menu uses allows a high level of detail to remain in the menu.

1598 days, 0 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Show me.

I wonder if we might beg some dedicated space on the site for the development of toys of this nature.

1597 days, 19 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I wonder if we might beg some dedicated space on the site for the development of toys of this nature.

I don't think it's needed. We've done well enough so far.

1597 days, 18 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Found an fixed a problem with poor interaction with lists on the page. It appears that you can't use the STYLE tag to have one set of CSS for one part of the page and another STYLE tag to have a different set of CSS elsewhere. I created a class, and it works properly. This is certainly a learning experience.

Working on reducing the CSS to the minimum that works. Will then try to add the third level, based on the example I found previously.

1597 days, 17 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Show me.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/TopToC

In this example, the only 3rd-level list is Starships -> Missions.

1597 days, 17 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Wow, huge improvement in layout, love that starbases are under planets now.

1597 days, 16 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

I found a bug in the 3rd-layer lists. Currently, it only works properly when the 3rd-layer list is at the end, or is shorter than the remainder of the 2nd-layer list. I'll be working on this.

Long titles wrap around within the drop-down boxes, so we don't need to worry about BR tags in the ToC any more. They've been removed in this instance.

I integrated most of your ToC changes into this. The exceptions are:

1. "Combat" is not under "Starships".
2. "Starbases" is not under "Planets".
3. In "Starmap", moved "Setting Colors" to the end of the list.

Except for the bug noted above, this works in the static pages (http://help.planets.nu/TopToc). It also works on my phone.

1597 days, 15 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK. The bug above has been improved to the point where it functions. It's not perfect, but it does work. I'll continue work on this in a different page.

1597 days, 13 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

And that bug is dead.

How's it look? From a functional standpoint, I believe it's ready for integration into the production pages. With the different format, there may be items that should be added.

I don't know if there's an actual limit to the depth of this menu system, other than screen size and system memory.

1597 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I found a possible alternative to the use of an iframe for the ship tables.

It didn't work any better than the iframe :(

1595 days, 13 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hi guys, I just posted another batch of changes to the changelog. In general, I'm thinking we can delete all the pre-alpha stuff as suggested above, and then maybe split the rest into two, pre-beefer and post-beefer changes. What do you think?

1595 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I approve. Let us make it so. I'll get to it if nobody else does, but I'm tied up tonight.

Is there any way to recreate the change list post-migration pre-Beefer?

1595 days, 11 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Any comments on the top menu system?

http://help.planets.nu/TopToc

Gnerphk, please verify that the HTML is something you can work with.

BB and Joshua,
If it's OK, is there any chance of getting it implemented (requires a minor modification to the JavaScript client - I can supply if needed)?

1595 days, 11 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm thinking we can delete all the pre-alpha stuff as suggested above, and then maybe split the rest into two, pre-beefer and post-beefer changes. What do you think?

I think that would work better if there were a version number change for the Client (maybe the Host as well - that's up to you). This makes the change in the documentation blend better with the status of the site.

1595 days, 7 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The TopToc looks good, but I'll have to consult with the boss. I know that to some degree we try to avoid hover triggers for content, so we keep better mobile compatibility.

I didn't really follow you about the version numbers...

1595 days, 7 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> we try to avoid hover triggers for content, so we keep better mobile compatibility

It worked OK on my Windows phone. I just press and hold to bring down the menu, then tap on the item I want.

I'm now marking the items in the drop-down that have children. Does this help?

> I didn't really follow you about the version numbers...

The Client's been at 1.22 for a while. If you have a changelog that's before 1.0, another for 1.0-1.22 and the "current" for changes after 1.22, I think the transition will be better for all. Similar for the Host-side changes, but we don't know the version numbers.

1595 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I don't think we really have much mapping changes to version numbers. Dates should be fine I think.

1595 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

If it's what we have, it's what we'll use. Accuracy trumps style, alas.

1595 days, 6 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I don't think we really have much mapping changes to version numbers. Dates should be fine I think.

OK. For the next file (whenever that is), you might want to make the break on a version number change.

1593 days, 8 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Any comments on the top menu system?

I received a few private remarks. Here are the responses:

> The collapsible menus did something really weird on IE7(? 8?) on my XP system.

This is as expected. To run Planets.nu, the browser needs to support HTML5 and CSS3. Neither IE7 nor IE8 support that, so they should fail.

> On the desktop systems it seems nicely functional, and I think it has potential, though depending on the browser sometimes I get an odd highlighting effect on the rest of the page.

If you could provide the browser and circumstances for the odd highlighting, I might be able to look at it. I tested it with IE11 and Firefox, and it seemed to work properly.

> I can't seem to use it at all with my cell, which is running Droid
Chrome. A second cell, which uses Galaxy Chrome and a larger screen,
displayed it better but not well.

That's interesting. I tested on a Windows phone and a Kindle, and it worked with minor quirks. On the Windows phone, to select from the drop-down, you had to touch and hold the button. On the Kindle you had to quickly select the entry from the drop-down.

Unfortunately, the browsers in mobile phones are all slightly tweaked from the desktop browsers. I believe that this is due to a number of reasons, including:

* To better interface with a touchscreen
* To work better with low system memory
* To work better with a low-speed CPU

Until the mobile browsers become more standards compliant, a drop-down menu will have glitches. If there were a way for the CSS to know that the browser is from a mobile, I think we could disable the drop-down features, and just provide a flat ToC.

1593 days, 6 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

So we really need an m. documentation format, then. Let's see if Beefer or Joshua is
(1) paying attention
and
(2) willing.

I've done mobile development, though not too recently; still, it should be useful if we need to rely on my expertise as well. The flat ToC sidebar is nonfunctional in mobile, IMO; the top-bar "Oracle"-style 1990s navigation bar that we've cobbled together for the top nav would suffice if needed. That would improve space use efficiency.

I did notice an odd highlighting quirk using Firefox, BTW. It comes and goes.

1592 days, 17 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I did notice an odd highlighting quirk using Firefox

The way the drop-down top nav bar is supposed to work is that the current selection is a different color than the rest. The color changes are supposed to be limited to the nav bar only.

Could you please describe the strangeness?

The only strangeness I'm aware of is if the nav bar wraps around, the items early on the upper line will have difficulty displaying, as their entries will be under the second line. I expect that there's a CSS directive that will cause them to be brought to the front, but I don't believe that fixing this glitch would be time well spent. If this were to be implemented in production, the line wouldn't wrap because it would have 300px more width to use (the missing side nav bar).

1592 days, 7 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I've added a section in the Questions for Joshua file about known bugs.

The list continues to grow. I just put the 8th bug in there. Is there any chance that a developer could take a few minutes and have a look at it? Some of these bugs seem like they'll be easy to fix.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/questions-for-joshua

1592 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Last two sentences of Minefields doc need fixing. Plus 'slowed' is confusing, "waypoint target is setback 10-ly" is more clear about what occurs (although I'm operating on 2nd hand knowledge, may be wrong about this).

Plus Minefields really deserve a proper linking to, probably under Starmap since Planet-starbases and Ships both equally manipulate them and visually they are all over it.

1592 days, 6 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Properly, Minefields belongs below Minelaying (under Ships), and should be side-referenced from the Starmap and, incidentally, from the Starbase Sweep campaign advantage (among other places). However, right now we're operating with some pages that are a bit cobbled-together.

"Slowed", however, is the correct term, I think, since that's what actually happens.

1592 days, 5 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk: The warp speed decreases? Otherwise 'slowed' is misleading.

Starbases can minelay and it takes a starbase to build a ship, so by your logic ships should be under starbases.

Someone looking for minefield info today couldn't find it... while having it listed under both starbases and ships docs, it wasn't intuitive to search either places for it.

1592 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yes; a damaged ship is slowed. Quite literally, its max speed is decreased. As I understand it, this is approximated by the minehit effect.

Consider it pseudo-realistically, if you will:

*BOOM*
"Captain! We just struck a mine!"
"Damage report!"
"Coming in now, Captain; Engineering reports minor damage to the engines."
"Helm reporting, Keptin. Concussion has reduced our speed to Warp Sewen. Returning to course."
"Steady as she goes! Weapons -- set the phasers to their widest angle and fire on low intensity to clear out some of these mines!"
"Aye, sir... Phaser control reports this will take until next turn."

...OK, so it's not a perfect example, but it'll do. :o)

An ion storm will change a ship's waypoint, but a standard minehit will either stop a vessel cold or slow it down. Any other descriptor will be misleading; we did try a couple before arriving at that conclusion.

