Gameplay tips & tricks

[Slick]

This thread was inspired by another thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=303719&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=31&fpart=1
where I learned something that probably everyone else knew except me even after my playing this game since it was released. So I decided to post some of my useful tips & tricks (a lot of which will be redundant if you read the FAQ) for SE4 gameplay. If others do the same then it's quite possible some of us may learn a trick to relieve a headache or two.

1) This one I learned from another user here on the forum. If you want to have a built-in reminder on a given planet when a build queue is done, such as you just finished building all your miner-II's (because they can be built in 1 turn) and now you want to upgade to miner-III's, you can do this. First create a dummy ship/unit of some kind. I like to use a small mine, but it doesn't matter. Just make sure you name it with your reminder as its name such as "*upgrade". Make sure you use a * as the first character (or other character which is alphabetized before the letter A). Now, each turn, review your construction queue and click the column header on the right. This will sort the list alphabetically by the names of the things under construction. Queues with the * as a starting character will be at the top of the list and you conveniently can see all your construction queues which need action. Just delete the dummy unit and issue the next order.

2) I kinda stumbled on this one by accident. I was frustrated that you couldn't add ships to a planet queue unless you had a spaceyard already built. Well you can. First add your ship to another planet's queue then save that queue. If you want to see the procedure for this, see the FAQ. Then you can add the spaceyard to your current planet followed by ships or bases using this technique. This will NOT allow you to actually build ships/bases without a spaceyard, but it sure saves time.

3) The "repeat orders" command can be very useful. I won't go into all the different ways to use it here but I'll cover 2. First for simultaneous games, you launch mines, sats, or fighters from planets automatically by using this command after the first launch. Second, you can automate collection of units. For example you can have every planet in a system making fighters, then using a small/medium transport, you can automate picking up the units from all the planets and dumping them at the largest planet. Then with a larger transport or carrier, you can stop off at the large planet to load full of fighters while it is on its way to the front lines.

3) At your training planets, make lots of fleets. Initially you should make as many 1-ship fleets as possible. That way if you neet to pump out a ship/fleet in a hurry, you can put it into one of these fleets for an instant 20% bonus. If the ship can wait there to be fully trained, it can get a 20% + 20% = 40% bonus. This may be a little cheezy, but you can even make 1-ship fleets with mothballed ships. The ship won't get experience but the dummy fleet will eventually max out. You can then make specialized super fast small ships to ferry these "fleets" out to your front lines if necessary.

4) Use the memo pad for keeping notes. Just right-click on the galaxy map in the lower right then left-click on a system to make notes. I use the system notes to keep track of system-wide things like if I have a satellite with anti-cloak sensors, or if I have a system-wide research computer, etc. For empire-wide notes, I use the scratchpad in my home system. Undocumented: you can insert a carriage-return in the scratch pad by using CTRL-M.

5) If I ever get another empire to surrender, how the heck do I make sure I adjusted all his planets? Easy. Bring up the colony report and first sort by Name, then click the Races tab on the right. You will see all the systems sorted in order and the races are shown. Easy to pick the newely acquired planets out.

6) How the heck do I capture more than one planet per turn in simultaneous games? Using your Capture Planet Fleet: "attack planet 1, load troops from planet 1, attack planet 2, load troops from planet 2, etc" for orders

7) I know that moving captured or different breathing population around is a pain, but how do I easily find the best planets to undome? Easy. Bring up the Colony report and click the "General" tab. Next sort by "Pic" which sorts by planet size, then sort again by "Atmosphere". Next click on the "Races" tab on the right. Now you have a list of planets sorted in increasing size by atmosphere and you can see what kind of race is on the planet. Concentrate on the largest planets first for undoming.

8) I am running a resource defecit but which construction queues should I shut down first? First check out which resource you are shortest in by using the empire status report. Then bring up the construction queue, click "usage" on the right then sort by the usage column. This will show the most usage planets first using the total per turn for each planet M+O+R. The highest using planets will be at the top.

9) What things will I produce on the next turn? Easy. Bring up the colony report, click on "construction" tab on the right. Next sort by the "time remaining" tab. scroll down to see all the things that only need .1 years to build.

10) I've got too much resources coming in each turn and all my spaceyards are already building something and I don't have enough storage. I don't want to lose the resources, so which planets have the most empty cargo room for building units? Bring up the colony report, click on the cargo tab on the right, then sort by "space". Sroll to bottom to see the least filled planets. BTW, build more spaceyards and/or storage!

11) Use Waypoints. If you only use 1 waypoint, make your homeworld waypoint 1. I usually transform my homeworld into a training center at some point in the game. It is very convenient to click on a ship and then hit CTRL-1 to send it to my homeworld for training. If I make another training world or fleet rally point, it is easy to use another waypoint for that one too. You are limited to 10 waypoints, but I have never needed all 10. You can also make spaceyards automatically send ships to a given waypoint. Also, rename your waypoints to give them descriptive titles such as "home", "defensive chokepoint 1", etc. I haven't tried this, but I believe that if you move a waypoint, all the ships which have orders to move to that waypoint will automatically go to the new location. This might be a good way to have a "rolling" fleet staging point.


That's 11 things that I find useful for now. I may add to this later.

Slick.

[Alneyan]

All below does not take cheesiness into account, and merely states what is possible to do that does not sound so obvious (it does not include anything involving abusing allies or the like).

3') Use fighters for your fleet training needs. They travel on their own, do not need a SY, and so can be built at that useless one facility planet without wasting SY-time. Fighters also do not cost anything at all to maintain, unlike ships.

12) Drones can have strategies of their own, including not automatically ramming anything within range. If you like to use them, it might be a good idea to use decoy drones to soak up PDC fire (especially if you would like to do something different for once).

13) Most actions involving Stellar Manipulation can be done in the middle of the turn. For example, send your Warp Opener to another system, and order the vessel to open a wormhole there. Or put a Star Destroy over a star, order it to pull back for one sector, and then to come back to the star to destroy it, giving your fleet time to escape. That one may be quite obvious, but I have played for several months before being told about it.

14) When playing with a harsh ship limit, and/or having resource shortages, you might want to put vessels in your queues, and hold their construction one turn before completion. It will cut down your resource expenses will still allowing you to have backups under your hand. (The answer to your question Alarikf is: yes, the Polymer People has such reinforcements standing by)

15) Not exactly a trick, but something worth reminding. When using Resource Converters, never put the planet on Repeat Orders. Ever. Failure to do so will result in headaches, massive economical shortages, and general despair within your Empire.

16) Much like Slick's first suggestion, you can use dummy units to mark planets fully developped. Make a satellite, put it in the queues of all your developped planets, and put the queue on hold. This way, you can sort planets by construction queue, allowing you to see which planets are currently doing nothing.

17) Are you bothered with having people spy on your ship count? (Namely by checking the numbers after your designs) You might want to consider doing a very minor retrofit then, where the original vessel is "This is not a warship" and the updated one "This is still not a warship". Once your ten "This is not a warship" warships have been retrofitted, the next such ships will not take the numbers after 11, but will cycle back to 1. Someone too confident might actually believe you have fewer ships than in actuality, as after all your design name remained the same.

[Fyron]

18) You can upgrade a single facility at a time on a planet that has lots of the same facility. Find a planet with just one obselete facility built. Add the Upgrade Facility X item to the build queue. Click on Fill Queue, then Save the queue with an appropriate name by clicking on Add Type. Now, go to the previous planet. Use the Fill Queue button to add the single facility upgrade order. You can naturally have "Upgrade 2 X" or "Upgrade 3 X" fill queues by finding planets with 2 or 3 facilities to upgrade, respectively. Using this method, you can upgrade large Groups of facilities in small batches, thus allowing some to be upgraded immediately and begin functioning sooner than it would take for all to be upgraded at once.

19) You can use the hotkey ctrl + t to manually add a minefield marker to a sector, and ctrl + r to remove one. These can be used to mark certain sectors, such as damaging warp points, as no-fly zones. Your ships will avoid the sectors marked as minefields, trying to find a safer route.

20) Your exploration ships do not have to stop when entering an unexplored system. You can order them to "move to" a random sector in the system, such as the far side or center, after the "warp" order. The ship will merrily continue on it's way.

[Slick]

21) To give a bunch of ships in the same sector the "sentry" order, shift-click them all, then manually left click one of them and give it the "sentry" order. For some reason, the Sentry button doesn't light up when shift clicking multiple ships.

13') you can use this "stagger step" to time out lots of combinations. Stellar manipulation is a great one to practice with, but you can use your imagination to time out other complicated routines in a simultaneous game turn.

19') Strategically placing minefield markers can also be used to "funnel" ships to move over a Resupply Depot.


Slick.

p.s. Fyron, for 18, I had thought many times about doing this, but I didn't think it would work. Thanks!

[Atrocities]

I made this a sticky for a bit. To give it a chance to draw in readers. Will unsticky it later.

[Roanon]

Hey Slick, you're giving away all my cool tricks! Soon I will not be able to win any game any more! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

2) I do not have verified it yet, but I think I have noticed after the Last patch that ships in queues on a planet without shipyards are automatically cleared when the turn is executed.

6) Never could make attack / load troops work reliably. I always use attack, move one sector away, load troops from previous sector. This works always. I do not know why the load order is often ignored otherwise.

10) Too much income, too little spaceyards? Retrofit series are your friend! Roughly doubles your shipyard capacity. Save cost and time by training while retrofitting.

15) Always build at least one resource converter more than needed. Nothing more crippling than a conquered resource converter if it is your only one. One class III converter can only convert a maximum of 1,365,000 resources into 955,500 of a different type per turn. If you try to convert more, the orders will be queued into the next turn.

[Fyron]

Roanon said:
6) Never could make attack / load troops work reliably. I always use attack, move one sector away, load troops from previous sector. This works always. I do not know why the load order is often ignored otherwise.

Huh. I have never had a problem doing this. The only time a problem arises is if I have a ship survive with so much damage that it can't move much if at all, but that just stops the fleet entirely...

[Tanus]

Imperator Fyron said:

Roanon said:
6) Never could make attack / load troops work reliably. I always use attack, move one sector away, load troops from previous sector. This works always. I do not know why the load order is often ignored otherwise.

Huh. I have never had a problem doing this. The only time a problem arises is if I have a ship survive with so much damage that it can't move much if at all, but that just stops the fleet entirely...



I've also had this problem. If I tell ships to attack, then load troops, very often the ships will just move on without reloading the troops, and thereby glass the next planets. I also attack-move one sector-load troops from previous to make sure that it actually loads my troops

[Fyron]

Does this happen in sectors with multiple planets? I find that if I order the fleet to attack every planet in the sector, then one load troops order, it works fine. I don't think I have ever had a problem with my fleets not picking up the troops on the move. Is the ground combat requiring more than one combat? This isn't very likely in stock SE4, but could be an issue...

[Roanon]

I usually attack multiple planets first, because after the load order it might be that only 1 transport may be loaded with troops, and the fleet be able to capture only single planets. About 90% of the time, the load order didn't work unless preceeded by a sidestep move of one sector which I routinely do now.

[Slick]

As you all can tell, I finally got a weekend off! Worked 7 weeks straight and the 2nd thing I did on my day off was play SE4 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Anyways, all the good ideas here will eventually make it to the FAQ.

There has to be more good ideas out there. What I would really like to see are neat or subtle interface tricks, special strings of ship orders, and the like. Unique planet or system setups that you find useful are also welcome. Any good multiplayer tricks are also good (keep the good ones secret if you want, but throw us a bone!) If you have had a headache with a certain part of the game and later found a workaround, post it here. Chances are good that others haven't found the trick yet.

Slick.

[Fyron]

Roanon said:
I usually attack multiple planets first, because after the load order it might be that only 1 transport may be loaded with troops, and the fleet be able to capture only single planets.

Do you send your transports out with full cargo loads? Troops are rarely lost in ground combat in stock SE4, except in the odd situation where some player filled their planet with troops (which I have never seen done myself...). If so, then all transports should be filled back up, as the first transport can't load everything. Of course, if you use a lot of carriers, losing fighters might skew the results... But then, in most situations fighters aren't really worth using in stock SE4.


About 90% of the time, the load order didn't work unless preceeded by a sidestep move of one sector which I routinely do now.

Strange. I have never seen it fail.

[Slick]

I have only seen the order fail very rarely. I usually only use a single Troop Transport in my fleets, though. Could it have to do with multiple transports?

Yeah, Yeah, I know...use more transports. Old dog, new trick...

Slick.

[Fyron]

22) If you disable Condensed View when designing a ship, you can stagger the placement of weapons to control which will fire first and in what order. This can be useful for using Ionic Dispersers, for example. You might want to put first 1 Shield Depleter, then 2 Anti-Proton Beams, then 1 Ionic Disperser, then several more Anti-Proton Beams. The purpose of this is to try to get all of the shields knocked out before the Ionic Disperser fires. If there are shield points remaining, the Ionic Disperser will be unable to do its damage to the engines. The Anti-Proton Beams do not care what they hit, shields or hull. Placing a few of them before the Ionic Disperser helps improve the chances that all of the shield points will be gone before the Ionic Disperser fires. You migh consider placing the Ionic Disperser Last. If you do this, you might create situations in which the Anti-Proton Beam shots get lucky and knock out some engines, thus wasting damage points overall.

23) One hit from a heavy mounted or two shots from large mounted Ionic Dispersers will wipe out all of the engines on any ship. This will eliminate all supply storage on the ship, thus rendering it unable to fire any weapons. All further weapons from the enemy fleet will now ignore your useless hulk and target other ships. So, you should always add a Supply Storage component to all warships (certainly of Light Cruiser size or larger, possibly Destroyers, but those tend to die very quickly anyways so the benefits are reduced). Later when you get Quantum Reactors, the Supply Storage component should be replaced with a Quantum Reactor. This will allow the ship to still have some supplies after all engines are knocked out. So, it is still a threatening target. Enemy warships will continue to fire weapons at it until it is disabled (all weapons destroyed) or utterly destroyed. This, fewer ships of yours can be disabled in a given round with the same amount of enemy firepower. At 20 kT, a Supply Storage component is almost trivial in size (especially once you get Battle Cruisers and larger sized ships), and has the added benefit of increasing the operational range of your fleets by 10-20%, depending on other factors.

Note: A Solar Collector is _not_ a viable replacement for a Supply Storage component! Surely, it provides greater benefits in terms of range, but it will not prevent your ships from being unable to fire at all if they are hit by Ionic Dispersers.

24) Computer Viruses are the bane of Master Computer equipped ships. For larger ships, you might consider adding 1 Bridge, 1 Life Support, and 1 Crew Quarter component in addition to the Master Computer. 1 of each is all you need to maintain full command and control of the ship (ie: no loss of movement). Surely, adding the extra C&C components is more expensive in cost and size than just the Master Computer. However, on larger ship hulls, it will still be cheaper than using no Master Computer at all and relying on normal C&C components. If the Master Computer is knocked out, you still have the required command and control components, so your ship is fully functional. It will still be protected from Allegience Subverters and Mental Flailers, even with a damaged Master Computer. Against Psychic races, you get immunity to Allegience Subverters and immunity to disablement from Computer Viruses. Against normal races, you still get the immunity to disablement from Computer Viruses, and can save a lot of space and resources on large ship hulls.

[Fyron]

Slick said:
I have only seen the order fail very rarely. I usually only use a single Troop Transport in my fleets, though. Could it have to do with multiple transports?

Yeah, Yeah, I know...use more transports. Old dog, new trick...

Slick.

