i'm making a status tidy for posting ingame status on these and other non-html public boards, so players can get advice. it will remove some info and round off some numbers, both to anonymize the countries and make it easier to read.

the question is: what info from the ingame advisor do you need to be able to give advice? (or perhaps easier, what don't you need?)

the work-in-progress : http://eestats.com/statustidy

example

------    Basic Info     ------
Government           Theocracy
Networth             $23,000,000
Land                 100,000
Money                $800,000

------ Land Distribution ------
Enterprise Zones     0
Residences           0
Industrial Complexes 400
Military Bases       0
Research Labs        0
Farms                0
Oil Rigs             1,000
Construction Sites   200
Unused Lands         0

------    Technology     ------
Military             200,000
Medical              6
Business             100,000
Residential          100,000
Agricultural         300,000
Warfare              20,000
Military Strategy    2
Weapons              80,000
Industrial           400
Spy                  2
SDI                  70,000

------    Economics      ------
Tax Revenues         $1,000,000
Tax Rate             35
Per Capita Income    $20
Expenses             $1,000,000
Military Expenses    $1,000,000
Alliance/GDI         $90,000
Land Expenses        $100,000
Net Income           $70,000

------    Production     ------
Food                 1,000,000
Production           0
Consumption          10,000
Net Change           -10,000
Oil                  500,000

------     Military      ------
Spies                20,000
Troops               2,000
Jets                 300,000
Turrets              300,000
Tanks                20,000

Enterprise Zones 0
Residences 0
Industrial Complexes (25%)
Military Bases 0
Research Labs 0
Farms 0
Oil Rigs (63%)
Construction Sites (12%)
Unused Lands 0

Similar to what maz said, I'd do the following:

government
land (rounded to thousands)
cash (rounded to millions)
cs (exact)
all other buildings (rounded to percents)
tech (percentages)
tax rate
food (rounded to thousands)
oil (rounded to thousands)
military (rounded to thousands)

right now i have the same rounding for all numbers, where everything over 100 is rounded to the closest most significant digit, so:

42 is 42
420 goes to 400
3750 goes to 4000
44907 goes to 40000
etc

i think this should scale ok for all numbers, and keep the important small ones intact, like tax rate?

what of the info posted above is not needed to give advice? pci? maybe the whole economics bit except tax rate? production?

if i have 90% farms, you know that i produce food, and can tell that i lack agri tech. do you need to know my production? etc etc.

You could cut out the specifics of taxes, expenses and production, just stick with total income, expenses, produce, leave out the consumption, land upkeep, alliance costs, etc.

hrmm intestesting

Very cool idea. :)

bore I like that rounding since it works for small as well as large countries. Using Slagpit's rounding it would say 0 for too many numbers if the country was smallish. I was thinking what if the NW is <1m or the cash is small then you get 0's

instead of CS how about BPT that's what you really need though people just figure it out themselves.

Like the % for buildings and tech

Economics only need tax rate and net income
(need to know if they are +/- $/turn .. maybe in a % )

Alliance/gdi (really used to tell if they have allies so can prob ommit if they just tell you or the cleaner says 0 or some % of nw)

production only need net change
(really same as net income if someone really wanted to know it they could figure it out from the land etc.)

keep going with this ? :)

Perhaps you could make different outputs for different strats?

Just as a few rough examples (because I don't have the brain cells left to think much harder about it right now):

For someone running a farmer strat, provide outputs for bushels/turn, but remove this output for non farmer strats.

Or output actual tech #'s for techers, while only providing %'s for non techers.

Or output units produced/turn for indies, but skip this with other strats.


You could simply click a radio button to choose which report you want generated, or choose a full report depending on your needs.

I'm sure there's a long list of different additions/subtractions from the final report for each strat type, many of which could be really handy teaching tools. I know it would be a lot of work, and would probably be an afterthought to getting a unified tidy going, but I figured I throw it out there anyways.

how about giving the user the option, but with warnings for the newer players to avoid mistaken disclosure?

e.g. a radio button for each stat on your advisor page (edit: I mean once pasted into eestats), rounded as previously described, plus add a "5% randomise" button next to each to add a random variable on request. it could even be displayed as the advisor page with the interface buttons overlayed next to it.

it would have to be opt in for everything, but you could have a "recommended" button that shows just the minimum few outputs for each govt type/strat, with +/-5% randomisation on all stats under this heading by default.

this way you give complete user control but with some protection for new players built in. it is anonymised by rounding plus the randomisation factor on request.

might be too heavy on the setup for bore though ;)

also, still doesn't feel anonymous enough to me even with the rounding etc.

I find the original layout bore presented to be the best. you could cut out production rates since they are easily determined by looking at the tech levels. changing things to percentages just makes it difficult to read