1592 days, 4 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk: I'm talking about the 10-ly waypoint reduction caused by mine hits to lower tech hulls... also only applies to waypoints further than 10-my, you have to fix the waypoint after (to my knowledge). What you said about damage is also missing from Minefield doc currently.

1592 days, 3 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

We missed mentioning that hitting a mine could damage a ship? Good Lord; that's a bit embarrassing, to be sure.

1592 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Oh, I see; we neglected to link to the subpage on ship damage there. Easily mended.

I've been thinking about "slowed", and I still don't think we ought to alter the passage. I'll keep thinking about it, though. That article gets revised every so often, so you may actually see a change some day.

1592 days, 3 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

RE top-nav alt menu -
> Could you please describe the strangeness?

Comes and goes; sometimes, but not others, the page menu itself as well as the fixed side ToC are disordered and suffer an odd highlighting effect. My guess is that, sometimes, the code somehow conflicts between the dynamic menu and the static ones -- probably some setting or other, and since it's transient, Lord only knows what activates it.

Since you asked, I've checked it on a different system and seen the same thing in Firefox -- but again, not always, and never the first time it's loaded. Ctrl-F5 has always cleared it up, but a simple refresh failed the one time I thought to check it.

1591 days, 17 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

This is still a problem that I don't see. I understand what you wrote, but I've never seen it. Is your Firefox up to date?

It's possible that you've found a bug in Firefox. Have you reported it to them?

Is there a site that you know of with w drop-down menu that works reliably under Firefox? If so, I should be able to figure out how they did it, and replicate the functionality.

1591 days, 10 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'll keep my eyes open for an alternative, and I'll continue testing here. Usually, though, what I see is incredibly rich menus or plain-text.

Both Firefoxes are up to date; both are spare insofar as addons and plugins are concerned (no Sun Java, for instance). However, no odd display instance happened when I had a single tab open, so it's possible that another application was interfering. I'll fiddle around until I can either repeat or dismiss it, probably tomorrow or Monday.

Since Firefox didn't ask me to look for bugs, I thought it inappropriate to inform them of what I'd found; it also strikes me as something they'd dismiss out of hand.

1591 days, 8 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

There are a few quotes at the top of the new Tenacity page, but I don't think they're formatted correctly. Could you please have a quick look at them?

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/NewTenacity

1587 days, 17 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> There are a few quotes at the top of the new Tenacity page, but I don't think they're formatted correctly. Could you please have a quick look at them?

Any chance to get to this soon? As the article is complete, except for some last-minute changes from the devs, an overall review would be nice. If you change something significant, please comment out the old text and add the new.

I'll go over this after you've gone through it to clean up some of the comments.

1587 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Oh my.

Ohhhh myyyyy.

I hereby officially withdraw the last disparaging or patronizing thing I said to you about your writing ability, @Whisperer; you've got soul, man.

I'm going to take some time with this, if you don't mind -- mostly to revel in the glory that I see. I may also run through and check for typos but I don't expect any after that start.

Nicely done, sir.

1587 days, 15 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Agreed, well done.

1587 days, 15 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Nicely done

Thank you.

I've been trying to figure out how to add "color" to the pages, but there's only so much that can be done without changing the meaning of the writing. This time, I tried something different ... the quotes. I think that the four quotes at the top may be a bit over the top; possibly one of the short quotes and one of the long ones?

Do you think that adding quotes to some of the other pages would improve the overall quality of the pages, possibly by setting the stage?

BTW, in case you can't tell, I don't like the new system. I'll document it correctly, but I don't think I'll ever like it in it's current state.

1587 days, 15 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's clearly not neutral documentation...

1587 days, 14 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> It's clearly not neutral documentation

It's as close as I could bring myself to create. It's hard to stay neutral when writing about a POS (no, I don't mean Point of Sale).

You might want to see my most recent post to the pre-announcement thread for the Tenacity change. Perhaps that would clarify my position a bit.

http://planets.nu/#/activity/1877516

1587 days, 10 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Be glad I'm not writing the documentation on this. I scarcely trust myself to repair the one missing apostrophe.

"Tenancy". The stat is now called "Tenancy".

See? And I'm in a GOOD mood today. Beefer gave me my carriage returns, and I'm grateful and positive. :o)

1586 days, 14 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> The stat is now called "Tenancy".

Do you want that put into the documentation? I expect that Joshua or Big Beefer would change it back, and change the slant of the article as well, but I'm game if you are.

1586 days, 14 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

:o) Yeah; you're right; we'd better not. But it's such an appropriate name...

1586 days, 13 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

One change: Missed turns from private and blitz games will no longer be counted in a player's record. I just fixed that.

1586 days, 12 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Big+Beefer,

> One change: Missed turns from private and blitz games will no longer be counted in a player's record. I just fixed that.

Is this fix only going forward, or is it also for historical games?

1586 days, 12 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

going forward

1586 days, 12 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Big+Beefer,

How do Blitz games figure into Tenacity? I hope they're exempt.

1586 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yeah, always have been. They just had that missed turn weirdness. That's actually where a couple of mine are from.

1586 days, 11 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Big+Beefer,

> One change ...

I believe it's in there now.

1585 days, 4 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've completed a couple more pages in the document review. "customization" presented some interesting complexities, and I don't believe I'm going to be able to complete a final edit at this time.

On that page, we state that the chain-production of debris fields is a "bug". I'd like to alter that phrasing to "unintended feature", since there has been absolutely no mention to date that this might be fixed at any point in the future, and "unintended feature" is as close to criticism as I feel like going within the documentation proper.

The RaceKill "bug" I think we can leave as it stands; that, as I recall, is on one of the lists of things to be fixed. We can alter the documentation to fit at that time.

The additional item which will require discussion is the subject of nested links: I believe that, while a drastic increase in the number of sublinks in this page would improve the accessibility of information, it would create a large amount of complexity, making future maintenance onerous. Moreover, documentation doesn't exist for some of these items (largely since we don't actually have official information) and to link some things while failing to link others seems inconsistent.

Thoughts?

1585 days, 3 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> we state that the chain-production of debris fields is a "bug". I'd like to alter that phrasing to "unintended feature"

It's a bug because the system doesn't account for the chain-reaction. When a configuration request is for 3 debris fields and the system delivers 5, that's a bug.

> documentation doesn't exist for some of these items

Then we should create a page that says we don't know what it is. We've received quite a bit of help from the community. Perhaps we'll get some on these as well.

1585 days, 3 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I concur; it's a bug, in that it's an unintended consequence. Nevertheless, I'd strongly suggest that the appropriate place to criticize site management is in the Feed rather than the official documentation.

(You'll notice that I don't tend to pull my punches about that sort of thing in the Feed. Against people, sure, but not against the site.)

--

Ideally, I would agree. Nevertheless, I'd like to avoid this in order to keep complexity down. Think about it; we'll talk later.

--

Side note: I keep intending to do a thorough scan of your Tenacity page, but... frankly, I feel rather strongly about the issue, and I don't trust myself. I'm holding off another day or two.

1585 days, 2 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

When the EE destroy several planets in a chain reaction is it a bug?

The game system destroys a planet it checks if other planets are within a set range and it is it destroyed and the next planet is destroyed etc.

I think this should be the same with set up with the games.

A planet is selected at random for the 500 planets and it is selected for destruction. If another planet is also destroyed then let it be.

Its a lot better than changing the program to selecting planets that is not near a planet.

1584 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk

> I concur; it's a bug, in that it's an unintended consequence

It's a bug because the code doesn't do what the user asks it to do; intended vs. unintended doesn't come into play. While we expect some things to happen in the game that aren't quite what the user thought they were asking for, due to the interaction with other players and the random number generator, we should expect the game generator to deliver what it's asked to deliver.

> I'd strongly suggest that the appropriate place to criticize site management is in the Feed rather than the official documentation

I don't see this as criticizing management. It's documenting a failure of the software to do what it's asked to do. Unlike the feed, it's easy to update this when the bug is fixed.

Bugs should NEVER be called Features. This implies to the readers that the bug is permanent. If we're informed by Management that this is intended and permanent, we should then change the documentation to call it a feature, but not before.

@Martinr,

> A planet is selected at random for the 500 planets and it is selected for destruction. If another planet is also destroyed then let it be.

I see two problems with this philosophy.

