[BETA] [1.8.x] Bureaucracy - Monthly Budgets, Reimagined (Release Candidate - 22/01/2020)

[severedsolo]

3 hours ago, vardicd said:

Anyone testing this version, it seems to break on saves in progress. I had 3 buildings in the construction list undergoing upgrades, and a back log of 30 some science. I should have gotten about 9 science from it per my budget allocation. I got all of it, and all three buildings upgraded at the start of the next budget cycle, which put me 5.5 million funds in the hole. Does not seem to affect new saves, however, 

Ah, that would be because I changed the way allocations are saved. It looks like going into the UI and resetting your allocations fixes that (I'm not going to fix it, because BETA, so it won't be in the final release anyway).

@Beetlecat mentioned that he's lost the toolbar icon, I can't reproduce, so if anyone else sees it please provide a log and a save.

Edited January 19, 2020 by severedsolo

[vardicd]

1 hour ago, severedsolo said:

Ah, that would be because I changed the way allocations are saved. It looks like going into the UI and resetting your allocations fixes that (I'm not going to fix it, because BETA, so it won't be in the final release anyway).

@Beetlecat mentioned that he's lost the toolbar icon, I can't reproduce, so if anyone else sees it please provide a log and a save.

I upgraded flight controller, and lost the toolbar icon until i came to report it and saw your post about the upgraded fight controller breaking things. once i upgraded Bureaucracy the icon reappeared. I wonder if using the older version of flight controller would produce the same result? @Beetlecat pardon the obvious question, are you using both the newest build of Bureaucracy and the newest build of flight controller?

Edited January 19, 2020 by vardicd

[vardicd]

1 hour ago, severedsolo said:

Ah, that would be because I changed the way allocations are saved. It looks like going into the UI and resetting your allocations fixes that (I'm not going to fix it, because BETA, so it won't be in the final release anyway).

Confirmed, reloading the backup version of the save I had and adjusting my allocations causes the budget cycle to complete normally without bankrupting me.

[severedsolo]

14 minutes ago, vardicd said:

I upgraded flight controller, and lost the toolbar icon until i came to report it and saw your post about the upgraded fight controller breaking things. once i upgraded Bureaucracy the icon reappeared. I wonder if using the older version of flight controller would produce the same result? @Beetlecat pardon the obvious question, are you using both the newest build of Bureaucracy and the newest build of flight controller?

That's probably it. I broke the cardinal rule of a public api with the last flight tracker update and completely ripped up the api methods. Figured it would be ok because I'm the only person using it in my mods, and it was a one time thing. Should probably have just deprecated them instead

[vardicd]

@severedsolo I got this science result just now with recovery of a craft that survived a flight, and I should have gotten 0 science from it because I've recovered so many flights, but I got, well, this?

Edited January 19, 2020 by vardicd

[severedsolo]

10 minutes ago, vardicd said:

@severedsolo I got this science result just now with recovery of a craft that survived a flight, and I should have gotten 0 science from it because I've recovered so many flights, but I got, well, this?

That's 0.000001358 in scientific notation. It's effectively zero. I should probably filter out tiny amounts though

[severedsolo]

Minor update:

Bureaucracy Beta 4 (0.4) Now Available

• Experiments will no longer be intercepted if they are worth less than 1 science.
• Fixed a rounding error in the Research UI

[Beetlecat]

7 hours ago, severedsolo said:

Minor update:

Bureaucracy Beta 4 (0.4) Now Available

• Experiments will no longer be intercepted if they are worth less than 1 science.
• Fixed a rounding error in the Research UI

Sorry for that "false alarm" about the toolbar icon --- I wasn't keeping track of my dev / testing game environment, and updating Flight Tracker should have set off an alarm bell that it wasn't yet a "good idea"(tm).

By -- not intercepted -- do you mean that the fractional science would just get dumped right into the available pool, and not placed into the "Budget Queue" ? Like, if I harvested 0.9 worth of an experiment, it wouldn't get processed, just passed through?

There are many science-gathering things that can result in partial/decimal returns. Kerbalism specifically rearranges science to be values of 1.6, 2.3, etc. and they can be gathered piecemeal. Less-than-one clearly shaves off a proportion of actual science, but I'm not sure what a good decimal place would be. Maybe still capture 0.1 as a valid science unit? 0.01? This would still avoid the above "virtually zero" problem.

I'm enjoying putting Bureaucracy/myself through through the early-game phases, and have yet to start working with Kerbals to see how that aspect of the mod plays out. Time to start flying some planes and crashing some rockets.  Thanks again for rebuilding this!

[severedsolo]

1 minute ago, Beetlecat said:

By -- not intercepted -- do you mean that the fractional science would just get dumped right into the available pool, and not placed into the "Budget Queue" ? Like, if I harvested 0.9 worth of an experiment, it wouldn't get processed, just passed through?

That is what I mean, but you are right, 0.1 is probably more sensible. (Why does the stock system even allow such tiny amounts when in the display it's only every to 1sf anyway? *end rant*).

