Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

Ok, I will start this thread because there have been several times where I suddenly realized something totally obvious that everyone else probably knows and I feel like a real bonehead for not realizing it earlier. I have played SE III for a long time and upgraded to SE4G when Gold was released. If not documented in the FAQ, or if you just have a funny story, post it here.

I just realized 15 minutes ago that you can tell the atmosphere type of a planet by its color. I know that everyone probably knew this, but I just realized it. DOH! No wonder I had been finding so frustrating to move alien population to the right breathing planet.

I don't normally use neutrals, so I didn't pick this one up early either, but about 2 months ago, I suddenly realized that you can immediately tell if a race is a neutral by their "bland" flag. After that ton of bricks hit me, I noticed that the same races always seem to be neutrals. Can anyone confirm that the batch of neutral races are always neutral? or are they sometimes non-neutral?

Of course, in the beginning, made all the rookie mistakes: no engines on a ship, not loading population on a colonizer, mothballing an entire fleet in space (including the spaceyard ship) so it got stranded, etc, etc...

Anyone else care to state the obvious that they didn't notice?

Slick.

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

Neutrals are in Pictures\RaceNeutral

Non-neutrals are in Pictures\Races

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">DOH!

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm... not always, for example there's a CO2 planet that has so much blue in its green I tend to mistake it for oxygen. The map editor will show you all the pictures under on heading.

Someone made a mod a long time ago that really changed pictures. I remember some airless moons were reddish brown.

[ January 18, 2003, 22:35: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

Yeah, but those Carbon planets have vastly different patterns than the Oxygen planets, and it is fairly easy to tell them apart once you've played for a while.

What mod was that? Maybe it could be looted... err... borrowed from... for the Image Mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

Another good example of the woes of colorblindness. I just checked this in my current game, and the first two carbon dioxide planets look completly different to me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

Play se4 a lot, and you'll memorize whatever they look like to you, and be able to tell at a glance what the planets are. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

I guess that is my problem...

I haven't played SE4 a lot! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Slick, you are not alone... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Even after not playing for long periods of time. I don't play at school, and when I came home for winter break, I had (almost) no problem. There are two tiny planets that I mix up sometimes, the Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen tinies that have rings. CO2 is a tan color, and H2 is a reddish-brown. Usually if I give it more than a cursory glance, I can tell, but just scanning through systems, sometimes it fails to register.

But in stock SEIV, I'm pretty sure there's only about 200 planet pictures. Make a large map game, and play it from the afternoon until the wee hours of the morning. You'll know what all the planets are after that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious
 

I always mix up the two nearly-identical tiny planets with the squigglies all over them - one's hydrogen and one's CO2 I think... then there's the medium CO2 rock planet that looks like a gas giant, and the fact that some CO2 planets are green and some are brown...