1. This means that the code does not deliver to the user what the user requested that it deliver.

2. Debris fields are extremely rich in minerals, and should be looked at as being "Strategic Resources" by the players. The chain reaction causes some of these resources to be hugely larger than others. It's unbalancing enough that there are normally only 2-4 planetoid fields in the game (giving the player who owns them a huge advantage in resources), but if some of those resources are 3-5 times as large, then the winner of the game has just been decided.

In order to minimize the game unbalance done by the super-abundant minerals in the initial debris fields, those debris fields should at least be relatively evenly distributed. If an EE player in a Campaign game wants to convert a cluster of planets into a super-mine, that's an in-game decision, and I have no problems with it.

1584 days, 17 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

So what if they are unbalancing?

Its a game option to give a bit of randomness like all the other campaign cartographer options.

Don't have them in the game if you think they are unbalancing. Don't join a game if its in them.

But if you describe what is actually what is happening in the game set up this will make it clearer.

Inform people what happens.

But rewording the start set up to indicate that more than 1 planet may explode

1584 days, 17 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> So what if they are unbalancing?

That leads to players resigning or being dropped. Do we really need more of that?

> Inform people what happens.

If Joshua says that it's a feature and not a bug, that's what should be done, but not until then.

1584 days, 17 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

And that's the only logical counterargument to my statement. It's also the one I'd hoped you wouldn't use.

Right, then. Let's wait on @Joshua or @Big+Beefer to tell us where these two issues are on the bug list and we'll adjust accordingly.

1584 days, 15 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> And that's the only logical counterargument to my statement. It's also the one I'd hoped you wouldn't use.

Then you weren't being logical ;)

1584 days, 13 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I think the confusion over campaign cartographer generated maps with the number of planets converted to debri discs can be simplified by when the game is generated just relabel the number of debri discs to the number of "Asteroid fields" wanted. Then indicate the asteroid fields can be formed from one or more planets becoming debri discs depending on how close the random planet is to its neighbouring planets.

I am in one game with 9 debri discs indicated but I count 13 planets that have been destroyed (1 x 3 planets, 2 x 2 planets, and six single planets).

There are only two methods to destroy a planet. The EE blowing it up and when dedicated at a start of a game by the host.

When a planet is blown up it is turned into a number of planetoids named after the planet with a number. It then forms a debri disc up to a set distance which is depicted by a circle on the map. If planets are within the circle they are also blown up. So this makes multiple debri discs but combined in to one asteroids field but with the limitation of having now two names. The total debri disc is the effect of all planets that are destroyed.

When you put the mouse over one of the multiple debri discs it describes it as the planet name asteroid field. One of the planets (possibly is the one that blew up first) is the dominant name as the name shows even though your mouse may be over the other planets overlapping debri disc (at that point you could call it both names).

Maybe the name could be changed so when two planets blow up you have a joint name?

Eg in my game I have Down World with 9 planetoids and Equuleus with 8 planetoids. Maybe when you cursor over the debri disc it could be called the Down World - Equuleous asteroid field instead of one or the other.

Simply relabeling the campaign set up as asteroid fields wanted and indicate it can be made up of 1 or more planets will make it clear for everyone.

1584 days, 8 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey, @Beefer: We seem to be lacking a sublink link to the original Change Log inside your new page. Could I impose?

1584 days, 6 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

yeah, that's fine

1582 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes ago

decius

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hi, I noticed a contradiction/error in the documentation for the "beam up" missions.

On http://play.planets.nu/#/howtoplay/gather-missions, it says "Starships do not need fuel to execute these missions." I'm pretty sure that's incorrect.

And if it's not wrong, then it at least contradicts this bit:
"Ships that are out of fuel become very restricted in their choice of actions. At the beginning of the Host, any mission apart from Land and Disassemble will be reset to Exploration" on http://play.planets.nu/#/howtoplay/out-of-fuel.

This has resulted in an annoying situation where I have several Neutronic Fuel Carriers running around in a dead player's territory with no fuel and no easy way to get fuel because their beam up fuel missions get reset each turn. /sigh

1582 days, 17 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I have several Neutronic Fuel Carriers running around in a dead player's territory with no fuel and no easy way to get fuel because their beam up fuel missions get reset each turn.

The first page is correct. The second page is almost correct, as I believe the reset is done after the Gather missions.

To Gather from a dead player's planets, you need to know the Friendly Code. The planet still has colonists and probably has Defense Posts. Just because the player's dead doesn't mean that everything they created is free. It's cheap, but not free.

1581 days, 20 hours, 55 minutes ago

decius

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Ah, okay, thanks! Time to take over that planet...

1581 days, 20 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey, @Whisperer: Take a look at "ion-storms", if you would. There's some odd changes in there that I don't recognize. See you in the comments.

1581 days, 16 hours, 41 minutes ago

meteor

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hi,
I think I found an error concerning the documentation of military score:

1) The formula for mine field units seems to be wrong. I made a test, laid a minefield with 1800 mfu, which decayed to 1709 next turn. I got 459 points for it (did nothing else):
459 = Trunc(1709 / 100) * 54 / 2
Seems like only the MC and not the minerals of the M8-torps are calculated.

2) While one can read it through the lines it would be nice if you could point out more obvious that torpedos on a SB are calculated as zero points.

1581 days, 16 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I believe you're correct about part (1). There's a couple of other minor flaws, I think; keep looking.

(2)? I'd actually thought they counted at 50%. Go figure. That explains a mistake I made a few turns back in my Capricorn analysis.

1581 days, 16 hours, 29 minutes ago

meteor

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

2) I tried it out. Definitely 0 points.

1581 days, 16 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Cool. Do me a favor: Refresh your browser and then take another look; see if that works for now.

Thanks, Meteor; good catch.

1581 days, 14 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Take a look at "ion-storms", if you would.

I'm looking at it, but I don't see any issue. A while back I added information about the mass of planets and planetoids to explain why they're not affected by ion storms.

I do, however, see some bugs. The page states that you can't cloak in an ion storm. While that's true of normal cloaking, it's not true of advanced cloaking.

Also, near the end, it says that the Tantrum was designed by the Feds. It's actually the Colonies.

1581 days, 13 hours, 36 minutes ago

meteor

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@GP:
2) nice
1) better, but 69/54 = 1.27, IMHO these 27% are no "minor" difference. The .69/2 = .345 part is still there (and while I don't know whether my guess about .54/2 is always correct, these numbers are definitely wrong)

3) Another thing: If you build a ship with a hull that supports weapons but don't put any weapons actually on it is reported as a freighter on the scoreboard and counts 0 military points. (Interesting for Feds ;-))

1581 days, 12 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

(1) Yeah; I hate to document it that way when it was evidently intended to be otherwise, is the thing. I figured it'd be polite to let Beefer take a look first.

(3) Very true, and that's something we ought to explicitly mention.

Thanks for doing the extra work, mate. :o)

1580 days, 18 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Found and fixed a bug in the RGA documentation. The docs said beams were needed. Both Donovans and the code says that any Rebel ship can RGA, so I updated the docs to agree.

1580 days, 17 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Good catch. Yeah; that's right. You need beams for Privateer Rob and for Fascist Pillage, and I'm pretty sure you need them for Lizard Hissss!, but we've done RGAs with Neut Carriers. Imagine, No guns and a crew of two wiping out vast populations.

Actually, I really don't like imagining that. Unpleasant way to wage war.

1580 days, 16 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> You need beams for Privateer Rob and for Fascist Pillage, and I'm pretty sure you need them for Lizard Hissss!

As per the code, all three. Also, the Plunder mission requires beams, but I can't find any mention of it in the code. I guess Pillage becomes Plunder when the advantage is activated.

The docs for the Rob mission didn't mention that beams are a requirement, so I fixed it as well. This required some creativity that I'd like someone to verify.

1580 days, 16 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Perhaps, as "secret agents", even the crew can't know about them.

Going AFK; family medical emergency. I'll be in touch.

1580 days, 15 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Perhaps, as "secret agents", even the crew can't know about them.

The delivery crew _always_ knows about insurgents that they're carrying. The submarine service isn't called the "Silent Service" just because their boats are quiet ;)

> family medical emergency

Again? You've _got_ to get that family of yours healthy.

Healthy family -> happy family -> happy Gnerphk -> more productive Gnerphk -> Gnerphk spending more time at Planets.nu -> happy everyone (except your opponents)

Good luck.

1580 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've been going through the Client code, and found a few Friendly Codes that aren't documented:

BD[0-9HQ]
NAD, NAM, NAT

I believe that the BDn codes are similar to the MDn codes, except that they're for Beam Down Money. I'm also thinking that the NAD, NAM and NAT codes are for No Alchemy Duranium/Molybdenum/Tritanium, but I'm not sure they've been implemented.