I have been using 2 troop transports to conquer planets with a moon in the same turn, and using the move to next planet trick, to great affect in the PBW game P&N on PBW, take 2. Yes, it is using SE4 1.49, so it is possible that some bug appeared in a later Version. I have a lot of carriers, due to fighters being useful in P&N Mod, and I haven't seen any of them load the troops up rather than the transports. I do occasionally have problems with all troops going on a single transport, as it is actually possible to lose troops in ground invasions in P&N Mod, so I only attack a single sector with 2 planets once per turn to make sure I don't glass the second moon. But other than that, I have had no problems at all conquering 3-7 planets in a turn (depending on system layout of course). The only time a problem occurs is when my invasion forces are unable to defeat all militia in a single combat (once again thanks to P&N Mod, this is actually possible). If there is just one planet, the second transport drops troops and it is usually enough. If it isn't, the fleet will do nothing further, as it will be unable to load troops. It will _not_ continue on it's merry way, leaving the troops behind on the embattled planet.

This is, of course, not the only game I have done such things in, but it is the one that I am doing it in currently. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[iaen]

Instead of building resource storage facilies, you can also build insanely expensive bases, and mothball them. When you're lacking in reserves, scrap a few. Becomes a lot more efficient with recycling facilities. It is also a perfect excuse for keeping hundreds of sunkillers around.

[Roanon]

Imperator Fyron said:
Troops are rarely lost in ground combat in stock SE4, except in the odd situation where some player filled their planet with troops (which I have never seen done myself...).


Try fighting real opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif. Yes, some of my enemies are so eager to deny me their planets that they build their police troops with weapons. Also, if you have the standard -50 ground combat racial trait, planets with higher population, i.e. nearly every planet when fighting against an organic enemy, will cause heavy losses from the militia. My transports only have about 500kt space, being heavily armored so they are able to advance alone against shipless planets. 2 x 50 troops are worn down to 1 x 50 (or less) troops after very few turns when fighting against an enemy who has the impertinence to make your victory as slow and fruitless as possible - hi Teal, hi Alneyan http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


If it isn't, the fleet will do nothing further, as it will be unable to load troops. It will _not_ continue on it's merry way, leaving the troops behind on the embattled planet.


Very old and outdated game Version..... Tried this with the latest game Version?

[Alneyan]

Do not fret Roanon, for the might of the Continuum will not keep your invading troops at bay for much longer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif The previous player built more troops than I know what to do with, and these have been reconverted to the noble purpose of forcing you to glass my planets (you won't get free happiness from me!). I did build a couple more troops here and there, but my happiness collapsed before I could manage to fully protect all my planets.

Speaking of troops: the Shield Depleter is the most powerful weapon for troops in the regular game, as special damage does not matter for troops. Only cost and damage per kt have any incidence, and the Shield Depleter is the best by a fair amount in these two fields. It makes very little sense, so use your own mileage to determine whether it is a legitimate design or not. The writer declines any responsability for the mishandling of Small Shield Depleters.

A few reminders worth mentioning:
- The Crystalline Armour effectively works as a beefed up Emissive Armour, as it is able to negate weapons doing 149 normal damage or less (with 10 Crystalline Armour III per vessel, and at least 150 points of shielding). Adding more Crystalline Armour or more regular Armour only helps to increase the survivability of the ship. It does not go above 150 because the Crystalline Armour has a damage resistance of 150 points. So if you are fighting such a vessel with DUCs doing 120 damage points per turn, do not be surprised to see you have dealt no damage whatsoever to the enemy fleet.
- Unlike the Mental Flail (I am not sure of the exact name of this weapon... It is the Psychic weapon increasing reload time), the Energy Dampener is not countered by anything at all, including the Master Computer. These weapons do not pop in often, but be warned of their properties if you are fighting them.
- The War Shrine and the Temporal facility providing the same ability only affects offence (by +15% and +30% respectively at level III), and do not give any bonus to defence, contrary to what the description seems to imply.
- Never, ever, cloak a minesweeper. Minesweepers do not work when cloaked. For the sake of safety, not putting any kind of cloaking device on them would seem to be a good idea; unless you have perfectly accurate intelligence that is.

I do not know if it is really on topic, but I have taken the liberty of pasting a lengthy explanation on how damage really works in SE4. The quote comes straight from Dubious Guide, and has been posted on these Boards in 2001 by Zanthis. The only change since then is that Organic Armour no longer regenerates before being damaged; the rest remains valid with the 1.91 patch as far as I can tell. If it is irrelevant to your idea for this thread Slick, feel free to tell me so and I will cut off the quote below.

"In order to better understand how damage is dealt, I did some extensive testing with the simulator. Here are my results, in FAQ format:

1. How is damage assigned?
First, ignore shields for now (see Question #2). Now, every time you hit a ship, a random component is selected on the target. If the target still has armor, the random component will be a piece of armor. Now, if the amount of damage you've done with that hit equals or exceeds the damage resistance of the component, it is destroyed. If you have left-over damage, another component is randomly selected. Repeat until a component is selected for which not enough damage remains to destroy. This extra damage is stored by the target for use later.
Now, next time the target is hit, the first thing that happens is any extra damage (from previous hits) is added to your weapon's damage. Then, the selecting of components to be destroyed occurs as described in the above paragraph.
As you can see, this means components do not have "damage done to them." I have not been able to verify it, but it is likey that when a component is randomly selected and not destroyed, it is remembered and automatically selected in the future until destroyed. This would give the appearance of a single component taking damage. However, I do know that if you change damage types (say from normal to armor skipping) a new component is randomly selected.
That means, if you modify Armor III to take 400 (instead of 40) damage to destroy and change the Shard Cannon to do only 1 damage (it skips armor) and then hit a ship with one Armor III for 300 normal damage (which cannot destroy the piece of Armor III and so sits around as extra damage) and then hit the target for only 1 point of damage with the Shard Cannon, 301 damage will be randomly targeted at components inside the target's armor!!! This is why Shard Cannons and Null-Space Projectors sometimes really gut ships, especially those using high-resistant armor (Organic, Crystaline, etc).
Of course, the reverse is also true. If you hit with armor skipping damage but fail to destroy a component, you just generate extra damage. Future hits may apply that extra damage toward armor, even though it originally skipped armor.

2. Ok, so how do shields fit into this?
I'm glad you asked. First, don't mix phased and non-phased generating components. If you do, you get non-phased shields. That is, until all the non-phased shield generating components are destroyed; then suddenly, in the middle of battle, your shields will become phased.
Ok, otherwise, shields work just like you expect. Damage from weapons gets taken off your shields first. However, remember above where I told you extra damage is added to your weapon's damage before being applied? That happens before your weapon's damage is applied to shields. That means, hit a ship with normal shields and some Armor III with a PPB (skips non-phased shields) for 35 damage (not enough to destroy a piece of armor) and then with a Meson BLaster (normal damage) for 30 and the extra damage (35 from the PPB) is added to the Meson's 30 for a total of 65 damage delt to the target's non-phased shields!!!
This gets even more fun with shield regeneration. See, if you get some damage passed their shields without destroying components (so it's still extra damage), but the regenerators bring the shields back up, that damage you got passed their shields gets pulled back out and has to go through the shields again next time the ship gets hit.
As an added bonus, destroying a shield generating component drops your current shield value to your maximum shield value (assuming your current value was greater than max value) but it does this before the component is destroyed! This means, with 3 Shield V (900 shields), if you get hit by a PPB that kills one of the generators, your shields will be 900 out of 600! If a second hit kills another generator, your shields will be 600 out of 300.

[Snip: Zanthis was discussing the pre 1.49 Organic Armour in question 3]

4. Do I really want to know how Crystalline Armor works?
No, you really, really don't. But here it is. Let's do this by example. Assume a ship with 0/300 shields and 4 Crystalline Armor III (150 damage resistance each , 15 dmg converted to shields each) and no damage inside shields yet. This ship is hit by a Meson BLaster (normal damage) for 30. The CA regenerates the target's shields by 30 (it could have done up to 60, but the weapon damage was only 30). This shield regeneration is done after the weapon damage is applied against shields, so it doesn't block this hit. Now, the 30 weapon damage becomes extra damage since it cannot kill the armor (that takes 150). So, we now have 30/300 shields and 30 extra damage.
The target is hit again for another 30 damage. First, we added extra damage to this, so we get a hit doing 60 damage (see Question #1 if you've forgot about that ). Now, the shield blocks 30, so 30 damage is left which causes the CA to regen another 30 shields and the ships extra damage to be set to 30, again. So, we now have 30/300 shields and 30 extra damage. Look familar?
That's right, if you cannot, in a single hit, do either 150 damage OR more damage than the CA can convert to shields, you will NEVER hurt the ship without armor skipping weapons (see Question #1 for how much fun you can have sneaking non-armor skipping damage inside a ship with armor-skipping weapons).
Don't believe me? Ok, example continued, but doing 60 damage this time. Adding extra damage makes it 90, shield blocks 30, 60 points of shields regen'd and 60 points to extra damage. Now we have 60/300 shields and 60 extra damage. Hit again for 60, plus extra damage is 120, shields block 60, 60 left, regen shield 60 and extra damage becomes 60, leaving us with 60/300 shields and 60 extra damage? Fun, isn't it?
Again, 65 damage though. Add extra damage, 125, shield blocks 60, 65 left, regen shield 60 (max for 4 CA-III) and extra damage set to 65. Hit again for 65. Add extra damage, 130, shield blocks 60, 70 left, regen shield 60 and extra damage set to 70. Hit again for 65. Add extra damage, 135, shield blocks 60, 75 left, regen shield 60 and extra damage set to 75. As you can see, the extra damage slowly creeps up, and once it hits 150, it will kill a piece of CA. At which point only 45 damage can be converted to shields and doing 65 a hit, the ship will begin to die faster.
Now, here is the scary part. We're 60/300 shields with 75 extra damage and no CA destroyed yet. You've been slowly chipping away with 65 damage weapons. Guess what happens if you hit is for 60 or less damage? Hit for 40. Add extra damage, 115, shield blocks 60, 55 left, regen shield 55 and extra damage set to 55. Now we're at 55/300 and 55 extra damage. That's right, the ship has effectively healed 20!!!
Moral of the story, once you've got his shield almost down, fire *only* weapons that do more damage than he can convert to shields (or do 150+ damage). If you must use lower damaging weapons, fire only your highest low-damage weapon until his shields equal the damage that that weapon does. Then, switch to your big guns. This maximizes the amount of damage applied to his components. If your "big gun" happens to be armor skipping, even better. This will suck the extra damage from your weaker weapons right past his armor into his internals. Also, armor skipping also does not trigger CA's shield regeneration. This makes it the ability of choice for taking out crystalline armored ships.

5. And how do fighters fit into all this?
First off, a lone fighter works exactly the same as a ship...almost. You cannot fire only one of multiple identical weapons. All DUC-III's on a single fighter fire at once or not at all. In fact, you must unhighlight all of them or they all fire.
Further, all identical items are combined into a single super-weapon. DUC-III normally do 15 damage each. Mount four on a fighter and you almost have one weapon doing 60 damage. I say almost, because there is a separate roll to hit for each weapon. So if you have only a 50% to hit, your quad-DUC3's will normally behave like a single weapon dealing 30 damage, although it could do either 0 (all four miss) or up to 60.
Incidentally, DUC-III and DUC-II count as different weapons and do not combine in the above described manner. Also, this combining effect is not bad, and can be good. That means you normally don't want to mix weapons on your fighters.
Once you start grouping them, things get more confusing. Like lone fighters, all weapons of the same type combine, but across the entire group. To avoid firing your DUC3's in a squad of fighters, you must unhighlight all of them. Leave even one highlighted and ever fighter will fire their DUC3's.
It should not be surprising that this means larger fighter Groups rip up crystalline armor easier, not to mention help you bypass emmisive armor. Of course, larger Groups are easier to kill due to damage streaming.
If it weren't for how crystalline armor currently works, I'd say the combining effect of fighters is unimportant. It doesn't really effect how things play out. But with CA the way it stands, you might want to consider using larger Groups when dealing with ships protected by lots of CA."

[Aiken]

It's a well known strategy, but I'll mention it nevertheless:
If you want to achive maximum efficiency in ground combat, it's worth to design 3 types of troops: Defender, Offender and Leader.
Defender's design include small shields (or armor) only. Offenders are armed with you favorite weapon (ground cannons or small shield depleters) and nothing else. Leader is equiped with shields plus small combat sensor and small ecm components.
Produce them in 3:6:1 proportions (rough numbers). Now, then filling your troop transport, place Defenders first, then Offenders and Last Leaders. Being dropped to a planet, Defender will play a meat shield role, Offenders will stay behind Defenders unharmed and wipe out militia (or hostile troops) and Leaders will provide attack and defense bonus to the whole stack of troops.

[Gandalf Parker]

iaen said:
Instead of building resource storage facilies, you can also build insanely expensive bases, and mothball them. When you're lacking in reserves, scrap a few. Becomes a lot more efficient with recycling facilities. It is also a perfect excuse for keeping hundreds of sunkillers around.

WOW and the light goes on!
I had excess materials, I wanted to have stupid tiny worlds at home do some sort of building, so I used precious planet slots making a cargo storage so I could buildup stockpiles of mines or drones. And sats/ftrs before I saw something here about autolaunch.

BUILD STORAGE BASES! They can be emergency resources as mentioned above, allows for full use of the planet building up possible use items, and if things get tight in that area the base can be retrofitted some something with weapons/shields.
And they have only .1 more build time than a cargo facility (in the check I just made YMMV)

[Gandalf Parker]

aiken said:
Defender's design include small shields (or armor) only. Offenders are armed with you favorite weapon (ground cannons or small shield depleters) and nothing else. Leader is equiped with shields plus small combat sensor and small ecm components.

DOes that strategy carry over to other things? Fighters? Drones? Satellites? Ships?

[Slick]

Aiken: for simultaneous games, how do you make sure the troops are loaded right after the initial load? If you attack,load,attack,load, etc, don't they get all jumbled up?

Slick.

[Aiken]

Gandalf, it's a general rule for units: first loaded - first deployed, second loaded - second deployed. Note, that you can't store ships in cargo.


Slick said:
Aiken: for simultaneous games, how do you make sure the troops are loaded right after the initial load? If you attack,load,attack,load, etc, don't they get all jumbled up?

Slick.



I tested deployment of multiple unit types with load/drop cargo orders: loaded 4 types of troops to transport and then ordered it to move to planet, drop troops, load troops, move to next planet ... There were 4 destination points (my planets). Next turn, placement order of troops in cargo was the same as initial one (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). I'm not sure about real planet assault, though. I'll make a test game to check it, and post my observation here.

[Fyron]

Roanon said:

Imperator Fyron said:
Troops are rarely lost in ground combat in stock SE4, except in the odd situation where some player filled their planet with troops (which I have never seen done myself...).


Try fighting real opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif. Yes, some of my enemies are so eager to deny me their planets that they build their police troops with weapons. Also, if you have the standard -50 ground combat racial trait, planets with higher population, i.e. nearly every planet when fighting against an organic enemy, will cause heavy losses from the militia. My transports only have about 500kt space, being heavily armored so they are able to advance alone against shipless planets. 2 x 50 troops are worn down to 1 x 50 (or less) troops after very few turns when fighting against an enemy who has the impertinence to make your victory as slow and fruitless as possible - hi Teal, hi Alneyan http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Huh. That is your problem, you have poor troop ship designs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif My designs are capable of dropping as many troops as possible, and even with 50 physical strength and against planets where police troops are armed, I never lose any... Even the militia of filled huge worlds have never been an issue (as by the time huge worlds are filled, I have large transports and large troops)...


