Newbie question
 

I'm currently playing the demo, and I ran into one small problem:

I can create colonies in my home system without problems. But whenever I send a colony ship through a warp point, my colonies won't start. I go to a planet with a red or green asterisk above it, click on the 'colonize' button, and the colony is created. But the population is '0' and whenever I try to build somethning there, it never gets done.
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...s/confused.gif
Now I know I'm missing something obvious that everyone else knows, and I hate to use forums to ask rookie questions like this 'cause I know I'll get flamed back to the stone age. But I'm trying very hard to get excited about this game, and I can't get too far into it without some help here.

Thanks.

Re: Newbie question
 

When you hit "c" or the Colonize button then click on the planet you want to colonize, the game automatically loads 4M of your people and then sends the ship off to the destination. At least that is the way it normally works. (Works great for me, full or demo.)
You can load the colonists yourself by clicking on the colony ship then hitting "T" or the Transport button and loading the colonists onboard yourself, then telling it to colonize the planet.

Cryptotec88

Re: Newbie question
 

Fenris,

You are, inadvertently, sending empty colony ships.

There are three ways to "fix" this:

1) When your colony ship is still in orbit, don't use the "move" or "warp" buttons to send it colonizing. Use the "colonize" button, click on the target sector, then click on the target planet. It will autoload colonists and head off to colonize.

2) Click on the "load cargo" button before telling it to move, and load population from the planet. That will load up colonists, then you can fly around to whereever and colonize at your leisure.

3) Build a transport with lots of cargo containers, load population at the homeworlds, and then drop population on your empty colonies.

Hope this helps,

John

Re: Newbie question
 

Hi Fenris,
you are not alone out there.
I (am) was new to SE, and made the same *mistake*
Have Fun
Ferendra

Re: Newbie question
 

How do you attack planets? What can you do to an enemy's planets? Control them, blockade them, bomb them, plague them - What are all these tings?

Re: Newbie question
 

You attack planets just like any ship/unit -- move into their square and confirm combat. You do have to watch for weapon platforms and satellites, however (always check the Cargo tab of a defender's planet, and of his transports and carriers), and certain weapons are better (e.g. planetary napalm only hits planets and WPs, but it does a *lot* more damage than standard anti-ship weapons).

Nasty things you can do to colonies and planets include...

- Destroy the colony outright, by attacking with weapons.
- Destroy only the colonists themselves, not facilities, via neutron bombs. Useful before invasion.
- Destroy only certain facilities, via smart bombs.
- Invade the colony with troops (note: quite difficult, it seems. Not sure what the rules are here).
- Cause it to join you, or form its own side, via espionage ('Puppet Political Parties').
- Blockade it, by simply remaining in orbit (which slows its production, IIRC, and should deny its resources to the owning empire; it should probably also make it unhappy).
- Drop plague bombs on it, which causes plague (which causes mass death and corresponding unhappiness every turn until cured or colony wiped out. Nasty, especially if your opponent never bothered to research even Biology and it's Plague V...)
- Destroy the planet, IIRC, using tectonic bombs.
- Destroy the planet and everything else in the entire system, by either exploding a star (into a nebula) or collapsing one (into a black hole).

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Newbie question
 

on blocading, how exactly does that work out? i send a ship or fleet to orbit a poor little undefended planet and the game asks if i want to attack. if i say no, then the move is canceled. if i say yes, then the overzealous captains (stragic combat only..) procede to bomb the unsuspecting residents into oblivion. how do you just orbit without attacking? how do I make ships use harsh words instead of planetary napalm?

I seek peaceful co-existance, but I am having a hard time starving out my neighbours to persuade them to my ways of thinking since my fleet captains get all happy slaughtering the women and children http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Newbie question
 

To orbit w/o attacking for real, you can choose 'attack', then tactical, and simply hit 'end turn' 30 times.

You might also be able to set the ship/fleet strategy to 'don't get hurt' and see if that works for strategic, but a) don't forget to change it back (usually to either optimum or maximum firing range) afterwards. I'd try this in the simulator first, 'tho.

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Newbie question
 

It seems I am the patron saint of reviving old Posts. Here's number 2 for the day.

