Unbelievable find on ruins!
 

I am playing a Rock species.

At about turn 10 I colonized a tiny rock planet and got kamikaze warheads, Chemistry and Gas Colony technology! WOW!

About 15 turns later I colonized a Gas planet one system away and got Spacetards II, Repair II!

I feel like I got a huge edge!!

Has anyone evr gotten this lucky??

Re: Unbelievable find on ruins!
 

usually the only thing of note I get from ruins is Tactical interfaces. I'm pretty sure it's been explained that the ruin techs are predetermined, but still whenever I am about to colonise ruins I line up in research all the high cost stuff, like research, space yards and colony tech in the hope they will be selected http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Unbelievable find on ruins!
 

Yeah, I've seen the A.I. have 2 colonizeation techs on turn 5 or 6 -- they must have likewise gotten one from a ruin. I tell ya, a benefit like that will really turn the A.I. into a monster.

Once I got 4 or maybe 5 techs at once, don't remember what they were. I just wished I could have given my xenoarcheologists a bonus or something for being so productive.

Once I was playing religious, and I got two levels of religion tech. Now trhat saved a lot of research, but if I'd hadn't taken the trait, I would have gotten no message. Leaves me wondering, what have I missed everytime I colonize a ruin.

Oh, and someone once made a stellar neighborhood map. He put something like 20 techs on a ruin that was in some very hazardous system. That was an interesting idea.

Re: Unbelievable find on ruins!
 

There are two types of ruins. Ancient ruins and Anciet ruins unique. The 'unique' will give you one of four techs that you can't get within the game at all. They are Massive shield depleter, Massive engine depleter, Massive planetary shields and Neural net. The other ruins will give you a generated number of tech levels at random. You can learn more about this in the map maker/editor program that comes with SEIV.

Re: Unbelievable find on ruins!
 

You can tell something about what you're going to get from ruins in a random stock map by the description of the ruins.

"There are ancient ruins on this planet from a long dead civilization." - 1 random tech

"There are buried alien cities on this planet that have long been deserted." - 2 random techs

"Sensors indicate some kind of advanced technological devices left on this planet." - 3 random techs

"We have detected advanced technology present on this planet." - predetermined unique tech

Which unique tech you get from unique tech ruins is determined at map creation. Random techs are determined at the time of colonization, and are chosen completely randomly from the techs you have all the prereqs for and haven't researched to the maximum level. I'm not sure, but I think every tech area has an equal chance of being picked. If you're playing sequential movement, it's possible to force a ruins to give you a particular tech by saving before colonizing, and reloading every time you don't get what you want. The random number generator is reset to the same spot in the sequence every time you reload, so you'll have to do something like simulating two colony ships running away from each other a different number of times after each reload. This is not recommended for most players if you want a challenging game, but may even the scales if you're consistently losing to the AI.

Re: Unbelievable find on ruins!
 

What's really fun is finding both ice and gas colony tech within the first 15 turns in a PBW game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: Unbelievable find on ruins!
 

I know what you mean. In the first twenty turns of my current game I found Ice Colonization and Research II. Traded for Rock tech on turn 25 and have not looked back since. It will really help since I am bordered on both sides with players who are Deeply Religious. My economy right now is twice theirs combined and hopefully I can continue to out produce them or I am in for a very long nasty fight.