Very old and outdated game Version..... Tried this with the latest game Version?

I have not had the opportunity recently to conquer planets with moons, but I have indeed successfully conquered multiple planets in one turn without issue in 1.91.

[Fyron]

Slick said:
Aiken: for simultaneous games, how do you make sure the troops are loaded right after the initial load? If you attack,load,attack,load, etc, don't they get all jumbled up?

Slick.

In my experience, they remain in the originally loaded order when you use Attack and Load Remotely orders. Even when you just move the fleet into the sector with the planet(s).

[Gandalf Parker]

aiken said:
Gandalf, it's a general rule for units: first loaded - first deployed, second loaded - second deployed. Note, that you can't store ships in cargo.



I could test this myself later I guess... but does this mean that such a tactic would work for fighters and drones? Ive been using # of engines to try and add some control to attack sequence.

[Aiken]

It should work. I used such tactic with 2 types of fighters: first I loaded carrier with rocket pod fighters (1st wave), and then duc fighters (2nd wave). They were launched in the same order as loaded.

edit: but I don't actually remember, if they were recovered in proper order or not. need to test it again.

[Fyron]

Just don't bother trying to get your fighter stacks to each have 3 of one fighter type, 1 of a second and 1 of a third... If you can even manage to do it once, losing a single fighter will screw up the ordering and future launches will have the stacks out of wack...

[Slick]

aiken said:
It should work. I used such tactic with 2 types of fighters: first I loaded carrier with rocket pod fighters (1st wave), and then duc fighters (2nd wave). They were launched in the same order as loaded.

edit: but I don't actually remember, if they were recovered in proper order or not. need to test it again.




What about using more than 1 Troop Transport. I can't see how the order would stay the same after some troops get lost with the added variable of not knowing which transport will pick up the troops.

Slick.

[Slick]

Hey! A friend of mine mentioned that he may have figured out a way to overcome the "cloaked minesweepers don't sweep mines" problem. I'll be testing this before I post the results.

Slick.

[Fyron]

That would definitely be a cheating exploit, as cloaked minesweepers do not sweep mines for balance reasons... You should definitely email the bug exploit to Malfador if it works.

[Alneyan]

A small thing perhaps worth mentioning: red nebulaes grant you the best kind of cloaking, which cannot be bypassed by *any* sensor. This can be used to help your natural paranoia, or to have a nice secure system when striking against another Empire.

On the topic of game mechanisms: happiness is one of the most important factors of your Empire, and keeping it as high as possible should be one of your priorities. Happiness works as follow: all your planets have an happiness value (from 0 to 1000) expressing the number of unhappy people on this planet. If you have an happiness value of 0, nobody is angry on this planet, whereas a value of 1000 means everyone is out asking for your blood. These values are expressed in tenths of percent, so 540 means 54% of the inhabitants of this planet are unhappy. From the Happiness.txt file, the various levels of happiness are as follow:

Population Anger (in %) Descript. Resource Modificator
75 - 100 Rioting 0%
60 - 74 Angry 80%
45 - 59 Unhappy 90%
30 - 44 Indifferent 100%
15 - 29 Happy 110%
0 - 14 Jubiliant 120%

So what modifies happiness? The following means can be used to reduce your population anger values, thus improving your happiness. Note that most of the values are given for the Peaceful happiness type, by far the most common. For other happiness types, please replace the numbers as needed.

*Empire wide positive changes:
- Colonising a planet decreases unhappiness by 1% per planet colonised.
- Likewise, capturing an enemy planet decreases unhappiness by 3% per planet captured.
- Enacting certain treaties (Trade Alliance and above for peaceful) decreases unhappiness, from -2% for a Trade Alliance to -10% for a Partnership. This bonus is only applied when accepting the treaty, regardless of any previous treaty you had with the particular Empire.

*System wide positive changes:
- The Urban Pacification Center, the Fate Shrine and the Temporal Vacation Service improve happiness within a whole system. At levels III, the UPC and the Fate Shrine reduce population anger by 3% (a value of 30) per turn, and the Temporal Vacation Service reduces unhappiness by 6% every turn.
- Having ships in a system decreases unhappiness by 0,3% per ship. Having a big fleet within a system is thus an effective way of quenching unrest.
- Winning a battle in the system decreases unhappiness by 2% per battle won.

*Sector or planetary changes:
- Winning a battle over the sector decreases unhappiness by 5% per battle.
- Every troop on a planet decreases unhappiness by 0,2%, regardless of the strength of the troop.
- Friendly ships decreases unhappiness if they are over the planet(s) in question, by 1% per ship.
- Building ships and facilities should decrease unhappiness by 0,5%, which only affects the planet in question to the best of my knowledge (this bonus is fairly weak, and I have yet to see it play a major part, so I gather it is only planet wide).

And now the more annoying part, why you are losing happiness. It goes as follow:

* Empire wide happiness losses:
- Losing a planet (where the planet is destroyed from orbit) increases unhappiness by 5% for the whole Empire. This is the main reason why happiness collapses if you are fighting a defensive war (where your planets are being glassed). Losing your homeworld thus increases unhappiness by 10%, which may or may not stack with the regular happiness loss.
- Losing a ship increases unrest by 0,1% per ship lost. I believe it applies to the whole Empire, but may be wrong on this one; feel free to correct me if required.
- Having a planet captured increases unhappiness by 3% per planet captured.
- Specific treaties lower your happiness, such as War, Non Intercourse, and Subjugation/Protectorate when you are the dominated party. Again, this is only for the Peaceful happiness type.

* System wide happiness losses:
- The presence of enemy ships increases unrest by 0,5% per ship.
- Losing a battle in the system increases unrest by 2% per battle.
- Every ship lost in the system increases unrest by 0,2%.

* Sector or planet happiness losses:
- Losing a battle in the sector increases unhappiness by 5%, while having a battle without a clear victor increases unhappiness by 1%.
- Every ship in the sector increases unrest by 0,8%.
- Every one million settler killed increases unhappiness by 0,1%.
- Enemy troops on the planet (in the case of long ground battles) increases unrest by no less than 20%.
- Having a plagued planet increases unrest by 20% as well.

The following can improve or decrease happiness:
- Points above 100 in the Happiness characteristic gives you a small increase of happiness for your whole Empire, whereas points below 100 decreases your global Happiness. Note that this effect has little impact on the game, because of the Natural happiness decrease.
- The Natural decrease is of 2% every turn, regardless of whatever else may happen. This will push happiness towards the Indifferent level if you are between Jubilant and Angry, by 2% every turn. So if you have a planet with a Jubilant status, this will be a decrease, whereas it will actually increase happiness for an Angry planet. Natural decrease does not allow you to "undo" a riot on a planet however.

Since the 1.91 patch, there is an effective cap for happiness changes each turn. This is set at 20%, either positive or negative, and means you cannot increase or decrease unhappiness by more than 20% every turn. So if all your planets were Jubilant, you could not fall immediately to Riots in a single turn (you would need between four and five turns for it to happen). Before the 1.91 patch, this cap was indicated in full percents, and so was set at 200% (twice as much as the maximum anger value), hence resulting in immediate massive riots if you had lost enough planets in a single turn.

[Slick]

Imperator Fyron said:
That would definitely be a cheating exploit, as cloaked minesweepers do not sweep mines for balance reasons... You should definitely email the bug exploit to Malfador if it works.



Hold your horses. I said I'm testing it. I also assure you that, if this does in fact work, it is NOT an exploit and I will post the method here. At this point, I won't say any more. It may or may not acutally work. The person who told me about it is a newbie so I wanted to test it before posting it. It does sound to me like it might work though.


Slick.

[capnq]

* Sector or planet happiness losses:

- Every ship in the sector increases unrest by 0,8%.

Every enemy ship, that is.

[AgentZero]

When I'm playing as an evil empire, which is most of the time, one of my favourite tricks is to ally with two (AI) opponents who are sharing a system with each other. I then park a small fleet over Empire A's planets, and declare war on Empire B. When Empire B's ships attack mine, I destroy them, but first capture the planet belonging to Empire A (my ally). Obviously this doesn't work against human opponents, but you can sometimes get quite a few planets this way.
I once had a game where I had fleets parked over 10 huge planets across 3 systems that belonged to my 'ally'. When I declared war on the other empire, he attacked all 10 fleets in the same turn (with 2 destroyers against 15 DNs. Go figure). I went from being ranked 6th in that game right up to 1st in one turn. Pure evil sweetness.

[Fyron]

Let's keep things that are obviously bug exploits, such as conquering an ally's planets, out of the list...

[AgentZero]

Well, I dunno. Last game I played against a human (which was AGES) ago, I did something similar to one of my friends and just told him the enemy conquered his planet and I took it back. Course things got ugly pretty fast when I decided not to give it back. ;-)

In terms of 'legitimate' strategies, I've put quite a bit of thought into fighter combat strategies. One thing I find works quite well for keeping your fighters alive is to have your carriers escorted by a few Missile Ships. As the name implies, these are ships (usually CRs or BCs) loaded to the gills with CSMs (With my modified ships sizes a CR carries about 18CSMs and a BC does 30). When in combat, I have them spread their fire across as many targets as possible, and send my fighters in about 1-2 squares behind them. The AI uses up all their PDCs on the missiles, and the fighters can swoop in to attack unmolested. Each fighter usually carried 4 Rocket Pods so 400 damage potential per fighter (again, modified sizes, but the principle is the same), and a Heavy carrier can launch about 250 fighters. So 250x400=100,000 damage points. And that's a lot of hurt in anybody's books.

Using this tactic, I usually send out hunting packs of 2 heavy carriers, 3 Missile BCs and one spaceyard ship with cargo comps to ensure my carriers are always fully loaded. It works brilliantly against the AI, but not so well against humans, since I haven't figured out how to use the 'Missile Screen' tactic in Strategic Combat.

[Makinus]

Just a small trick, that while obvious, i did not see much people using it:

When colonizing distant systems, create a fleet with the Colony Ship and a small ship full of supply components and solar panels (an escort or frigate is enough) so the colony ship can have the supplies needed to reach the system...

I normally retrofit my old escort and frigate ships to these "booster ships" when new hull sizes make them obsolete in the line of battle...

Other use for obsolete frigates is to add a repair component to them and make them repair ships that still can be useful in the line of battle.

Another use for obsolete escort and frigates is to add cargo components and use them as troop transports or faster trasnports for units, since they can have more engines than the traditional transports (while the traditional transports are more cost-effective, these "fast transports" can help you to transport badly needed units faster to the front)...

i don´t know if these hints are really usefull against human players, since i mainly play against the AI, but i just wanted to add my 2 cents....

[tesco samoa]

I like to make the all in one support ship

A ship that has cargo for troops, Mine sweepers and Repair all built into one. ( Plus it is also the EM scanner ship ) This helps with making the ship very useful in 3 rolls... Add a q.r. or some supplies as well to finish it off. As all ships should have spent 20kt on the supply bay.

[Grandpa Kim]

Another small item:

You don't actually need fighters on a planet to issue the "launch fighters" orders. All you need is one unit of any sort. (For me, this usually mean riot troops.) This allows you the issue the build order and launch fighters order at the same time thus avoiding the eventual "no storage available" log entry.


2. Ok, so how do shields fit into this?
I'm glad you asked. First, don't mix phased and non-phased generating components. If you do, you get non-phased shields. That is, until all the non-phased shield generating components are destroyed; then suddenly, in the middle of battle, your shields will become phased.
Ok, otherwise, shields work just like you expect. Damage from weapons gets taken off your shields first. However, remember above where I told you extra damage is added to your weapon's damage before being applied? That happens before your weapon's damage is applied to shields. That means, hit a ship with normal shields and some Armor III with a PPB (skips non-phased shields) for 35 damage (not enough to destroy a piece of armor) and then with a Meson BLaster (normal damage) for 30 and the extra damage (35 from the PPB) is added to the Meson's 30 for a total of 65 damage delt to the target's non-phased shields!!!
This gets even more fun with shield regeneration. See, if you get some damage passed their shields without destroying components (so it's still extra damage), but the regenerators bring the shields back up, that damage you got passed their shields gets pulled back out and has to go through the shields again next time the ship gets hit.
As an added bonus, destroying a shield generating component drops your current shield value to your maximum shield value (assuming your current value was greater than max value) but it does this before the component is destroyed! This means, with 3 Shield V (900 shields), if you get hit by a PPB that kills one of the generators, your shields will be 900 out of 600! If a second hit kills another generator, your shields will be 600 out of 300.



Does this mean a ship armed SD, NSP, SD, NSP,... would be an awesome ship?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

[Alneyan]

I do not know Grandpa Kim; the part about shielding goes well beyond my understanding (a similar idea works fine for Armour, and would be much better if singular armour components were bigger).

[douglas]

I don't think so. If you've knocked out a targets shields with shield depleters and then hit it again with another shield depleter, that damage will simply be ignored rather than stored and added to the next shot. If you then hit it with a null-space projector and another shield depleter, any damage from the NSP that didn't completely destroy a component would become shields-only damage and be discarded.

[bearclaw]

A minor point but might be of some value.

I found by accident that the ship/base that has a SY does not have to have cargo space when building units if there is any other cargo space in the sector. I use this for warp point defense. Build a cheap base with a sat bay/mine layer and have a SY ship (or base) in the same sector. The SY ship is set to repeat build sats or mines and they are automaticly placed in the launching base which is also set to repeat launch. If needed the SY ship can be moved and return or whatever else is needed. with larger sizes this is of small concern but it does allow for mobile unit production with a cheap SY ship and anything else with cargo space wherever is needed.

[Atrocities]

I finally have one to add. I hope it has not already been added.

Tip: You can sort the planets by min, org, or rad values simply by clicking on the word "Values" above each in the Planets Window. The window you use to send colony ships.

This is a very useful tip if your running low on minerals, you can sort prospective planet by mineral value and then deploy your colony ship to that planet. The same goes for Orgs and rads.

[Atrocities]

TIP:

On your home worlds build troops, weapon platforms, satellites, mines, fighters, and weapons platforms.

Design a colony ship using a larger hull size and add lots of cargo components.

Transfer a small amount of population to the new colony ship along with some troops, fighters, weapons platforms, mines, and satellites. When the ship colonizes the planet, presto, you have instant fortifications. I normally only use this TIP in the earily part of the game when I know there are hostiles about.

[Atrocities]

11. When encountering a new race, first destroy his ship, then offer him a treaty. This is called Gun Boat diplomacy.

From the Evil Ruler Hand Book and E.R.A.S.E. (http://www.astmod.com/erase.htm)

[Spoo]

Here's one I learned from Spoon: (this applies to the stock game)

There's no need to use colonizer hulls. Instead use small transports, since they're the same size, have the same cost, and it's not immediately clear to your enemies whether the ship is a colonizer, minelayer, troop transport, etc.

[Alneyan]

A few more "oops, what did go wrong?":
- When using Carriers, never, ever, forget to check their ship strategies. They usually default to "Don't get hurt", even if they happen to carry enough firepower to slaughter a whole civilisation.

This is fairly awful for carriers used as gunboats, and a disaster if you intend your carriers to keep up with the rest of your fleet (while launching some fighters). As such, it would be best to keep a close eye on their ship strategies, before running into such problems.

- Along the same lines: I believe a retrofitted ship keeps the ship strategy of the first design. At any rate, I would advise you to set a similar ship strategy for the basic and newer designs, just in case.

