Smoothing Edges - Development Log #481

Michi talks about adding little details to make the upkeep contracts actually usable.

Michi (molp)

Now that the upkeep contracts are working, I spent some time this week to actually make them usable. I added a new toggle in the INV command to show and hide upkeep stores. I quickly noticed that it is hard to distinguish between multiple upkeep stores if they’re at the same address. Since gateways (and future infrastructure) will usually have the same address as the planet they belong to, it is impossible to tell which store belongs to what infrastructure. So I added another column to the command that has the owner of the
infrastructure. Clicking on an entry will open the respective infrastructure command:

By the way, if you filter out the upkeep stores, the column won't show, thus saving some precious screen space.

The INV command now also shows GTW as a context command if the displayed store is an upkeep store.

I also added a few notifications: There is one when an infrastructure changes its operational state ("operational" or "upkeep missing"), when an infrastructure upgrade is complete and whenever a new upkeep phase started.

Then I circled back to the INFU upkeep command again. I removed some unnecessary fields, added the uptime average field and fixed the "pill" display of the uptime history:

Another thing I added is that unused upkeep materials will be carried over into the next upkeep phase. Infrastructure can only be operational when all upkeep materials are present. Before, when the upkeep phase ended, all upkeep materials would vanish and the contractor would have to start at zero again. That felt a bit harsh, so if the infrastructure hasn't been operational in the last upkeep phase, the upkeep materials count towards the next upkeep phase.

Next up is the balancing release we’re planning to release early May.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!

Happy trading!