Newbie questions.

[Ebonyknight]

Had a few questions. I have the demo and my full game should be coming tomorrow.

Refits. How do you refit an existing ship? I see how to upgrade designs, but not how to refit the existing ships.

How do you load an empire once you have started. I guess I should ask, can you load an empire for a quick start game? I just get a little tired redesigning basic ships. Is loading the empire the only way to get around this?

Bases, I noticed that you seemed to be allowed to add propulsion to bases, is this possible to build mobile bases and do they move just as fast as the regular ships? What would be the incentive to (other than cost) to not build any of the other classes and just build mammoth bases as ships?

Are there any advantages to building more than one supply depot or multiple space yards at a site? Does it decrease the build time having multiples?

Is there any way to change the name of a ship individually?

How do you gather intelligence on other races.

Thanks.

[Narlotep]

Ebony,

1.) You select the ship. A button with a green triangular shape will be available on the main control bar. Click on it and it will display the ship in the left side of the screen and there will be several choices in a list on the right side. If you have already designed an upgrade, the "retrofit" option will be available. Click and let the magic begin.

Note: Your ship must be colocated with a ship yard.
Note: If you've added/subtracted components to the upgraded design, you will be able to select "retrofit" but it won't work...Says some dribble about "sizes must match" or some such.

2.) You can start a game with your basic empire as you defined at the beginning of the game, build basic ship designs and then select "Save Empire" (I think) from the save game button.

3.) Er, teh only propulsion that-may-be possible for bases is Emergency Propulsion pods and I think only one is permitted per vessel. I'm not sure, but you definitely cannot use Ion Drives on a base.

4.) Good question. It's supposed to be impossible to have more than one shipyard per planet. There was (is?) a bug that would permit more in a specific case, but it's not by design. There is no advantage to building multiple Resupply Depots.

5.) Click on the ship once it enters your fleet. A button labelled "Name" will appear on the button bar. CLick and modify name of the vessel. (Similarly click on a planet and the same will permit renaming of planets.)

6.) Overtly collected general intelligence information is available upon contact, i.e. racial characteristics. Specific intelligence can be acquired after the development of Applied Intelligence, which gives you Intell centers. These in turn produce Intell points which can be applied to different missions. The types of missions expand when App. Intell 2 is reached.

Hope it helps.

Narlotep

[Psitticine]

quote:

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Originally posted by Narlotep:
Note: If you've added/subtracted components to the upgraded design, you will be able to select "retrofit" but it won't work...Says some dribble about "sizes must match" or some such.

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Eh? I've never seen this happen and I'm continuously refitting my ships. Are you sure you aren't resetting the hull size when you upgrade the design?

[great.throwdini]

Re: "sizes must match" -

I, too, get this message all the time. Does anyone know whether MM will repair this seeming bug in the first patch?

And no, I am not resetting hull size, but it does seem to be related to adding/subtracting components from an upgraded design. Terribly frustrating.

[LintMan]

I've never seen a "sizes must match" message, and my upgrades regularly have different #'s of components.

Are you maybe seeing the "maximum 50% cost difference" message? If you are, that means that you new design costs more than twice as much as your old one and you can't upgrade that ship to the new type. (Actually, you can if you're willing to design intermediate cost level designs and put the ship through a series of upgrades - very pricey!).

You can adjust the 50% number through a setting in Settings.txt.

[Narlotep]

Nope, I'm positive about the message. Either it is referring to adding additional components in an upgrade or sizes of swapped components not matching. I'll try it again later and let ya'll know.

Narlotep