Questions, part 5

[Skulky]

I got a few myself actually... In regards to Puke's answer about the troops, do you really need just a cockpit? I heard somewhere that you need at least one comp, cheapest is armor unless you have an org weapon in which case you get defense as well as pop supress.

clarification: if i gave resource conVersion orders three times in a PBW game will only the Last one run? I'm in trouble if that's the case

What is the point of drones, they are almost as much as a destroyer and much worse, for the cost of three or four or five or six you could put out a nice DN or baseship. Until you start seeing 30-40 you can stop them easily, they can get hit by most weapons making them worse than seekers in this regard. I guess on a low ship game with a high unit limit or something similar where you had a strong incentive i dont' see their use. It just doesn't seem like a good economical decision.

Also, you still need to be able to see your targets, and to get a spotter into one of my systems will take a concentrated effort, probably costing enough that you should have just built normal ships.

NOW, IF... you had the move to/warp order then you could begin using them like RD2s and SBM/SR HAWKS (explorers/warp missiles for you non-starfire ppl)

D.

[Quikngruvn]

8. If you garrison a captured planet, how many troops do you need to keep the population from rioting? Is there some particular ratio of ships and troops to planet population that you need to have to be able to stop the rioting?

The effectiveness of troops and ships in orbit depends on your happiness type (peaceful, bloodthirsty, or neutral). From happiness.txt...

--*--
Population Happiness Levels:
Pop Anger Pct Description Res Mod
75 - 100 Rioting 0%
60 - 74 Angry 60%
45 - 59 Unhappy 80%
30 - 44 Indifferent 100%
15 - 29 Happy 120%
0 - 14 Jubiliant 140%

All values are in 10ths of a percent.

Peaceful:
Our Ship in Sector := -10
Our Troops on Planet := -2

Bloodthirsty:
Our Ship in Sector := -5
Our Troops on Planet := -2

Neutral:
Our Ship in Sector := 0
Our Troops on Planet := -2
--*--

It would look like it would take 52 troops to guarantee that a riot be quelled, but there are a whole bunch of other things that could affect the planet's happiness. (I'm not about to post the whole file, so you'll have to check for yourself. )

[edit] Math error. [/edit]

Quikngruvn

[ August 02, 2002, 06:36: Message edited by: Quikngruvn ]

[PvK]

Troops just need a cockpit to give a happiness bonus. But they're nearly useless as troops then, of course.

Drones are cheaper than ships because purchase price is only a small part of a ship's cost - the maintenance cost is what makes a fleet expensive, and drones cost zero. Therefore they are very cost-effective for peacetime build-ups. They also have several other advantages, which have been described on other threads (speed, damage, to-hit, concealment, no happiness penalty for losing them, etc.). Low-tech drones may be easy to shoot down by themselves, but high-tech drones in hordes or combined with other forces can suddenly become a very serious threat.

However you and everyone else is right that they would be a lot better with a "move to" order!

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

clarification: if i gave resource conVersion orders three times in a PBW game will only the Last one run? I'm in trouble if that's the case

You can view the planet's orders with the eyeball icon. You should see that there are three separate "Convert Resources" entries.

All three should be done in one turn, unless there is a problem such as insufficent resources.

[Silent Sorrow]

Originally posted by Puke:
[QB]edit: beaten to the punch. hopefully my answers are not entirely useless.

lordy, i think you just ask these to make people feel goog about answering them. you can always start a high tech game and try a few out.

I don't have the time to try out everything in test games. I just make notes of questions I have taken from actual games as I play them. Then I apply the answers to my next game.

3 - yep. if you do something sneaky to get multiple spaceyards, such as the upgrade method.

You're the second person I've seen mention this. But what are you talking about? There's some kind of trick? When I upgrade space yards, it simply upgrades the existing ones--it doesn't add another.

4 - eh? training you mean? default training is 20%, and it has never taken me to 21. perhaps your ships have experience from somewhere else?

Nope. I've seen it a few times now--a 10 percent facility takes me to 11 percent. Not that I'm complaining.

5 - not sure here, isnt there a drone strategy setting you can define? or did you mean tactical. in tactical, the answer is 'no.'

My beef is that in tactical I may want the drone to attack a specific enemy ship and not the one the AI has decided is the biggest threat (or whatever). Sucks that you can't do that.

6 - you cant analyze racial techs. also, you will only get one level per technology per component. also, if the component is not of a higher level than what you have, you will not get anything even if the previously owning race has better tech than what was on the component.

I was trying to analyze the enemy ships to get the wave motion gun. I didn't have the tech, yet analyzing the ships still didn't give it to me. Of course, I had so many research points that I just gave up and researched it normally in a few turns.

7 - drones burn x number of supplies per turn, per settings.txt (i think). if they are burning more than solar panels are generating, you are out of luck. i have not tried puttin pannels on drones though, so they might not work at all.

Don't they burn supplies based on how far they travel per turn? Someone else in this thread has said the default is 200. But I thought supplies used was always a function of distance travelled. And by the time I start using drones, they're doing 12 MP per turn. ...

[Singollo]

6. When you capture an enemy ship and scrap it for analysis, what determines if you get any tech out of it? I've tried it a few times and nothing happened.

Just a quick clarification to avoid any possible confusion: the "scrap" command is not the command to use if you want to get new techs from the ship. Scrapping it will just give you the resources. If you want to get new techs from the ship (provided there are any to obtain), you must use the "Analyze" button; this will destroy the ship without giving you any resources, but you will get the tech.

I'm not sure if this was understood or not already, but the wording of your question suggested that you were scrapping when you should have been analyzing.

Out of curiosity, what is this sneaky "upgrade method" of getting multiple shipyards?

[Suicide Junkie]

You're the second person I've seen mention this. But what are you talking about? There's some kind of trick? When I upgrade space yards, it simply upgrades the existing ones--it doesn't add another.

It is not available in the standard game, or any of the currently public mods (as far as I know).

However, it can be fairly easily added to a mod.
How it works is that:
1) You build a normal space yard.
2) You build a facility without spaceyard abilities.
3) You mod an upgrade for that second facility that has some spaceyard abilities.
4) You can freely upgrade that second facility into the third facility, and the spaceyard rates will add up.