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Various questions about the FAQ

OK, I've finished reading through the entire FAQ (minus the multiplayer parts) for Version 03069 and have several questions related to areas that are either unclear or seem to be contradictory.

The format is FAQ section quoted followed by my related question.

Quote:

2.3.3 Warp guns can give your ship extended life in "Dogfights" especially with gunships.

What does this mean, gives you "extended life"? I've never used a warp gun. Seems like a silly weapon to me. Moves ships one or two random spaces? So? To waste time with that while the other guy us hitting you with weapons that actually take out your armour and systems seems pointless to me. What am I missing?

+++

Quote:

4.3.1 Atmosphere converters can be scrapped after the atmosphere is converted. Multiple Atmosphere Converters on the planet will speed up the process. (Quikngruvn)

4.3.6 Climate Control Facilities can be scrapped once the colony's conditions are Optimal. Multiple CCF's will speed the process. (Quikngruvn)

Interesting--more facilities speed up the process. Two questions: These are so expensive and take so long to work that building two or more of either on a single planet seems unrealistic. Does anyone ever do this?

Second, I never build the climate control facility. I just can't tell what kind of difference it makes to have the atmosphere go from, say, "unpleasant" to "optimal." Anyone have any stats on exactly what this accomplishes?

+++

Quote:

5.6.1 Fleet supplies are shared (evenly, regardless of ship size) at the end of each turn. 1 quantum reactor will top off the fleet. ships can still have supply problems in combat if they don�t have QR�s.

By this I understand that a fleet moving around on the galaxy screen only needs one ship with QR to be able to do that. However, once in combat, will all the non-QR ships START with full supplies or will they have zero supplies?

+++

Quote:

6.4.7 Since shields must be lowered to use Boarding Parties (and they don�t come back up unless you have shield regenerators), armor is a better choice on BP ships. Also consider use of shield depleting weapons on BP Ships.

This seems to suggest that your own ship which is doing the boarding has to have its shields down before its troops can leave the ship to board a target. Is this right? (I understand that the target ship must have its shields taken down.)

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Quote:

8.1.2 Units in same sector stack and count as 1 unit. Any component on any in the stack applies to all, except shields (until that unit is killed). i.e. 1 multiplex tracking component on 1 sat in a group makes the whole group able to multiplex track until that component is destroyed.

This is unclear to me. Does this mean a shielded unit will in fact Last longer than other units in its stack? Same for armour? How does this work for weapons platforms on a planet? If I've got, say, 10 WP, and one of them has armour III's or stealth armour, etc., does that one WP Last longer than the others? Does its armour cover all the other non-armoured WPs? Also, should shields be put on WPs at all?

+++

Quote:

8.1.5 Q: Are shields in fighter/satellite count as hitpoints or as shield? So how shield depleter and phased-polaron beam works against them?
A(Baron Munchausen): Shields on a unit just add to hit points, but as testing has shown, the PPB does skip the shields on units.

Unclear. "Add to hit points" how? Can anyone be more specific? But the PPB somehow skips the shields and attacks the unit's "base hit points" or something like that?

+++

Quote:

8.6.6 Q: Is it worth to put ecm, stealth armor and scattering armor to weapon platform when there is -200% defence bonus by planet?
A(Imperator Fyron): No, there is really no point. The best you can do is to get it to -200 + 60 + 15 + 15 = -110. That means that a normal ship with no sensors or training has a 100 chance to hit at range 11 (or 99%, cause there is always that 1% miss without talismans).

Actually, isn't the other bonus of scattering and stealth armour that it adds to hit points by absorbing damage before other components? Therefore, while the to-hit bonus is neglible doesn't it make sense to have lots of armour on WPs? But again, I'm not clear on how stacks of WPs take damage when they're not identical. Will the armoured WPs help absorb damage even if they scattered around randomly? Or does just that individual WP have a better chance of survival because of its armour?

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Quote:

9.2.2 If a planet with a spaceport is blockaded, the resource sharing ability for the whole system still works, but no contribution of resources is made by the blockaded planet. So in this case non-blockaded planets in that system would still contribute to the general resource �pool�.

Nothing unclear here. But I did want to just say that I think this is unfortunate. It would add a lot more strategy if blockading a spaceport planet actually stopped all that system's planets from contributing to the empire.

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Quote:

10.1.3 Stolen tech reports (via intel ops) don�t show up under the race:tech tab. Only what is seen in combat shows under race:tech. Since you don�t officially �know� about stuff until it is listed in race:tech, this makes it impossible to target intelligence ops to get them until after combat. bug reported to MM.