Likewise, copying designs do not copy the ship strategy, so you will have to set it again for any copied design. Otherwise, you will find yourself with ships running away from combat, which isn't perhaps the purpose of your warships.


And one more actual tip: do not overlook Emergency building, since it can be quite useful to speed up your growth. Emergency building results in an increase by 50% of your construction rates, at the cost of one turn of Slow build (at 25% of the standard construction rate) per turn of Emergency building.

Contrary to what might be believed, Emergency building can Last for eleven turns, for only ten turns of slow build. Construction is checked eleven times between the turn when you switch Emergency build on (0.0 year of Emergency build) and the tenth turn (1.0 year of Emergency build), when it will be switched off. Nonetheless, this Last turn still has the increased construction rates.

Besides emergencies, Emergency build can be used for the following purposes:
- To fully develop a planet with few facility slots. For example, if you want to build one Spaceport and four research centers, switching Emergency build on will allow you to build the Spaceport in two turns rather than three, at virtually no cost; the nine remaining turns will be more than enough to build your four research centers. The same could be used for Atmosphere Converters (done in five turns with Emergency Building, leaving you six turns to fill up the five remaining slots at best) among other facilities.

- To speed up the construction of expensive ships, aka Stellar Manipulation vessels. When the ETA before completion shows 1.6 year, Emergency building can bring the delay down to 1.1 year, which will be completed before Emergency building wears off. A net gain of five turns might be just all you need to close that wormhole before the invading fleet warps in, rather than crashing on said fleet.

By the same reasoning, spaceyards only expected to build a single item can use Emergency building to gain five turns of construction time. For example, a spaceyard base intended to build one remote-mining starbase would use Emergency build to get the starbase completed five turns before, resulting in a very significant gain by allowing the remote-mining operation to start five turns before.

- A common early game opening is to build eleven colony ships at your homeworld, in order to expand as quickly as can be done. By the time the homeworld goes back to very low construction rates, you should have at least one or two spaceyards somewhere else to carry on with the production, while your other colony ships do their best to give you a lead in expansion. You might need retrofits to manage this however, especially with average construction rates and/or a Medium-sized homeworld or below, which gives me the perfect opportunity to speak of retrofitting.

* Retrofitting allows you to "transform" a ship of a certain design into another, at a higher price. The targetted design can only be 50% (or less) more expensive than the original design, all resources added. For instance, a basic ship costing 15,000 minerals could be retrofitted to a design costing 10,000 minerals, 2,000 organics and 10,000 radioactives (total 22,000 resources, while the limit was 22,500 resources).

The added cost of retrofitting is +20% per component added (so adding a component normally costing 400 minerals will cost 480 minerals), and 30% of the cost of any removed component. You will also have to pay maintenance for your ships being retrofitted, although the total maintenance should be lower than for the full design.

Any added component will be "broken" when added, though having broken components does not affect retrofitting in any way. Lastly, retrofitting does not allow you to add spaceyards or colony modules to a ship not having any such component to begin with. If your ship had an Ice module, you would however be able to retrofit it in a Gas coloniser.

* Once again, retrofitting has several uses:
- It helps speed up the construction of these expensive ships, namely Stellar Manipulation vessels. Building one of the cheaper Stellar Manipulation components (the Matter Gravity Sphere, or the Ionic components if possible) to retrofit them into Warp Openers or Planet Creators is a very effective way of getting these ships more quickly, especially in conjunction with Emergency building.

Be warned that the actual retrofit is very expensive, generally around 80,000 minerals and 60,000 radioactives to retrofit a Planet Creator into a Warp Opener. Because of this, you should have a few storage facilities and a balanced economy before attempting any massive Stellar Manipulation project.

- Retrofitting is also used to virtually increase your number of spaceyards. In other words, you would create a cheaper design, built one turn earlier than the full ship, and would "finish" the ship through a single retrofit in orbit. This does not usually result in ships being completed earlier, but increases your construction abilities. For example, if the original ship required four turns to build, but the retrofitted Version needs three turns, you can build 33% more ships than before.

This will require you to have at least decent repair abilities, and some resources to spare since it is somewhat more expensive than the regular way. It remains quite useful as a temporary adjustement of your construction abilities however; if you have too many resources, you can thus boost your construction rates, while waiting for more spaceyards to come Online. And when/if you lack resources, simply go back to the original design not requiring any retrofit.

- The Last main use of retrofits is for retroseries, where a given ship is retrofitted several times before being "finished". This way is the most expensive in resources (although by the time it is widespread, you should not have too many problems with economics), and requires some micromanagement as well. It will significantly improve your construction rates however, as such ships can often be completed in half the time originally needed.

My apologises if any of the above is unclear or vague; I find retrofitting and Emergency building to be fairly complicated processes to explain, although they are important in a game. If you are left puzzled and with a headache after reading the above, please say so and I will do my best to give a more thorough explanation (or leave this task to someone actually able to get herself understood).

[Atrocities]

That is a lot of excellent info there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

I have found it useful to not use the "send colony ship". Its good for new players since it wont forget to load up with population first. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
But (at least in solo play) I like to send my colony ships to the planet and then decide whether or not to colonize there. By then I have many times learned something which makes me prefer to change the orders.

Along the same line (again solo play) I have often found it useful to send a ship to the warp point just BEFORE where it is supposed to end up. Again I might have learned something new. In many cases I will wait one turn to make sure it has full movement before I enter the warp. This gives me options to try and jump quick to the planet if there is company there. Or to jump back into the warp and try somewhere else.

[Gandalph]

Atrocities said:
I finally have one to add. I hope it has not already been added.

Tip: You can sort the planets by min, org, or rad values simply by clicking on the word "Values" above each in the Planets Window. The window you use to send colony ships.

This is a very useful tip if your running low on minerals, you can sort prospective planet by mineral value and then deploy your colony ship to that planet. The same goes for Orgs and rads.



To further this tip, if you click on the planets column it orders the planets from smallest to largest, then click on the mins, orgs, rads colomn and you will have the planets sorted by value AND size. This way you can scroll down to the Huge planets with high resources.

[Parasite]

Alneyan said:
A small thing perhaps worth mentioning: red nebulaes grant you the best kind of cloaking, which cannot be bypassed by *any* sensor. This can be used to help your natural paranoia, or to have a nice secure system when striking against another Empire.




There is one sensor that can "see" through Red Nebulas. A Mine can. Placing one or two mines from a ship with a single minelayer can be used for tracking and warning for when ships are going through nebula sectors. Even if they are swept, you still know the sector and possibly timing and direction of the enemy ships. Imagine a system with one mine in every sector. The entering ship or fleet will show the path taken and stop point. This may let you predict his timing and exit points.

[Alneyan]

Hush Parasite! You are giving away one of my little tricks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif More specifically, you should lay as many mines as possible on the wormholes, to take down sneaky vessels without enough minesweeping support (I will usually send a minesweeper if I am attempting to sneak in a hostile nebulae).

Of course, it will only work if you lack any treaty with the crafty Empire, and is of no use when one of your allies is busy planting a fleet in that annoying nebulae right in the middle of your Empire.

[Slick]

Here's another one I use. Say I am in dire of need more minerals, and who isn't? I just colonized a planet and the resource percentages are 107%M, 123%O, 160%R and my empire has a Resource Converter III (30% loss on conVersion). I'll make Rad Extractor II's on that planet until it's full then upgrade to level III's. (I believe that monoliths take too long to pay back, so let's leave that discussion for another time.) I can get more minerals after converting Rads, even accounting for the conVersion loss than I can get with Mineral Miners. 160 * 0.7 = 112% which is higher than 107%.

Slick.

[Aiken]

But if your Mining aptitude is greatly tweaked (up to 120% or higher, which is standard for pbw) you get 107% * 1,2 = 128% minerals from such planet, and this number is higher than 112%.

[Slick]

very true. There were two points to make there and I didn't factor in all the various variables on purpose. That was assuming all other variables being equal. First, the quickest way to fill up a planet is to fill it with level II facilities (for min, org, rad, research, intel) assuming unmodified construction rates and no spaceyard, then upgrade to level III after the planet is full. This is because a level II is the most productive facility that can be built in 1 turn. Secondly, that you can pre-calculate your resource income after accounting for resource conVersion. There are several things that I calculate during the game and I normally have the Windohs calculator open during the game for a quick number crunch.

Slick.

[Alneyan]

Slick said:
assuming unmodified construction rates and no spaceyard




I am just nitpicking, but that might be helpful to someone else, so. Your construction characteristic does not alter your planetary construction rate if you do not have a spaceyard on this planet. No matter how low your construction characteristic is, a planet without a spaceyard will have a standard construction rate.

So if you happen to have a lower than 100% construction aptitude, building a Spaceyard I will actually decrease your construction rate, even for facilities/units, which do not require a spaceyard. Population modifiers should work fine without a spaceyard though; the should is here because of an odd bug, but that's another story.

[Slick]

Just for clarification, when I said "unmodified construction rates" I meant that the base construction rates are unmodified from the default values in the data file "settings.txt". Those default values are to be able to construct with no spaceyard up to 2000 Min, 2000 Org, 2000 Rad per turn.

Slick.

[LGM]

Spoo said:
There's no need to use colonizer hulls. Instead use small transports, since they're the same size, have the same cost, and it's not immediately clear to your enemies whether the ship is a colonizer, minelayer, troop transport, etc.



To build upon this technique also use Freighters as your early combat ships. The Satellite launchers have a high probability of absorbing missile hits.

Consider building warships on Freighter hulls the first turn or two. You should with good constructon be able to build such ships in one turn at a homeworld. Then you can switch to Emergency building SY Bases and/or Freighter with Colonly modules.

On your initial Freighter warships, stick a few population on them. This population will be immediately replaced, but this population can be used to exchange breathers with another race as you explore.

[LGM]

Carriers that fight in combat should be classfied as Offensive Ships or Troop Carriers so they will not get the Don't Get Hurt order by default from the Carrier class. This avoids the pitfall of forgetting to change their orders, especially when you upgrade designs.

[LGM]

While someone mentioned that Small Fighter stacks are less vulnerable, they can get in the way of your warships and block them from getting into battle. Large stacks keep your movement lanes open.

[LGM]

Putting all (or most) of a systems warp-points into a cluster makes defense more efficient (one fleet will do). However, there is a pitfall to this strategy. If there is a way to attack them without going through one of the warp-points, several warp-points in a battle can bottle up your fleet so you do not have room to move. I've lost a fleet of Talisman dreadnaughts in such a situation. I was shocked when I lost the battle, but the replay showed my ships fighting piece mail as they wiggled their way out of a 9 warp-point cluster. Besides the 9 warp-points, a bunch of CSM V drones did not help (they just sat there blocking things up even worse).

[LGM]

When building Ringworlds, use the slow build turns of your Mobile shipyards when you are done building the RW parts to build weapon platforms, satellites, troops, and mines to place on your new ringworld. Never waste ringworld construction time buildng units - you build those buggers for the high facility limit so don't waste time building units or ships.

[LGM]

Warp Weapons on Heavy mounts are a nice way to break up an enemies fleet so they fight piecemail. However, such a strategy makes your unarmed ships that run to the corner much harder to defend. I suggest you spread out your mine sweeping capabilty if you use these. You also need to spread out minesweepers if they target weakest in case you put one weapon with max range on your minesweepers.

Repulser beams are better at pushing enemies in a consistent directon, but they do not work against bigger ships like Warp weapons do.

[LGM]

Ringworlds remove the star from a system, so solar collectors on drones will no longer collect supply, so they will quickly run out of supply. I would assume that would apply to Crystalline faclity that produces resources per star as well (they would no longer produce).

My next post will be some reason why you should not use drones.

[LGM]

You can deploy drones in space with two solar collectors III so they do not run out of supply. However, they are managed as single units so they quickly make your empire hard to manage. If you use the space bar to move to the next ship without orders, it will stop on drones. Since drones cannot be grouped in a fleet, you will keep coming back to the drone stack as you cycle looking for ships to give orders too.

If you hit the ship limit and feel you must build units, build fighters instead of drones. They are easier to manage and can be recovered and can be grouped in fleets.

[TurinTurambar]

LGM said:

Spoo said:
There's no need to use colonizer hulls. Instead use small transports, since they're the same size, have the same cost, and it's not immediately clear to your enemies whether the ship is a colonizer, minelayer, troop transport, etc.



To build upon this technique also use Freighters as your early combat ships. The Satellite launchers have a high probability of absorbing missile hits.

Consider building warships on Freighter hulls the first turn or two. You should with good constructon be able to build such ships in one turn at a homeworld. Then you can switch to Emergency building SY Bases and/or Freighter with Colonly modules.

On your initial Freighter warships, stick a few population on them. This population will be immediately replaced, but this population can be used to exchange breathers with another race as you explore.



Why would you use a Transport Hull as a warship when " <font color="red"> · </font> At least 50% of spaces must be used for Cargo Containers."

?
Turin

[geoschmo]

TurinTurambar said:
Why would you use a Transport Hull as a warship when " <font color="red"> · </font> At least 50% of spaces must be used for Cargo Containers."

?
Turin

A cargo ship is 300Kt, half of which must be cargo spaces. So basically you have a the same amount of room as an escort (150kt) for weapons etc PLUS you have 150Kt worth of cargo components that help to absorb a few extra shots in combat. All else being equal such an armed cargo ship should win a large majority of 1 on 1 fights against escorts, and will hold it's own against frigates. The longer you can Last in a fight the better off you'll be. The main drawback is the 5 engine limit on cargo ships. Sometimes speed can be a decisive factor.

[TurinTurambar]

I love this place!

Turin

[TurinTurambar]

Wait.... what number are we on? Ummm:

n) If you're in a PBW game with anyone who posted useful information in this thread, withdraw.

[Alneyan]

The same reasoning goes for Light Carriers, which are cheaper to research than Light Cruisers, have 420 more hitpoints, the same speed, a slightly improved weapon mount (though you might wish not to use it actually), and an adequate cargo capacity. They do lack the +10% defence bonus of the Light Cruisers however, and are somewhat more expensive.

And of course, being able to add or remove fighters to your fleet at will is always nice; drop the fighters if they are fond of PDC, and put them back once they become lax with PDC. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Incidentally, would a little something about Stellar Manipulation be helpful to anyone reading this thread?

[Rathar]

I am into your tips Alneyan, always something useful in them.

Plus, I need all the advice I can get in order to killllllllllll you in jjpear.

mumbles something about stupid star destroyers eating his pretty little fleets...

[LGM]

TurinTurambar said:
n) If you're in a PBW game with anyone who posted useful information in this thread, withdraw.



Not all players use the same name in PBW and this forum, myself included.

[LGM]

geoschmo said:
A cargo ship is 300Kt, half of which must be cargo spaces. So basically you have a the same amount of room as an escort (150kt) for weapons etc PLUS you have 150Kt worth of cargo components that help to absorb a few extra shots in combat. All else being equal such an armed cargo ship should win a large majority of 1 on 1 fights against escorts, and will hold it's own against frigates. The longer you can Last in a fight the better off you'll be. The main drawback is the 5 engine limit on cargo ships. Sometimes speed can be a decisive factor.



Do not forget that escorts do have a 40% defense with a 0% defense for Freighters. However, until Point Defense Cannon II is reached, ships with Missile 1 and Max Range/Don't Get Hurt orders win over Depleted Uranium Cannons (Except at Warp-points where it can go either way). Defense has no effect on Missles, so the defense does not matter. A ship with 5 engines (Freighter) moves 3 in combat, the same speed as a ship with 6 engines (Escorts), unless you have the Propulsion primary trait.

