Re: Supply questions
 

Opps...spoke before I thought...I hate that...

There isn't a way that I know of to move SUPPLIES. The movement I mentioned above (besides the bowel movement in my brain at the time http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif ) was a CARGO move....sorry

For supplies, you'll just have to 'fleet' the ships together and they'll share supplies.

Paul E. Mason
Senior VMS Systems Administrator

Re: Supply questions
 

But ships won't share supplies immediately - i.e., you won't get the "increased" movement until the turn AFTER you formed the fleet.

Re: Supply questions
 

Should I be able to split the fleet after re-supply? I havn't been able to do that.

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
The Stellar Manipulation weapon type items are very powerful,IMO. Would it be possible to make them a one shot item instead of allowing them to be repaired, i.e. you would have to retrofit the ship to get the item functional again?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm with you!

A cloaked planet destroyer is one incredibly powerful ship!

I don't think the game engine has the capability to 'remove' a component from the ship after it has been used. If that is the case, I would like to humbly suggest that the planet destroying weapon *KILL* everything in that grid. This would destroy the ship as well as any pesky satellites that are probably the reason why I nuked the planet in the first place. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
Should I be able to split the fleet after re-supply? I havn't been able to do that.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Try this:

1. Form a fleet which includes your supply ship (or a base since they have infinite supply)

2. Hit End Turn.

3. Now, split up the fleet as you like. The supplies should be equally divided among the ships. If your fleet included a base when you hit end turn, all your ships will be re-fueled.

Re: Supply questions
 

Raynor,
I'll try it tonight. Thanks

Re: Supply questions
 

On the stellar manipulators, can a modder flag them to always have the marker for forbidden technology? Meaning the one that prevents a non-organic race from repairing a damaged seeking parasite on a ship it stole.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nyx:
On the stellar manipulators, can a modder flag them to always have the marker for forbidden technology? Meaning the one that prevents a non-organic race from repairing a damaged seeking parasite on a ship it stole.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You'd have to make all the Stellar Manipulation stuff a "racial tech". But then you'd have to set up certain races to have access to the racial tech...

Why do you ask?

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nyx:
On the stellar manipulators, can a modder flag them to always have the marker for forbidden technology? Meaning the one that prevents a non-organic race from repairing a damaged seeking parasite on a ship it stole.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm confused.

I've never been able to repair *anything* on a captured ship. Are you supposed to be able to repair stuff on captured ships?

Re: Supply questions
 

Raynor, you're supposed to be able to repair anything you could build yourself. If you can't build it, you can't fix it either. Bu tif you capture a ship with equal or lower tech value, then you can fix it.

Tsaarx, The reason why was in response to the request to find a way to prevent them from being repaired and reused. Look down to Raynor's response to Nitram Draw where Nitram asks about making stellar manipulation truly one-shot items. This was just a quick thought about how it might be possible to do such a thing.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Supply questions
 

I have some questions on supply.
I have always wondered why it does not cost any supply to repair? It only seems to cost time.
The Stellar Manipulation weapon type items are very powerful,IMO. Would it be possible to make them a one shot item instead of allowing them to be repaired, i.e. you would have to retrofit the ship to get the item functional again?
I have had ships run out of supplies. Once this happens it seems that even if I get a ship loaded with supply to it and form a fleet I still have reduced movement costs. Is there a way to transfer supplies from one ship to another, sort of creating a supply tender type ship?
Thanks

Re: Supply questions
 

I believe that you can use the transfer supplies option to move stuff between ships...you MAY have to be at a planet to do it, not sure on that, but, I moved troops from one troop ship to another Last night while in orbit around a planet.

Paul E. Mason
Senior VMS Systems Administrator

Re: Supply questions
 

Would it be possible to make the stellar manipulation weapons work like mines? You build them, place them, use them and then they are gone. You could build a stellar weapon mine layer but the mines would be expensive. Might limit the use of these weapons to critical situations.
I also think the weapon that opens and closes warp points should be a facility. Maybe it could even scrap itself after use.

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Marty Ward:
Would it be possible to make the stellar manipulation weapons work like mines? You build them, place them, use them and then they are gone. You could build a stellar weapon mine layer but the mines would be expensive. Might limit the use of these weapons to critical situations.
I also think the weapon that opens and closes warp points should be a facility. Maybe it could even scrap itself after use.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


I assume you want something like B5's jump gate? I've heard that these are being considered, but I don't think they've started working on them. Any beta testers want to comment?

Re: Supply questions
 

What I would like to see is these powerful items not be able to be used on a whim. If you can use one and have a repair bay fix it at no cost in one turn then they lose some of their specialness. You could destroy a planet a turn per ship if you wanted. I thought that destroying them after use would restrict their use to really special tasks.
They seem to strong to me.

Re: Supply questions
 

I think a small modification of social unrest would do the job.... Anyone care to give it a shot?

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What? Why? he really did it? Who Knew? -me 20 min ago

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nyx:
On the stellar manipulators, can a modder flag them to always have the marker for forbidden technology? Meaning the one that prevents a non-organic race from repairing a damaged seeking parasite on a ship it stole.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I haven't found any way to make such adjustment. It just isn't included in the code. However, if the supply requirements for Stellar Manipulation components would work, it would make them much harder to use.

