Mixed Bag of Questions

[davanden]

I have only recently found this forum. I beg your indulgence in answering a few specific
questions that are bugging me, while I sort through all the existing material.

1. How does population fit into production? I understand that facilities extract resources,
and this production is modified by the planet's resource percentages. Presumably,
population also contributes to final output. This isn't explained in the manual, as
far as I can see.

2. How do you take advantage of those traces of ancient civilizations that planets
sometimes have? In only one case can I remember ever getting a technological
breakthrough from that. Is there something specific I should be doing?

3. What's the deal with cloaking? Why would you ever not want to be cloaked? What is the
disadvantage? Does cloaking help in tactical combat, or just on the strategic level? I seem
to get cloaked ships shot at all the time.

4. I really wish one could assign ships in a fleet to permanent "Groups," like squadrons.
At the beginning of each battle, I have to sort through all the ships and group the
missile ships together, the carriers, the beam ships, etc. Even so, ships don't keep
in formation. Sometimes they just seem to wander all over the place, no matter what
the group leader is doing. Why is this?

5. It would be nice if I could change the strategy as well as the Groups at the tactical
level. Strategy depends on the force you're attacking.

Dav Vandenbroucke

[Suicide Junkie]

1) 100M people gives a 5% bonus.
500M gives 10%
1Billion gives 20%
every billion after gives 10% more than the Last
8 billion gives 90% bonus
10 billion gives 100% bonus

2) Ruins will give one of two things:
1 to 5 random, regular tech levels.
1 of the unique ruins tech (planetary shields, massive weapons, Neural combat net, etc)

If you have already got what the ruins would have given you, it will not show up in your log.

Some mods also add "dummy" ruins that do not actually give anything useful.

3) Cloaking is strategic-only. If a cloaked ship is in the same sector as a battle, it will be seen, and join the battle.
Cloaking also drains supplies, and takes up space that could be used for weapons and shields.
There are sensors available to research that will render cloaking (of an equal or lower level) useless.
At max tech, the sensors beat the cloaks.

4) There is a "fleet" button in the command bar. The icon is of a group of ships, with a Plus sign in the corner.
Select a ship, click that fleet button, "Create Fleet", then click to move ships into it.
If you exit that window and select the fleet, you can give orders to the entire group of ships at once, and set their common strategy with the "chess pawn" icon in the command bar.

5) See 4.
You need to set strategies before combat happens. If you are doing "tactical combat" with manual control over the ships, you can set the formation when you designate the leader.

[Puke]

there are also some activities you cant do while cloaked. colonizing, launching units or deploying mines, or sweeping mines, for example. to get an idea of your resource modifyers for population and other things, take a look at the ABILITY tab when you are looking at a planet.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Puke:
there are also some activities you cant do while cloaked. colonizing, launching units or deploying mines, or sweeping mines, for example. to get an idea of your resource modifyers for population and other things, take a look at the ABILITY tab when you are looking at a planet.

Actually units and mines can be deployed while cloaked. You cannot sweep while cloaked though, that is correct. Colonizing I will take your word for. I never put a cloak on a colony ship myself that I can remember.

Geoschmo

[Slick]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Puke:
there are also some activities you cant do while cloaked. colonizing, launching units or deploying mines, or sweeping mines, for example. to get an idea of your resource modifyers for population and other things, take a look at the ABILITY tab when you are looking at a planet.

Actually units and mines can be deployed while cloaked. You cannot sweep while cloaked though, that is correct. Colonizing I will take your word for. I never put a cloak on a colony ship myself that I can remember.

Geoschmo

---

I can confirm the inability to colonize while cloaked. However, I keep hearing conflicting reports on whether or not a cloaked Minesweeper will or will not uncloak to sweep mines. I will test this at my next opportunity. Check out related entries in the History.txt:

v1.66:
3. Fixed - Cloaked minesweepers will decloak their entire group if they encounter a minefield (regardless of their minister settings).

v1.52:
5. Fixed - If a cloaked minesweeper is about to enter a sector with a known minefield, it will decloak.

v1.15:
5. Fixed - Improved the AI Minesweeping minister.

The jury is still out.

Slick

[ January 03, 2003, 00:37: Message edited by: Slick ]

[Puke]

i think that refers to how the AI handles minefields that it knows about. if it does not know about the field, it should hit it while cloaked and die horribly. if it does know about the field, it should de-cloak and sweep.

as for human players, they have to do it all by hand. I believe that even in a simultanious game, the AI behaves as if its sequential. i.e. can give cloak/uncloak orders in mid-movement. human players dont have that luxury in simultanious games.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by davanden:

5. It would be nice if I could change the strategy as well as the Groups at the tactical
level. Strategy depends on the force you're attacking.

Dav Vandenbroucke

When you say you are at the tactical level, I guess you selected tactical combat. Then, you can change the Groups and their formations. They're called combat Groups, and they have a leader and those that follow.

You can then select auto if you're tired of controling them.

[davanden]

Thanks to everyone for your replies. I didn't make myself clear in my Last couple of questions. I already know about fleets, setting strategies and formations, and about assigning Groups at the beginning of tactical combat. What I was wondering about was the ability to permanently assign Groups within a fleet, so that I don't have to hunt through all the ships and, for example, find all the missile ships, at the beginning of each battle. I'd like all the missile ships in a squadron within a fleet. It appears that this isn't possible.

When I do go to the trouble of assigning Groups in a battle, I find that it doesn't help much, because the "wingmen" do not keep formation. Many of them go off in odd directions. I don't mean maneuvering to stay in formation, either. They just kind of wander away from the battle. These are ships with strategies such as "optimal range," too, not "don't get hurt." I usually have to control the ships individually to get them headed the right way.

[Puke]

nope, no such luck.

i dont notice those problems so much, because multiplayer play always uses simultanious combat.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by davanden:
, because the "wingmen" do not keep formation. Many of them go off in odd directions. I don't mean maneuvering to stay in formation, either. They just kind of wander away from the battle. These are ships with strategies such as "optimal range," too, not "don't get hurt."

I've seen them go a little hokey too. But a small fleet, no more than 10 ships, of the same type, do tend to stay in formation.

Ships with no weapons always run away. A ship with just point defense cannons is a ship with no weapons A ship with PDC and one meson bLaster I will stay in formation.

Ships may break formation while they reload, and return once the reload is complete. WMG, CSM, null cannon are worst at this effect because their reload is 3 turns.

See if you want to try this. Use the arrowhead or wall formation. The lead ship is a heavily shielded light cruiser with CSM (or beam weapon your choice). The wingmen are smaller or less well shielded with a mix of CSM and PDC.

Won't they keep formation, spread your missiles out, and overlap their point defense? Will it work better if they're all beam weapons with reload rate 1?

Maybe you want a special tacic, like a PDC Destroyer orbiting a capital ship always drawing fire, SE4 doesn't do that.

But even my tactic above, I wouldn't count on. I usuall just try to overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers and advanced technology.