I have seen many novices fall in the early game to myself or others that did not research Mil Sci 1 as their first technology and PDC 1 and 2 after that.

In the early game you will not have many Com Channels to acquire the technology in trade, so going for something else is extremely risky. If you disagree, speak up, I'll come looking for you sometime in the early game.

[NullAshton]

Mineral planets are the best.
Beware of strange warppoints.

Thats all I know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[TurinTurambar]

I've tried research patterns in so many different ways, I don't even know if I have a decisive method. I think I kind of base it on how stable the Quadrant is and who my neighbors are early in the game (turns 1-20). If all the treaties, borders, and trade are courteous; I'll try to get the jump on Construction/Mines and Physics 2/Phased-Weapons&amp;Shields as fast as I can. If there are tenuous treaties and arguments over colonization, I'll follow a more conservative course.

Turin

[TurinTurambar]

Not all players use the same name in PBW and this forum, myself included.



OK, well that's cheap. I would never play against you, Alneyan, Slick, Fyron, George, or Aiken.

Makes me wonder who "King Bio" was in the Celestial Spheres game.

&lt;sings&gt; "Honnnnnnnnn-es-tyyyyyyyyy. Is SUCH a lonely worrrrrd....." &lt;quick fade&gt;

[Alneyan]

Not sure if that was your point, but only a small minority (if any player at all) uses different aliases on PBW and this forum, without making the connection between the two obvious. Imperator Fyron, Geoschmo, Aiken, Slick and myself all have the same nickname here and on PBW.

And of course, some players are more ruthless than the ones you named, but should I give names if that will only encourage you not to play with them?

And yet another edit: I now recall that LGM posted about a few games at PBW, so he is not what I would call anonymous, since you can figure out the link if you want to.

[Slick]

TurinTurambar said:
I would never play against you, ... Slick, ...



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Slick.

[Fyron]

Slick said:

TurinTurambar said:
I would never play against you, ... Slick, ...



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Slick.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Indeed... damned experience. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Aiken]

TurinTurambar said:
OK, well that's cheap. I would never play against you, ... or Aiken.


http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif
oh...
...but you're right. Playing against me might lead you to conclusion that stock se4 AI is far superior than human brain http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[TurinTurambar]

If anyone took offense at my "Wouldn't play against you" comment I sincerely apologize. It was just my way of saying "Why would I heap burning coals on my own head willingly?" Y'know what I mean? I would never go out on a basketball court and ask Michael Jordan for a 1 on 1 match. I would never step into a boxing ring with De La Hoya and tell him I could kick his @$$.

It was simply a comment on my experience level. I consider the players I listed as "the heavyweights."

Oh yeah, and I hate losing.

Turin

[AgentZero]

Then you should play against me! I'm still giggling/kicking myself because not five minutes ago, I set off a star destroyer in my own home system. And three of my other most developed systems! Don't know why. Musta forgotten who I was playing...

[Aiken]

If you attack a planet from a bottom or right side (on the combat map), planet has 30% less chance to hit you. This is apparently a bug (either Planet Combat Offense Modifier is ignored or it's something about planet occuping 3x3 squares), but you can exploit it if you wish.

[Atrocities]

Now this is a tip that I can use. Thanks Aiken. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[TurinTurambar]

But how would you use it in a simul-game? Can you send your fleet or troopship to the square below the planet in sys-map, and then give it the attack order from there? (..or orders given in a string of course..)

?

Turin

[Aiken]

Yes, you can.
Just follow this scheme
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
B B B
B O A
B A A
</pre><hr />
If you start attacking from the "A" squares (on the system map) you'll start on the right or bottom of combat map for sure. Else you ships will start on the top or left of combat map, or drift there.
"O" is a planet.

[TurinTurambar]

Sweet! Thanks!

Turin/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif

[LordAxel]

The ancient race trait has a small exploit that can be used. As soon as you meet an alien race you will know all the systems they occupy through the borders map in the politics window. Not too big a help but will help send you send ships towards his empire and have colony ships avoid enemy space.

[douglas]

Ancient Race also allows you to know where every homeworld is from the start, and allows the only certain counter to the previously mentioned trick. The combination of the right size planet and all three values being within 5% of 80/100/120% for bad/average/good starting planets almost never happens by chance, so every such planet is almost guaranteed to be a homeworld. To prevent any other ancient race from learning exactly where your borders are on first contact, claim the entire galaxy on the first turn.

[Riesig_Bar]

douglas said:
To prevent any other ancient race from learning exactly where your borders are on first contact, claim the entire galaxy on the first turn.



How do you do that?
If it sounds dumb its because I am still new.

[Suicide Junkie]

douglas said:
To prevent any other ancient race from learning exactly where your borders are on first contact, claim the entire galaxy on the first turn.


Or, and this works for everybody...
UNclaim your homesystem(s)

Better yet, if you're an ancient race, claim somebody else's homesystem to throw the other ancient race off http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Alneyan]

Alternatively, claim only some systems, resulting in bogus borders. To alter your borders, go to the Score screen =&gt; Borders. If you want to claim the whole galaxy, click on every systems you are not already claiming (you will miss some if you are not an Ancient player, unless you are very patient).

The Ancient race can also see how many colonies the enemy has in total, by looking at the appropriate figure in the Planets screen. This does not always work, however, and is mostly useful if there are only a couple of Empires in the game. Regular Empires can usually get the same information, but only about the enemy colonies present in systems they have seen. I am not sure what may prevent that figure from working though.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Riesig_Bar said:

douglas said:
To prevent any other ancient race from learning exactly where your borders are on first contact, claim the entire galaxy on the first turn.



How do you do that?
If it sounds dumb its because I am still new.


It's not dumb. It's just that you can claim any system you can see, at a guess. With ancient race, you can see all systems. Never messed much with the claim system myself, so I don't know.

[Makinus]

claiming a system does have any diplomatic (AI) impact?
As if you contest with another race a system the diplomatic instance with that race degrades?

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, once you meet a race you'd be wise to UNclaim all systems that appear on your map of their territory if you use this method of concealing your own territory. Hopefully the diplomacy system of SE V won't be so simplistic and we won't have to resort to 'tricks' to avoid revealing too much information.

[Fyron]

If you want to use such gamey exploits, just unclaim your home system(s) and disable the "automatically claim all colonized systems" option in the Empire Options screen (under Empire Status - crown). Now no systems will ever be claimed on the map.

[Slick]

Hey, I just realized this tonight:

You can protect your colonizers by fleeting them with warships. Simple, yes, I know, but I never did that before tonight. Then you can give the (C)olonize order to your fleet. Here's the neat part: if you have multiple colonizers in your fleet, even for different colony types, the fleet will move to the right place and one of the correct colonizers will unfleet itself to colonize the planet while the fleet guards in orbit. Leave the fleet there until it's safe or protected with units, then move on. I bet everyone knew this one except me, but just in case, I posted it here.

edit: Additionally, you can use your colonizing fleet with attack ships to attack and colonize an enemy planet in a single turn. The colonizers will stay out of combat with "don't get hurt" orders while your attack ships glass the planet then a colonizer in the fleet will colonize the planet on the next "movement day" during that turn, assuming it still has movement points left.


--------------------------

That also reminds me of a little trick I use to colonize moons/planets in the same sector. A colonizer needs to have at least one movement point in order to colonize so you can build a bare-bones colonizer with just the cheapest engine (ion engine III) and use it to colonize moons/planets in the same sector as the spaceyard. Once this is done, you can move any number of population between planets in the same sector using the Transfer Cargo order.

[Randallw]

A colonizer needs to have at least one movement point in order to colonize so you can build a bare-bones colonizer with just the cheapest engine (ion engine III) and use it to colonize moons/planets in the same sector as the spaceyard.




I had that idea, but failed to realise it needed not only engines but enough engines for 1 movement. Took me a few turns to get it working.

[Slick]

Randallw said:


A colonizer needs to have at least one movement point in order to colonize so you can build a bare-bones colonizer with just the cheapest engine (ion engine III) and use it to colonize moons/planets in the same sector as the spaceyard.




I had that idea, but failed to realise it needed not only engines but enough engines for 1 movement. Took me a few turns to get it working.



Sounds like you are using a QNP mod. I was speaking of unmodded propulsion. But yes, it requires at least 1 movement point to colonize, not necessarily 1 engine. Just to be precise.

[TurinTurambar]

douglas said:
Ancient Race also allows you to know where every homeworld is from the start, and allows the only certain counter to the previously mentioned trick. The combination of the right size planet and all three values being within 5% of 80/100/120% for bad/average/good starting planets almost never happens by chance, so every such planet is almost guaranteed to be a homeworld.



Grrrr! I HATE that you posted that! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif It always suprised me how few people have figured that out.

Turin/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif

[Slick]

If you increase the maximum number of systems beyond the default (100) in "settings.txt", you will need more names in the system names file. If you don't do this, you can end up with systems that have no name. The game will still run but it will be a pain to distinguish between different blank planets and systems. There are lots of system name files available or you can add your own.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I wrote a program to number all the blank spaces.

[TurinTurambar]

Buh?

In the Borders map?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

If that was directed at me...No, in the systemnames.txt

[TurinTurambar]

Read THIS (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=330343&amp;page=0&amp;view=collap sed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=&amp;fpart=1)if you're a newbie just starting out.

[Fyron]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
If that was directed at me...No, in the systemnames.txt

Why not just use one with 10s of thousands of names, such as the one in FQM (http://fqm.spaceempires.net/)? Never have the same system names twice! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Cause...I didn't know you could do that? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[NullAshton]

Mineral planets are the best. That's a really good tip http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif In your racial screen, make sure mineral production is higher than organics and radioactives.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

When you have "Players can see all systems" on at the game setup, do NOT choose Ancient Race as a racial trait http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

No, but seriously.

In stock SEIV, research troops quickly while still keeping an eye on other research, so your weapon/construction/whatever technology doesn't get too outdated. Once you have strong troops, create a couple of hundred (or thousand, if your economy allows) and load them on cargo bases in orbit/in a specific location like an obscuring storm or nebulae.

Here's something I always do:
Create bases with ONLY cargo storage (as soon as you've met the requirements for B/CQ/LS by placing those or MC) and build one/a few in orbit around your Homeworld. Then, whenever your population gets above a certain level, place a set number of pop on those stations. That way, you can have billions of people in orbital stations, even if you start on a Tiny world. The reson for this is that this way, when you colonize a new planet, you can immediately fill it up to max pop to speed up its growth tremendously while not emptying your HW this way. Also, when an important colony has suffered severe population losses, you can replenish the pop. Or, when an important colony has been depopulated with - what are those things called again? Neutron Bombs? you can immediately repopulate it completely so you get the full income again after just a few turns, instead of suffering perhaps crippling losses to your economy over the course of perhaps several years.

It pays to have decoy drones. They can draw fire away from, say, your heavy fighters. Seekers can also perform this task, and don't need to be produced. Make your drones contain nothing but a computer, engines, and armor, and set their strategy to something like Point Blank.

Do NOT underestimate the power of heavy fighters stored on a planet. I've had multiple occasions when, in strategic combat, my heavy orbital bombers were suddenly destroyed by massive streams of fighters from the surface of the planet.

Also, do NOT underestimate the sheer defensive power of a Large Weapons Platform design containing nothing but shields, regenerators and armor. Place a few of these on your planets and orbital bombers will have a hard time bombing as they're up against heavy regenerating shielding AND armor, while WPs keep pounding away at them from the surface.

It's always handy to have at least one WP on a planet full of long-range weapons like the WMG, while others are packed with heavy short-range weaponry. The WPs with the WMGs (or other heavy long-range weapons) can probably get off at least one shot at an enemy fleet before they can fire on you. If they're unshielded, it's even better - you can cause severe damage to their internal components, perhaps you could even eliminate crucial comps like the command comps, engines, heavy weapons or orbital weapons.

[Suicide Junkie]

StrategiaInUltima said:Also, do NOT underestimate the sheer defensive power of a Large Weapons Platform design containing nothing but shields, regenerators and armor. Place a few of these on your planets and orbital bombers will have a hard time bombing as they're up against heavy regenerating shielding AND armor, while WPs keep pounding away at them from the surface.

Oddly enough I just tested this.
Platform: 1550 shields, 140 hull, 2500 regeneration.
Ship: 100 damage per shot, spread over many turns.

Result: 33rd hit dealt -1350 damage, killing the platform plus 10m people @ 10 hitpoints each.

Conclusions:
- The platform did not absorb any damage from the shot that killed it.
- This implies that the platform had an effective strength of between 3200 and 3300 hitpoints.
- 1550 of the hitpoints were not accounted for by the hitpoint meter on the planet.

-----

The same test was repeated with 3 ships, capable of delivering the entire volley in one combat turn. Identical results were achieved.

-----

The same test was repeated with the shield regenerators replaced with inert PDCs.
Identical results were achieved. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

-----

Overall Conclusions:
- Shield generation counts double on platforms.
Presumably once as shields, and again as hull structure.

[Spoo]

Shield regeneration doesn't work on units, right?

[Suicide Junkie]

Or planets, yes.

For the most part, it dosen't really matter, as units are often killed by the handful and would never have a chance to regenerate.

[Atrocities]

QUESTION BY: Smolf

I'm playing in a star system where not all system are connected to each other. I have just researched stellar manipulation to lvl 3 and got Gravitational Quantum Resonator I. It states that it can open a warp point out to a system 100 light years away. Is their any way to measure the distance between one of my star systems and the closest neighboring system?



ANSWER BY: Fyron

When you order a ship to open a warp point, you can see the distance between the systems by selecting the source system, then hovering the mouse over the target system.

The only other way to determine the distance between systems is to calculate it, unfortunately. Each square on the galaxy map is 10 light years. Diagonals count, so 10 squares in a direct diagonal line is not 100 LY, but instead 100 * sqrt(2) LY (at most).



If retorical please excuse, but it is good advice and should be mentioned twice.

[Suicide Junkie]

And as a detailed reminder:
To calculate the distances, use the Pythagorean theorem:
Distance to system = 10LY x squareroot( (horizontal)^2 + (vertical)^2 )

[Gozra]

Y'all don't remember there is a way to see distances in Y'all don't remember there is a way to see distances in SEIV I can't remember how but it had something to do with the stragic map and locating the distance it will tell you distance from point to point just click on point of origin and click on the point you want measured and the Distance in light years will come up this is in the game somewhere I am sure as I have used it before.

Tip:
Fleet strategies and experience are critical for winning a fleet action.

[Slick]

That's available only if you have a warp opener, on the screen to choose the destination of the warp opener. and you have to select a checkbox to turn that on.

[Rathar]

Ok esoteric stuff I have leaned in a year of this..

Mines do not stop a fleet from moving if they have sufficient sweeping capabilities. They do stop fleets without such but this may be merely due to engine damage.

Even if you have class 4 sensors of any type in a given system and your enemy warps into said system onto a planet of yours (Assuming it met no interference), that planet will not fire upon the ships (although it will suffer blockade) until it has at least 1 unit in space above it.

Please do note that in no way am I implying that mines are skippable with cloaking. They are the best sensor that exists.

If fighting a crystalline opponent, pay extra special attention to how crstalline armor works. (page 1 or 2 of this thread) All I can suggest is to use REALLY REALLY BIG guns. Shield depleters followed by the largest thing you can muster seem to work the best. Toss in engine destructors and battle warpers and you have a chance.

