An old hand with some new questions

[Droplede]

Hey, all. Been a few years, but it's nice to have a new Space Empires to amaze and confuse me.

Well, parts of it are nice. I'm agreeing with the SE4 vets' line that the potential is there, but distant at the moment. That, and I'd give a kidney for a one-click selection of components / actions / menus without having to confirm every move. But I digress ... on to the questions!

Is it just me, or does migration actually make it preferable to colonize a planet without pop loaded aboard your colonizer?

Just like the old days, I'd been loading extra cargo capacity on my colonizers so I could land 16 million people (or more) at the get go. So I accidentally did a pop-less colonization, and was amazed to find that the next turn I had 34m people in the colony -- far outstripping the growth rate of the other colonies who started 16m ahead. The advantage continued a few turns down the road -- the older and initially populated colonies hadn't even come close to catching up with the once-empty one. Anybody do a study of this, 'cause anecdotally, the migration-gain rate doesn't seem even close to proportionate.

Second question: any evidence at all that damage is directional? I've only confused myself by reading past postings on this topic. In other words: is there any gain to putting armor on, say, the sides to protect a certain axis of inner components, or will all your armor boil away before any of the outer/inner components are hit, regardless of facing?

Sorry if I'm rehashing. Anyway, looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and helping make SE5 the game it so obviously could and should be.

Best,
-doug

[Suicide Junkie]

You got lucky.
People only migrate to breathable worlds.


Damage is directional. There are only four directions, however. (Front/back/left/right)

In addition to that, all outer hull gets hit before any inner hull.
But among the outer hull components, the front ones get hit first by damage to the front side.


Armor is not directional when placed in Armor slots.
Modded stuff can be put in outer/inner hull slots, and thusly becomes directional.
Alternatively, modded armor (in armor slots) can be made to leak arbitrary percentages of the damage through to internals.

[Droplede]

Excellent. Thanks, S.J. As of old, I see you're on the case.

Only have about two hours under my belt with SE5, but already I'm shocked at ... well, at how similar it is to 4. I understand the scripting gives us a nice new handle to play with. And I like the potential that real-time combat has over I-GO/U-GO. But I'm surprised at how lost I wasn't.