[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Silent Sorrow:
1. To attack enemy ships in space with multiple friendly ships at the same time, do the friendlies have to be organized into a single fleet? The other day I noticed that when I shift-click individual ships and give them an attack order, they arrive one at a time and are of course picked off.

1(a). If I select two friendly fleets and give them an attack order will only one fleet attack at one time? (I seem to recall this is what happened to me a couple of days ago.) Thus, is the only way to attack with all my ships at one time is to put them all in a single fleet?

2. If I colonize a tiny planet and it allows only one facility, will I still reap the benefits of a research center if I put one there without a space port?

2(a). Is the same true if I put a system computer, etc., on a one-facility planet?

3. What exactly is the relationship between size of planetary population and other things such as production? In MOO2 I could easily see the relationship but here it's unclear. Does getting it up to a particular level vastly decrease production time of new units, etc.?

4. Do mines I lay in space affect my own ships (haven't had a chance to test this yet but I'm curious)?

5. Why does the AI attack me so early in the game? I'm playing with medium settings and I've noticed in the few games I've played that even if I've given another empire a gift when I first meet them, they haul off and declare war a few turns later, no matter what. Often they claim I've been doing this and that, even though I've been having no contact with them and haven't even researched any kind of intelligence apparatus, much less built anything. What gives?

1) In a turn-based game they will arrive together IF you shift-click them all with one turn's movement of the location. If they move more than one turn to attack then yes, they will all move independently on the next turn and arrive one at a time. In a simultaneous move game, each will move at its own speed if they are not fleeted together. If they have different speeds then yes they will arrive seperately. Fleets are good. Especially if you have fleet training facilities.

1a) No. All shift-clicked items, ship or fleet, will get the attack order. They just might move at different speeds. If the fleets/ships all have the same speed they should arrive together even in asimultaneous move game.

2) No. You need a space port to get any resources (including research or intelligence) from a system unless you have the 'Natural Merchants' ability. You could still put a resupply depot or a cargo storage facility on it. When you research atmosphere converters you can get more facilities out of it, after the ages-long wait for the facility to get built and convert the atmosphere.

2a) Same deal. You need the Space Port first, then something else to produce resources for the computer to increase. Computers can only enhance what is on the same planet or in the same system with them. There are no 'empire wide' facilities yet except the Resource Converter.

3) This is controlled in SETTINGS.TXT as illustrated by Fyron. You can change it if you like.

4) No, your mines do not affect your ships or your allies' ships.

5) Did you choose 'team mode' when you started the game? That tells the AI to automatically gang up on any human players in the game. Otherwise, it's up to the AI code in SE to decide, and some of the AI settings in the text files. Since we don't have the code we can't really say. Yes, sometimes an AI will just immediately decide it hates you.

Also, there is an intelligence operation that will send a false message of war. You might have had that used against you if the game has run for a few hundred turns and there has been time to research it.

[ July 01, 2002, 00:30: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]