This advice is also oddly useful for fighting races with the talisman. Your ships are likely not to get second shots anyways, hope to blow them up instantly.

If they have both abilities, you are in trouble, follow same advice but...

[douglas]

Rathar said:
Even if you have class 4 sensors of any type in a given system and your enemy warps into said system onto a planet of yours (Assuming it met no interference), that planet will not fire upon the ships (although it will suffer blockade) until it has at least 1 unit in space above it.



You forgot to mention that this is for when the enemy fleet is cloaked. Ships and bases will also work.

[Rathar]

Amazing how a bit of drink can cause one to leave out the whole point of one post, heh heh

I guess, thats a tip too. Don't drink and post!

[Smolf]

Rathar said:
Amazing how a bit of drink can cause one to leave out the whole point of one post, heh heh

I guess, thats a tip too. Don't drink and post!



Or make sure that everybody reading the post are drunk too... That way it all makes sense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Slick]

Suicide Junkie said:
Oddly enough I just tested this.

&lt;snip&gt;

Overall Conclusions:
- Shield generation counts double on platforms.
Presumably once as shields, and again as hull structure.



Has anyone tested the "double shield effect" for other units?

[Slick]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
Also, do NOT underestimate the sheer defensive power of a Large Weapons Platform design containing nothing but shields, regenerators and armor. Place a few of these on your planets and orbital bombers will have a hard time bombing as they're up against heavy regenerating shielding AND armor, while WPs keep pounding away at them from the surface.



I also tested this and here are my results:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I started a new high tech game with 2 human controlled empires, turn based. On homeworld A I built Weapon Platforms. On homeworld B I built 2 dreads with heavy mounted APB's. I conducted tactical combat at homeworld A using 1 weapon at a time, checking for surviving WP's after each shot.

Series 1
On Homeworld A I built 6 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with only WP computer core
1 medium WP with only WP computer core
1 large WP with only WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 medium WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 large WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's

Result: the first shot would always kill the 3 empty WP's then the remaining would be successively killed in order from small to large. 20 tries, exact same result in all cases.

This result is what might lead one to believe that WP's are destroyed from weakest to strongest since there usually is a significant difference in WP hitpoints in real games. And at first, I thought I proved it worked this way.

But then I started wondering if my test method was valid. After consideration I realized that randomly applied damage would still show the same results. This is because a small amount of damage would destroy a weak WP while it would "accumulate against" the strong WP without destroying it. So this test series didn't really prove anything.

Series 2
On Homeworld A I built 10 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and 1 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 2 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 3 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 4 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 5 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 6 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 7 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 8 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 9 PDC 5

The idea here is that there is only 20 kt difference between successive WP's.

Result: 20 runs. The WP's were NOT destroyed in order from weakest to strongest. Weaker ones TENDED to be destroyed before stronger ones. But there were several cases where the stronger WP's were destroyed before weaker ones. This validates the "random damage" position. If you randomly apply damage, you would expect this result.

Conclusion: WP's are not destroyed randomly but are damaged randomly; WP's with less hit points tend to be destroyed first because it takes less random hits to destroy them. [edit] This makes the idea of "shield platforms" interesting. Shield WP's will help absorb random hits to keep your weapon WP's alive longer, but only so far as they add more targets for the random damage - NOT that they get hit before or after other WP's.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

It can pay to keep a small number of ships with WMGs in your fleets. If the enemy uses mainly, say, APBs, you can get a rather large advantage over the enemy if you can get off a WMG volley from a few of your ships before the enemy ships are in range of their weapons. You might deal critical damage to them, perhaps even destroy a ship (or perhaps two, if they are weakly armored) before they're in conventional weapon range. I don't know how the AI handles it if a fleet/combatgroup leader loses all of his movement, but I think the fleet would just hang motionless in space. This would be ideal for you (especially fighting AI enemies in a classic turn tactical combat) if you kill the engines on the lead enemy ship and then stay out of weapons range and patiently pummel them with WMGs until their weapons are mostly gone, then close in for the kill with the rest of your warships.

(The following tip is especially true for mods with very fast ships, speed 10-20 or above on strategic map) It can really pay to have a few very fast strike ships armed with Ripper Beams. They can wait patiently until the enemy ships are nearer, dart into enemy range, fire a powerful volley and then retreat out of enemy range again. This is also handy in massive fleet actions, if a large fleet of yours and a large fleet of the enemy duke it out over a planet with these strike ships as defenders. While the fleets pound away at each other, the strike ships can pick away at the enemy and wither them down. This can be especially handy if the enemy utilizes long-range seeker-armed ships that stay out of your fleet's weapons range, the strike ships can destroy these fire-support ships to give your fleet an edge over the enemy, then pick away at medium/long-range warships that pour (heavy) fire into your fleet from a good distance.

If the above makes no sense at all, please let me know and I'll try to explain.

[El_Phil]

I'm not sure of the exact point but AI fleets definetly break when the leader is too heavily damaged. I think its percentage based as it seems fairly random, on the other hand it could be just no weapons and/or low movement and I just haven't been paying enough attention.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Yes, but if your warships stay in tight formation that will mean increased protection to the more vulnerable ships (less armor/shields, more weapons) while the enemy mobs provide for easy kills for you, as you can just kill off the lesser-armored enemies easily.

[Parasite]

A tactic I am starting to use against deadly foes concerns fleet experience.

I make sure I always put one or two ships in each fleet with "Do not get hurt" and "Break from fleet" orders. If a few ships survive a multi-fleet battle it should be them. This will save the fleet experience for use when it is reconstituted later. The fleet could even gain experience if the only survivor was the one who ran away.

[Atrocities]

Unless they are hunted down and destroyed. I just keep a couple of skilled ships at all my training facilities and have all my construction yards send ships there. (I use the neural net). Share the experience and your off and running while only training a minimal amount of your ships. The most trained ships are heavily armored with shields and armor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fyron]

In my assessment, Neural Combat Nets are dubious at best.

With two moons, it only takes 3 turns to get full training (training facilities on the planet and both moons will stack). 2 turns for 18% if you need the ships much more quickly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Also, you can even set up routes to move your ships along to get training. Training occurs if the ship ends up in a sector with a training facility at the end of the turn. You can move your ship to a planet with a training facility and it will recieve training on the next turn. Move it to another planet with a training facility, it recieves more training. By carefully setting up training routes, you can get your ships trained to 20% while they are moving to the front lines with a minimal amount of time wasted sitting at training planets.

Why do you think I eliminated sector training entirely in Adamant and replaced it all with (1% per turn max for non-psychic races) system-wide training facilities? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[El_Phil]

Also system wide gives the AI a chance of actually training their ships/fleets, if only by complete accident. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Emperor's Child]

Even if this change were made, you would need to go back to modify the AI constructino files to ensure they are actually built. I believe most AI facility construction files don't call for building any fleet or ship training facilities.

[El_Phil]

I've seen them turn up from time to time, but I couldn't swear in which mod. But probably not in stock, although don't hold me to it.

[Wolfman77]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:

Here's something I always do:
Create bases with ONLY cargo storage (as soon as you've met the requirements for B/CQ/LS by placing those or MC) and build one/a few in orbit around your Homeworld. Then, whenever your population gets above a certain level, place a set number of pop on those stations. That way, you can have billions of people in orbital stations, even if you start on a Tiny world. The reson for this is that this way, when you colonize a new planet, you can immediately fill it up to max pop to speed up its growth tremendously while not emptying your HW this way. Also, when an important colony has suffered severe population losses, you can replenish the pop. Or, when an important colony has been depopulated with - what are those things called again? Neutron Bombs? you can immediately repopulate it completely so you get the full income again after just a few turns, instead of suffering perhaps crippling losses to your economy over the course of perhaps several years.




I take it one step farther. I build a cargo base around the sun and use escorts and frigates with very specific movement and cargo capacity to ferry population from all plamets in the system automaticly.

Example: Huge planet holds 8B population with a growth of 5% per turn you can take 380M off each turn and it will fill back up fully. If, say, it's 2 spaces from the sun, build a cargo ship with 4 movement and can store exactly 380M Then just use 'load cargo' 'drop cargo' 'repeat'. Of course this can be a problem if you have low ship limits in the game, and it can also decrease your production. you can use one ship to do multiple planets if they are close enough to the storage base and are the same size and repro. rate, and you can use the 20% storage racial trait to ofset the production loss.

I've also found that creating planets is not random, but thats more of an exploit than a tip so it may be more apropriate under a different topic

[Wolfman77]

I've also noticed the AI has a problem determing when not to build production facilities on planets. eg. They colonize a planet with 10% mineral 1% organic and 0% rads and because the minerals are so much higher in relation to the others (120% is the stock percentage in the AI files IIRC) they fill it with mineral miners. I raised the lower limit for value, so when they do this at least it isn't a compleat waste. Of course they still use a planet that is 140%,120%,120% as a reserch or intlegence planet, as 140% is not more than 120% ofeither of the other two. you will get a few more planets that fall into this area though unlessyou change the AI files the a lower prcentage difference to build. So if you make the resource range 50%-150% the AI to about 113%. I have stronger AI's now but then I changed alot of other stuff and haven't yet tried it on the stock game. If someone else wants to try it out and see what you think, I'd like to hear your thoughts (or point out anything I forgot).

[Alienboy]

I was wondering if someone could tell me,..

Do fleets of fighters help the happiness of a systems population get better?
Also, I have been told of a bug that affects messages you send to other players. If you reply to messages first and then spend the next few days playing and saving your turn, your messages don't get sent,.. or something like that. I now do my messages last but I have started to wonder why my intel projects fail against a races with next to no intel points?? Is there a similar bug which affects Intel projects? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/icon27.gif

[Ed Kolis]

I don't think fighters help with happiness... only ships and bases.
Dunno about the bug...

[Renegade 13]

The messages problem occurs in multiplayer games for sure. Can create a lot of havoc.

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
I now do my messages last but I have started to wonder why my intel projects fail against a races with next to no intel points?? Is there a similar bug which affects Intel projects?


There are three possible reasons for intel projects to fail:

1) It was blocked by counterintel. Keep in mind that counterintel can be built up during an empire's height and saved indefinitely as long as it isn't being depleted faster than it's being generated. In a worst case scenario, you could have to wade through 12 nearly full Counter Intelligence 3 projects before seeing any success, which would take near 21.6 MILLION intelligence points of offense, not counting further intel defense produced while you're trying to wear it all down.

2) You tried a Puppet Political Parties project and didn't get lucky. This project, and this project only, has a 50% (I think) chance to fail even if counterintel fails to block it.

3) There are no valid targets. If, for example, an empire has been so badly beaten that it has no ships at all, Crew Insurrection projects used against that empire will all fail. This will usually produce a log message that simply states that the project failed, rather than saying that it was blocked.

[Alienboy]

douglas said:

Alienboy said:
I now do my messages last but I have started to wonder why my intel projects fail against a races with next to no intel points?? Is there a similar bug which affects Intel projects?


There are three possible reasons for intel projects to fail:

1) It was blocked by counterintel. Keep in mind that counterintel can be built up during an empire's height and saved indefinitely as long as it isn't being depleted faster than it's being generated. In a worst case scenario, you could have to wade through 12 nearly full Counter Intelligence 3 projects before seeing any success, which would take near 21.6 MILLION intelligence points of offense, not counting further intel defense produced while you're trying to wear it all down.

2) You tried a Puppet Political Parties project and didn't get lucky. This project, and this project only, has a 50% (I think) chance to fail even if counterintel fails to block it.

3) There are no valid targets. If, for example, an empire has been so badly beaten that it has no ships at all, Crew Insurrection projects used against that empire will all fail. This will usually produce a log message that simply states that the project failed, rather than saying that it was blocked.



I think it is the Puppet Political Parties that I have the most trouble with. Sometimes it has worked but instead of the target planet joining my race, it goes off and makes its own race. I would like to know more about how Intel works,... seems to be a strange beast! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/egg.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
I think it is the Puppet Political Parties that I have the most trouble with. Sometimes it has worked but instead of the target planet joining my race, it goes off and makes its own race. I would like to know more about how Intel works,... seems to be a strange beast! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/egg.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif


Read section "10.1 Intelligence" in the FAQ for the rundown on how intelligence works in general.

PPP is a special exception to the all-or-nothing rule of counterintel. It has a chance to do nothing, a chance to make the target planet form its own empire, and a chance to make the target planet switch sides to join you. If there are already 20 empires in the game, including any that may have alread been wiped out, the possibility of forming a new empire disappears. I don't know what effect this has on the probability of success. A new empire formed by a rebelling planet inherits all aspects of the empire design of its parent empire except name, population picture, and planet and atmosphere types. Somehow, all the population on the planet will spontaneously mutate to breathe the atmosphere of that planet, which can be quite useful for undoming planets without waiting for atmospheric modification plants. The new empire will also inherit all of the parent empire's technology, which may make it an attractive target for technological espionage, since it will only have the resources of that one planet and will not have any counterintel built up.

[Alienboy]

douglas said:

Alienboy said:
I think it is the Puppet Political Parties that I have the most trouble with. Sometimes it has worked but instead of the target planet joining my race, it goes off and makes its own race. I would like to know more about how Intel works,... seems to be a strange beast! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/egg.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif


Read section "10.1 Intelligence" in the FAQ for the rundown on how intelligence works in general.

PPP is a special exception to the all-or-nothing rule of counterintel. It has a chance to do nothing, a chance to make the target planet form its own empire, and a chance to make the target planet switch sides to join you. If there are already 20 empires in the game, including any that may have alread been wiped out, the possibility of forming a new empire disappears. I don't know what effect this has on the probability of success. A new empire formed by a rebelling planet inherits all aspects of the empire design of its parent empire except name, population picture, and planet and atmosphere types. Somehow, all the population on the planet will spontaneously mutate to breathe the atmosphere of that planet, which can be quite useful for undoming planets without waiting for atmospheric modification plants. The new empire will also inherit all of the parent empire's technology, which may make it an attractive target for technological espionage, since it will only have the resources of that one planet and will not have any counterintel built up.

As you have pointed out, a planet that has rebelled is an easy target for PPP and other projects. The other information is going to be useful so thanks for your comments.

Another issue I wondered about was to do with counter Intel. Lets say you have 4 slots of Counter Intel and you loss them all in one turn to multiple Intel Sabotage attacks. So you add another 4 slots of Counter Intel. I have done the above but suffered loses the next turn, such as resource procurement and crew insurections, which previously were kept at bay by the original 4 slots of Counter Intel? So it is my observation that any new counter Intel projects take one turn to actually start working. Would this be correct?,... Gee, maybe I should take a look at that FAQ thread you mentioned,... before asking these sorts of questions,...lol /threads/images/Graemlins/Fish.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_Checkered.gif

[Alienboy]

Crikey! I just had a look at the FAQ thread,..... OMG! I should have paid more attention in my speed reading class,.. Its huge! This game is hell!

Section 10.1.6 covers my last question,... I think. Don't really follow it fully but I have a rough idea.

[Alienboy]

I just wanted to know more about them. They generate 5000 shield points for the planet. Are weapons platforms also protected by them or does the 5000 shield points apply to the planets only? /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
I just wanted to know more about them. They generate 5000 shield points for the planet. Are weapons platforms also protected by them or does the 5000 shield points apply to the planets only? /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif


I assume you're asking about Massive Planetary Shield Facilities. The 5000 shield points protect everything on the planet, including weapon platforms, but it's non-phased shields so Phased Polaron Beams ignore them.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Pretty much the only special ruins tech that most everybody thinks doesn't suck is neural networks.