[severedsolo]

14 minutes ago, Beetlecat said:

There are many science-gathering things that can result in partial/decimal returns. Kerbalism specifically rearranges science to be values of 1.6, 2.3, etc. and they can be gathered piecemeal. Less-than-one clearly shaves off a proportion of actual science, but I'm not sure what a good decimal place would be. Maybe still capture 0.1 as a valid science unit? 0.01? This would still avoid the above "virtually zero" problem.

Bureaucracy 0.4r1 (still Beta 4, not worth a whole new Beta phase for such an insignificant change)

• Experiment intercept limit lowered to 0.1 rather than 1.0 (ie experiments worth less than 0.1 science will be credited instantly)

Barring any major hiccups (and I still need to test Kerbal Deaths) - I'm expecting a release candidate to be made available in the next day or so.

Edited January 19, 2020 by severedsolo

[Beetlecat]

11 hours ago, severedsolo said:

Ah, that would be because I changed the way allocations are saved. It looks like going into the UI and resetting your allocations fixes that (I'm not going to fix it, because BETA, so it won't be in the final release anyway).

@Beetlecat mentioned that he's lost the toolbar icon, I can't reproduce, so if anyone else sees it please provide a log and a save.

Just realizing I didn't give a follow-up to this: The button came back *immediately* after updating to the r3 beta last night. I wasn't following this thread closely, and my pre-updated flight tracker obviously caused Beurauc. to stutter on load somehow.  The budget calculations were wacky for a short bit, but after some scene transitions, everything was back to normal.

I'm purposefully running a heavily-modded game to if/where wacky interactions happen, but overall it's pretty solid.

--

There's a weird instance of an auto-failing part test contract that I've tried twice (it fails upon entering the VAB, even though everything else seems fine). I'll see if I can get it to trigger again, in case there's something to do with Bureaucracy's contract interception going on.

[severedsolo]

1 minute ago, Beetlecat said:

There's a weird instance of an auto-failing part test contract that I've tried twice (it fails upon entering the VAB, even though everything else seems fine). I'll see if I can get it to trigger again, in case there's something to do with Bureaucracy's contract interception going on.

The contract interceptor is unchanged since monthly budgets, so it shouldn't be, but if you want to chuck me a log next time it happens I'll look at it

[vardicd]

@severedsolo Potential bug with the construction prioritization. Had a few construction projects under way, needed my tracking station upgraded, prioritized it so it would be worked on first. the first budget cycle it did get the funding, and should have completed in the second budget cycle, however the priority reverted to the R+D building which was at the top of the list, and the tracking station did not finish. I'm assuming we shouldn't have to set the priority each month to get a priority project finished?

[severedsolo]

2 hours ago, vardicd said:

@severedsolo Potential bug with the construction prioritization. Had a few construction projects under way, needed my tracking station upgraded, prioritized it so it would be worked on first. the first budget cycle it did get the funding, and should have completed in the second budget cycle, however the priority reverted to the R+D building which was at the top of the list, and the tracking station did not finish. I'm assuming we shouldn't have to set the priority each month to get a priority project finished?

Hmm, yes that does sound like a bug priorities should stick. I will look at that thanks.

[severedsolo]

3 hours ago, vardicd said:

@severedsolo Potential bug with the construction prioritization. Had a few construction projects under way, needed my tracking station upgraded, prioritized it so it would be worked on first. the first budget cycle it did get the funding, and should have completed in the second budget cycle, however the priority reverted to the R+D building which was at the top of the list, and the tracking station did not finish. I'm assuming we shouldn't have to set the priority each month to get a priority project finished?

Found the issue - it's not that the priority is resetting every month, it's that the priority status isn't being saved on a scene change. Testing the fix now.

Bureaucracy Beta 5 (0.5) is now available

• Fixed an issue where priority status of upgrades would not be saved between scene switches.
• Fixed an issue where priority status would not be properly cleared when completing an upgrade.

Edited January 20, 2020 by severedsolo

[vardicd]

5 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Found the issue - it's not that the priority is resetting every month, it's that the priority status isn't being saved on a scene change. Testing the fix now.

Bureaucracy Beta 5 (0.5) is now available

• Fixed an issue where priority status of upgrades would not be saved between scene switches.
• Fixed an issue where priority status would not be properly cleared when completing an upgrade.

Downloading and updating for testing, will let you know if i find any problems. 

Question, is there an easy way to tell what level a building is at, or am i missing something obvious? since the visuals don't seem to change on buildings from level 1 to level 2, that i can tell, is there a way to see if i've done an upgrade on a given building?

[severedsolo]

2 minutes ago, vardicd said:

Question, is there an easy way to tell what level a building is at, or am i missing something obvious? since the visuals don't seem to change on buildings from level 1 to level 2, that i can tell, is there a way to see if i've done an upgrade on a given building?

