More newbie questions
 

Hi all,

Since my original newbie questions thread was such a success, I figured I'd draw on your collective knowledge again. This forum is great !
Three new questions came up:

1: The "sweep mines" command. When would you ever need this? I a minesweeper enters a minefield, one of two things happens: you sweep all mines and live, or there are more mines than you can sweep and you die. Why would you want an explicit re-sweep?

2: Trading comm channels: can this ever work against the AI? I can not ask them for comm channels of neighbors of theirs that I havent met yet, since my race doesnt know yet that those neighbors exist. Once I meet the neighbors, of course I immediately have the comm channel. So this feature seems useless..maybe not in multiplayer? Will its how you a list of all the comm channels of all players in the game, even the ones you have not met yet?

3: CD music: I hear I should have this. I dont. I now have the CD in the drive, start the game, but no background music. I did not touch the default setting in settings.txt that says CD music = True. When I launch SE4 it does not even check for the presence of a CD... what am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance,

Dragonlord

Re: More newbie questions
 

I've sucessfully used the trade com channels thing...
met an AI who had met virtually everyone and I just asked for "any 8 com channels" in exchange for a bunch of minerals/organics.

As for the rest I cant help.

Re: More newbie questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dragonlord:

1: The "sweep mines" command. When would you ever need this? I a minesweeper enters a minefield, one of two things happens: you sweep all mines and live, or there are more mines than you can sweep and you die. Why would you want an explicit re-sweep?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's used to sweep mines when your minesweeper is already in the minefield.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
3: CD music: I hear I should have this. I dont. I now have the CD in the drive, start the game, but no background music. I did not touch the default setting in settings.txt that says CD music = True. When I launch SE4 it does not even check for the presence of a CD... what am I doing wrong?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think there's also an option somewhere in the file menu. Anyway the music in the original CD music ins't worth it.

Re: More newbie questions
 

1. I asked once about sweep mines and was told that it was useful for tactical combat to handle mines released during combat. Since I only play PBEM, I can't verify.

2. Trading comm channels is very useful in PBEM games. One way is to agree on the trade and then each side gift the other. Since you can see the other players on the load game screen, it would make sense to me to have a list of all comm channels for trading purposes. I would also like a game option to have all comm channels available to everyone (sort of like seeing all scores).

Re: More newbie questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>It's used to sweep mines when your minesweeper is already in the minefield.[/b]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In my experience, if my sweeper enters a large minefield, he will be killed by the mines. Basically he is overwhelmed and can't sweep them all at once. And dead sweepers cannot do a manual re-sweep...
Still puzzled.

Re: More newbie questions
 

You can get se4 to play ANY music CD you put into the d drive, at least under an older patch Version.

Re: More newbie questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> You can get se4 to play ANY music CD you put into the d drive, at least under an older patch Version.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I sometimes play with a classical CD in. The only "problem" is that the game will switch music tracks for some situations, so you often won't hear complete tracks.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: More newbie questions
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dragonlord:
In my experience, if my sweeper enters a large minefield, he will be killed by the mines. Basically he is overwhelmed and can't sweep them all at once. And dead sweepers cannot do a manual re-sweep...
Still puzzled.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think there are some rare cases in which your mine sweeper can start the turn in an enemy minefield. For example, if the enemy mined the orbit of one of your planets and you build a mine sweeper at its planetary space yard.
I never saw anything like that in my games, anyway, so I can't say if it works...

Re: More newbie questions
 

Example: You attack an enemy fleet with your fleet.
One enemy ship turns out to be a minelayer, and spews mines into space as it runs away. You and the other fleet square off and fight it out.
You win, and combat ends. Now, you are in the same square as an undetonated minefield.
Using the Sweep command allows you to sweep the mines without moving one square away, then coming back to sweep the mines.

Re: More newbie questions
 

Thanks Sj, that helps !

Re: More newbie questions
 

I think the "sweep mines" command was intended to be used for giving orders to a minesweeper ship (i.e., instead of giving a "move to" order, give a "sweep mines" order and select the destination sector). I've also used the sweep mines command (in previous patches) to get rid of the minefield designator in sectors where I've cleared the minefield, but still have that "M" symbol and ships continue to avoid the sector. Supposedly, MM has finally fixed that bug...