[Slick]

I haven't done formal testing, but through game experience, I think that fighters over a planet just might help happiness. My general way to overcome a rioting system (such as when another empire surrenders) is to gang up all available ships to a single planet, get it to stop rioting and then build an Urban Pacification Center on it (maybe after some troops).

There have been a few cases where I only had fighters available to do this and I was able to overcome riots. The happiness effect may have been due to other things such as battles won elsewhere, etc. That being said, it appears to me that fighters do positively affect happiness.

[Alneyan]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Pretty much the only special ruins tech that most everybody thinks doesn't suck is neural networks.



Actually, it sucks big time, as it is said not to work. At all. Douglas tested it under the latest patch, and found out it was about less useful than 30kt of cheese

[douglas]

No, I think cheese would have less structure, it's too soft. A Neural Combat Net is exactly as useful as an empty fighter bay, but it costs more.

[Renegade 13]

Good to know!

[Alienboy]

Slick said:
I haven't done formal testing, but through game experience, I think that fighters over a planet just might help happiness. My general way to overcome a rioting system (such as when another empire surrenders) is to gang up all available ships to a single planet, get it to stop rioting and then build an Urban Pacification Center on it (maybe after some troops).

There have been a few cases where I only had fighters available to do this and I was able to overcome riots. The happiness effect may have been due to other things such as battles won elsewhere, etc. That being said, it appears to me that fighters do positively affect happiness.



Hey, thanks Slick, I had a hunch they (Fighters) would affect the happiness thing, just wasn't sure. Will try what you have mentioned and see if I get similar results. /threads/images/Graemlins/Cheese.gif

[Alienboy]

douglas said:

Alienboy said:
I just wanted to know more about them. They generate 5000 shield points for the planet. Are weapons platforms also protected by them or does the 5000 shield points apply to the planets only? /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif


I assume you're asking about Massive Planetary Shield Facilities. The 5000 shield points protect everything on the planet, including weapon platforms, but it's non-phased shields so Phased Polaron Beams ignore them.


Yes I was refering to them (Massive Planetary Shields). If Phased Polaron Beams ignore those shields, then is it safe to say that Null-Space Projectors skip those shields also? /threads/images/Graemlins/Cheese.gif

[Ed Kolis]

Yes.

[Slick]

You can't transfer cargo off of a Plagued planet.

[TurinTurambar]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Pretty much the only special ruins tech that most everybody thinks doesn't suck is neural networks.



Massive Shield Depleter does not suck.

[Alienboy]

I couldn't upload my game turn due to a server problem on SEIV PBW so I thought I'd come on here for a while and ask another silly question. I think I'll choose one from a book I have been reading lately entitled "The delicate art of creating mindless conversation" by Myndles drivelle.

Anyway, In our game we have had a race surrender to another race (nevermind Bearclaw, better luck next time mate!) I am GM for the game. The surrendering player left the game a turn after surrendering (I removed him from the game). It was then pointed out to me, by another player in the game, that I should have left the player in the game so that the "dead race" isn't listed as "open Slot" as it was after I removed the surrendered player. It didn't make sense to me to leave a player in the game that isn't actually participating in the game. I assume that player would still get "last player to upload" messages etc. I didn't see the point in that. Then I got to wondering why would a "dead race" be listed as an "open slot" on PBW? I asked Geoschmo what would happen if someone was allowed to apply and join our game using that race. His reply was that that person would not be able to do anything due to the fact that that race has no planets, ships etc. Other people I have spoken too have said the same thing.

I decided to get a new account with PBW and apply for that open slot in our game. It has been two or three turns since the last player surrendered that race. I then downloaded the current turn and accessed that race (Sons of Thunder Clan) As expected there are no planets, ships etc but the race still has all comm channels and technologies and 200 points of each resource. My normal race in the game is the Sethillans and in that races current turn the SOT are listed as dead and I can no longer communicate with them. So what I did with the SOT race is to send the Sethillans a message asking for a gift of a planet or two. I then ended the turn and upload the game file. The idea is to see if a "dead race" can be re-established. Geoschmo has told me thats this is as far as I will be able to go. I am keen to see what happens next turn!

Now,... for the silly question! lol
What sort of cheese does narf poit chez BOOM like?

[Alienboy]

TurinTurambar said:

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Pretty much the only special ruins tech that most everybody thinks doesn't suck is neural networks.



Massive Shield Depleter does not suck.



Does too suck, better off having a Cargo facility with heaps of extra Weapons platforms,... well, I reacon anyway!!?? /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif

[Wolfman77]

Alienboy said:
Does too suck, better off having a Cargo facility with heaps of extra Weapons platforms,... well, I reacon anyway!!?? /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif



Your thinking of Massive Planetary Shield Generators. And yes I believe that in stock, 1 large weapons platform full of shields will give you more damage resistance. Although they can be of use at the beginning of a high reaserch cost game, as it takes a while to get more powerful shields.

Massive shield depleaters on the other hand can be very useful if your enemy uses alot of shields. I've needed them a few times.

[Alienboy]

Lol,.. your correct, I was refering to the massive planetary shields. It was 4am in the morning then and I should have given up long before then,... lol.

[Wolfman77]

lol... We've all had those nights. And when SEV comes out, we will havewhole weekends. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Slick]

The Massive Shield Depleter has a reload of 30 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif which means it fires only once at most per combat. I think that makes it suck.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Unless your enemy has shield regeneraters, that once is enough.

[Alienboy]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Unless your enemy has shield regeneraters, that once is enough.



Too much cheese in your diet narf! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif The only race that can benefit fully from that weapon is a religious race, as it tends to miss its target otherwise,.... better off with Shield depleting weapons that fire every turn I say,... but hey,... your welcome to use that weapon against my fleets any day!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif

Hey,... can anyone tell me how to make "screen shots" of your game,... would love to know.!!

PS, here is a big explosion I made for my game, if anyone likes you can have.

[Suicide Junkie]

Hit the Print screen key on your keyboard. This will "copy" the current image on screen.

Then open any graphic editing program, (MSPaint works just fine) and hit "paste" (CTRL-V).


Note:
The print screen key is typically found right beside the scroll lock and the pause/break key.
Also commonly found in the region near the insert/delete keys.

[Alienboy]

Thanks for that, ya learn something new everyday. /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif

Hmmm, wonder what happened to my big explosion???

Anyway, here it is, let me know what you think?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Pretty and good.

[Alienboy]

Does anyone know a little bit about Ship upgrades? On some turns I have done a lot of ship upgrades, sometimes more than 50 ships per turn. I have a problem keeping track of how much resources I need to complete all upgrades successfully. I have a resource converter facility and plenty of resources to work with. I usually find that I need more mineral resources. The problem is I can’t seem to figure out exactly how much of the other resources I need to convert to cover all my upgrades. I always seem to find that some of my upgrades didn’t go through because I have a lack of resources. Is there a way to calculate how much resources I need for bulk ship upgrades without having to write down the cost of every single individual upgrade?? /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif

[Wolfman77]

Multiplication is the best method I've found. if you select 10 ships that cost 5kT of minerals each, you need 50kT to compleate the upgrade. If I'm not mistaken, all ship need to be from the same class. After selecting them and clicking "retrofit" it should list the costs of each shipto the right of the class name. It would be nice, though, if it totaled them up for you.

[Alienboy]

Wolfman77 said:
Multiplication is the best method I've found. if you select 10 ships that cost 5kT of minerals each, you need 50kT to compleate the upgrade. If I'm not mistaken, all ship need to be from the same class. After selecting them and clicking "retrofit" it should list the costs of each shipto the right of the class name. It would be nice, though, if it totaled them up for you.



Yeah, I agree,.. a total is necessary. I have just upgraded 70 odd ships, mostly different classes. I have tried to calculate things but I am missing something somewhere. I think that you only have the resources you have left from your last turn to work with. You might have 500000 minerals coming in on your current turn but I think that it is not accounted for with your current upgrades?? not sure really.

You also have to account for any resources you gift to other races.

[Wolfman77]

Yes you can only use resources you have in storage. None from production mining or trade are counted. I don't gift too much, but then I only play the AI, most of the time I've already ticked them off enough that I can't change their mood much. When your empire really starts to grow retrofit costs can kill you if you havent kept up on storage. Several mods have added storage to the production facilities. This helps alot, but I've found tiny planets full of starage facilities to be useful as well, since you cant get as good production and build bonuses from them.

[Parasite]

On Upgrading ships, write down the cost of each upgrade the first time you do it. Go to the ship screen, show orders and sort by Ship class, then orders. All the upgrade orders will then at one location in the list. It makes it easy to count and multiply even if there are upgrades at multiple locations.

Check out the turn order to see what comes first, but I am pretty sure that Maintanace, resource conversion and gifts/trades come first, then upgrades, then production and building.

According to what you are upgrading make sure you are mineral bound. Vast engine, SM, or PPB upgrades can really suck down the Radioactives... Even more than you expect. Production later in the turn will then cover up the lack.

[Alienboy]

Parasite said:
On Upgrading ships, write down the cost of each upgrade the first time you do it. Go to the ship screen, show orders and sort by Ship class, then orders. All the upgrade orders will then at one location in the list. It makes it easy to count and multiply even if there are upgrades at multiple locations.

Check out the turn order to see what comes first, but I am pretty sure that Maintanace, resource conversion and gifts/trades come first, then upgrades, then production and building.

According to what you are upgrading make sure you are mineral bound. Vast engine, SM, or PPB upgrades can really suck down the Radioactives... Even more than you expect. Production later in the turn will then cover up the lack.



Thanks for the advice, I have been working at building my resource storage and production. Where I think I have been caught out is converting too much Radioactive or Organic resources into Mineral resources, leaving myself short of the Radioactive and Organic resources. It would be great to have an upgrade cost tele in the Ship screen.

[Warshed]

This was proboably listed a million times already but from most important to least important:

1. Better AI (possibly upgradable/patchable through a learning algorythm like in galactic civilizations)

2. More interesting research tree (something like Master of Orion 3 or Civ 4), just not like lasers 1, lasers 2, but maybe lasers, then phasers, then quark gun, etc. Also have an option for your empires, like in MOO3, which determines how many techs are available to your empire to research (forcing you to trade for and steal techs from other empires).

3. Better graphics, and possibly combat using fleets, rather than moving one ship at a time, you move one fleet at a time, with damage being assigned just like in normal SE4, but to individual ships within a fleet.

4. More lucky specials (which is a selectable option when configuring the galaxy), lucky planet specials, lucky tech specials (on planets or a random event, or you get the option to buy them using resources).

5. Rare resources that can only be found on certain planets, which are used to build the most powerful weapons. This will force people into war or trade for those rare resources.

6. Ship and system heros like in MOO2.

[Slick]

Warshed, I think you posted this in the wrong thread. Looks like SE5 wishlist stuff.

[Warshed]

ohhh damn sorry. I hope it can be removed. I thought I clicked on the right thread. I guess not.

[Hunpecked]

With regard to upgrades, I believe the total of resources available for upgrades also does not include points reclaimed from recycled facilities in the same turn. I sometimes keep track of retrofit expenses with Excel, and I got burned one time when I was retrofitting down to (almost) the last mineral in storage.

[douglas]

In sequential movement mode, resources from scrapped facilities are available immediately. In simultaneous, unless this was fixed in the Deluxe patch, there is a bug that prevents you from getting the resources at all. They will show up immediately when you're playing the turn, but they disappear when the turn is processed.

[Hunpecked]

Ah, that explains it.

[CaptainAL]

The ship upgrading has been a source of frustration for me. I think it may be a bug - I am sure that others here must have encountered it. Here's what happens:

I give the upgrade orders. [when this happens there's usually pretty many ships and a large amount of resources involved, with maybe a stellar manipulation upgrade or two] I add up all the resources needed and check my STORAGE amounts to make sure I have enough. Sure enough, I have plenty because I have been good at building many storage facilities. Now I also convert some resources, because I have so many extra organics and radioactives but am light on the minerals. I am careful NOT to convert more organics and radioactives then are available for the upgrades. Great, good to go... next turn I'll be ready to move...

NEXT TURN: Sh--! Not one ship upgraded. "Not Enough Resources" message for every one. But there are all the resources - still in storage.

Anyone have this happen (or am I just really burned out and not calculating everything right -- nine or ten times now)? Sometimes it happens, sometimes it does not. Anyone know how to avoid it? It has screwed me up so badly that now I never convert and upgrade in the same turn, unless I really don't need the upgrades that badly.

[douglas]

Were any of the planets you had doing resource conversions on repeat orders? If so, that planet would have continued converting until you ran out of the source resource or it had executed the maximum number of orders.

Also, resource conversion happens before retrofitting, and retrofitting happens before income. Be careful that your current storage plus or minus whatever you convert is sufficient to pay for all retrofits.

[CaptainAL]

The fact that you have not encountered it tells me that it must be me. Jez, I thought I had added everything up very carefully each time, too. No, I did not have RCF planets on repeat orders. Weird, the times when it has happened nothing retrofitted at all - and I would think that if I were a little off on my numbers that at least some would retrofit. I know that if I were off those times it couldn't have been by that much. On my upcoming turns I will write down the numbers to be sure.

Thanks again Douglas.

[Parasite]

I would check the planet with the RCF again. I have had one on on repeat orders to launch sat, mines, or fighters, then when I convert resources, it gets moved up into the repeat as well. Check all the RCF planets, then check them again. If you are getting Out of Resource messages, that is almost certainly it.

A minor possibility is you are getting hit by intellegence attacks to steal or destroy them. Could this be happening? If you have any counterintel up, you should get at least notification of attacks.

The game does not say which one is out, but you mentioned that you keep track of all three. Even Organics can be a problem if you are doing SM ships or Master Computers. Check all the messages, if some high cost ones fail first, later cheaper ones may still convert.

[CaptainAL]

Thanks. You guys know this game inside &amp; out so this answers my question - it isn't a bug. I read something about a scrap resource bug (maybe this thread, I forget) and that may be doing it. I am going to be very careful when cutting it close &amp; not count on any scrap resource gains. There's a lot of good stuff in this thread that has helped me out - thanks to all contributors.

[douglas]

The bug is that resources from scrapped facilities, despite showing up immediately when you're playing the turn, vanish without a trace in turn processing.

Resources from scrapped ships come in when the ship is scrapped, which happens when it executes its orders for the turn. When that happens relative to any retrofit orders depends on the speeds of the ships involved and on their ship ID's. Resources from a ship with speed 5 will never be available on the same turn to retrofit a ship with speed 6. If they both move on the same day (eg, same speed or speed 10-13), it depends on ship ID, which I most recently explained in this thread (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=394563)

Note that bases and ships with no engines "move" on day 0, so resources from scrapped bases will always be available to spend on retrofitting mobile ships, while scrapping mobile ships can never pay for retrofitting bases.

Also, there actually is one way to get resources from scrapped facilities in simultaneous play - abandon the planet and answer the prompt about scrapping the facilities with "yes". When the abandon/scrap order is executed (on day 0), you will get the correct amount of resources for scrapping every facility on the colony. Of course, this does completely destroy the colony, so you probably don't want to do it very often.

[Alienboy]

Hi CaptainAl,... Have just been catching up on this subject. I have read your posts and I thought I'd add my ten cents worth. (with the exchange rate and tax that comes out at about half a cent!)

From what I have read you are talking about a problem which you have encountered on a perticular turn. I am not sure if repeat orders would be the cause of what you discribe. If I'm not mistaken you have added up the cost of your total upgrades for a turn. You have taken into account your availible resources and converted resources to make up a mineral shortage, making sure you have left enough Organics and Radioactive resources for your upgrades. On the next turn you say that none of your upgrade actually worked.