Would anyone like to test these possible new codes?

1580 days, 7 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Those haven't been released yet. Still in testing.

1578 days, 21 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Healthy family -> happy family -> happy Gnerphk -> more productive Gnerphk -> Gnerphk spending more time at Planets.nu -> happy everyone (except your opponents)

Excellent logic. I bow to your perceptive analysis, sir. :o)

> Still in testing.

Delighted to hear it. Innovation is useful, but exhaustive testing supports continued balance.

1578 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The FoF page should probably have a link to the killrace page, and/or a comment that players under 1% mil score don't have their ships removed.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/fight-or-fail

1578 days, 10 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's possible that some incomplete edits are sitting on my system at home. I should be back on Saturday.

1577 days, 17 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

RaceKill cross-reference with FoF has been reactivated. Confirm that the "dead" bug has been fixed; single mention of it in RaceKill, given the reference, is sufficient.

1577 days, 17 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Confirm that the "dead" bug has been fixed

Please clarify. If you look at http://planets.nu/#/activity/1899746 you'll see that the bug was still with us as of 2 days ago.

1573 days, 15 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

While we're doing OK at documenting the internals of the game, I don't believe we have any documentation on the overall wrapper. This includes the game selection, player history/rank and Campaign advantage selection.

1572 days, 20 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

We should probably also add the API documentation to our ToDo list.

1572 days, 20 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I agree, BUT -- we shouldn't do either until we get some control over alternate pages for the left sidebar menu.

I'm not likely to participate in API documentation except as a proofreader. That's not the game I'm here for. But site documentation? We can do that.

Hrm. Revise above: We shouldn't INCORPORATE either until we have two alternate ToC sidebars, thus:

(1) ToC_Top as a top-menu sidebar, which permits access to different trees such as "game", "site", "API", et cetera. It would be best displayed as a 2-depth tree.
(2) ToC_Site, which contains a cross-reference to ToC (which we can call ToC_game in our new world)

Ideally, we'd have a separate ToC for each submenu, each of which would contain the sublinks for that submenu. Of course, with some extremely basic coding ability, we could use a master ToC and simply make it roughly collapsible, but specs say it's all got to be as platform-independent as possible, so we stick to HTML5.

Incidentally: Is there any way in HTML5 to check credential levels? If so, it would be useful to incorporate the "hidden" links into the ToC, such as the Admin tree. If not... well, if not, I suppose we could always be granted a function call. The site does it automatically, and if we have access... but then it would have to be an identically-called function cross-platform, and we can't guarantee that.

1572 days, 19 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> We shouldn't INCORPORATE either until we have two alternate ToC sidebars

I understand. From my point of view, there are far too many outstanding questions to Joshua & Co. for me to want to move forward on many of the game documentation tasks I've been working on. What happened to Joshua's "commitment" to respond to questions about the documentation?

The other thing I'm waiting on is your template for the race pages.

1572 days, 19 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yep. The first draft of the race text was rejected, and the guidance that I received led me to scrap the second version. I'm presently rewriting the third to mesh with a comprehensive fictional worldview. That's tough; it has to match up with the Echo Cluster War scenario, which has some narrative holes and logical problems that I'm having to deal with.

Form will follow function, and function will (in this case) follow text. The format of the final extract text will depend entirely on the structure and content of the final (albeit subject to change) race bios.

At present, I envision a structure similar to that of the current Solar Federation, but with some few of the modifications you proposed. Links will be concentrated on an abilities subpage, the full bio will be on a second, advantages on a third, and perhaps a shiplist on a fourth*, with a small stack of sublinks just above the two ship pics.

*Ideally, instead of a unique shiplist subpage for each race, we should instead have address tags incorporated into the master shiplist so we can simply open it up at the proper point. Easily done, but we lack access to edit that page due to size constraints.

1572 days, 19 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Ideally, instead of a unique shiplist subpage for each race, we should instead have address tags incorporated into the master shiplist

Actually, we could easily use the shiplist pieces I've previously worked on. Each race has two files. Just pull them in. The template is already there.

1572 days, 18 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Personally, I really love that page. It's got an insane amount of information on it, and it's my main go-to reference for in-game questions. It would be a shame to have anything happen to it.

1572 days, 17 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The 1% rule is not a bug. It is a rule just like Killrace.

See the http://planets.nu/#/activity/1899746 thread for an explanation.

1. 1% Rule: Positions abandoned after turn 30 with less than 1% military will be declared dead. (Their ships and star bases remain, they are just dead.)

2. Killrace: If a player position becomes open and a replacement does not join, Killrace kicks in.

These 2 rules combined leave multiple possibilities. If a game has Killrace:

1. Player drops before turn 30 (regardless of military score) and position is not filled. Killrace kicks in and all ships and SBs are destroyed.

2. Player drops after turn 30 with <1% military score. 1% Rule kicks in. Player is immediately dead. Ships and SB's remain.

3. Player drops after turn 30 and has >1% military and position is not filled. Killrace kicks in, player is declared dead, and all ships and SBs are destroyed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

A. 1% Rule applies in ALL games. It is a rule, just like Lizard Hissing is a rule.

B. Killrace applies in games labelled Killrace games.

C. FoF applies if the game is labelled FoF.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

So, you have 1% games.

You have 1% + Killrace games.

You have 1% + FoF games.

You have 1% + Killrace + FoF games

All 4 game types give you 4 different set of circumstances.

The 1% Rule is not a bug. It was specifically instituted and announced by Joshua on 2/4/11:

http://planets.nu/#/activity/1899746

1572 days, 16 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Mjs68508,

1. The activity link you posted links to an official Planets.nu announcement (http://planets.nu/post/introducing-the-time-machine), which mentions races being declared dead. It doesn't say anything about whether or not the ships and starbases will be removed.

2. Being predictable doesn't make it a feature vs. a bug.

It is being called a bug because it does not operate in a manner that's consistent with other forms or player exit in a game with RaceKill enabled.

1572 days, 16 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> I really love that page. It's got an insane amount of information on it

While I agree that there's a LOT of information on that page, it has a HUGE drawback in that it can't be edited by anyone except the developers, and the developers are notoriously slow at fixing it. That limitation makes it useless as documentation in a dynamic environment.

It is my intention to put that information into a replacement page, eliminating the need for the developers to be needed to update any of the documentation.

1572 days, 16 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'm not entirely certain we can properly term our environment "dynamic".

Perhaps Beefer can be drafted to make some changes on our behalf?

1572 days, 16 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm not entirely certain we can properly term our environment "dynamic".

Oh? Have we documented the new "Unload" button? Have we documented the ability of the Crystals to convert specific numbers/portions of torpedoes to web mines from the Mission list?

> Perhaps Beefer can be drafted to make some changes on our behalf?

The idea is that the document editors should be able to make any necessary changes to the documentation content without external assistance.

1572 days, 16 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

"1. The activity link you posted links to an official Planets.nu announcement (http://planets.nu/post/introducing-the-time-machine), which mentions races being declared dead. It doesn't say anything about whether or not the ships and starbases will be removed."

Since it doesn't say the ships and star bases are removed, they are not removed. If they were supposed to removed, it would say they were to be removed. In Killrace they are supposed to be removed and it says they will be removed. If a rule fails to say something will be done, then that something will not be done.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"2. Being predictable doesn't make it a feature vs. a bug. To be a feature, there needs to be a reason for it to exist."

There were very good reasons for the rule to exist. If you read the forums prior to 2/4/11 you will learn:

1. People were complaining that host would not run until hosting time when there was an open position. Now if the position was big, it was good to wait for a replacement. But, with a tiny position a replacement was unlikely and people were frustrated with waiting hours for host to run when everyone else's turn was in. So, Joshua instituted the 1% rule.

2. If you read the forums from that time the reason the ships and star bases are not eliminated is also quite clear. Ships are not eliminated because Crystals and Privateers complained that if the position was eliminated the ships of the empire they worked hard to destroy should remain to be captured. Then the other people said the star bases should remain so the area is not taken too easily.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"2. Being predictable doesn't make it a feature vs. a bug. To be a feature, there needs to be a reason for it to exist."

WRONG. If Joshua declares a new rule it is a feature whether anyone else likes it or not. It is silly for any of us to say he doesn't understand or agree with it so it is an official bug. Part of being a rule writer is the responsibility to present the rules as Joshua has instituted them, not as you want them.