The topic is appropriate for these questions.

1) What the heck do the repulser/tractor beams do? I know they pull/push stuff but at what rate? Does the number of wpns affect the rate?

2) How is the order of production determined by the computer? Say I have 25 planets all w/prod orders but only 10 projects worth of supplies avail how does the computer pick which are done? Is there a priority list somewhere I could modify? (I hate it when I have my front line worlds set to build WPs on emerergency but nothin gets built cause some older worlds are building toilets or something as worthless, so naturally the frontier world dies shortly after due to no defenses) And don't bring up the "put queue on hold" option - anyone ever tried to put 24 planets on hold just so 1 stinkin planet can be assured of building a WP? It's a pain in the butt... which brings me to...

3) Any way to select a queue to put on hold from the colonie or production screens? Any way to toggle all colonies on hold all at once? I haven't found it if there is.

4) this is to all the mod geniuses out there - Is there any way to alter the strategic combat file (if there is such a thing) to try to keep your ships from approaching an enemy any closer than the max range of your ships weapons? (ex - My ship A attacks enemy ship B. Ship A has wpn w/range of 5 and moves at rate of 3/turn. Ship B has wpn w/range of 4 and moves at rate of 3/turn. In Tact combat you would close rapidly till got w/in range then try to back off each turn taking advantage of your superior range on your wpn. In Strat combat the computer just seems to charge in as close as possible disregarding wpn range altogether. My strategy is set to optimal wpn range (whatever that means)...)

5) Also to MOD guys - in one of the game files the MegaEvil Empire settings are show as follows: "AI Uses Mega Evil Empire
:= True
AI Mega Evil Empire Threshold Score Thousands := 500
AI Human Mega Evil Empire Score Percent
:= 170
AI Computer Mega Evil Empire Score Percent := 250"

What does the 3rd and 4th settings do/controll? The score threshold appears to tell the cmptr to consider a human empire M/E when their score reaches 500,000. But what about the Last 2? Is the 170%, when the human score is 170% of the 2nd place AI? If so, what does the 250% do?

Is Mega Evil status a all or nothing type thing or is it an individual empire type thing. (will one AI empire consider you M/E if you score is 170/250% of theirs even though you aren't to that level for other empires?)

Better stop for awhile and see what kind of response I get on these b/f I ask any more.

Thanks in advance

Re: Newbie question
 

4. Switch your ships and fleets to Maximum Weapons Range. This didn't work too well before, but I THINK it works in 1.19.

5.
AI Human Mega Evil Empire Score Percent := 170

If a human player has a score over 500k, and is in 1st place with its score 170% of the 2nd place race, it will be considered Mega Evil.

AI Computer Mega Evil Empire Score Percent := 250

Same as above, but if the 1stplace player is an AI its score must be 250% of the 2nd-place player's. In other words, the game will declare a leading human player mega evil far more often than it will an AI.

I'm pretty sure you have to be the highest-scoring race in the game to be Mega Evil.

Re: Newbie question
 

let me add to the tractor question: I think they pull and push at a rate equal to the damage level of the weapon ( never used em, cant say) but what I would like to know is similarly, how does the damage number for boarding parties / aliegance subverters translate into odds? its not always a fixed number, so it must be a percentile (sometimes it takes more attempts to take over the same class of ship than other times)

and as for question 2 about production priorities, i am not sure, but i think it divides them evenly (which may mean that nothing gets done). I work arround this by putting some queues on hold when resources are low. for example, some yards have orders to repeat build mines or fighters. when i am in a crunch and am building lots of planetary facilities or warships, those other queues go on hold to free up the resoruces.

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 02 January 2001).]

Re: Newbie question
 

OK - got some more -

6) Combat sensors & ECM's - what exactly do they modify? They say it adds say, 20% to attack/defense. What does that mean? Is it 20% added to the ToHit %? 20% more damage? What? & the 20% defense bonus - is that -20% to the attackers %? Does it mean your armor/shields will sustain 20% more damage?

7) In the colonization screen, is there any way to sort the planets, say, alphabetically in the screen that pops up after you hit the "send colony ship to planet X" button. It's a pain in late game to have to sort through 50 planets to find the one listing for Zoltar VII when it's buried in the Medium sized planets (it apparently sorts all available planets by size automatically).

