4 questions
 

Why some ships cant be put on sentry?

When a green/red planet is not the first (a moon), then you dont have a visible clue. Do you know how to circument the problem?

Is population really that important? You only get an handful of percent bonus when you add pop to a planet. Seems much effort for a poor bonus.

How do you filter/handle your ships so that you can play fast turns, but without forgetting important fleets?

Re: 4 questions
 

"Why some ships cant be put on sentry?"

Could you be more specific? That question can not be answered with any certainty. It might be that your ships are in a system with enemy ships in it. If so, you can not place them on sentry in sequential turn mode games because sentry is cleared when an enemy ship enters the system.

"When a green/red planet is not the first (a moon), then you dont have a visible clue. Do you know how to circument the problem?"

Click on the sector and look at the moon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

"Is population really that important? You only get an handful of percent bonus when you add pop to a planet. Seems much effort for a poor bonus. "

Yes, population is important. A 30% bonus to construction and production on _every_ planet in the empire is a huge bonus.

"How do you filter/handle your ships so that you can play fast turns, but without forgetting important fleets?"

Use the next fleet button to cycle through fleets. Fleet all ships that can be fleeted.

Re: 4 questions
 

If there is an enemy in the system, the sentry order would be cleared immediately...

If there is a little number to indicate moons, just click the sector with the planet/moon system.
In unmodded games, 99% of the time, the moon will be a vaccuum world. (none atmosphere)
You can usually tell what kind of atmosphere the planet is by it's colour.
Blue/green=oxy, Green/Brown = CO2, Red/Orange = H2, Purple/Blue = Methane, Grey = None

Population helps, but in the unmodded game is usually not critically important.

Fleets are one of the most useful tools. Also, find chokepoints, and plug up warppoints with stacks of ships. If you only have two or three systems the enemy can attack, and you aren't chasing down little intruders all the time, it is much easier.
Use waypoints to have ships built at your spaceyards automatically move to the front line resupply depots/staging area.

Re: 4 questions
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Are they low on supply? You cannot sentry ships if they are low.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I go to the Planets screen (F4) and select "Colonize/Breath" This will show you all the planets that you know of that are your atmosphere type and can breath. Is this what you mean?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes population is important, having those small percent bonus' can make a huge difference when playing a competitve game. Keep those levels as high as you can.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Can't answer this one because I don't know how I do it, I just never do forget about the important fleets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I hope those help.

edit: I knew I was going to be beat to it but I tried anyways. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ April 29, 2003, 18:51: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]

Re: 4 questions
 

ok, thanks all, you're fast!

Sentry : Yes I believe it is a mix between ships in enemy system, or ships with low supply. In fact I would have liked a guard order, so I can filter rapidly all ships in guards when I open the ship list.

red/green star : the problem is I like to check on the map the nearest green planet available to a given colonizer. Sometime the planet is a moon, and I dont see her. Not a big problem, I also use the planets list.

But the bigger problem is that the RSY letters are hidden too when you have a colony which is a moon. That's a bit cumbersome. I then usually launch some mines, so I least I see my empire icon when I glance at a system, but still I would have liked to always have a visual clue on planets with RSY abilities.

Populations : Yes was speaking of solo play here. In MP, I remember my olde stars game when I always had huge cargo fleets to optimize my mineral distribution. Still thats certainly a design decision to have only a +100% bonus when your world is at 20 Billions pop compared to 1 Million ...

Re: 4 questions
 

Mods such as P&N and Proportions attempt to make the difference in production rates between a 4000M homeworld and a 50M fledgling colony... mainly by cutting the fledgling colony production rates by about 90% http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Slows down the game and makes population MUCH more important!

Re: 4 questions
 

new questions:

I suppose that the shields dont cumulate in a group. Like a fighter group, you dont have to bring down all the shields of all fighters before killing one?

Does the damage carry over on another fighter when a weapon destroy one?

Re: 4 questions
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Shields on units do not count as shield damage points liek on a normal ship. They are counted as hitpoints.

Re: 4 questions
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Er, what? waypoints let you set destinations that all ships automatically move to once built? Whatwho? How? [whine]I wanna knooooowwwwwww[/whine]

[ April 30, 2003, 00:15: Message edited by: Gwaihir ]

Re: 4 questions
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Er, what? waypoints let you set destinations that all ships automatically move to once built? Whatwho? How? [whine]I wanna knooooowwwwwww[/whine]</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You set waypoints on the Empires screen and then when you are in the construction window there is a set move to button on the lower right of the screen. Click that button and what waypoint and all new ships produced at that construction yard will automatically move to the set waypoint. You must be careful with this feature. I have forgotten that it was set and built colony ships that then have to be sent back to load population before going on.

Re: 4 questions
 

Cool! Thanks! hehe, sometimes i think, maybe i should read the manual . . . but then i realize, "but how would I annoy everyone if my questions were already answered???"

Re: 4 questions
 

about WP : I use them, but how to delete them?

about units : is it true that one combat scanner is sufficient on a platform to give all platforms a bonus to attack?

Re: 4 questions
 

same place you set them. don't worry, i couldn't remember either. have to do to remember.

Re: 4 questions
 

Hit Alt + (0-9) to set a way point on the system map window. Going to the waypoints window is excessive. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Also, Ctrl + (0-9) sends a ship to the relevant way point.

Re: 4 questions
 

(IIRC) 1 combat sensor works for all units in a stack. Satellites/WPs/fighters (well, not sure about fighters though...)

Re: 4 questions
 

So basically you can have a commanding platform, like says one attack scanner, some point defenses, a a lot of shields (so you dont loose them too early), and firing platforms with weapons and less shields?

Does an order exists when dealing with 'which platform is killed first'? I remember that the troops respond to a FIFO rules when invading, is it the same for platforms?