------------------------------------------------------------------

"It is being called a bug because it does not operate in a manner that's consistent with other forms of player exit in a game with RaceKill enabled."

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it is a bug. To repeat:

If a game has Killrace:

1. Player drops before turn 30 (regardless of military score) and position is not filled. Killrace kicks in and all ships and SBs are destroyed.

2. Player drops after turn 30 with <1% military score. 1% Rule kicks in. Player is immediately dead. Ships and SB's remain.

3. Player drops after turn 30 and has >1% military and position is not filled. Killrace kicks in, player is declared dead, and all ships and SBs are destroyed.

Killrace always kicks in when a position has been vacant for 3 turns. There is no inconsistency. If #2 occurs, then there is never a position vacant for 3 turns and it is not a surprise that Killrace does not kick in, even in a killrace game. Killrace only is initiated when the conditions are met (a position has been vacant for 3 turns).

1572 days, 16 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Mjs68508,

Nice argument. It almost convinces me. It Joshua hadn't been asked, I'd be tempted to change it. However, as Joshua has been asked, we'll let him make the call.

1572 days, 12 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Here is a suggested way to put it in the rules:

------------------------------------------------------------------

END OF TURN PLAYER CHECKS FOR ALL GAMES:

At the end of each turn, 3 checks are made by the computer for each player position:

1. Is it after turn 30?
If yes, is the position newly vacant this turn?
If yes does the position have <1% military score?
If yes, mark the position dead.

2. Is Killrace in effect?
If yes, has the position been vacant for 3 turns?
If yes,
(a) mark the position dead
(b) at the end of 3 more turns, eliminate all the ships and SBs for this position.

3. Is FoF in effect?
If yes, Is it after the FoF start turn listed for this game?
If yes, is the position occupied and does the position have fewer planets than the threshold?
If yes,
(a) Send warning to player
(b) At the beginning of next turn, after client-side actions are recorded, eliminate all ships and SBs for this position and mark the position dead.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Such an explanation explains all 3 rules in a short, simple, understandable manner.

1572 days, 10 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I like that, MJ.

1572 days, 10 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Mjs68508,

We're not currently looking for a way to document this bug. We're waiting for verification, one way or the other, from Joshua. If he says it's working the way he wants, then, AND ONLY THEN, will we be looking for a way to document it better.

I'm sorry that you're not receiving the answer you want. Had you come forward with the above information before Joshua was asked, it would have been a more difficult decision, but you didn't.

BTW, your comment about Crystals and Privateers wanting the ships left behind is inadequate to support the existence of this bug. There are better ways to resolve that particular problem.

1572 days, 8 hours, 41 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Question on documentation as it relates to the current game status...

Will we find the current state of information at http://play.planets.nu/#/howtoplay/intro or is there some other location?

1) I was having a problem finding information on what recognition or rewards a player can expect to receive (best case & worst case) as a replacement.

2) Are Melees now counted the same (tenacity, achievements, result bonuses, etc.) as other games?

1572 days, 8 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

We don't know any more than you do, @Mule. As we learn, we'll incorporate it, and @W has some temp pages in process (scroll up in the thread a ways) but our present state of ignorance on those very points is unfortunate.

What I can tell you for certain is that some recent changes have been made and more are pending. I see no reason for a Melee to be scored in any nonstandard fashion save that they are time-limited games; those have no result bonuses as a general rule unless an extraordinary victory condition (in this case, Diplomatic Planets) is reached within that time.

1572 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

"I see no reason for a Melee to be scored in any nonstandard fashion save that they are time-limited games; those have no result bonuses as a general rule unless an extraordinary victory condition (in this case, Diplomatic Planets) is reached within that time."

Joshua said here that Fixed turn games have the following rewards (multipliers):

1st - 5X
2nd - 3X
3rd - 2X
Rest - 1X (i.e., no multiplier)

On the other hand, we just finished PLS-70 and ended up with the following multipliers (after the 100 turn Fixed limit ended):

1st - 6X
2nd - 3X
3rd - 3X
Rest - 2X

If you look at a recent 100 Fixed Turn Melee game that just ended 4/18/2015, Pod Planet:

http://planets.nu/#/sector/116610/events

The multipliers for Achievement were:

1st - 9X (129 x 9 x 0.73 x 1.0 = 853)
2nd - 5X (125 x 5 x 0.73 x 1.0 = 459)
3rd - 3X (73 x 3 x 0.73 x 1.0 = 160)
Rest - 2X

This is using the formula:

# of Planets
x Multiplier
x Difficulty
x Tenacity
= Achievement Points

On the other hand, the multipliers for a similar Melee game ending on 4/12/2015 (Spaceball):

http://planets.nu/#/sector/115895

1st - 6X
2nd - 4X
Rest - 2X

So, there are definitely nice multipliers for top finishers in the current Melee Fixed Turn Games. Pod Planet shown above is very high. This may be because it was in the middle of a Diplomatic Victory Countdown (4 turns left) when the game ended. So, perhaps the computer added a Fixed Turn and Diplomatic Victory together to get such high multipliers. (I would consider this a bug.)

Lots of points available in Fixed Turn Melee games!

1572 days, 4 hours, 31 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I am amazed that this is how we must gather answers on something as basic as 'what do I get if I win?' and 'do all games get scored the same?'

What about Tenacity penalties? Do players take a hit for dropping a Melee?

1572 days, 1 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Don't be amazed, mate; that's how we get our answers too.

There's no private pipeline to Joshua. Granted, most of this stuff is pretty solid by know; there's not much for questions. Only thing is, you're asking about things that are in flux, @Mule. Once it's done, we'll get an announcement, and then the relatively thankless job of documenting the change will get done.

Sorry, but that's how things stand at the moment.

By the way: I'm pleased that Joshua hired Beefer; it was needed. And Beefer's doing a bang-up job. This is just one of those things, mate.

1571 days, 18 hours, 34 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@gnerphk:

I was hoping you DID have information not available to the rest od us.
However, I think both you and Whisperer both deserve a very big THANK YOU for your efforts to correct what I have always thought was NU's greatest weakness - poor docs.

Let me go on to say I have also been very impressed by the responses of Big Beefer. Getting BB on board was an inspired move.

I am hoping things will soon be "out of flux."

1571 days, 18 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

As far as tenacity, the new system is in place and has been for awhile. No additional changes are planned. Right now we are just collecting data, and making sure everything is functioning as expected. But for the documentation, you can go ahead and post the new version.

One thing in it to clarify: There is only one original player for each slot of a game. For normal games this will be whoever is in the spot when the first host cycle runs. We don't punish players for leaving a game before it even starts (ie. they get tired of waiting for it to start, find a more interesting game, etc.)

1571 days, 18 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

SWEET!

I guess to be polite I ought to wait for @Whisperer to do the honors; he's the one that's done all the hard work on the new T. page. I'll go out right now and put up a note.

Clarification appreciated, mate.

1571 days, 17 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Note is up. Someone let me know if the links work, willya?

1571 days, 17 hours, 39 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

OK ... Maybe I should ask BB and then W & G can consider if such information belongs in the docs.

Maybe I am a little dense, but I still don't know the answers.

1) I get that I will not lose Tenacity as a replacement. But, what is the up-side? If I win the game as a replacement, will I get the same points as if I were the original player? If not, what will IO get?

2) Are there ANY scoring differences between standard games and Melees? Do Melee drops receive any penalties?

I am posting here because this is where I first asked and because it would be something nice to include somewhere in our Docs.

1571 days, 17 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

Done.

@Big+Beefer,

I believe I've integrated your clarification into the page.

http://help.planets.nu/tenacity

It's unfortunate that none of the suggestions in the NewsFeed thread were found to be worthy of implementation. I guess this is yet another demonstration of NIH :(

http://planets.nu/#/activity/1877516

1571 days, 17 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> Note is up.

Note? What note? I see no note.

1571 days, 17 hours, 31 minutes ago

mule

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Explanation for those (like myself) that wondered why Whisperer was referring to the National Institutes of Health...

Not invented here (NIH) is the philosophical principle of not using third party solutions to a problem because of their external origins. It is usually employed in favor of employer's own solution to a given problem, though not necessarily so; NIH's emphasis is on ignoring, boycotting, or otherwise refusing to acknowledge solutions by others.

1571 days, 17 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

RE: NIH - :o)

@Whisperer: Dammit! I already got a hit out at my blog site outta that link! *sigh* Shoulda known you'd be on the job. ;o)

1571 days, 17 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I already got a hit out at my blog site outta that link!

