Stellar manip and movement in simultaneous game

[Alneyan]

douglas said:
Too bad they go off for anything. Including that hull-with-engines escort sent explicitly to trigger it before the main fleet comes through.

They only go off *if* the escort makes it to the system successfully. If the escort is destroyed at a wormhole battle, the sentry order will not go off. There are, of course, complications with this: putting an armada in a system that is to be destroyed is self-defeating, and Warp Openers can ruin your day.

There is no drawback involved if the enemy is already in the system though, unless perhaps if they were to engage their cloak (but then, you should really have sensors to detect them).

[NullAshton]

You could have a big thingie of sats, or mines in the area. You could also have the ship on a move to certain position, then move back and destroy the sun. That way the escorts go through, then the rest of the fleet, then the sun goes boom

[Joachim]

So we dont actually know when / how they go off?

This is a little irritating as the FAQ is very wrong on this, and it has cost me dearly.

[Slick]

Joachim said:
So we dont actually know when / how they go off?

This is a little irritating as the FAQ is very wrong on this, and it has cost me dearly.

I am currently working on the final FAQ revision. If you'd be more specific on what is wrong (and what would make it correct), I'd fix it.

Sometimes people submit items for the FAQ that aren't quite right, unintentionally, I am sure. It isn't feasable for me to test everything so it is important for errors to be pointed out. It is also important to be very sure one is correct before submitting an entry.

[NullAshton]

Its easy to test something, using the cheats.

[Slick]

NullAshton said:
Its easy to test something, using the cheats.

You're hired!

[Rathar]

Imho, which is based on experience, all bad..

If you have a stellar maipulation capable ship start a turn on a "sector" wherein lies an acceptable target then well, it will be allowed to perform any
stellar manipulations it is capable of wherenver and whenever you manage to tell it to do so.

The key imho is starting out on a spot that contains the thing you desire to manipulate. Not the very thing necessarily but anything that allows you to push the stellar manipulation button.

Please note that you will NOT be able to close or open warp points if the ship you give the orders to starts in a system with more than 1 WP. I've found that this is due to it's asking for a specific taget in that case and wlell... If your specific target isnt one of those well.. you lose. I am pretty sure that in this case it will close/open the "topmost" WP and that might not be what you desire..

Note, I haven't had the chance to test this yet in a real game setting as wellllll.. I am always too busy and cautious to waste time checking stuff in games for mere forum bug purposes.

At any rate I have found that if you give a warp opener (or shutter) which starts at a warp point you want open (or shut I guess) and give it first the move to X sector and then close WP in X sector it will close said WP.

If you give it the order to stellar manipulate first and then to move it'll shut (or open) the point it starts in and then move and do nothing..

Be careful on your timing.

Ie if you have move 12 warp closers which will require 2 mps, for some reason to move to their desired closing space then only ships with a move of 12 or greater will get two moves before the point is closed and ships with less than 6 or so moves (gets a bit wierd here comparing stuff with such large differences but..) will get no moves before this happens. Ships with 6 moves will get one move before.


IE to explain again...If your WP closer is faster(in MP's) than a fleet (in the same sector..) which you wish to slip into a given system (which you are closing access to, you hope..) then if you done give a move to here, move to there order of sufficient length to the closer ship/fleet then your fleet will find a closed WP when it gets the chance to move.

Another IE..

Say you have a fleet with move of 6, say you have a WP closer with a move of 12. IF your WP closer moves and is going to close the WP on it's 12th MP then you have until said 6 MP fleets 5th move to utilize the open warp point.

I can't speak of WP/star things on sentry. Never been close enough to challenge their destruction, or my systems have been protected and well...

So basically I have learned or at least think its true that.. As long as you start on a sector with the capabilities you desire for stellar manipulation then if you have sufficient MP's to get to the spot where you "Actually" want to do said manipulation then it's fair game. Otherwise, no.

My question about this is that if you have a stellar ship and it does move its full 12 or whatever, does it still retain the capability (ie 0 months usage time) to do manipulations or does it have to wait?

Yes I drink and post. Sue me.

