PlanetsCentral

As usual I have noted some things in PCC which I am not really content with. Or which seem to be outright queer. 2 points right now. ;-)

In the last turns I had several problems with sensor reports about planets. The first problem is that it is rather important to know the date of a certain information (ever looked in the internet for a place to eat lunch and found it deserted on arrival?). When did I scan the native clans the last time - meaning when was the last time the defence posts did not exceed 20 for sure? Just as an excample. PCC does not help me to get this information of a ccertain Planet though it IS available by analyzing the reports.

To do so I have to go through all the reports of the last turns until I find some about that specific planet. And even further if that was not the right one. Which is not so easy having about 50 messages per turn only about scanned planets - sorted by ID OF THE SCANNING SHIP and further by ID OF THE SCANNED PLANET. That PHosts works that way, I understand. However, I do not so. Sorting them by ownership would swuit me lots more. It would be even nice to mark all the scans of let's say "lizard-planets" as unimportant instead of all bioscans / planetscans at all. An alternative might be a scanhistory as PCC already provides for ships - which may include the outcome of any successful scan of the planet including the turn for the last few (10? 15?) turns.

Well anyway that's what I would like to have. :-D

Theres something else on my mind too. PCC includes a graph for PBPs from the data the Host provides every turn. As I read the data it is incomplete since I don't get these data for every player. Quite in contrast to the PT-scores. This is confusing because there is nowhere any mentioning about that fact. It is already confusing me when I read the host-messages alone, but even more so since PCC displays the PBPs as graphical input. I did need all these 36 turns as well as some very obvious hints (the first one 4 turns ago and it still took me until now) to work that out. It would help a lot if there was an "unknown" or "?" sign instead of simply "-" in the score overview. I interpreted the "-" as "zero" before.

In the last turns I had several problems with sensor reports about planets. The first problem is that it is rather important to know the date of a certain information (ever looked in the internet for a place to eat lunch and found it deserted on arrival?). When did I scan the native clans the last time - meaning when was the last time the defence posts did not exceed 20 for sure? Just as an excample. PCC does not help me to get this information of a ccertain Planet though it IS available by analyzing the reports.

Normally, PCC2 does display this information on the F5 screen. It has separate timestamps for natives, colonists, climate, and minerals.

To do so I have to go through all the reports of the last turns until I find some about that specific planet. And even further if that was not the right one. Which is not so easy having about 50 messages per turn only about scanned planets - sorted by ID OF THE SCANNING SHIP and further by ID OF THE SCANNED PLANET. That PHosts works that way, I understand. However, I do not so. Sorting them by ownership would swuit me lots more. It would be even nice to mark all the scans of let's say "lizard-planets" as unimportant instead of all bioscans / planetscans at all.

So far, PCC2 does not sort messages at all. However, I'm distilling all sorts of information out of them, and I considered making an interface to filter on that (mainly, "show all messages that apply to planet XYZ").

PCC includes a graph for PBPs from the data the Host provides every turn. As I read the data it is incomplete since I don't get these data for every player. Quite in contrast to the PT-scores. This is confusing because there is nowhere any mentioning about that fact. It is already confusing me when I read the host-messages alone, but even more so since PCC displays the PBPs as graphical input. I did need all these 36 turns as well as some very obvious hints (the first one 4 turns ago and it still took me until now) to work that out. It would help a lot if there was an "unknown" or "?" sign instead of simply "-" in the score overview. I interpreted the "-" as "zero" before.

"-" is unknown, "0" is zero.

Would "·" instead of "-" work better? I believe I use that already at other places.

--Stefan