Un-used production or engineering shields

Do you mean, if you're not building a ship, but you are building a social project, convert the military resources to social resources for that planet, and convert both military and social resources to research resources if you don't have any projects? An interesting proposition, but I'm not sure that it would be easily implemented because there would have to be a way for you to un-convert them if you wanted to build something.

Just a dumb question.

Why?

From my point it looks like a straight forward, simple programing job. With debugging and all less than an hour of work. I could understand if you said you'd add it later, but I do not see any difficulty in implementing.

It would be highly unrealistic.

Just because you're good at say research does'nt mean that you can easily take that and put it to say building tanks. Similarly, just because you're good at building star ships doesn't mean youc an just take unused manufacturing capacity and turn it over to building a factory.

They are quite seperate things.

That's one of the reasons why we have tried to globalize some of this. While the details screen will let you tweak things to a degree, the overall idea is that, as leader, you have to make some tough decisions and those decisions tend to be more global than local often times (with some modification at the local level).

Perhaps a stupid question, but..

Will Governors be implemented on planet, system or empire level?

My reasoning is this: To have one Governor running the entire empire on your behalf would seem odd to me. However, to have one for each system or planet would seem to more within the job-title.

If it is so, then you might consider letting each Governor have slightly different skills (basically a modifier on Military, Social and Research) and let them gain experience just like ships will (if I've understood things correctly).

This might also let them put enphasis on one of the three areas, but not move all resources from one or two categories into the last. After all, just because you like research a lot, doesn't mean you can mothball everything else..

This could actually add an entirely new level to the game - or perhaps this is just one of my frequent tangents..

Brad,
I don't think some for of cross transfer of production is unrealistic. If a military shipyard on this planet is being unused, the skilled labour could easily work on some other large project, such as building an oilrig or a huge bridge. Skills can be transferred.
Maybe a solultion/suggestion would be to add technology advancements. The first adcance allows transfer of 20% of unused production, the second 40% and so on. These could be social, economic or military advancements (maybe requirying certain levels of each).
As for Cari's comment. Are you saying that unused production is stored up to be used on the next project? So if you build nothing for 10 turns and then start a new project you already have 10 turns work of production? If not then there should be no need to unconvert.

No, I meant that you would eventually want to stop diverting resources. To do any of this, you would have to have some kind of interface.

I know that you guys want more control over the planets, but you're going to have to wait until the planet details screen and governors are implemented; otherwise, anything we would do would be throwaway code and art. Rather than diverting the resources of the Gal Civ development team and thereby decreasing production, you'll enjoy the end results much more if we finish our current tasks before continuing.

Cari,
I totally agree about not diverting resources to useless task and do understand that the full detailed planet screens will follow. My suggestion is for the full game though, as it would (in my opinion) reduce micro-management by allowing you to just leave your planets alone. If noting is being built is either queue, then a fraction of the resources (not 100% to be realistic) would automatically be transferred to the other queue.
This would require a player to do NOTHING, as oppossed to a dedicated micromanagement player who would click on the details screen and change the individual sliders for that planet.
Don't waste time on this though, as I'll comment again when the details screen arrives and we see how the balance is and micromanagement is.
Paul.

Cari:
About investing resources: You're absolutely right. Don't worry about it now - just add it to the (evergrowing) list of features to add..

In the real world, idle factory workers do not become scientists. Idle scientists are not sent off to the factories.

It's one thing to adjust spending priorities on a per planet basis, it's another thing to outright have unused resources from one category diverted to another. Very unrealistic and it would eliminate a lot of the strategic skill from the game.

I mean, at that point you might as well just have generic shields used for everything.

Brad,
I know I should not perpetuate a philosophical discussion on this forum
(even if you did start it), but: while you might be correct that factory
workers do not become scientists (at least, not over night), scientists have
been laid off during the last few decades. They became factory workers,
food servers, store clerks, what ever, to keep food on their tables.

Also, it looks to me like the discussion started with transfering
similar skills from one form of skilled labor (military projects) to another
(social projects). And I have seen some cases with the testing I have done
where having two distinct types of work forces that can not be cross swapped
is a severe handicap. I.e., when the planet population is low (as in a
recently colonized planet) and resources are relatively low it is sometimes
impossible to produce both ships and social improvements.

But, what happens to the military resources when a military project of
"NOTHING" is selected? It doesn't look like the resources are shifted to
the social project. Do those resources just get thrown into the bit bucket?
Or does it reduce the resources spent? Or what? (Perhaps I should ask these
questions more in the future tense, what will happen to these resources in
the finished product?) Should the resources not spent on a "NOTHING" project
be savings or should they be deverted to the other type of project on the
same planet? I believe in the OS/2 version, the unspent resources showed
up as savings of a sort. This allowed us to increase spending and,
indirectly, increase the resources spent on non-"nothing" projects.

Where do I stand? I think I could live very well with the way the OS/2
version worked, but with the ability to have two projects per planet in
the new version, I think the redirection of resources to only one project
on a planet by selecting "nothing" on the other projuct is very appealing
to me.

This thread (and my current response) opens up some questions about how
the current level works. I am in need of playing it again and getting smoe
more insight to this issue.

Cheers,
Jack

Brad,
I would suggest that no extra resources are spent on this topic for the moment, at least until the details screen is present.
AS for your real world arguement, think of world war 2. During the war thousands of scientists and engineers were stripped from social projects to work on military projects. At the end of the war all of these people and many thousands more of military personel then returned to social projects.
Sure, there may have been some delays before they were all re-employed and some efficiency may have been lost, but when the end of the war came and many military factories were no longer needed, they were converted.
I agree with Jack that the OS2 method of turning this production into a saving would at least be better than nothing, but I do like the idea of not having to micromanage every planet and letting unused production 'gradually and somewhat inefficiently' transfer to the other production queue.
A possible suggestion would be a 'build social shields' production option for the military projects anbd vice versa?
Paul.