Holy Atmospheres, Batman!!! aka stating the obvious

[Slick]

Ok, I will start this thread because there have been several times where I suddenly realized something totally obvious that everyone else probably knows and I feel like a real bonehead for not realizing it earlier. I have played SE III for a long time and upgraded to SE4G when Gold was released. If not documented in the FAQ, or if you just have a funny story, post it here.

I just realized 15 minutes ago that you can tell the atmosphere type of a planet by its color. I know that everyone probably knew this, but I just realized it. DOH! No wonder I had been finding so frustrating to move alien population to the right breathing planet.

I don't normally use neutrals, so I didn't pick this one up early either, but about 2 months ago, I suddenly realized that you can immediately tell if a race is a neutral by their "bland" flag. After that ton of bricks hit me, I noticed that the same races always seem to be neutrals. Can anyone confirm that the batch of neutral races are always neutral? or are they sometimes non-neutral?

Of course, in the beginning, made all the rookie mistakes: no engines on a ship, not loading population on a colonizer, mothballing an entire fleet in space (including the spaceyard ship) so it got stranded, etc, etc...

Anyone else care to state the obvious that they didn't notice?

Slick.

[Fyron]

Neutrals are in Pictures\RaceNeutral

Non-neutrals are in Pictures\Races

[Slick]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Neutrals are in Pictures\RaceNeutral

Non-neutrals are in Pictures\Races

DOH!

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Slick:


I just realized 15 minutes ago that you can tell the atmosphere type of a planet by its color. I know that everyone probably knew this, but I just realized it. DOH! No wonder I had been finding so frustrating to move alien population to the right breathing planet.

Slick.

Hmm... not always, for example there's a CO2 planet that has so much blue in its green I tend to mistake it for oxygen. The map editor will show you all the pictures under on heading.

Someone made a mod a long time ago that really changed pictures. I remember some airless moons were reddish brown.

[ January 18, 2003, 22:35: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Fyron]

Yeah, but those Carbon planets have vastly different patterns than the Oxygen planets, and it is fairly easy to tell them apart once you've played for a while.

What mod was that? Maybe it could be looted... err... borrowed from... for the Image Mod.

[couslee]

Another good example of the woes of colorblindness. I just checked this in my current game, and the first two carbon dioxide planets look completly different to me.

[Fyron]

Play se4 a lot, and you'll memorize whatever they look like to you, and be able to tell at a glance what the planets are.

[tbontob]

I guess that is my problem...

I haven't played SE4 a lot!

Slick, you are not alone...

[Will]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Play se4 a lot, and you'll memorize whatever they look like to you, and be able to tell at a glance what the planets are.

Even after not playing for long periods of time. I don't play at school, and when I came home for winter break, I had (almost) no problem. There are two tiny planets that I mix up sometimes, the Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen tinies that have rings. CO2 is a tan color, and H2 is a reddish-brown. Usually if I give it more than a cursory glance, I can tell, but just scanning through systems, sometimes it fails to register.

But in stock SEIV, I'm pretty sure there's only about 200 planet pictures. Make a large map game, and play it from the afternoon until the wee hours of the morning. You'll know what all the planets are after that

[Ed Kolis]

I always mix up the two nearly-identical tiny planets with the squigglies all over them - one's hydrogen and one's CO2 I think... then there's the medium CO2 rock planet that looks like a gas giant, and the fact that some CO2 planets are green and some are brown...