[REL] Applied Power 0.5.2 [86422]

Economy bar that focuses on how much metal is being spent, and what is limiting that spending.



- https://github.com/JustinLove/applied_power
- http://wondible.com/pa/applied_power_v0.5.2.zip
- PAMM

Status

Effectively early access. Expect things to be recolored, moved, removed, or introduced. There is still a fair bit of information design to do, but the major themes are in place.

Major features

Inspired by @elodea 's Easy cookie cutter planetary annihilation build order #7 DIY edition

- Central location given to cumulative spent metal (applied power)
- Metal and energy arranged in pipelines
- Limiting factor highlighted

There will be a little fudge in the metal spent values. Games on Playfab (or otherwise providing a lobby id) have limited persitance of metal spent value over disconnects or UI resets. There is some dead reckoning over the disconnect time, but don't expect much in the way of accuracy.

Elements (2015-04-29)



The element that is currently limiting spent metal/applied build power is highlighted with yellow outline. A green background suggests "do more of this", red X "do less of this"

Supplies are solid colors, think of them as the flow between blocks. Demands are thin white lines, think of them as pipes that limit how much you can move.


Left (metal) side:

[Estimated Build Power]-ditto-[Energy Efficiency]-Metal Demand-[Metal Supply]-supply & demand-[Metal Storage]-spent & demand-[Build Efficiency]

Center:

*Cumulative Spent Metal*

Right (energy) side:

[Energy Spent/Metal Spent][Radar Strength (vanilla)]-spent & demand-[Energy Storage]-supply & demand-[Energy Supply]-demand-[Energy Demand]

Energy Spending/Metal Spending

This has become a rather dense display. The number represents the title: the ratio of energy per metal spending.

The background represents three numbers

- Energy Spending/Metal Spending (number displayed): red line. Might be hidden by white line
- Energy Demand/Build Power: white line
- Energy Supply/Metal Supply: solid color

The scale is max of the three values; if the solid color is full, your ratio is good. If it starts to fall, your energy supply is falling behind your available metal or spending. A healthy economy has the white line and solid color near the top of the box. If the red line appears, you are wasting energy because of a metal shortage.

Notable Missing Features

Does not show eco multiplier.

Does not account for shared economy.

Conflicts

Any other mod which replaces the economy/status bar

Changes

## 0.5.2

- Triage release for 86422 (titans) fixes images paths

## 0.5.1

- Game changed required scene header links
- Removed library CSS that are not used in this scene

## 0.5.0

- Spent is cumulative total instead of per-second
- Visibility pass on numbers
- First pass EPM visualization
- Major energy numbers are back to basic supply and demand
- Small numbers removed.

Im trying to make sense of this new UI bar....but failing horribly

Yeah, it's still rough. I thought the icons would help a lot, but apparently not enough. I need to look at the tooltips at some point, and build out a tour and examples on the topic once the design settles down.

Applied Power 0.2.0

- Tooltip pass
- Move build efficiency and energy-per-metal to full blocks
- POWER -> SPENT
- Energy-per-metal supply and demand

Minor numbers:
- Energy Supply/Metal Supply: do you have enough energy for the metal you have
- Energy Demand/Build Power: what you target the supply ratio to

Forgot to grab a screenshot before I quit for the night, perhaps in the morning. I hope to do more with color and signaling on the new elements at some point.

Looks like the minor number positioning is messed up on Windows. Must be system font differences.

Applied Power 0.2.1 - Fix minor number positioning on windows

Applied Power 0.3.0

- Color background for build efficiency
- Economic limit is now green with yellow boarder (do more of this)
- Excess spending (resource efficiency < 75%) has a red X with yellow border on the box (do less of this)
- Bottom align flows
- Removed background icons from build efficiency and effective energy per metal


Things I'm thinking about:
- Might be interesting to make energy side major number energy-per-metal, but would have asymmetry with metal numbers matching metal flows.
- Some visual way to compare EPM ratios.
- It's easy to lose track of energy when you are metal limited. Maybe a vanilla radar strength indicator on energy side.

Applied Power 0.4.0

- Darken status colors so limits stand out more
- Radar strength block
- Small numbers in flows - net amount now present
- EPM moved to major numbers in supply/demand blocks

Lots of experimental things. Not sure about EPM, and the flow numbers may be overload. Needs updated screenshot.

Starting to understand it enough to be able to interpret what i'm seeing at a quick glance.

However, maybe it's just because i'm growing old, but I find it really hard to quickly see the numbers. Either they are too small font size, or they are white on light background (the larger font size ones). Is it possible to do font outlines? Or maybe colour coding might help? red for outflow, green for inflow.

Also suggest changing 'spent' to 'spending'. Or is it possible to have a gross spent number? If you had that, i would definitely switch over to this permanently.

Thanks for the feedback!

By gross spent, do you mean an accumulating total over the game? Would that be instead of or in addition to the current amount being spent per second?

yea, like an accumulated total over the course of the game. It could be either a replacement or addition, although i would favour replacement. For me it's more useful to know how much i've spent over the long term, than a snapshot of how much i'm spending at any single point in time since it can vary alot. But that could just be my playstyle.

If that's not possible i was suggesting changing the tense from spent to spending to better reflect what that number was.

And no problem! love the mods you make.

Applied Power 0.5.0



- Spent is cumulative total instead of per-second
- Visibility pass on numbers
- First pass EPM visualization
- Major energy numbers are back to basic supply and demand
- Small numbers removed.

There will be a little fudge in the metal spent values. Games on Playfab (or otherwise providing a lobby id) have limited persitance of metal spent value over disconnects or UI resets. There is some dead reckoning over the disconnect time, but don't expect much in the way of accuracy.

Energy Spending/Metal Spending

This has become a rather dense display. The number represents the title: the ratio of energy per metal spending.

The background represents three numbers

- Energy Spending/Metal Spending (number displayed): red line. Might be hidden by white line
- Energy Demand/Build Power: white line
- Energy Supply/Metal Supply: solid color

The scale is max of the three values; if the solid color is full, your ratio is good. If it starts to fall, your energy supply is falling behind your available metal or spending. A healthy economy has the white line and solid color near the top of the box. If the red line appears, you are wasting energy because of a metal shortage.

Applied Power 0.5.1

- Game changed required scene header links
- Removed library CSS that are not used in this scene

Applied Power 0.5.2 - Triage release for 86422 (titans) fixes images paths

Does not show eco multiplier, but I'll have to address that later.

more primary colors!!! can't read what's going on

Thanks for the feedback, though I'm afraid it hasn't triggered any definite ideas on how to improve it.

you know about contrast right?

just make the energy bar full on green and the power bar full on yellow. I don't know really

You mean metal and energy?

If the yellow gets brighter, the white demand line doesn't have contrast; make the line darker and it doesn't have good contrast with the black background. I might be able to do something with metal if I give up on the bluish tradition of earlier vanilla eco bars