PhaseDragon Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 I am currently working on a whole-empire project which parses the PDF file into data fields and places the information into Excel spreadsheets. Also, there is an excellent Ship Builder and Production sheet. I am still working on it but it should be ready soon. I had some problems trying to convert the spreadsheets to work in older versions of Excel...specifically Excel 97. I had to resort to asking for help from Microsoft. That actually proved to be even more helpful than I had hoped and allowed me to rewrite large sections of code to make it run a little faster. The production sheet will read the Shipyard Report, Colony Report, Tooled Production, and Imperial Stockpiles from the PDF and place those values in the production sheet automatically. Also, when building a Nuclear Transwarp Drive, for example, all the other builds associated with this build will also be calculated automatically. It is even tied to the shipyard should you want to start your production from the Ship building level. In addition, there will be an option to optimize your production by adjusting your build amounts based on current stockpiles, mine production, and convoy routes. If your build amounts cannot be produced in one turn then the routine will indicate how many turns it will take to complete the build using the optimized builds (re-adding mine production and convoy route resources for each turn). Finally, there will be an option to save a copy of your work to a separate sheet which will allow you to change your mind about your production and then go back to your first thoughts without having to regenerate everything from scratch. This also allows you bring back production ques from old turns as a starting point if you would like. The research tracker will calculate research points based on the currently accepted square root formula and generate the items that are newly researchable provided that you have that information stored in your copy of the database. The copy shipped with the program will only contain items that are already discovered and are newly researchable by a starting empire. Other items can be either entered manually or read from the PDF file automatically from ANZ, RTD, and INST orders. The research points required to discover an item will also have to be filled in by individual empires. If you have more than one empire you can share one database between them eliminating the need to duplicate tech item entries. Also, scientist bonuses and exploration bonuses will be recorded automatically by reading the PDF. There is currently no accepted formula that I am aware of to calculate the bonus amounts for these events so they are left blank to be manually filled in. You will get a glimpse of their effect when you get a discovery earlier that expected (must be a scientist or exploration bonus). And the best part of all you can batch files together to run all at once (except for the production que as this is pop group specific), even mixing empires when generating exploration data. This will keep all your system scans and pmaps..etc all in one place. Each entry (if read from the PDF) will have an empire ID associated with it. The date of last scan is checked and if earlier than current scan it will be overwritten with the new data and tagged with the new empire ID and date. Future revisions will include the ability to export your build que directly into the Imperial Palace Orders database. Also working on Fleet Movements to export in the same way. I haven't decided on the best way to handle this yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali-t-akua Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Wow. This is huge. Good job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T'Lariss Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 PhaseDragon Ed it sounds like a great tool for building and maintaining an Empire. That kind of effort sould be applauded so Be sure to let us all now when you have it done.' Once again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hughestrog Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Impressed and speechless- great work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobknob Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Sounds very nice. Do you have some sort of timetable for it's completion? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SargonKingOfSlith Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Ambitious Innovative Impressive! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Octus Imperium Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Astounding and practical. Hats off to you technically creative folks putting such skills to practical use. Practical for SN:ROTE players, at least. Interested in hearing about the impending successful launch! Octus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Locklyn Posted September 2, 2004 Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Considering the trouble I have making Excel do the things I want it to I stand in complete awe and you have risen to deityhood in all your many colours /Locklyn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhaseDragon Posted September 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 17, 2004 I had a minor setback trying to make the program work in earlier versions of Excel. In fact, I had a sheet lock up during some heavy coding and when I loaded the "recovery" it was corrupted. The production file works right now although I need to do some minor tweaking on the optimization routines. No timetable on writing the data to the Imperial Palace yet. The Research file was one of the files that I have redesigned. The old version was working very slowly and did not lend itself to queries. I had to build the tech list for each empire with a looping structure which was very slow. Also, the formulas criss-crossed in some places and caused circular references in certain circumstances. The revision of the Research file solves all those problems and stores all newly discovered tech in a nice neat list that can be queried directly into the PopGrp file. I have a preliminary version which will read the .pdf files and allow you to do your production much faster and allow you to track you exploration and research. I am working on the instructions for this now but am not sure if it will work in Excel97. If you encounter any errors while using it you can email me with the error and as much information of what you were doing that you can provide. I will send this version to RTG probably on Monday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Locklyn Posted September 17, 2004 Report Share Posted September 17, 2004 Great work Ed! As usual I am in total awe of people who can bend computers to their will! And appreciative of anything that makes my gaming easier! /Locklyn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T'Lariss Posted September 17, 2004 Report Share Posted September 17, 2004 Ed, Amazing work. I can not wait to take a look at it and see how it works Good stuff Gary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hughestrog Posted September 17, 2004 Report Share Posted September 17, 2004 As said before- WOW! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orin Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 I will send this version to RTG probably on Monday. Any Luck? would be very interesting to see for this turn... no pressure :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhaseDragon Posted September 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 25, 2004 I just shipped the first version to Pete and to a few testers. If you would like an untested version just send me an email. Currently I have to manually create the links for the queries. When you email me indicate how many Empires you would like to be able to setup since I will have to send multiple copies of some files. I am still working on the production optimization routine. It should be ready within a few day. I have less time to work with since I am working more hours now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhaseDragon Posted September 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 25, 2004 I already have a couple reported errors with the Research.xls file. I will have a fix as soon as I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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