Frequently Asked Questions for Newbies

[Slick]

Hello, I have been keeping “good to know” notes when I find out something that is not [or not well] documented]. Some of these have “bit” me in a game so I wrote them down so that I didn’t have to remember them all. I have gotten a wealth of info from the “dubious strategy guide” and this forum. You guys are always willing to help newbies and are very mature, which is why I like reading this forum. Please don’t be offended if you see something below which you posted; sometimes I just cut and paste into my notes file for future reference. Most of these have been originally written by the community and I found interesting. Please use any/all in the newbie guide and give credit to the community. Also, please look for mistakes and redundancies. Some of these may seem very simplistic to the veterans here but each one was not obvious to me at the time I copied it so I think they may be useful in a newbie guide.

- bases and sats have unlimited supplies.

- sats or other orbiters will attack a newly captured planet. need to eliminate them before capture. Weapon Platforms will not attack troops and don’t participate in ground combat.

- ships with a spaceyard can’t build while cloaked but can repair while cloaked. [icon changes from “spaceyard” to “repair” while cloaked.

- Cloaking: cloaked sats with sensors work well for recon. cloaking devices uses supplies, not sure about stealth armor. cloaked ships can get into combat if they encounter ship with right sensors. you can launch/recover fighters/mines[not recover]/satellites, transfer cargo, resource mine while cloaked
cannot colonize while cloaked. cloaked ships can’t be retrofitted

- all components on sats/fighters/mines/drones are inactive when unlaunched.

- ships lose fleet experience when they leave fleet.

- ships must leave fleet to be refit or do specialized functions [use emergency supply, build ships, etc.]

-ships will decloak when out of supplies

- atmosphere converters can be scrapped after the atmosphere is converted.

- each crew quarter counts as 16 defense against Boarding Parties

- there is a limit of 10 warp points per system

- need to add weapons to a ship in the order you want them to fire in combat

- specialty weapons [eg. weapon damaging] leave no “excess” damage. If it doesn’t destroy weapon, it does nothing.

- mounts on tractors don’t improve tractor

- tractors are not able to pull in larger ships

- 1] you can't design a ship unless it has the requested number of LS/CQ, or a MC. 2] ships lose movement if they have ZERO lifesupports or crewquarters remaining. 3] ships lose movement if they have no intact bridge or aux con. 4] any ship with an intact MC is exempt from rules 2 & 3. One each of B/LS/CQ is enough to fly the ship normally, but you can't save that design unless you have an MC [or are designing a ship < 450KT in size].

- you can self destruct mines

- Organic armor will regenerate only in battle, not in strategic mode. If got 1 left, engage immobile target and just sit there to regenerate.

- domed worlds are 1/5 facilities of non-domed. domed sphere worlds are 1/2. not sure about ring worlds.

- emergency supply & propulsion pods need a spaceyard [not repair bay] to repair.

- rock/none gives moons a whole new meaning.

- no use in training missile ships or using combat sensors - missiles either hit or miss based on range & pd.

- don’t forget to set the strategy of a new ship design

- if all ships in a fleet break formation, they go to their individual ship orders. this may be what you want.

- victory conditions are “and” not “or”

- good ratio - mineralsrganics:radioactives = 5-10:1:2-3. increase organics if you are organic racial, endgame increase radioactives

- mothballing a ship resets its crew experience to 0%

- retrofitting a ship does not affect its crew experience.

- you can shift cargo between anything in the same sector with cargo components, even a planet and its moons. built units will be placed in the cargo components of the building unit. if none/full, they will be placed in any other cargo components in the sector [ships, planets, moons]. if all full, you get log message saying unavailable storage.

- don’t mothball your Last spaceyard ship in a fleet - you need an active spaceyard to unmothball.

- System facility effects stack with planetary facility effects.

- it costs 50% [of the cost of the new facility] to upgrade a facility

- how much does retrofitting cost? 120%, 30% for component removal

- what does experience do? 20% Experience [whether gained from training or combat] would give your ships a 20% less-likely-to-be-hit modifier and a 20% more-likely-to-hit-with-direct-fire-weapons modifier.

- solar generators have increased benefits if more stars are present

- pdc’s get a 70% to-hit bonus. incinerator beams get a 10% to hit bonus. wmg’s get a 30% to hit bonus
high energy magnifiers get a 30% to hit bonus. tachyon canons get a 10% to hit bonus. mental singularity generators get at 20% to hit bonus

- units in same sector stack and count as 1 unit. any component on any in the stack applies to all, except shields [until that unit is killed]. ie. 1 multiplex tracking component on 1 sat in a group makes the whole group able to multiplex track until that component is destroyed.

- when a stack of units takes damage, all structure is added up and when enough accumulate to destroy 1 unit, it is killed. no partials.

- do pdc’s need multiplex tracking? no.

- captured population [by any means] loses all of its racial attributes and is identical to yours except they retain their atmosphere breathing so can be used to populate your colonies appropriately AND they slowly get unhappy over time so you need to account for that so they don’t riot [riot police, upc, etc.].

- pdc’s won’t fire automatically unless you or the target moves and is in range; but they can be fired manually.

- you can get ripped off in the “build 1 turn’s worth” since extra build capacity is lost- check out the build times for 1,5,10,etc if you were going to build that many anyway - could be shorter since additional build points are lost, but you won’t get any of your units until the entire build time is complete.

- ships do retain original strategies after being retrofitted or captured - you can overcome this by making a 1-ship fleet and giving it new fleet orders.

- Income is better than a savings account with no interest. quote I saw regarding whether to build a facility on a poorly valued planet.

- Facilities undergoing upgrade still produce. Do not scrap to upgrade!

- Shields are not active against mines.

- having more population increases production rate [see settings.txt]

- happiness affects resource production [see settings.txt]

- there is no way in unmodded game to detect mines without running into them.

- repairs cost no resources.