Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Been a long time with these questions and I don't know if the abilities actually work now, so here it is.

Mine Warheads, do the alternate damage types work correctly (ie, engines only, weapons only, boarding parties only, etc) and do these abilities work on Drone warheads or fighter warheads as well??

I've put PDC cannons on fighters that target only seekers, yet sometimes they don't fire at all unless I do it manually. What gives?

Heavily modded game, attack a sector with 2 planets, one that belongs to my enemy, one that belongs to a race I have a partnership with (though they are murderous with me), the allied planet is in the middle, the enemy is in the top left corner, I start in the bottom right corner. My troop dropships surge toward the top left corner but actually drop the troops on the ALLIED world, taking it. What the heck happened there??

Settings question, 'Defending units per population' (ie, militia), do I get more militia by raising this number or lowering it?

Launching mines from a planet, even with this option disabled I can still manually (not sure about simult or auto) launch mines from my planets. (ie, Launch from planet:False).

Do Baseships ever get fleeted?? or are they always loners? And if so is there any way to make regular attack ships above 1499kt in size.

I'm just finishing up the new Gold-D mod (going great) and a funny error continually pops up, one where the event log only shows a few Posts unless you click on the 'all' button. I remember this as an old but that was 'fixed', do I get this bug due to just updating the old Gold-D mod or should I have started out with a blank Version of SE4Gold and cut/pasted everything into it??

Possibly more questions, but I'll have to remember them..... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ January 06, 2004, 00:50: Message edited by: Deathstalker ]

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Can't answer all your questions, but I'll do the ones I can...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For mines, they work, excluding the ones that don't make sense like plague (mines don't hit planets) and shield piercing (shields are no defense against mines anyway). Drone warhead damage types currently don't work, but they'll be fixed in the final patch. Dunno about fighters...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pretty sure that's a typo and it actually controls how many POPULATION you need to get one MILITIA unit. So raising the number would reduce the number of militias.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would think that setting launch from planet to false would prevent you from launching from planets, but there could always be a bug...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What, you've never run into the 300 baseship fleet of doom? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif They're just ships like any other... or are you referring to the AI? If so, I have no idea; I've never been much for messing with AI's.

edit: I hate quote tags http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

[ December 31, 2003, 17:00: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Yes, special damage type work for mine warheads and the mines are smart enough NOT to attack if the ship runs out of whatever their special damage type is designed to destroy in later patches.

Special damage types do NOT work on drones in the current release. This will be fixed in the forthcoming patch.

The automatic routine that checks for movement of PDC targets doesn't work very well with units. Is this surprising? The targets of PDC are units. Units checking on units is recursion and all sorts of confusing things can happen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Argh! Sounds like a bug with the troop drop thing. Your ships should not attack the assets of your allies in combat. Did you report this to Malfador?

Lower the setting to get more militia on the planet. It's the number of population needed to 'produce' one militia. Too bad this isn't a 'racial' thing so different races could be more or less effective at planet defense, huh?

Base ships get fleeted like any other ship, don't they? I don't recall seeing any difference in their behavior from destroyers. They just cost more so there are fewer of them. This is one of the problems with the AI, it has no concept of either logistics or fleet tactics.

The event log is all there, but the 'scroll' function doesn't get reset so you have to scroll back up to the top to see the entries if you left it somewhere else.

[ December 31, 2003, 17:08: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

The Event Log - Can you enter information manually into the Event Log?

How about including, in the next patch, a note book option in the political screen for each race encountered. This way a player can keep notes on other races. (Would work great in PBW games.)

How about including, in the next patch, a communication log. This log would keep all in coming and out going communications between your race and others. Again a must have for PBW.

For the next patch will there be a way to tell the game Not to re-use races if there are only say 8 races available and the play selects Many Players for the game?

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thanks for explaining this. Now I understand why sometimes my event log looks blank at the start of the turn until I click one of the buttons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">More like an unimplemented feature than a bug. There are quite a few of them around. Palace ability anyone? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Thanks for the responses guys http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Fyron, I will probally be sending you the 'beta' release of the final Gold-D mod soon (within a week or two, hopefully sooner). (and yes, beta, I'm forever tweaking values of things like missiles, SRM ranges , which weapons are allowed to have spinal mounts or gatling mounts and racial scripts for the new weapons....that and I'm debating adding a new AI race to the next Version, Pirates.....which will work something like the Borg/Monsters...)

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Hey DS could I bother you for a copy of your beta as well. I think you and I have a lot of simular ideas. I am working on the Conquest mod and from what I have read, a lot of the ideas I have planned up for the mod you touched on. If it is ok with you I would like compare them, and if they are simular enough, borrow them, with credit given to you, for the Conquest mod.

If you rather not, thats cool. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But thanks for reading the post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's not surprising, but it sounds like another overlooked mod application rather than something difficult to program, without recursion. When any unit or seeker moves, just search all enemy units (just as is currently done for all enemy ships and WP's) for the PD ability, range, and availability.