Simply not clear to me. Anyone else want to reword this?

That's all for now. All replies appreciated.

Re: Various questions about the FAQ

Quote:

What does this mean, gives you "extended life"? I've never used a warp gun. Seems like a silly weapon to me. Moves ships one or two random spaces? So? To waste time with that while the other guy us hitting you with weapons that actually take out your armour and systems seems pointless to me. What am I missing?

The wormhole beam moves the ship to a random square on the combat grid.

Occasionally, this may only be 1 or 2 squares.
Statistically, there will be a few times when it moves the ship closer to you.
However, most of the time, the enemy will be flung far away, and at the very least, their ships will be scattered out of formation.

Quote:

Second, I never build the climate control facility. I just can't tell what kind of difference it makes to have the atmosphere go from, say, "unpleasant" to "optimal." Anyone have any stats on exactly what this accomplishes?

Reproduction rate will increase as the conditions improve.
If the conditions get down to "Deadly", then there will be no growth at all.

Quote:

By this I understand that a fleet moving around on the galaxy screen only needs one ship with QR to be able to do that. However, once in combat, will all the non-QR ships START with full supplies or will they have zero supplies?

As it says, the ships will all be topped off bewteen turns.
Which also means they don't get any more until the next turn.

So if you fire off all your ammo in combat you can run out of supplies until the quantum reactor ship has a chance to share some more of its infinite supples at the end-turn.

Quote:

This seems to suggest that your own ship which is doing the boarding has to have its shields down before its troops can leave the ship to board a target. Is this right? (I understand that the target ship must have its shields taken down.)

The ship which attempts to board will willingly lower its own shields in order to attempt the boarding.
Without shield regenerators or armor, your boarding ship will have no defenses for the remainder of the battle.

Quote:

This is unclear to me. Does this mean a shielded unit will in fact Last longer than other units in its stack? Same for armour? How does this work for weapons platforms on a planet? If I've got, say, 10 WP, and one of them has armour III's or stealth armour, etc., does that one WP Last longer than the others? Does its armour cover all the other non-armoured WPs? Also, should shields be put on WPs at all?

The ECM ability from the stealth armor gets shared amongst all the units.
The shields do not. They are treated the same way armor is.

IE: if the shielded unit is hit, its shields will protect it. If an unshielded unit is hit, the other unit's shields don't help. Which unit is hit is fairly random.

Quote:

Actually, isn't the other bonus of scattering and stealth armour that it adds to hit points by absorbing damage before other components? Therefore, while the to-hit bonus is neglible doesn't it make sense to have lots of armour on WPs? But again, I'm not clear on how stacks of WPs take damage when they're not identical. Will the armoured WPs help absorb damage even if they scattered around randomly? Or does just that individual WP have a better chance of survival because of its armour?

Stealth and Scattering armor is poor relative to Standard armor in terms of sheer hitpoints. It is absolutely pitiful in terms of hitpoints relative to shields.
Thus, ony one stealth or scattering armor is useful. The rest should be Standard armor or shields.

Quote:

10.1.3 Stolen tech reports (via intel ops) don’t show up under the race:tech tab.

You don't officially know that the aliens have the tech that your spies on them to discover.
Before it appears in the list of techs you know they posses, you must encounter it in battle. (Allied combat against a third party works too)

[ June 28, 2003, 19:37: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Various questions about the FAQ

[quote]Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Quote:

The wormhole beam moves the ship to a random square on the combat grid.

Occasionally, this may only be 1 or 2 squares.
Statistically, there will be a few times when it moves the ship closer to you.
However, most of the time, the enemy will be flung far away, and at the very least, their ships will be scattered out of formation.

Yeah, put it after your normal weapons so you get to concentrate fire and then scatter the enemy. It is effective, but very high in the research tree.

Quote:

Originally posted by Silent Sorrow:
By this I understand that a fleet moving around on the galaxy screen only needs one ship with QR to be able to do that. However, once in combat, will all the non-QR ships START with full supplies or will they have zero supplies?

They will not start with zero supplies. I don't know if they will be at full supply or full supply minus the movement so far for the turn.

EDIT: Slick confirmed that they start the turn with full supply, which is what I suspected. Didn't want to give info I wasn't completely sure about.

Quote:

Originally posted in the FAQ:
8.1.2 Units in same sector stack and count as 1 unit. Any component on any in the stack applies to all, except shields (until that unit is killed). i.e. 1 multiplex tracking component on 1 sat in a group makes the whole group able to multiplex track until that component is destroyed.

