Transport Minister Broken?

Cryptotec88 · #1 December 14th, 2000, 08:23 PM

Like the above, is the Transport Minister Broken? Has anyone gotten it to do anything at all. I have it (alone) toggled on and several ships with the Minister Control toggled on. I had 3 planets that got colonized without people and I didn't notice for several turns. All the while the Minister did nothing! Am I missing something or is it broken in V1.11?

Taqwus · #2 December 14th, 2000, 08:32 PM

Ditto. In my experience, you have to explicitly order a transport to shift pop to empty planets, and there's no warning message generated when it happens.

The easiest way to find 'em is probably to check the Colony listing, sort by Race, and then the empties should be at the bottom of the list methinks.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Courageous · #3 December 14th, 2000, 09:26 PM

The transport minister doesn't really seem to have the ability to project the consequences of its own actions. For example, it might decide to grab X population from some planet, but then send 10 transports there, completely depopulating the planet. IOW, it's not projecting the impact of each transport individually on the planet; the result in aggregate is not desireable, and it cannot forsee the result in aggregate.

Hence, don't use the transport minister.

C//

Cryptotec88 · #4 December 14th, 2000, 09:33 PM

In my games I don't have to worry about whether its on or off. It never moves a single ship! I'll have to check the beta patch info to see if anything mentions this...

eagleton · #5 December 15th, 2000, 12:43 AM

Depopulation of planets by multiple transports has been fixed in one of the new beta Versions. You can find this int the beta-patch thread that was posted by Shrapnelgames. Population Transports are supposed to take population from planets with more than 1.000 million people and take it to planets with less than 500 million people. Unless it is out, you can stop the problem of depopulation by building only small transports. I never had problems with that.

Psitticine · #6 December 15th, 2000, 02:22 AM

It's been working OK for me, with one exception. It has a bad trait of disregarding the fact different races can breathe different atmospheres.

I'll let the minister control several small transports for the first stage of the game but I'll disable it once I've conquered somebody who can breathe something different than my starting race's air. The transport minister doesn't pay attention to this sort of thing and keeps messing things up by adding colonists that can't breathe the air on a planet right beside ones who can.

Marik · #7 December 15th, 2000, 02:34 AM

If your trans ships aren't moving, make sure they are Population Transport ships and not just Cargo Transfer ships. The comp tends to auto design cargo trans which just sit around and do jack. If they are pop or troop trans, the computer moves them around and everything works fine. It is just that the auto design never seems to make 'em.

Oh, and you have to ensure the minister is on *and* the individual minister for the ship is on. Good luck

eagleton · #8 December 15th, 2000, 02:43 AM

Yeah psitticine, you're right, I forgot about that. Tha AI can't deal with different races, so the AI opponents can't get advantages out of using conquered enemies populations. This should be one area for MM to develop the AI a great deal...

Jubala · #9 December 15th, 2000, 04:43 AM

The easiest way to fix that would make a colony not domed as soon there's population there that can breath the atmosphere. Been suggested before.