I guess I was a bit slow :)

1571 days, 17 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Well, for those of you that missed it, the "Work In Progress" playlist can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUjZ-3a3MlwVRblvBQ_6YtWsbhgaWmG-Q

My Blog, of course, is http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/

1571 days, 16 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Mule,

> I get that I will not lose Tenacity as a replacement. But, what is the up-side?

The "up-side" WRT Tenacity is that you have a chance to get a Tenacity bump, short-lived though it may be.

WRT scoring, we have no information on that :(

> it would be something nice to include somewhere in our Docs

Yes it would, but the Planets.nu "Management" hasn't been forthcoming on that sort of information. I believe they want it keep it hidden, so that it's more difficult to "game" the scoring system. Of course, it could just be that they don't care.

1571 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

Please check out the recently updated Admin Interface, near the bottom of the page. Some interesting links added. With luck, they'll help us do our job better.

1570 days, 19 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

I believe that it would be a good idea to merge the Documentation Standards page with the Editorial Guidelines page.

1570 days, 19 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The ToDo list has been updated with the above items.

1570 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'll take a look.

1569 days, 14 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Fixed a typo or two in Ion Shield. :o)

About time to start a new Doc Editing Thread, neh? This will be... what, comment 466?

1568 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> About time to start a new Doc Editing Thread

I restarted the last one at well over 500. We've got a while before we hit that.

1565 days, 8 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Save function seems to be running extremely slowly.

I'm thinking it might be advisable to run a mass purge on some of the older archived change versions of these pages. Thoughts?

1565 days, 8 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm thinking it might be advisable to run a mass purge on some of the older archived change versions of these pages. Thoughts?

I agree, but I don't think we have the ability to do so.

In addition, there are almost 40 pages marked to be deleted. These can be deleted through the game interface by a level 3 user (document editors are level 1 users).

1561 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Do we know any Level 2 users? How do I go about getting a promotion?

Incidentally: I've begun filling the gaps in the archived changelog. Low priority task but what the heck -- it's something to do while watching "Supernatural" reruns.

Heh. Idjits.

1560 days, 4 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Do we know any Level 2 users?

Joshua. Probably Big Beefer as well. Maybe some of the developers at GMI.

> How do I go about getting a promotion?

Ask Joshua, but I don't think you'll get it. The current privilege system has three levels. L0 - normal player. L1 - Editors and Translators. L2 - Management. This is a very poor system. The privileges need to be more granular.

1549 days, 14 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> I'm thinking it might be advisable to run a mass purge on some of the older archived change versions of these pages.

The pages marked to be deleted are now gone. The interface is also faster.

1549 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

As per http://planets.nu/#/activity/1948702, the changes to Diplomatic status happen sometime before step 10A in the Host Order. Looking at that document, I believe that we can put it into step 1. Are you OK with that?

1549 days, 14 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Let me check it over tonight. Personally, I believe it's part of Step 1 proper, the Update Clientside.

I'm going to pop over to FoF and update for the gradual increase.

1546 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Let me check it over tonight.

And the answer was?

1545 days, 17 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I added a "Documentation Details" link at the bottom of the "about-docs" page. This link goes to the "Documentation Administrative Interface", which lists lots of useful items, including how to request to become an editor.

1544 days, 13 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Host order updated - added diplomacy changes to the top of item 1.

1543 days, 18 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

Could you please have a look at 'dashboard-reports'. I added the last groups, but they're commented out. I hope you can provide at least some of the missing information.

1543 days, 17 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've got about ten minutes before my next meeting; let's see what I can squeeze in. :o)

1543 days, 17 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'm going to suggest that we keep the Reports fairly innocent of race-specific entries. It'll just clutter things without giving useful information otherwise.

Dark Sense has been mentioned under Sensor Sweep but I didn't get to Diplomacy yet.

1543 days, 16 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm going to suggest that we keep the Reports fairly innocent of race-specific entries. It'll just clutter things without giving useful information otherwise.

While I understand your argument, I disagree with it. When a player has a question about a specific message, I believe there should be _some_ information about it in the 'dashboard-reports' page.

The next step will be to list and describe the individual messages in a sub-page.

1543 days, 16 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Minor addition to the 'minefields' and 'web-mines' pages. The area covered by a single mine is now specified.

1543 days, 16 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

You do make a point about the Reports, @W.

Query: What do you think we ought to do about report examples? We could do a single very large "Details" page, for instance.

(I ask in part because this might be a good place to put information about the highly unlikely reports.)

1543 days, 16 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Digging through the client code, I discovered that the minefield decay rate is 15% if the minefield intersects a Nebula, instead of the default 5%. I guess the high particle count in the Nebula causes more failures than normal.

This needs to be added this to the documentation.

1543 days, 16 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> What do you think we ought to do about report examples? We could do a single very large "Details" page, for instance.

When the user sees a message, it is within a specific group, so we should be able to get away with a page per group. This will keep the individual pages relatively short.

1543 days, 15 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

That's a lot of subpages added to the stack. Can we just create a single indexed wall-of-text instead?

1543 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Can we just create a single indexed wall-of-text instead?

We could, but I think it would be too large. Also, we don't have the ability to reference a tag from external pages. While it would add about 20 pages, I think that's the increased simplicity for the user would make it worth the investment.

1543 days, 14 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I'm thinking about a single page covering both normal minefields and web minefields. The differences are relatively minor, and I think I can adequately explain them in a single page.

Opinions?

1543 days, 14 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I believe that's a very bad idea considering the extreme importance of those differences. Web fields win championships. We can't afford any confusion there.

1543 days, 8 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Gnerphk,

> I believe that's a very bad idea considering the extreme importance of those differences.

Perhaps, but here's my first pass at this:

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/NewMinefields

I think that, even if we decide to stick with different pages for normal mines vs. web mines, the new format will work better.

1543 days, 7 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's got potential. I like the format; very narrative. Good flow to it, and the information is where one would think it ought to be.

It'll need to be linked into the weapons-details page, of course, and I'm still of the opinion that webmines requires a unique details page -- but that's not too terribly difficult to accomplish; I can just trim down the current page to match, altering to mimic the style.

Might want to put the area of a single mine in perspective, since you're doing numbers. The radius of a one-mine field, a 500-mine field, et cetera. Max field numbers would be nice too. The one number is a bit out-of-place.

But I do like it; I like it a lot.

1543 days, 7 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I think you could be more concise if you used pictures, especially on web minefields.

1543 days, 6 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I like the format; very narrative. Good flow to it, and the information is where one would think it ought to be

I used the Host Order as a starting point, but I guess you figured that out ;)

> I'm still of the opinion that webmines requires a unique details page - but that's not too terribly difficult to accomplish

That's what I thought. If it didn't work out, we could just duplicate it and edit both down.

> Might want to put the area of a single mine in perspective

Not a bad idea. How about minefield size for 100 torps and torps for 100 LY?

> But I do like it; I like it a lot.

Thanks. I'll continue working on it and see if I can clean up some of the rough edges. Any suggestions along these lines would be appreciated.

1543 days, 6 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I think you could be more concise if you used pictures, especially on web minefields.

Do you have specific suggestions? I don't see where a picture would help all that much for minefields.

1543 days, 6 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's not farfetched, I suppose:
"This is a ship in a minefield. (fig.1)
This is a ship outside of a minefield. (fig.2)
This is a former ship that tried to fly through a minefield. (fig.X)"

1543 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Could also use JavaScript to draw the diagrams, that way if the Client defaults change, it is simpler to update them all at once.

1543 days, 0 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

"Digging through the client code, I discovered that the minefield decay rate is 15% if the minefield intersects a Nebula, instead of the default 5%. I guess the high particle count in the Nebula causes more failures than normal."

Perhaps it would be wise to consult the NU official rules when writing up the documentation.

http://planets.nu/documentation/nebulas

"Minefields and web minefields which are overlapping a nebula suffer from a 3X higher minefield decay rate."

1542 days, 20 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Glyn,

> Could also use JavaScript to draw the diagrams, that way if the Client defaults change, it is simpler to update them all at once.

No. That's one of the limitations of the documentation interface.

@Mjs68508,

I thought we had all of that sort of thing rolled into the documentation. Apparently I was in error.

1542 days, 19 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I really like how you have the site rules link prominently displayed on the front page. It is important for players to know what the rules are. It is also very important for players to know that something is not a rule.

I was going to suggest that you have an overall minefields page with a link in the Starmap section. However, I noticed that you already have an overall minefields page under the starmap section. The only thing missing is the link. (I found the missing link! Call Art Bell!)

