[douglas]

Rathar said:
Ok, cloaking..

I just had the absolutely lovely experience of having 58 dreadnaughts and baseships (fully cloaked) come into a system of mine and end their turn upon a planet of mine (well defended, but not that well..)

Here comes the question.

I had and have multiple level 4 scanners in system so I can full on see them.

Why hasn't my planet shot at them?

Even wierder... Last turn I had the good fortune of having an 8 baseship cloaked fleet of his warp in and move to another planet of mine in a system which also had type 4 scanners in operation. This planet also did not fire upon the fleet (did I mention that both planets suffered the blockade effect so they definitely knew the ships were there..) but as their very very first action the next turn attacked and blew the smithereens out of said fleet indicating that it really really did see it.

I guess what I am asking is why is it that if the planet can plainly see the fleet it didn't blow it up the turn it arrived above it?

Am I missing something reallllly basic like "Cloaked ships can neither attack nor be attacked(but still exert blockade abilities in which case send one cloaked ship to each opponent planet, game over..)" and thus he decloaked and I was able to attack or some freaky timing thing?

Hmm really odd idea.. Fleets with 0 movement points will still engage in a combat if one is possible even though they cost 1 move (right? Has been my experience I think.. err or is it that they cost no actual MP's but you will be able to conduct as many attacks on your target as you have remaining movements? [ie, have 8 mv's, use 5 to get to combat, do three attacks if necessary]) but planets will only engage if the fleet they oppose has 1?

Either way, I thought it would have worked out that my planet this turn would be a glowing ball of glass now and that last turns planet would have blown the invaders out of the Oort clouds the instant they appeared..

Please to enlighten me, the future may depend upon it..!

A planet by itself cannot initiate combat with a cloaked fleet, even one it can see. However, anything at all in space around the planet, even an empty satellite, will do the trick. The planet blowing the fleet to smithereens on the second turn most likely happened because the fleet decloaked that turn.

Rathar said:
P,S, Totally unrelated but uhmm for some reason I get a large amt of random error messages before I open most any game (my superstitious theory is that it's due to folks having ship sets I don't bother to load) but I can get neither combat replays nor movement logs to go ever..

The errors when opening games are probably due to some of the shipsets you have not having AI files updated for Gold. To fix them, either delete the AI files for the shipsets in question or copy&paste the required lines from another shipset that has them. Note that the first option will force any AI's using those shipsets in single-player games to fall back on the generic AI files, which will likely reduce the AI's intelligence and certainly won't make use of any racial techs that race has.

Rathar said:
P,S,S... Umm Ok, "Simultaneous" movement occurs in order of player sign up for game yes? Does this mean that player one moves all of its units all of their movement and then player two so on and so on or does it mean that Player one (if they have the fastest moving ship etc etc, lets assume all ships everywhere move 10 per turn) moves all of their ships 1 space then player two one space etc? Big difference!

"Simultaneous" means simultaneous. Simultaneous movement happens over a period of 30 "days" in the month that one turn represents. Ships get to move once every 30/speed days. A ship with 6 speed, for example, will move on days 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. I'm not sure how the game handles rounding. All ship movement on any given day happens all at once and combat only happens after all the movement for the day is done. Note that "seek after" orders will seek after the location of the target at the start of the day. This makes it much easier to flee from an enemy fleet if you happen to be moving at exactly the same speed as your pursuer, and makes it possible for two fleets with the same speed to constantly "pass in the night", switching places all turn long while both seeking after each other.

Rathar said:
Blather Blather..

Grrrr, I swear the first 5 views of this aren't me editing this.. really.. but..

At what point in a turn does a planet or a ship launch stuff (mines, sats, fighters, etc)?

Planet launching happens on day 1. I'm not sure at exactly what point ships launch in the interval between the moves before and after the launch, though I am certain they launch by the time they could have moved out of the sector, even if their orders are to stay there after launch.