Same way you would in stock - right click it and look at the label, you can also see it in the "Facilities Report" (just after the upgrade completes) - I keep meaning to put a screen message in to tell you as well, but keep forgetting.

Re the visuals: I'm restricted to the visuals that stock already has in, so have tried to space them out (you get Lv1 visuals for 1+2, Lv2 for 3+4 and Lv3 at 5 so you can see it's fully upgraded)

Edited January 20, 2020 by severedsolo

[vardicd]

5 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Same way you would in stock - right click it and look at the label, you can also see it in the "Facilities Report" (just after the upgrade completes) - I keep meaning to put a screen message in to tell you as well, but keep forgetting.

Re the visuals: I'm restricted to the visuals that stock already has in, so have tried to space them out (you get Lv1 visuals for 1+2, Lv2 for 3+4 and Lv3 at 5 so you can see it's fully upgraded)

I actually never noticed that the buildings have a level tag on them, even in stock, when you right click on them. I've always gone by the visual appearance of them, even in stock. Thanks 

Edited January 20, 2020 by vardicd

[vardicd]

@severedsolo Seems like this update fixed it, priority seems to stick between scene change and budget cycles.

[severedsolo]

4 minutes ago, vardicd said:

@severedsolo Seems like this update fixed it, priority seems to stick between scene change and budget cycles.

I thought it would - I wasn't resetting the priority at all (which was a problem in itself when an upgrade completes), so I knew it couldn't have been me resetting it. - but more importantly, isPriority wasn't actually being saved anywhere. (Reason 232 for doing this rewrite: Now that classes save their own data, it's really easy to see when you forgot something)

Edited January 20, 2020 by severedsolo

[vardicd]

@severedsolo I note about mod interactions, Bureaucracy makes the mod, Kerbin Environmental Institute {maintained by Linuxgurugamer} behave in unexpected ways. With Bureaucracy having 5 levels of upgrades, you don't get the ability to do surface samples until R+D level 3, however, KEI which does all the science around KSC, detects 1 upgrade to the R+D facility, and since it doesn't see that there are now 5 levels, it allows surface samples to occur, since it assumes the R+D facility, is now at the correct level [after a single upgrade instead of 2 upgrade levels Bureaucracy expects] I don't know if there's anything you can do on your end, or you need/want to speak to Linuxgurugamer about something on that mod's end, or just put a warning about interactions on this mod's page. 

[severedsolo]

18 minutes ago, vardicd said:

@severedsolo I note about mod interactions, Bureaucracy makes the mod, Kerbin Environmental Institute {maintained by Linuxgurugamer} behave in unexpected ways. With Bureaucracy having 5 levels of upgrades, you don't get the ability to do surface samples until R+D level 3, however, KEI which does all the science around KSC, detects 1 upgrade to the R+D facility, and since it doesn't see that there are now 5 levels, it allows surface samples to occur, since it assumes the R+D facility, is now at the correct level [after a single upgrade instead of 2 upgrade levels Bureaucracy expects] I don't know if there's anything you can do on your end, or you need/want to speak to Linuxgurugamer about something on that mod's end, or just put a warning about interactions on this mod's page. 

That will need a fix in KEI but it should be easily done. I'll submit a pr to lgg later

[vardicd]

50 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

That will need a fix in KEI but it should be easily done. I'll submit a pr to lgg later

Awesome. 

I do find I have a quality of life/feature request, if it wouldn't be too terribly difficult to implement {and if it is don't worry about it it's not a huge deal or anything} Would it be possible to add a % complete to the Bureaucracy constructions tab showing the overall completion of each upgrade request? I'm not really good at quick math, and it takes me a bit to figure out if my upgrade is sitting at "xx dollars, and I need XYZ total, then I'm at approx 34%" 

Over all, I like Bureaucracy's system much better, with the additional levels and over time funding, instead of needing everything upfront, but I have, a couple of times now, caught myself looking at my constructions tab and looking at the money spent vs remaining and thinking, okay so is that like, 20% or 25% done? I have no idea how hard it would be to do, and if you don't want too, completely understand. Thought I'd ask, otherwise I'd never know. Thanks.

[severedsolo]

1 minute ago, vardicd said:

Would it be possible to add a % complete to the Bureaucracy constructions tab showing the overall completion of each upgrade request? I'm not really good at quick math, and it takes me a bit to figure out if my upgrade is sitting at "xx dollars, and I need XYZ total, then I'm at approx 34%" 

Sure, it's no more difficult than what it's already showing. I'm thinking maybe replace the existing label with something like "xx% done ($y needed)" . - would that be acceptable?.

Now I think about it, you are probably more interested in what you need to put in than what you already have anyway

[vardicd]

14 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Sure, it's no more difficult than what it's already showing. I'm thinking maybe replace the existing label with something like "xx% done ($y needed)" . - would that be acceptable?.

Now I think about it, you are probably more interested in what you need to put in than what you already have anyway

I like the idea of xx% completed and $y still needed. {example: 50% complete and 205,678still needed.} Yeah That'd be great.