Ancient Ruins & Advanced Technology?

[tbontob]

What is the difference between ancient ruins and advanced technology on a planet?

Would I be correct in assuming that ancient ruins are a source of "found" or "ancient" technology and that advanced technology is technology which we would normally research?

And can anyone give a "guestimate" of the probability of technology actually being found on the site?

What kinds of ancient technology is "findable"? And is any of the ancient technology actually useful and if so...why?

For example, Massive Engine Destroying Weapons are not very useful when compared with our normal ionic dispersers.

[Pablo]

As far as I understand, ancient ruins is new and not researcheable technology like Massive shield depleaters and advanced technology is researcheable technology but of higher levels than the game start (sometimes it happened that I colonize a planet with adv.tech and get nothing because I have the technology already researched myself).

[dogscoff]

Most people reckon the special ruins techs (ie all the massive techs) aren't very good but there are a few ppl out there who really like the Neural Net thingummy.

This is unmodded, of course. most mods alter the ruins techs in some way to make them more useful. Proportions even exchanges the ruins techs for ruins tech areas, which give all kinds of goodies, but you have to invest research points as well as just colonising the planet.

As for frequency/ probability, I don't know but I do know it can be modded. Have a look in the game's data files and you'll find it sooner or later.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by tbontob:
What is the difference between ancient ruins and advanced technology on a planet?

For example, Massive Engine Destroying Weapons are not very useful when compared with our normal ionic dispersers.

Ah, but if you find them before anyone else even has a chance to research that far -- aren't they at least cool, if not as useful.

Seriously, I thought the massive engine destoryer, and especially the Massive Shield Depleter were the greatest before I understood the tech tech tree and knew I could get something myself.

A massive shiled depleter on a boarding party destroyer is pretty good the early game. When no one has self destruct, and is only up to shield 2.

Yes, you get to research a shield depleter, and with a carefully assembled fleet of boarders and depleters in the correct number, with careful tactics for fleet and ships, avoiding the enemy that uses self destruct ... bah, I'm talking about have some fun early on.

Leaving space littered with engineless frigates of an enemy that only has a few planets to support maintenance -- and they don't even have repair researched yet -- bwah ha ha ha

[Slick]

The probabilities that ruins will be on a planet is located in StellarAbilityTypes.txt. The exact tech you get (according to Abilities.txt) is random.

[ October 03, 2002, 16:31: Message edited by: Slick ]

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Slick:
The probabilities that ruins will be on a planet is located in StellarAbilityTypes.txt. The exact tech you get (according to Abilities.txt) is random.

Which begs the question about ability #2 or at least the one called: Unique. Is that for the tech that exists outside a tech tree or what?