Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

In short, when in doubt, Right Click, you knever know what you will find.

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

Watch out for Divide points evenly:
Start of game
Research Choose Apply Points Evenly
Select The Following to Study
Propulsion 1000
Stellar harnessing 1000
Applyed Reasearch 200,000
It will apply the same number of Research Points to each item in the que even if this number is higher than what is needed to "learn" it.

Remove the selction from Divide points evenly and it will then apply the points left to right filling each item with the right amount of Research Points utill it runs out.

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

Here's a neat trick that I just learned. Probably lots of people knew about it.

I was always frustrated when I set up a new planet and I wanted to give it orders to build a spaceyard then build some ships. If you do with the normal "Build Queue" window, the queue won't let you add ships/bases to the queue until after you have the spaceyard built. So under normal circumstances you have to come back to the planet queue after the spaceyard is built to add your ships/bases.

But there is a way around this. First find a planet with a spaceyard and an empty queue. You can make custom queues using the "Fill Queue" button for ships/bases or whatever. Once the custom queue is memorized, go back to your new planet and now you can add the spaceyard using the normal method and also add ships using the custom "Fill Queue" button. This method lets you add ships/bases to a queue without a spaceyard (yet). Helps lower some of the micromanagement.

You probably get an error of some kind if you try this without sequencing the spaceyard before the ships. I haven't tried that since it obviously won't work.

Slick.

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

I just found out something that is probably incredibly obvious, but I'm hoping that someone here will give me a hand with it. Up to this point I've been creating a new race with unique characteristics every time I play. For the first time the other day I choose a race from the TDM-Modpack and noticed that the colinized planets that appeared in the system window showed letters to indicate what facilities were currently built. After experimenting around, I also found that some races had all planets, colonized or not, showing the planet name in the main system window.
I've torn the manual apart looking for a hotkey that will turn these lables on or off and haven't found a thing. Like I said, this is probably and obvious one, but does anyone know how I can flag planets to show what facilities are built or at least show the planet's name?

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

try Empire Status => Empire Options

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Brilliant idea! You could use this to make your ships automatically pass through resupply depots that they would otherwise fly straight past! What key is it to mark a minefield?

EDIT: Don't worry, I found it in the manual- Ctrl T.

[ February 18, 2003, 14:44: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh, now that is slick D. Very slick! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

You can set up trade routes through systems. Block off paths between warp points directing the ships to pass over certain planets. Very nice.

Geoschmo

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've bugged Malfador for a hard code Version of this before now, but it looks like it's no longer necessary. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

Ok, well it may not work perfectly actually, so we still may need somewhat of a hard code change. It looks like you can't get your ships to move more than a space or two out off of their ideal path by doing this. Although I am only looking at their blue route lines. I haven't tried actually running the turn to see what happens to the ship. It's still very nice escpecially if you can put a resupply depot on a planet near the center of the system.

Geoschmo

Re: Things in SEIV I never knew about....
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">How about if you built a "tunnel" of fake minefields, so there is only one path available from the warp point to the resupply depot? It seems like overkill but if you ever wanted to reach other parts of the system you could manually override the aVersion to minefields.