[douglas]

The information on when stellar manipulation happens currently in the FAQ is incorrect. I have tested it pretty thoroughly and posted my results in the Updated the FAQ thread a little while back. Here are the most relevant parts to this discussion:

douglas said:
A ship's ID number is a unique identifier assigned to ships when they are built. It is not visible to the player. The first available ID is the one assigned. When a ship is destroyed, its ID becomes available again.

Within each day in a turn's movement, ships move in order by ID number. This matters for certain stellar manipulations, seek after orders, and minesweeping. Fleets move all at once when their lowest-ID ship moves.

Stellar manipulation: Whether trying to open a warp point and go through it at exactly the same time works or not depends on whether the warp opener has a lower ID than the moving ship. Also, destroying and recreating a planet in one turn with two different ships requires that the create order be executed either on a later day or on the same day by a ship with a higher ID.

Now for a way to make all this information actually useful: Ships are sorted in the fleet transfer screen by ID number, lowest ID at the top. This sort order is in effect both in the list of ships not in fleets and within each fleet. The order of the fleets is by fleet ID, which is used for nothing else that I can tell, except the order fleets are displayed in the ships screen (F6). The order ships are gone through by the "Next ship" operation, typically accessed by the space bar hotkey, is also by ship ID. Unfortunately, this order is cyclical and your current position in it appears to be stored in the savegame, even through turn execution. Of course, you could try building an escort on turn 1 specifically to keep it around forever as your known lowest-ID ship, but this isn't guaranteed to work perfectly unless you're player 1 - anything players before you build on turn one will have a lower ID, which could possibly be freed later and taken up by another one of your ships.

douglas said:
Another kind of stellar manipulation where ship ID can matter: star destruction/nebula creation/black hole creation. A ship moving on the same day as the scheduled mass destruction order has two possible options if it has a lower ID than the stellar manipulation ship. First, if it is on a warp point, it can warp to safety an instant before the superweapon goes off. Second, if it is one sector away from the stellar manipulation ship, it can move there and prevent the ship from doing anything, provided that you do not have a non-aggression or higher treaty with the owner of the stellar manipulation ship. If it has a higher ID than the stellar manip ship, it can't do anything but wait to die.

All orders that do not spend movement points happen just before the ship's next move action. This means that if a ship runs out of movement with a stellar manipulation or load/drop or similar order at the top of the queue, that order will not be executed until its first movement of the next turn.

[geoschmo]

Douglas, that's a lot of good information. Assuming it is all correct though it doesn't explain the situation that happened here. In this case the star destroyer was faster than the ships sitting on the warp point, so it should have destructed on an earlier day than the fleeing ships moved and Ship ID shouldn't have been a factor.

[douglas]

douglas said:
A ship's ID number is a unique identifier assigned to ships when they are built. It is not visible to the player. The first available ID is the one assigned. When a ship is destroyed, its ID becomes available again.

Now for a way to make all this information actually useful: Ships are sorted in the fleet transfer screen by ID number, lowest ID at the top.

I tested retrofitting's effect on ship ID by building three ships and scrapping the first. The two ships remaining had ID number 2 and 3 (assume for this discussion that ID's start at 1). I then retrofitted ship 3 to another design. It was still listed after ship 2 in the fleet transfer screen, so its ID was >2. I then built two more ships. The order in the fleet transfer screen was then first new ship, ship 2, retrofitted ship 3, second new ship. The retrofitted ship's ID was therefore 3 both before and after the retrofit, even though ID 1 was available when the retrofit was done. Note that each action (scrap, retrofit, build, etc.) was done on a separate turn to make absolutely sure that order of events within a turn would have no effect on the trial.

geoschmo said:
ToddT, your assumption seems to be that retrofit changes ship ID becasue you believe that Joachims ship predated "most if not all" of your ships that got away. However, if Douglas is correct, you'd have to be 100% sure that all your ships were newer than Joachims. Not just some, but all, since according to his info the fleet moves with the lowest ID ship. You are positive that you didn't have any ships in that fleet that had been around for a while in the game? An old LC that you had brought up to date or something?

Once again, I reiterate that relative AGE DOES NOT CORRESPOND DIRECTLY TO SHIP ID. Suppose you have ships 1, 2, 3, and 4. 2 gets destroyed. Another ship gets built. The new ship WILL NOT be ship 5. Instead, it will take 2's empty slot. The new ship 2 was built after 3 and 4, but has a lower ID number.