1542 days, 19 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

#Gnerphk,

> Might want to put the area of a single mine in perspective

The table is now in.

1542 days, 15 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Joshua just released a new pile of advantages and changes to previous advantages. These need to be documented.

1542 days, 14 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Friendly Code question:

In the Friendly Code documentation, why is the MFx Friendly Code in Minefields (the only entry there), instead of in Planets?

1542 days, 13 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

TTBOMK, all the appropriate information has been placed into the new minefields page. Comments are appreciated.

http://help.planets.nu/NewMinefields

1542 days, 12 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

couple of small points -
1) instead of "too large" for robots, it should say 150 ly. too large might make someone think they can't do it in reality, a minefield will be laid and extra mines will be wasted.
2) detection should note that it is 200 ly from the edge of a minefield.

1542 days, 12 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Jellyfishspam,

Good feedback. Done.

1542 days, 11 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

on a semi-related note. the host-order lists 3 separate times that minefield fcodes are set. steps 8, 25, and 66. why is that and when do fcodes actually take effect?

1542 days, 11 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Jellyfishspam,

> the host-order lists 3 separate times that minefield fcodes are set. steps 8, 25, and 66. why is that and when do fcodes actually take effect?

I believe that the purposes of the various steps where the minefield Friendly Codes are set are as follows:

8 - Account for changes to planetary Friendly Codes.
25 - Assign Friendly Codes to new minefields.
66 - Update Friendly Codes of minefields where the planet that controlled the Friendly Code was lost in battle.

1541 days, 23 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Documentation request:

It would be helpful when describing a ship to say whether the ship abilities are ship specific or race specific.

Example: If another race owns an iron lady command ship, do those command abilities work for the other race?

This can be ambiguous.

Also, I don't see any info on fleet?...Ra

1541 days, 14 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

"Fleet"? What is this "fleet" of which you speak?

As it happens, the documentation proper doesn't actually do much for ship descriptions. We could create a section, but for the most part, ships don't need much to describe them. More to the point, if there were anything that we knew that isn't in the release notes or the Host Order, I'm pretty sure we'd find a way to squeeze it in -- and we haven't.

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/command-ship is all we know (officially) about the Iron Lady Command Ship. As we learn more, we'll add it.

In general, this sort of page can easiest be found from the Ship List page.

1541 days, 14 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

So does anyone know if the command ship functions for other races if they possess it?...Ra

1541 days, 13 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Re fleet:

"Fleet View Settings: Effect the ship icon squares displayed when you have a ship/planet/starbase screen open. These settings obsolete the Add Fleet Info script if you were using it."

...Ra

1541 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It's a ship ability , not racial ability. So yes it does.

1541 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@Siggi

Thanks. How did you determine this, has it been tested?...Ra

1541 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

All ship abilities work like that unless explicitly stated otherwise, @Ra.

1541 days, 13 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

RE Fleet: Well, there you have it, I guess.

To be frank, I have absolutely no idea of the context here. Guess I hadn't ought to write any documentation about it, eh?

1541 days, 13 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I read a thread about this a loooong time ago where a player had traded for a Command ship and was curious about this. Can't find the thread now though :/
But all ship abilities work regardless of race.

1541 days, 13 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

We're working on porting the documentation over for the mobile app. We've started letting new players sign-up through it, but they are having a tough time figuring out what to do. Making the documentation available in-app will be a good first step in helping them out.

I don't think we need you all to do anything in particular to support this. Aside from some minor image sizing issues here and there, it looks pretty good already on my phone (and nothing ever looks good on my phone)

But I want to make you aware of some formatting I'm applying to the docs. There is some stuff we'd prefer isn't included in the mobile docs, because it's specific to the web interface, is about features we haven't implemented yet, or is mainly external links. These things I've been marking with class="WebClient" which will keep the mobile app from showing them without us having to keep separate sets of docs. I went through the toc briefly and tagged some things that way if you want to see it in action. For the most part, what you have is general enough I think we can use it for both clients, which is awesome.

Also, if you want to see what it will look like on the mobile app (before we get the next version out), you can use http://help.planets.nu/?mobile=true

1541 days, 13 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Looks good, BB; I'll check it out. If you find you do need anything specific, just let us know. I'll be engaged on a writing gig for a couple of weeks but otherwise I can squeeze Planets work in between other business.

1541 days, 13 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Super Spy Advanced and Cloak and Intercept have been incorporated. I'm considering a merge of Super Spy Deluxe with the Super Spy base page.

Initial edit is in progress for Empire STF; awaiting clarification before detailing.

1541 days, 8 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I noticed Documentation has neglected covering large meteor impacts besides in host config and dashboard-reports... that is all I could find anyhow.

If that is all the info in Documentation, I'm pretty sure there is more about large meteor impacts and their effects.

I experienced one myself, might be tough tracking down when and where though.

1541 days, 8 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Oh and also Gravity wells in host config oversimplifies gravity wells since HYPjumping-in ships are only affected by 2-ly raidus.

1537 days, 17 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yes. It's a constant conflict between overburdening the reader with mostly useless information and then having that information available to anyone who's specifically looking for it. There have been some debates.

I'll look over the points you raise, but at least one of them sounds like something that doesn't need changing.

1537 days, 17 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Gravity wells in host config oversimplifies gravity wells since HYPjumping-in ships are only affected by 2-ly raidus.

This is properly described in the Hyperjump documentation. As it's an edge case, it wasn't put anywhere except where that edge case was described.

1537 days, 17 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hm. Meteor impacts might want a subpage at that. There's no good place to file it, though; the subject doesn't belong to any categories.

I think I'm going to take the intellectual position that Meteor Impact only ever happens (as far as we can tell) during the reports, and therefore should be filed there. If someone's looking for it, they're likely to go to Reports eventually, if they're feeling logical.

That does beg an interesting question: Should there be a Search function for the documentation? If so, should it be text-driven or instead aim for keyword tags?

Side note: I've got a couple of unexpected hours to spare today, and I think I'll use them to clean up the race pages a bit.

1537 days, 16 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Meteor impacts might want a subpage at that.

We discussed this 6 days ago. Meteor impacts, of all types, belong in a subpage of Reports.

1537 days, 16 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Should there be a Search function for the documentation?

In Joshua's original announcement, he said it would be created. This would require changes to the client, so it's out of our hands.

1537 days, 15 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Two weeks past due, I've clarified the bit on Diplomacy updates.

So here's the thing: The former Step 1 of the Host Order, which now has sub-steps, is the portion in which diplomacy is updated. There are other things that happen in Step 1, which seem to have something to do with system events.

I'm going to suggest that we add a new sub-step to 1, a new A, which is: updating diplomacy and system information.

RE Meteors: That I don't remember discussing this isn't too surprising, but I'll take your word for it. We're on the same page, at least. (Pun intended, but it was intended to be more amusing. Ah, well.)

RE Search: Let's push for it, shall we?

1537 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm going to suggest that we add a new sub-step to 1, a new A, which is: updating diplomacy and system information.

I believe that was done about a week ago.

1537 days, 13 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I can see that now. Odd; I wonder why I didn't notice it before. Couldn't have been a lack of refresh; must just be native brainlessness.

1535 days, 2 hours, 44 minutes ago

meteor

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

May you add to the Host Order page something like:
"0. Fight or Fail"

1535 days, 2 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

We're still trying to pinpoint the exact moment, but I seem to remember we've discussed this.

I believe it happens just after Step 1.0 and before 1.A. We should have had Hijk test it for us.

1535 days, 2 hours, 24 minutes ago

meteor

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

What would be the difference between 0. and between 1.0 before 1.A.?
It's the same moment after all.

At the moment, it is bad that the whole point is missing.

1535 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

There are actually things that happen during Step 1.0, believe it or not. 1.A is technically one of them, but we don't know if FoF is as well. Some of this stuff, it's probably wise we don't actually post detailed lists -- hack prevention et cetera -- but some of it we actually don't know for sure.

It's important to know the precise position in the Host before we add it, and it's the sort of thing we can test, so we will. At present, we mention the timing in context within the documentation.

The Host Order page proper, though, is the single most important portion of this documentation, slightly ahead of the Race Page (aka Ship List). It's considered by us (the editors) to be virtually sacrosanct, and changes are never made to it unless we're absolutely certain.

1535 days, 2 hours, 0 minutes ago

meteor

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> The Host Order page proper, though, is the single most important portion of this documentation

Yes, and it is the page for which it is most important that it IS complete. Else it is rather misleading.