Thanks for the info so far.

didn't know that about the Max Wpn range - opps Just got another question...

8) If a ship is set to Max Wpn Range and it has 2 types of wpns - say a 3 range and a 6 range DF type wpn, which range will it use for the Max wpn range - the 3 or the 6? Would this prohibit putting extreme long range wpns on with medium range wpns?

Re: Newbie question
 

If you use maximum range go into your empires menu and click on strategies. You can then change the secondary strategy to don't get hurt. Then the ship will fire weapons at maximum range then move away and fire again when the weapon is usable again. This works well for missle weapons except when fighting against a planet. For planets the maximum range the computer sees and the real maximum range are not always the same and sometimes the missles don't hit the planet. If you have a mix of weapons on your ship the computer will go to the maximum range of the longest range weapon, fire, then go to the maximum range of the next longest, fire, and so on. You might want to set the strategy to primary: maximum range secondary: optimum range to fight against planets.

Be aware that if your ships are in formation some of them will be too close and some to far with these settings because the lead ship is the one that these strategies are used for. I favor a wall formation if I use one but after a few movements the results are about the same as in the arrowhead formation.

Ok on to combat sensors and ECM. Combat sensors add to the to hit percentage and do not affect damage. ECM subtracts from the enemies to hit percentage. So if you have both on your ship you will both be able to hit easier and will be harder to hit.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 02 January 2001).]

Re: Newbie question
 

More Newbie Questions -

While reading another thread on stellar manipulation and the computer's use or lack of use of Monoliths I thought of 2 more Ques:

9) Do Monoliths get the same bonuses to production from pop lvl/happiness/planet resource levels that regular resource extracting facilities get?

10) If you did alter the AI research file to sub in Stellar Manipulation in place of Mineral/organic/radioactive extraction (in hopes of letting the computer have access to Monoliths) would the computer actually use the other tech components that are available in Stell Mani (ie- building/destroying planets, stars, storms, nebula, black holes, warp points?)

Re: Newbie question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Taqwus:
- Invade the colony with troops (note: quite difficult, it seems. Not sure what the rules are here).


<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You get a fleet of about 4 or 5 attack ships. and one troop ship you then head for the planet. As soon as the troop ship is close enough you drop the troops on the planet.

Re: Newbie question
 

I do not think it's that hard to invade planets with ground troops, as long as you have researched the techs required.

In case you don't know what's the tech required... you need "Troops" & "Troop Weapons". But if your race has access to another tech tree, such as Organic, then you can research "Smaller Weapons" instead of "Troop Weapons". They are much more powerful than the standard troop weapons.

Assuming no other ground units on the target planet, the defending force is approximatly 1 per 20M to 25M. For a small AI start-up, with around 40M, the defending force will be only 2. So if you can land a much larger number of troops, you can take the planet without lossing any unit.

Re: Newbie question
 

bump - still lookin for answers

Re: Newbie question
 

this is turning into my own little personal thread... which isn't good since I obviously don't know the answers to my questions.

anyway - another thought.

Read somewhere, cant' find the thread, about Monoliths and the computer's failure to research Stellar Manip and how this could be fixed by subbin the stellar Manip tech for the resource extrction techs in the AI's research files.

10)My question is which research files need to be modified? The default research file or the research files in each races individual folders?

Any help on any of the 10 below unanswered questions would be helpful - thanks.

------------------
Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: Newbie question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by WhiteHojo:
10)My question is which research files need to be modified? The default research file or the research files in each races individual folders?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Individual race research files. But it is better not to do it if you haven't done it before. I am working right now on all the standard races to make them MUCH more competitive (looking to challenge EA). However, I will post these races one by one as they get finished, and with first on (Sergetti) I will post a little modified components and facilities files with some of the fixes that have been reported on this forum and can be fixed by moders. That mod will be compatible with Mephisto's and will enable AI to use monoliths. So you don't need to fix this yourself, just wait a day or two until I finish (and test) Sergetti and download the mod.

Re: Newbie question
 

excellent news daynar - I'll be lookin forward to it.