Re: Supply questions
 

The problem with making it unrepairable the way its set up now is that flag is only set on unresearchable technology. That means if you can build stellar manipulation you can repair it. That would be a code change to make that work.

Even if you made it a racial pick sort of thing if you picked that area you could research it, build it, and repair it. If you didn't research it you couldn't repair it but you couldn't build it either so its a moot point.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 10 February 2001).]

Re: Supply questions
 

Why not just alter the Stellar manipulation components to destroy the ship that is carrying them, like the ringworld + sphereworld comps? Alternatively add the Sector - Damage ability to the comp so that any ship in the area is torn apart by the gravitational flux / whatever of the warp point openning / closing

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jimbob55:
Why not just alter the Stellar manipulation components to destroy the ship that is carrying them, like the ringworld + sphereworld comps? Alternatively add the Sector - Damage ability to the comp so that any ship in the area is torn apart by the gravitational flux / whatever of the warp point openning / closing<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


With respect to the planet destroying components, I think that is an outstanding idea. But not on my warp open/close ships! Not that.

You should see my empire before I started turning off the SM tech to give the AI a fair chance. My empire would be as fully interconnected as is possible under the 10 warp points per system limit. And, I wouldn't have any warp points leading out that didn't have at least half my fleet sitting there watching to see what came through. Even that one was closed once I became MEE.

Wormhole creation is very, very fun. Under 1.19, it's also very, very unbalancing. I would set all my colonies up to send their ships to my homeworld. Once I had a fair size fleet, I'd open up a wormhole to an enemy system, send the ships through and close the wormhole. Very, very fun. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

This raises an interesting question in my mind: How many of you who use SM like I do would like to see an expensive SM component which could be placed on a ship/base which blocks the creation of wormholes into that system?

Before I found out that the AI doesn't use SM offensively, I had a rapid deployment force ready to respond to any hostile wormholes opened up in my empire. But if the AI (or a human) effectively uses wormholes, I don't see anything to prevent him from annihilating at least one planet per turn by opening a wormhole and then sending everything he has through to destroy a single planet. If he's lucky and the planet is close to the wormhole, he might even make it back through the wormhole after the battle.

Re: Supply questions
 

I'd rather see repair bays changed so that they had a repair rate, or a cost associated with them aside from just maintenance. It shouldn't take as long to repair a stellar manipulation component as it does a piece of armor...

As far as wormhole usage - let's see how good the AI is at using stellar manip. with the next patch. Maybe it'll surprise us. *shrug*
-Drake

Re: Supply questions
 

A repair rate and resource cost for the repair of SM devices would be great. Both should be high.

Re: Supply questions
 

The way to keep your system safe from an enemy wormhole attack is to open 10 wormholes to safe systems. Then no one can open one to that system. When you want to open a new one just close one of the old ones and open the new one.

Re: Supply questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tomgs:
The way to keep your system safe from an enemy wormhole attack is to open 10 wormholes to safe systems. Then no one can open one to that system. When you want to open a new one just close one of the old ones and open the new one.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey! No fair coming up with simple solutions to complex problems. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Thanks, man!

Re: Supply questions
 

I've come up with my own rules for SM components, what a great game to let you change things so simply.
I'm going to increase the size so that they can only be put on large, DN and larger, ships with not much extra space left for other items. This will cause the need for a speciality ship for each type of SM item and the ship will be relatively defensless.
I've alway thought of these items as huge complicated devices so it makes me feel better to do it this way.
I am also going to add some additional build costs to increase the maintenance, I can pretend this is the cost for repairing the item.

Re: Supply questions
 

I agree with the people who think that making the supply usage requirement work properly will help balance the SM components. As it stands now, you can indeed just repair the component and use it again next turn. If you had to pay the 4000 supply points for each use, you'd have to put a Quantum Reactor on the ship, or use the emergency resupply pods and repair those too, or have a supply ship (or multiple supply ships) supporting the SM ship.

Of course, the QR may unbalance the SM components again. Not certain how to fix that yet...

Re: Supply questions
 

I also agree that the supply usage bug should be squashed. And also INCREASE the SM usage so that only ships with Quantum Reactors would be able to use 'em (or have a BS with 40 Supply III's on it!?!?). That would give me a reason to research QR's - right now I don't use 'em but that's for another thread. OTOH, the supply usage problem is one reason why I don't HAVE to research QR!!!

The other thing I'd like to add is that IMO, many should consider lower the number of Warp Points allowed per system. I read in another thread that this is in a text file somewhere. I don't mod but use a lot of stuff other people have done. Wonderful Job Also to all modders!!!

My reason behind the reduction is that I too, am tempted to exploit the usefulness / tactical advantage / cheat behind the rapid opening and closing of WP's into enemy territory. I too can amass an emergency fleet in just a few turns FROM anywhere in my territory TO anywhere in my territory. The AI just does NOT do this which gives a HUGE advantage once SM is available.