> It's important to know the precise position in the Host before we add it
I cannot disagree more.

You know enough to add it, it is just a nuance that is still missing. So you could just make a note, f.e. add before 1.0:
"?. Fight or Fail (The price timing is not yet known, but it either happens before or is incorporated into step 1)"
(well, you can do that in better words than me)

But to let it out completely is worse to the Host Order page, especially because it is the most important one.

1535 days, 1 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

You're welcome to disagree, @Meteor. You're unlikely to convince me, though.

Once we do know, I assure you it will be added. If you'd care to help test it, something can be arranged.

1534 days, 19 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> May you add to the Host Order page something like:
"0. Fight or Fail"

Actually, we KNOW that it doesn't happen that early. The FoFed user is allowed to issue one last set of commands, and some of these commands are done. As FoF happens prior to ship movement, commands to move a ship don't happen, but commands to beam fuel, minerals, money and supplies (usually after converting to money) to ships and setting tax rates to 100% are executed.

Due to the above, we know that the earliest that FoF can happen is after step 1C.

1532 days, 14 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Annotated Host Order was never intended to be a public document and has been removed. I'd like there to exist a method, possibly using the Class trigger, that permits filtered viewing of this by login credentials. Does such a method exist, and can we use it?

If not, I can simply create a new orphaned page to host it, but that's not terribly secure either.

1531 days, 18 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'd like there to exist a method, possibly using the Class trigger, that permits filtered viewing of this by login credentials. Does such a method exist, and can we use it?

I've been through this code. There's no such method. To keep things private (to any small group), they can't be created through the documentation interface, nor can they be uploaded to Joshua's servers.

I've felt for some time that Planets.nu needs a more flexible security implementation. This is yet another reason for that need.

1531 days, 14 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Something more complicated, certainly. I love the authentication concept, and tiered access seems reasonable, but if it's not implemented, what use is it to us?

1530 days, 12 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Just noticed at http://help.planets.nu/out-of-fuel , that it fails to mention beam up fuel mission.

1530 days, 12 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It is mentioned in the ship missions part that you don't need fuel to beam up.
But Glyn is right this should be mentioned too on the out-of-fuel page.

1530 days, 12 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

It is now.

A few versions of that page ago, I believe a more general statement (along the lines of "can't perform most missions) was what we relied on to cover that, but it got missed in the last edit.

1530 days, 12 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Well that was fast.
One might almost think you were getting paid for this :)

1530 days, 12 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

If only. No, I just happened to be passing through on the way from the main gig to a secondary one.

Any major fix would have had to wait, but this was simple enough.

1530 days, 11 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Well kudos anyway :)
The documentation may not be perfect but considering how it used to be you guys have done an excellent job.

1530 days, 10 hours, 25 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

On this page http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/taxes-details

The overpopulation formulas say:

(Clans Killed) = CEIL(((Native Clans) - (Maximum Population) - (Clans Supported By Supplies)) / 10)

and

(Supplies Consumed) = 1 + ((Native Clans) - (Maximum Population) / 40)

Those "Native Clans" should be "Colonist Clans".

1530 days, 9 hours, 19 minutes ago

rensha

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

In the races pages. Only the birds have a strength and weaknesses section. Not sure if consistency was a goal but it stood out to me

1530 days, 3 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The Races pages are works in progress. You'll see some changes periodically.

1530 days, 3 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Fixed, @Singularity. I'm not entirely sure what the function "CEIL" is, though, and perhaps that and a few other functions could use some explanation.

1530 days, 3 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The CEIL function rounds up, just as the FLOOR junction rounds down.

1529 days, 8 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Good to know. At least, I think I follow...

I'm doing a little standardization in the Production Queue and Priority Build Queue nomenclature, preliminary to adding in descriptors like (Classic) and (Random) or (New) or whatever.

1529 days, 7 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

I've paused in the middle of editing "ready-checkbox". What do you think the parent (tree) page(s) ought to be? It only exists on three pages, but none of the three has any sort of positive priority.

1529 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> I'm doing a little standardization in the Production Queue and Priority Build Queue nomenclature, preliminary to adding in descriptors like (Classic) and (Random) or (New) or whatever.

Please don't change the name for the new queue. The reason is that anything like "new" or "random" will become incorrect when the next major build queue change comes out. While the original could be called Classic, I don't see that it buys us much.

> I've paused in the middle of editing "ready-checkbox". What do you think the parent (tree) page(s) ought to be? It only exists on three pages, but none of the three has any sort of positive priority.

The only parent I can think of is Starmap.

1529 days, 4 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

> Please don't change the name for the new queue.

At present, all I'm planning is to call it, uniformly, "Production Queue".

> "Starmap"

Hrm. Well, that's where it lives, I suppose. What the heck; why not.

1528 days, 4 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

General review:

(1) ToC is getting a fairly minor trim and refit over the weekend. Please stay clear of it for a couple of days and mail me with any desired alterations. Once it's trimmed down, the plan is to reorganize it more or less as previously discussed.
(2) The text in the individual Races pages will see some minor changes.
(3) It looks like just about every non-orphaned article exists in the tree somewhere. I'm setting up an exhaustive review method to make sure of this. Any exceptions are likely to stand in need of revision anyway, so that'll be tied in. This project should take much of the next week if all goes according to plan.
(4) The textual review project is nearing completion. There are some quite large articles slated for rewrite, but most of the in-tree small ones are finished.
(5) Site (rather than Game) documentation is the next big project. It shouldn't take too long to slap up a structure, after which it's just playing fill-in-the-blanks.

Unless fortune should smile on me unexpectedly, I'll have some time before my next paying gig, so it'll be a good opportunity to get started.

1527 days, 12 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Hey, @Beefer -- Was there any criteria used for the Class - WebClient selection? Only, I may have gotten rid of a couple of the links; take a look if you like.

I think as a whole the ToC looks much improved, but I plan to go in and tweak it a bit more in a little while.

1524 days, 15 hours, 35 minutes ago

nanning

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Could this link:
http://planets.uservoice.com/
be added to the Introduction.Links subpage?

1524 days, 15 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Yes, that's on my list already. Great minds (and ours too!)

1522 days, 16 hours, 22 minutes ago

meteor

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Please have a look at this:
http://planets.nu/#/activity/1997134

1522 days, 13 hours, 3 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

The "default config" link has dropped off of the TOC. I found the link to it in General Information, but I think it should be in the TOC too.

1522 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

There, I'm afraid we disagree, @Singularity.

The main thing about the "Default Config" page is, it's outdated. The format isn't current, which positively begs for a lot of confusion among newer users. I won't restore it.

Instead, I'm (slowly, because I have to work for money too) putting together some pages in the current "Settings" format on the default configurations for Classic and Standard games. Those too may be kept off the ToC, but they'll be right at the top of Game Design, and they'll be referenced from at least three different places, so they'll be easy to find.

Thing is, the ToC is too long even now that I've trimmed half of it, and it'll get longer once the Website documentation is completed and gets moved to the top tier. It's a constant struggle between maximizing information access on the one hand -- and keeping people from drowning in links on the other.

1522 days, 12 hours, 33 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@G Where can I see the current "Settings" format to compare the styles you are referring to?

I do agree that the ToC is getting too long. I had incorrectly assumed it had been left off in error as many of the other General sub-pages were still listed in the top level ToC.

I'll leave it to you and @W to make the editorial decisions. You are both doing a great job, and I'm happy to just contribute from time to time.

1522 days, 12 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Game information page, @Sing. Open up the details page on any game and you'll see a small, discreet blue "SETTINGS" link on the right side by the minerals display.

I'm thinking of going with that, only a bit more readable; given enough time, we'll even have the SETTINGS pane fully documented.

But right now I've got a 40-50 hour backlog of projects here on the site, plus about 20 hours of WORK work to do this week, plus some personal writing I want to do... oh, and a few turns to run in my spare time. And that's not counting my actual life.

So it'll be a couple of weeks. :o)

1522 days, 12 hours, 23 minutes ago

singularity

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

@G Yeah, tell me about it :o)

Aren't you in a war, or something too? ;)

1522 days, 12 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Heh. Not that the War takes much of my day at the moment.

Now, WRITING about the War -- THAT takes some time. :o)

1522 days, 11 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Documentation Editing Thread, Part 2: The editors are...

Due to the length of this thread, we'd like to discontinue its use, and move to the Part 3 thread.

http://planets.nu/#/activity/1997960