So all your confusion about units seems to stem from the wording here. I'm not the expert, but here is how I understand it. The special abilities of components, like combat to hit plus or multiplex tracking, etc. are the things that apply to the whole stack of units. The damage resistence of the component (armor and shields for example) only adds to the hit points of that individual unit, though.

If you get way into micromanagement though, you can put units with lots of guns (low total hp) "behind" units with lots of armor and shields (high total hp). This allows the gun units to survive longer and fire a lot. Most often done with troops, I think.

[ June 28, 2003, 19:21: Message edited by: cybersol ]

Re: Various questions about the FAQ

I'll take a shot at a few of them.

Quote:

However, once in combat, will all the non-QR ships START with full supplies or will they have zero supplies?

Ships have their supplies topped off at the end of each turn if they are in a fleet with a QR. During that turn, supplies are consumed normally by movement. If combat occurs at any point in the middle of the turn, ships will begin combat with whatever their supply level is at.

Quote:

It is suggesting that you make your boarding ships use armor instead of shields so that they are protected after boarding by the remaining armor. If they had shields, the shields would drop to zero just prior to boarding and remain down for the remainder of combat, unless you had some shield regenerators.

Quote:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.1.3 Stolen tech reports (via intel ops) don�t show up under the race:tech tab. Only what is seen in combat shows under race:tech. Since you don�t officially �know� about stuff until it is listed in race:tech, this makes it impossible to target intelligence ops to get them until after combat. bug reported to MM.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Simply not clear to me. Anyone else want to reword this?

There is an intel project called "Tech Reports" which gives info about the enemy tech levels. Results of a successful attack are shown in the Log but are not added to your in-game "knowledge" of the enemy under the Race/tech screen (obtained by clicking Empires (alien head or F9) then right-clicking on an empire, then the "tech" tab. Since this new information is not officially "known" by the game engine, the tech cannot be specifically targeted by another intelligence project called "Technological Espionage" which steals technology. You still may get lucky if you target "any" technology.

If I get more time later, I might take a swing at some more.

Slick.

Re: Various questions about the FAQ

Quote:

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Occasionally, this may only be 1 or 2 squares.
Statistically, there will be a few times when it moves the ship closer to you.
However, most of the time, the enemy will be flung far away, and at the very least, their ships will be scattered out of formation.

Quote:

Reproduction rate will increase as the conditions improve.
If the conditions get down to "Deadly", then there will be no growth at all. <blockquote>quote:<hr />

OK. Has anyone actually calculated the percentage gain for the CC facility? I find that by the time they're available (late game-ish) I typically have so many resources that any gain from a CC seems like it would be superfluous--especially given the time it takes to actually change the climate. By this I mean, the mineral miner facility I probably had to scrap to make way for the CC facility would have generated many thousands of KTs of resources in the time it took for the CC facility to come on line and do its thing.

Does anyone out there make regular use of the CC facility?

<blockquote>quote:<hr />The ECM ability from the stealth armor gets shared amongst all the units.
The shields do not. They are treated the same way armor is.

IE: if the shielded unit is hit, its shields will protect it. If an unshielded unit is hit, the other unit's shields don't help. Which unit is hit is fairly random.

Meaning armour protects only the individual unit, correct? Interesting. Makes the decision to armour or not armour an important one. Although on the other hand, the volume of ship fire typically tossed at planetary WPs perhaps makes armour pointless. Might as well put just guns on them.

<hr /></blockquote>You don't officially know that the aliens have the tech that your spies on them to discover.
Before it appears in the list of techs you know they posses, you must encounter it in battle. (Allied combat against a third party works too)<hr /></blockquote>What about the many non-combat techs? How would I ever know if I got them?

Re: Various questions about the FAQ

Quote:

Originally posted by Silent Sorrow:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Occasionally, this may only be 1 or 2 squares.
Statistically, there will be a few times when it moves the ship closer to you.
However, most of the time, the enemy will be flung far away, and at the very least, their ships will be scattered out of formation.

Hmm, if it's only 1-2 squares that won't make a real difference--at least, not in massive battles where all the ships are bunched up anyway. But I may try this just to see what it actually does.

<hr /></blockquote>He said it may only be 1-2 squares. It's completely random. It could quite possibly fling the ship to the corner of the combat map. It all depends on the randomness of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Various questions about the FAQ

Yeah http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
Murphy's law will cause those small jumps to happen in the worst possible situation at the worst possible time, but most of the time the ships will be flung across the map.