Economic spread sheet

[Xveers]

I have a question in a similar vein; apologies for the hijack.

I'm using an older version of Excel that can't handle the depth of function calls in the SSF spreadsheet.

I do, however, also have OpenOffice which can open the spreadsheet (it takes about 10 minutes to convert), so I was wondering if anybody has had success with using it that way? I'm a bit hesitant to go in blind, since my old 2E universe generator (Excel v4 vintage) did NOT work well when I tried to let OpenOffice convert it several years ago.

Hijack reply!

There are generally two issues (in my experience) with porting it over to OO or Libre or the like:

1) There is (or at least there was) a formatting issue with the Vlookup statements. Excel is a bit more forgiving, allowing spaces/not allowing spaces (one or the other) whereas OO/Libre requires them. This causes some of the Vlookups to break, but it's strictly a formatting issue. Once that's fixed it's OO happy.

2) The "custom macros" with the exception of the New Turn button, are all really just replacements for older excel code that was a pain to write and maintain, but were otherwise all doable in the formula bar. I can't remember where these all were located, but at the least there's one in the planetary GPV calculator and one for research. These would need to get rewritten to not be excel macros, but it IS doable.

[Antares]

We have players in our games that try to use the empire spreadsheet as an organizational tool more or less, since the macro functionality won't work for them when they try to use it with non-MS workbooks... google docs, etc.

It is quite a pain for both the player and SM in our experience.

[krenshala]

I've gotten a working colony growth, emplacement and income sheet in google Sheets that should port directly to Calc or Excel. Writing the code to properly handle PTU emplacements on a world above 180 PU was a pain, but doable. It can potentially handle any life type if the table of what bodies are what survivability is properly updated. I skipped making it dynamic since my spreadsheet is limited to just tracking population growth and emplacement, and the resulting income from it, however.

I can share that sheet with you if you want, Xveers ... assuming you aren't in Hypnobeards game.

[PracticalM]

We have players in our games that try to use the empire spreadsheet as an organizational tool more or less, since the macro functionality won't work for them when they try to use it with non-MS workbooks... google docs, etc.

It is quite a pain for both the player and SM in our experience.

In theory the scripting ability of Google Sheets should allow similar macros to be built. It just would take some time to do a port.

[StarTytalan]

I’m glade other are getting their questions answered but my original question is still unanswered. Yes there is documentation with the download but these are not a how you use this they just do a basic explanation of what the difference tabs are and what they basically do. This is okay if you have someone who is a power excel user and has the inclination and time to take things apart to figure out what to do but it’s more that a little daunting to someone looking to simply the economics of the game. Example:

1: impute this information on tab A
2: do this on tab D
3: run this macro by doing this on tab F

This is badly needed the documentation is great and useful but with out a basic step by step most people will find they can’t use this spreadsheet.

[PracticalM]

There was a document written by William Wells that is called updated spreadsheet help.doc

It was included with the GSF sheets at one point, or you can look to see if it was added the SDS downloads page.

[StarTytalan]

I’m honestly not sure what to say to that. Seems like there no real support for this sheet. Kind of sad if you think about it.

[Antares]

I’m honestly not sure what to say to that. Seems like there no real support for this sheet. Kind of sad if you think about it.

Play with it some in a real or mock game... that's what we did. After a few turns it becomes very clear.

[StarTytalan]

So you suggest that I just throw this at some newbies and tell them to use it? I’ve sure that will encourage them to play. And what if they are not excel savvy? It’s one thing to have the time and experience to puzzle something like this out it entirely different when you need to work thing out around real world responsibilities. I’m not attacking you I’m just trying to point out that just playing around with it is not a viable option for many players and not having a basic step by step can be discouraging to new players.

[Antares]

So you suggest that I just throw this at some newbies and tell them to use it?

No, I suggest what I suggested in my last post.

"Play with it some in a real or mock game."

It's just a suggestion... ignore it if you like... but there is no need to argue about it or convolute it to mean something other than what was said.