Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

I've only ever encountered a problem with the nebular plow if I folded to a system in the middle of a nebula and then tried to go to another system by the use of a normal stardrive.

What level do you set your nebulas at when you're starting your game? I don't care for nebulas so I keep mine set at the lowest coverage and I've never had this problem. If it's occurring at highest levels of nebula coverage, it would seem to me to be a function of the difficulty level.

Also: does anybody know if use of the nebula plow loses you points? Something about environmental destruction? If this is so, do you lose points even if you're not on a scientific mission?

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

Yep, check out that negative value in the "bonus" section of your mission score-card. I don't know whether if there is any multiplier attached to this depending on the mission type.

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

The travel time estimate never underestimates the time, and it takes the nebula into account. So you'll never see an ETA of 200 days and have it actually take 2000.

You need a nebular star drive to move fast in the nebula. The plow creates a path through the nebula so that you can cross it faster with a normal drive afterwards; it's not intended to be a replacement for nebular drives.

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

Ok, there's an issue with that.

1. There's only one nebular drive that is worse than a standard drive, the hydrogen nebula drve. All others have a nebula speed of 12 or higher. Therefore the nebula plow doesn't help you if, by your statement, you are supposed to have nebula drives in addition to the plow.

2. Since when do we backtrack using the exact same path as before anyway? The nebula plow isn't very useful if we can only move faster after we've plowed our way through and are taking the same path again.

3. We see the plow working well and efficiently about 50-75% of the time. So obviously it is capable of working well. When it only works well some of the time, that tells me there's a bug.

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

1) With combos of drives its very easy to have a decent nebula speed but faster normal speed for your flotilla.

2) The plow is great for visiting the edge systems of a nebula where you often go in a bit slower but leave quickly because of plowing action.

3) The plow works better when you don't start in a nebula and when you have faster drives and when the nebula isn't thick.

The reason it 'works better in the demo' is because its small map only, in a large map with more nebulas total its much more possible to get a 'thick' nebula, which is harder to plow. (Thick nebulas are overlapping nebula, which btw are easily created by the plow)

It's not a bug, it is well know and intended by the developers.

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

Especially given that the penalty for disturbing the nebula is based on the amount of nebula you disturb -- for instance, in one game a 'glancing blow' (accidental, as it turned out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif cost me just 2 points -- so it is a pretty decent idea to use it to visit those sorts of systems if time is going to be a concern.

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

You might also look to see if you have more than one ship. I read somewhere that the speed your flotilla goes is a function of the drive on your biggest (leader?) ship and an average of all the drives sorta. I don't know the function, but I know it considers all of the ships in your flotilla that can support drives. I wonder if the plow considers those other ships, as well, and says 'they don't have a plow, so it shouldn't work as effectively for the whole fleet.' That's my guess on what's happening or a combination of the two. I'll try to test it the next time I get the plow.

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

Your fleet sped is an average of all your drives 'weighted' for how heavy your ship is. So a good drive on ripcords fighter has almost no effect of fleet speed. Who the leader is doesn't matter.

Also I doubt the plow cares which ship its on. It'sprobably just a function of nebuladensity and flet speed.

Re: BUG: Nebula Plow
 

Yeah, I did some testing and it doesn't seem to matter how big your fleet is or what ship it's on. What I have noticed, however, is that there seems to be pre-defined...borders..for lack of a better word..that are more easily separated than the regular nebula region. These borders I'm referring to are internal. Sometimes you'll hit a pocket that is easily separable and the rest is dense. I need to pay attention to the little nebula density graph thing up above my ship info the next time I do testing. I'm sure it's related to the density.