PvK

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

So, I realize you can't have more than one shipyard per planet, BUT....could you have differing buildings that add to its build numbers per turn?? (sort of an 'add on' that will make your yard turn out ships faster...)

And its probally a really dumb question but is there any way to make a building take up more than one 'slot' in a planet?

Any idea what the AI would do if I replaced all the 'launchers' (sattelite/fighter/mine) with a generic component that could launch all the types? Would this mess up AI ship design totally?

[ January 06, 2004, 00:54: Message edited by: Deathstalker ]

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Certainly. Check out the SY Expansion projects in Adamant Mod and the PBW Version of P&N.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No. You can separate the abilities of facilities with multiple abilities, but that is it. All facilities take exactly 1 slot.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">All of the launchers are 30 kT, so it would have little effect, assuming you keep their cargo storage values at a reasonable rate (large, like that of Drone Launchers, to accomodate all unit types). They would have the exact same ship designs, just using the multi-purpose launcher instead of the other launchers (assuming you also delete the other launchers).

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Thanks Fyron, I played around with the expansion projects and finally figured out how you did it (didn't realize the importance of the empty facilities that could be upgraded)....sneaky guy arn't ya. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Mind if I blatently steal the idea? (credit will be givin of course...) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

I think it was SJ's idea originally...

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Ok, now for a real fun one, does 'Crew ConVersion' work for damage for a mine warhead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif , and wouldn't that be fun for a borg minelayer if it did?? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

No idea. Test it.

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

heh, think I will, and along with that does shields on units still work kinda funky (ie, not really shields but part of the structure??). I'd like to add different types of PDC weapons that can skip shields/armor for attacks on fighters/sats that have shield/armor mounts but not just increase PDC damage wich will lower the usefullness of seekers in general.

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

maybe this is a late reply. somehow this thread has slipped past me.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yes, baseships do get fleeted. Problem with the AI might be that it uses 'Attack Base' for the design type of Baseships.
The design type, not the size, determines whether a ship gets fleeted or not.

Attack Ships always get fleeted. Regardless of their size.

Attack Bases don't get fleeted. Good thing about them is that you can build small ships using the Attack Base design type. Thus you have nice scout ships.

[ January 18, 2004, 01:36: Message edited by: Rollo ]

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif nope, crew conVersion mines don't work. Just treated as normal damage (turned all mine warheads into crew conVersion damage, ships just kept blowing up, ah well.).

Thx Rollo. Is there any way though to have 'attack ships' that are above 1499 kt though? I've got the designcreations txt file set for 5000 kt attack ships but the only ones that get built are the attack bases. The ships seem to stop at the lowest kt below baseship size (my 1200 kt superdreadnoughts) and anything bigger must be an attack base, this even happens with AI's that don't even have attack bases in their txt files. Is this hardcoded?

Edit:

Also tried the 'one type only' laucher, it worked sort of. The only problem is that the AI will design/build ships it does not need (ie, minelayers long before it has mine warhead technology as the launchers can launch all unit types).

[ January 18, 2004, 02:10: Message edited by: Deathstalker ]

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yes, it is possible and I have a hunch why it isn't working for you.
What is the 'Minimum Speed :=' for the big attack ships in the design file?
And what is the 'Requirement Max Engines :=' for the Baseship hulls?

If the minimum speed is greater than the number of allowed engines, the hull cannot be selected by the AI, since it doesn't fullfil the minimum speed requirement.
Lower the 'Minimum Speed :=' for designs 1500kT - 5000kT and it should work.

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Rollo, you are a godsend http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Will do as you say and see what happens. (something so simple yet so frusturating, don't know what I'd do without you guys. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But PDC works just fine on satellites - another units, then why not with fighters ?

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

Satellites don't move -- they sit there and other units move around them. It could also be that special code is present to handle satellites since he expected people to put PDC in them, but not for fighters because he didn't expect people to put PDC in them.

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

ok, now for a few facility questions...do negative numbers work for facilities (ie, happiness, resources, % increase in resources for planet or system etc).

I'd like to make forced labour camps/slave camps that either decrease happiness or 'eat' organics.

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

I just ran across this thread and skimmed through it so forgive me if I repeat someone. The question that I am addressing is special damage for drones. In my mod I needed to simulate radiation damage to a planet using a drone as the delivery vehicle. To do this I gave the warhead on the drone the plague level # feature and it works just fine. Is this what you meant by special damage? I see that others say it does not work, however IF (stress on if) this is what you meant I can assure you that even after multiple test there is no problems and it can be done.

Re: Yet More NON-Newbie Questions ;)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I do not know about negative percent increases. But, a negative resource production does work. Negative system happiness ability does not work. Negative planet happiness ability does work. However, if there is any other happiness ability affecting it that is positive, the negative gets ignored. Unlike all other abilities, the system and planet happiness abilities are treated as the same, and only the best gets used. So, if your slave camp has -10 to planet happiness and you build a UPC I with +1 to system happiness, the planet ends up with a net +1 to happiness per turn, with the slave camp being totally ignored. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif