Re: Solar Systems with lots of asteriods but no planets
 

I just did a futher test. A empire can stay active even with just a mines left. Once I killed all the mines the empire finally died.

Re: Solar Systems with lots of asteriods but no planets
 

Looks like you guys were right, the ships left must have been abdoned due to lack of resources after the planets were destroyed.

That's why the mines stayed, no maintenace.

Re: Solar Systems with lots of asteriods but no planets
 

You do get a base amount of 200 resources a turn, no matter what, and 50K storage points no matter what.

That amount could easily support a few ships for a while after you lose all your planets, especially with robominers to fill it up in quick jolts. You could go around with the robominer in your fleet, kill alien colonies & suck their resources dry, then move on.

Re: Solar Systems with lots of asteriods but no planets
 

I once found a group of alien sat's off in a distant system while exploring. When I clicked on the empire flag, it gave me no description of any empire.

Could that have been the same issue? (EDIT: the issue of no planets left for the empire) Or could it have been due to it just being a sat and I had still not made contact with the empire?

If it was just 'not making contact', does that mean that you can't make contact with an empire thru sat's and mines and only thru ships / planets???? Been playing this game since SEII and haven't even thought about this one....

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 28 March 2001).]

Re: Solar Systems with lots of asteriods but no planets
 

You contact a alien race through ships, units or planets provided that you can trace a current path to a planet of the alien empire through the current warpoints of the system. If you cannot get to a planet you can not establish any diplomatic relations (except perhaps through a comm channel from another race

Re: Solar Systems with lots of asteriods but no planets
 

In order to make contact with a race, you must meet ship/planet to ship/planet.

In order to maintain contact, you must have a path from any one of your planets to any one of their planets.

If you've got zero maintenance, & are being hammered by intel, abandon all your planets & use starbase construction & ship capture to win. With out a planet, you can't maintain contact, and without contact, they can't do intel http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif