Global Minister Question

[JeffGeorge]

According to SEIV's HTML manual 'Global ministers are ministers who control things at an empire wide level. For example, the "Ship Construction Minister" is a global minister who will add new ships to the construction queues throughout your empire.' It later goes on to state that

Ship Construction - Controls adding and removing new ships or units from the construction queues.

How do I make this guy do this? I want to turn over the tedious task of mine and satellite building to this Minister, but he never seems to actually build anything. Since it's a Global Minister I don't feel that I have to turn on any individual planet queues. Right? Am I missing something?

[Glyn]

While I haven't used any ministers, generally you have to the turn on minister control for each planet or ship you want to hand over to there incompetence.

While view the planet or ship look for an icon on the top-right order bar that looks like a head. Clicking on that should enable/disable the minister for the plant or ship you are viewing. A head icon should appear in the detail view panel.

Also, the minister must be enabled in the empire options page.

PS. Don't expect the Minister to build what you actually want!

[JeffGeorge]

I think that's what I finally had to do, i.e. actually turn on the Ministers on each planet I wanted to use. I thought that you didn't have to do that for Global level ministers, however.

[PvK]

It depends on whether the minister applies to specific planets or not. For construction, yes you have to say which ones. I think there is an option which will turn them all on or off at once.

Actually pretty neat because you can turn them all on but then take the few most important ones for yourself. If you're playing single-player, you can also tinker with the AI build files to get effects all over the empire.

Or you can do what I've enjoyed a lot, and only run one or two things and let the AI do everything else. For example, you can just design the ships, or just decide on research, or just command one fleet. It also means the game flies by, because there is so little to do every turn compared to managing everything every turn.

PvK

[JeffGeorge]

That's kind of what I'm doing right now, experimenting with different governor settings to see what I can offload on him. I haven't been able to get him to build any mines or satellites yet, but he's cranking out ships.

[PvK]

You can also try turning ministers on and off for a few turns at a time. I can't remember off-hand if the unit-building minister is different from the ship-building minister or if they are the same, but if so, then turning off ship-building might get some units in the queue.

Otherwise, I think the AI might prioritize ship building over unit building, and so not build units until it fills ship quotas. And/or it might be related to the current AI mode.

PvK

[Makinus]

PvK said:
Or you can do what I've enjoyed a lot, and only run one or two things and let the AI do everything else. For example, you can just design the ships, or just decide on research, or just command one fleet. It also means the game flies by, because there is so little to do every turn compared to managing everything every turn.
PvK

I´m trying to do this in a new game but i´m hitting an annoying/strange minister behaviour: i control only one fleet, the fleet and the ships in the fleet are with the ministers deactivated (no minister icon), but every time my fleet ends without orders it suddently gets and order to go back to the homeworld, even without any minister icon in the fleet or the ships... what gives?

[capnq]

Makinus said: I´m trying to do this in a new game but i´m hitting an annoying/strange minister behaviour: i control only one fleet, the fleet and the ships in the fleet are with the ministers deactivated (no minister icon), but every time my fleet ends without orders it suddently gets and order to go back to the homeworld, even without any minister icon in the fleet or the ships... what gives?

How many supplies does your fleet have? I have this vague memory that the Supply Minister is one of the globals that doesn't need individual ships turned on. I'm not sure, though, because I gave up on using ministers after only my first few games.

[Makinus]

i thought this was the case, but even when the fleet have over 80% of total supplies as soon as it dosn´t have any orders it goes back to de homeworld...

[capnq]

Oh, here's a thought: Are any of the ships in the fleet "obsolete" designs? Maybe the Retrofit Minister (Is there a Retrofit Minister?) is trying to "upgrade" them.