I have always had a problem doing large amounts of upgrades but I have never encountered a turn where none were upgraded at all. What I am about to say is only based on my own theory as I don't know how the turns are processed. I am taking this opertunity to table my theory now.

Firstly, and probably quite simply,... are we forgetting the actual costs of ship repair??? In the situation where you have a number of ships that are damaged from W.H.Y and they are being repaired that turn. Have those costs been accounted for in your available resources total? I don't think so. Remember that each space yard can only repair at a certain rate. Sometimes a ship that has 50% damage may still have 20% damage to repair for the following turn. It is because of this that I believe that the cost to repair damaged components must be taken out at the beginning of the following turn BEFORE the cost of any upgrades are accounted for, and then it is dependant on how many components have been repaired from the previous turn. Did that make any sense at all??? I hope you catch my drift. It is also my understanding that if you are too low on resources no repairs will be completed regardless. If the above is correct then that could explain why you didn't have enough resources to upgrade you ships,... repairs must come first!?? .... anybody????

Another thing you might want to check is exactly how much resources did actually get converted,.. eg,..is it posible that you accidently converted 100000 Organics into Minerals when you only intended to convert 10000???

Another thing I have wondered about relates to the cost of an upgrade. As we all know you can only upgrade to 50% the original cost of that ship. If you are like me you may do several upgrades to get to the end result. eg,.. you start with a basic hull. Lets say you require four upgrades to get the ship you want. If you start with the first upgrade and accidently try to upgrade it to the fourth upgrade then you would receive a message telling you that you can not upgrade a ship more than 50% the original cost. That is well known,... but if you do not have enough resources to do that upgrade,... you will get the "you do not have enough resources to complete this upgrade" message before the "50% upgrade message" I believe the game considers the cost of an upgrade before the ability to upgrade. So,.. this may be another posible explaination for what you have discribed, and you would have no way of telling which upgrade you were trying for. Maybe this might also be useful in the new version. ie,.. if an upgrade order is not completed it would be great to know what you were trying to upgrade too, and if you were short of resources, how much and which resources would also be handy????

Sheeesh,.. maybe thats just a little too hard. We should just like it or lump it I reakon! lol..... and what about riots,... haven't even gone there! lol

Merry christmas to you all from Alienboy. /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
Firstly, and probably quite simply,... are we forgetting the actual costs of ship repair???...


Repairs do not cost any resources at all. Damaged components still cost maintenance, but there is no extra cost for repair beyond just getting the damaged ship and a repair bay or space yard in the same place.

Alienboy said:
Another thing I have wondered about relates to the cost of an upgrade. As we all know you can only upgrade to 50% the original cost of that ship. If you are like me you may do several upgrades to get to the end result. eg,.. you start with a basic hull. Lets say you require four upgrades to get the ship you want. If you start with the first upgrade and accidently try to upgrade it to the fourth upgrade then you would receive a message telling you that you can not upgrade a ship more than 50% the original cost. That is well known,... but if you do not have enough resources to do that upgrade,... you will get the "you do not have enough resources to complete this upgrade" message before the "50% upgrade message" I believe the game considers the cost of an upgrade before the ability to upgrade. So,.. this may be another posible explaination for what you have discribed, and you would have no way of telling which upgrade you were trying for. Maybe this might also be useful in the new version. ie,.. if an upgrade order is not completed it would be great to know what you were trying to upgrade too, and if you were short of resources, how much and which resources would also be handy????


If the problem were the 50% limit, the log message would say so.

The problem seems to have been figured out already. Unless I am mistaken, he was depending on resources from scrapped facilities for at least some of the upgrades, and there is a bug that makes those resources disappear in simultaneous mode turn processing.

[Alienboy]

CaptainAL said:
The ship upgrading has been a source of frustration for me. I think it may be a bug - I am sure that others here must have encountered it. Here's what happens:

I give the upgrade orders. [when this happens there's usually pretty many ships and a large amount of resources involved, with maybe a stellar manipulation upgrade or two] I add up all the resources needed and check my STORAGE amounts to make sure I have enough. Sure enough, I have plenty because I have been good at building many storage facilities. Now I also convert some resources, because I have so many extra organics and radioactives but am light on the minerals. I am careful NOT to convert more organics and radioactives then are available for the upgrades. Great, good to go... next turn I'll be ready to move...

NEXT TURN: Sh--! Not one ship upgraded. "Not Enough Resources" message for every one. But there are all the resources - still in storage.

Anyone have this happen (or am I just really burned out and not calculating everything right -- nine or ten times now)? Sometimes it happens, sometimes it does not. Anyone know how to avoid it? It has screwed me up so badly that now I never convert and upgrade in the same turn, unless I really don't need the upgrades that badly.




douglas said:

Repairs do not cost any resources at all. Damaged components still cost maintenance, but there is no extra cost for repair beyond just getting the damaged ship and a repair bay or space yard in the same place.

If the problem were the 50% limit, the log message would say so.

The problem seems to have been figured out already. Unless I am mistaken, he was depending on resources from scrapped facilities for at least some of the upgrades, and there is a bug that makes those resources disappear in simultaneous mode turn processing.




Hi Douglas,
Sorry dude, the quote from CaptainAL that I was refering to in my last post is quoted above and does not mention anything about scraping facilities at all. I was not refering to the bug you mentioned.

I have always wondered about ship repairs and I have been under the belief that all repairs do actually cost resources to complete. I based this on my observations but of course I may have not taken something into account and therefore may be mistaken. If your ships are damaged during a battle surely it costs something to fix them? Thanks for your comments, I will have to pay more attention to see if my original thoughts are correct.

With regards to the 50% thing. A little while ago I designed a ship that took three upgrades to complete. I must have made a slight error in my calculations because I was unable to do the last upgrade, due to it costing over 50% more that the second upgrade. However I did not find this out at the first time I tried to do that upgrade because I was too low on resources and in the next turn I got the"you do not have enough resources" message. I then tried it the following turn. My resources were fine but this time I got the "50% more than cost" message. Thats what I was refering to.,... thats is,.. unless somehow again I have overlooked something??? I'm sure I remembered it correctly though??

[Slick]

Repairs are indeed "free" (i.e. they cost no resources) In game terms, that's what the "Maintenance" cost is for. It doesn't seem too logical, but hey, that's how it works. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif

[Fyron]

When quoted text is more than half of your post, that's a good indication to either remove the quotes or shorten them, possibly with elipses, just showing the first line or two. Readers can always scroll back to see the full original post.

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
Hi Douglas,
Sorry dude, the quote from CaptainAL that I was refering to in my last post is quoted above and does not mention anything about scraping facilities at all. I was not refering to the bug you mentioned.


He mentioned scrap resources as a possible culprit a few posts later.


Alienboy said:
I have always wondered about ship repairs and I have been under the belief that all repairs do actually cost resources to complete. ...


I have played in a game where I regularly did an IMMENSE amount of repairing every turn (retroseries building for ordinary combat ships) and had a rather tight budget. If repairs cost resources, my calculations in that game would have been very far off and I would have run out of resources quickly. They weren't, and I didn't.

Alienboy said:
With regards to the 50% thing. A little while ago I designed a ship that took three upgrades to complete. I must have made a slight error in my calculations because I was unable to do the last upgrade, due to it costing over 50% more that the second upgrade. However I did not find this out at the first time ...


The game may indeed check for resources before checking the 50% limit, but that is completely unrelated to CaptainAl's problem. He was getting out-of-resources messages after carefully calculating that he did have enough resources.

[Alienboy]

If you say so douglas, have a nice christmas.

[Glyn]

Slick said:
Repairs are indeed "free" (i.e. they cost no resources) In game terms, that's what the "Maintenance" cost is for. It doesn't seem too logical, but hey, that's how it works. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif



It’s a little known fact that the monthly maintains cost for ships included an insurance policy for full replacement of any damaged components, so repairing a damaged component doesn’t cost extra. There is an exception clause in the case where the ship is totally destroyed they don’t have to replace anything.

[CaptainAL]

Thanks for all the posts.

Well, it happened again and I think I know why. I did not elect collision coverage http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Until recently I did not know about the 1.36M resource conversion limit for each RC III. So I started keeping an eye on that to make sure I did not exceed the limit. What I did not know until now is that resource conversion orders above the 1.36M limit carry over to the next turn. I must not have noticed the lit-up view orders icon when I gave the converter new orders for more conversion. The resource conversion backlog must have been for radioactives, and I guess that I put the radioactive conversion first on my new orders last turn. I figure this because only radioactives converted this turn and not the organics I ordered. So the backlog conversion of rads added to the new order to exceed the 1.2M rads I had in storage; therefore, nothing retrofitted. AAAAHHHHH - The Bug is ME!

LESSON I LEARNED: always clear any left over conversion orders before issuing new ones! OR - keep your eye on the eyeball! Sorry for wasted time guys - I would have noticed this sooner if I read sooner about the 1.36M converting limit. Perhaps these posts are worthwhile though in case someone else also does not see the 1.36M limit noted in the FAQs but does pick it up here.

Oh - and I have often thanked God that repairs do not cost anything. That would really drive me nuts!

Have a happy holiday all and thanks for your help!!!

[Captain Kwok]

I noticed you did a similar thing with your former empire in Stellar Battles after noticing a bunch of retrofits not going through.

[Slick]

I believe the Resource Conversion limit is per converter so you can convert more resources by making facilities on other planets.

[CaptainAL]

Captain Kwok said:
I noticed you did a similar thing with your former empire in Stellar Battles after noticing a bunch of retrofits not going through.



Yes, in every game that I had that many resources to convert I made this mistake. I just assumed it was a bug, but started to wonder when I didn't hear of it happening to anyone else. I don't know why I didn't notice before that there were conversion orders still pending when it happened and they related to resources that had not been converted. But anyway, I now know I no longer must deal with this affliction! [Cap'n Al rolls on floor imitating Gullom, shouting "I'm Free, I'm Free"]

You should be in pretty good shape in that game despite the wasted resources. I was giving some away to the Earth partner periodically - he seemed to be the most loyal ally to the Zappazoids in that game.

[CaptainAL]

Need a bit of help once more. I looked over the FAQ and didn't see this, but if it is there I apologize &amp; just let me know that. Thanks.

Question is regarding firing priority: What does strongest and weakest relate to - is strongest gauged by damage points the ship can sustain or the firepower of the ship? My fleets keep hitting my opponents "decoy" ships first - you know, the ones with 25 Crystal Armor plates and 6 shields. I can't afford another big loss. I had strongest as priority, so maybe that seeks the ship with greatest damage resistance. But I tried weakest in the simulator - same thing happened. I tried it with no strongest/weakest priority, and still the ships targeted the decoy first. Hopefully someone can give me a quick answer to this one, or I might as well give up on the game (and without me the game is essentially over for everyone). Thanks again.

[CaptainAL]

I think the addition of my post above is not obvious to most, since there is no answer and little views. I am going to post it as its own topic. Probably shouldn't be here anyway.

[Alienboy]

I think this is the right place for your post. The simulator can't be trusted but I will add something I noticed. I haven't got to the bottom of this "issue" so I will only say what I have seen so far, in the hope that others may have seen this too!. I have tried different firering priorities and sometimes there seems to be no change even though I have done similar to you,... (changed from strongest to weakest etc) On many occasions I have given up and gone to resume my game. Thats when I noticed that the spaceyard build rates had changed, eg,.. a ship that normally takes 2 turns to build would now be taking 3 turns to build??. Also the amount of resources I had stored had reduced! ... and all I had done was use the simular!??. So I saved and quit. I then re-opened my game and everything was back in order. I then checked the same simulation and this time I did see a difference. So I only do a few simulations at a time and I always re-open to resume my game. Seems to work better?????? I think ! lol

Out of fustration I just made my firering priority Nearest, Nearest, Nearest, Nearest!

[Alienboy]

Oh yeah,... was going to ask if anyone could recommend a good map for up to ten players. The game I am playing has a custom map. I would like to find something big??? Just interested in some feedback really. What your fav map?

[Fyron]

That sort of question should probably be posted in a new thread. Stickied threads should strive to remain on-topic, else they are not as useful as stickied threads.

[StarShadow]

This is something that I thought up the other day, I hope someone finds it useful.

You can make a 'super fast transport' with a large hull (for example: a battleship) by adding spaceyard and emergency propulsion components to it. You'll have to babysit it but you can use the emergency propulsion every turn (the space yard will repair it). The end result is a transport with 16 movement and 3250kt of cargo (at max tech/with a battle ship).

StarShadow

[Captain Kwok]

I think emergency propulsion components need to be repaired at a planetary space yard...

[StarShadow]

I thought so too, but I tested it out before posting and it works.

[douglas]

Any space yard will do, and repair bays can help. Even a modded space yard with 0 repair rate allows repair bays in the same sector to repair emergency components.

[Slick]

I use that very "super fast" battleship design also for my Stellar Manipulation ships. You paid big bucks for them, you are paying big maintenance for them, you can't have them spending too much unproductive time moving around. It's good if you retro-series build and/or want to retrofit to a different configuration because the basic hull-engines-spaceyard-etc is the same.

With these designs, they usually operate solo so they have to be "minefield resistant". Keep them protected behind your lines, use armor instead of shields. So long as the spaceyard component survives, it will repair itself.

I also make a "super fast" rescue ship. Same basic idea with repair bays added also. I'll build these at strategic places and mothball them. In the rare occurrence that a fleet takes lots of damage and it will be several turns before the fleet's existing repair capability completes repairs (or the fleet's repair ships got killed), I'll activate these ships to assist.

[Glyn]

Set the base strategy to not fire on planets or satellites. Captured bases would no longer fire on the planet or satellites they once protected.

Note: If captured you could neutralize them by changing there strategy to not fire on anything.

Second Note: If you capture a base (or ship) retro fit it ASAP even if it’s to the same design. (Too bad if it has unique tech.)

[StarShadow]

This tip is for single player games and is somewhat cheesy (mmmmm cheese http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)...Save the turn before you create a planet, if it's not your type, try again. The planet you get on the second try will be the kind you get EVERY time (on the 2nd+ try). Most of the time it tends to be Carbon Dioxide. If it's still not your type, reload and try again next turn.

[Wolfman77]

Yes and if you move to different sqares in certain orders you can change what type it is. The formula to determin planet type and atmosphere seem to be based partially on where the ship moved tat turn.

[AngleWyrm]

Maybe if the ship moves somewhere else, then other 'hidden things' use up a random number. Which are different from dice in that we can see the future of a random number line, but we cannot see the future of a random dice roll.

[Parasite]

This sounds a lot like the Artifact discovery. It is hooked to the random number geterator. I have heard that the Simulator will rerandomize it. This means you are not stuck with the second planet type. Just run a simulation and then create the planet again from the save.

And Yes, this is cheezy.

[StarShadow]

Just noticed this a few minutes ago, self-destruct when used as a boarding counter-measure, will not always destroy the ship/base. To add a little variety I modded some AIs to use armor instead of shields. Anyway, I sent a boarding ship to try and take a base orbiting a planet I recently 'aquired' and failed to notice it had a self-destruct device. I boarded, it went boom, but didn't 'die', it did however, take 10,000 damage to it's armor.

Fairly conclusive proof that self-destruct does 10,000 damage. So if you *really* want to capture an enemies ship/base, armor your boarding ship so that it has (more than) 10,000kt worth of armoring.