Updated the FAQ

[Parasite]

Awesome list! Here are some changes and additions from a lurker (Parasite)

1.1.1.2.1 (edit) plagues, increase happiness system-wide,

2.9.7.1 (move "Neat trick" stuff move to here)
2.9.7.2 (add) Design colonizers with one more movement point than needed to reach a planet to have it move and colonize in one turn. Two moves away, make it the cheapest speed three ship. i.e. three engines III or one engine IX depending on TL.

2.14 (add the below)
A (Parasite)
d. Medium Transports are good for carrying a repair bay and can still carry enough cargo to design correctly. (see also the "Junk Carrier" strategy later)

4.4.8.1 (edit) (add here or somewhere)
Planet population markers tell how many people are generally on a planet. The marks appear in the top right corner of the planet.
Pop.(M) Dashes
0 0
1-200 I
201-1000 II
1001 + III

4.4.13
f. (edit) Add Tech Level too.

i.
(replace second answer) Static for all things. Note: If you save a queue with a low TL then after adding it, go to "Construction Queues" and click "Upgrade Facilities". It will upgrade all the faculties in your queues to the current TL faculty. It also adds all needed updates to your construction queues. This may or may not be what you want.

(edit to Last answer) have to click once for each facility in the saved queue over the current queue limit. Making a queue with 7 items can then be added twice to fill a 15 queue, or three times in a 20 or 25 queue.

5.5.3 (???) The wording here is not correct. I have construction as my highest priority and (during refits for sure) the ship/base with repair stations is not always repaired first. I think it is done on a Last refitted first repaired FILO queue. Battle damage repairs could be different. Once a ship starts repairing, it will complete unless moved out of the sector.

5.5.9 (add to end) Retrofit engines three (or half) at a time and only lose supplies to what the leftover/repaired engines can hold.

6.4.11 (replace) A captured ship will have its weapons disrupted for ten combat turns before they can fire. Any previous load time on the weapon (from firing before capture) is added to this.

6.7.4 (add) Click on a weapon to unhighlight it before firing. It will then not fire. It can then be clicked on again and fired at the same ship the same turn. Very useful for removing shields, killing WPs only, ect. This does not work for fighter stacks (unit stacks???) All fighters in a stack will fire at once. (Multi track may change this???)

7.2.8.1 (add) Capture a planet on turn 29 and the Sats will only get one fire at the planet. They will hit the troops you dropped first, and you can still get the planet intact.

7.2.17 (obsolete) As of 1.84 Gold you will not be able to attack your own captured planet. Also friendly missiles in flight targeted on the planet are stopped before they hit.

7.2.23 (edit sp) strength does affect

7.2.24 (edit) PD is OK. It will fire.

8.1.5 (edit A) Units (aka fighters) must also have supplies for shields to work.

8.5.4 (my question) Does this work in Strategic mode?

10.2.4 (add) Offering an AI empire a good trade can cause him to accept the trade. This will happen BEFORE he would declare war on you. This can be done for several turns even if you are a Mega Evil Empire. You will still get the normal treaty trade (because he didn't declare war). It can more than make up for the trade losses of 1-2K resources.

10.2.5 (add) How an AI refuses a trade can give hints on his tech. "We do not have that tech" means OK, no fighters, Attack! Whereas "We don't was to trade for that" means Get on that PD tech research!

13.1.2 (add) Trades may prevent full war for a time. (see 10.2.4)

17.3.6.2 (edit) values as your

17.3.10.1
c. (add) Preparing for upgrades.

17.11.5
d. (add) Build lots of cheap stupid ships for his "Any Ship" insurrections to capture.

17.11.7
(remove) Comm Mimic (in twice)

[ August 08, 2003, 17:06: Message edited by: Parasite ]

[geoschmo]

Hey, as far as keeping the sticky Newbie Faq thread clean and posting questions here, we could lock the official faq thread so noone could post to it at all. Whoever is officially maintaining the FAQ could let one of the Moderators know when changes need made and we could unlock it for you at that point, or one of us can edit it. Let us know if you want to do that.

Geoschmo

[Mephisto]

Good idea! Slick, Ruatha, what do you think?

[Slick]

I could work with that.

Looks like there was some problem with a reply (?) that the Moderators took care of??? Was there a problem with content or credit to an original author or something like that?

edit: As soon as the latest "Strategy Article" is complete, I was going to incorporate it and the other additions in this thread.

Slick.

[ August 15, 2003, 16:34: Message edited by: Slick ]

[Ruatha]

Right now I'll let Slick decide as he has already done, it's he that does all the work, I'm just a backup, and happy with that!

[ August 15, 2003, 17:10: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[Slick]

Ruatha, I enjoy doing the updates and am proud to be able to contribute to the community - although the real credit goes to the contributors. I am glad that you allow me to help with this project. My work situation is really getting busy and will stay busy for the near term of 6-8 months, so I might need some help during this time. I think between the 2 of us, and the upcoming Starfury and SE5 we can manage. In the next revision, I will start sections for Starfury and SE5, and when the respective games are released, I will break out those sections as separate FAQ's.

Slick.

[sheridangreen]

Hello all,

Long time lurker, first time poster. First of all, thank you _so_ much for the FAQ. I think just reading it and the rest of the info on this forum has bumped me from "newbie" to "novice". Not much of a difference, but it sounds better.

Anyways, would it be possible to post all of the updates separately from the FAQ? I mean, still put the updates in the FAQ, but also post all of the updates you did somewhere else? Like in this thread, or the now "Old FAQ" thread? That way there would still be a place for the "new" newbies to read the FAQ, and a place for the "old" newbies to get new information that was added to the FAQ, without having to scan through the whole thing to find out what was added. I know that some of the updates are discussed in this thread, but sometimes one of you will find some random piece of info and stick it in the FAQ. If it's too much extra work, nevermind, but it would be nice. Thanks!

[Suicide Junkie]

Fyron prompted me to post this...

Ok, a big fix section:
5.5.2 The order in which repairs are performed is set with (F11) Empire Status/Repair Priorities. Clearing the priorities list will leave only the component types that you have the technology to build; more entries become available when you research the corresponding techs. (capnq)
5.5.3 Ships are repaired in the order they are listed in the fleet transfer screen. (Douglas) "Repair Priorities" only applies to the ship currently being repaired, and does not affect which ship gets repaired first. See also section 5.13 for an explanation of ship ID and how it affects retrofits.
The above is wrong.

Instead:
- Repair priorities can be set in the repair priorities window F11) Empire Status/Repair Priorities. This is not an ordered list, but rather a true/false state. Items on the right side will be prioritized, while items on the left will not be prioritized.

- Any damaged component which falls into a category on the right side of the repair priorities list will get a "priority flag". Any SHIP which contains a damaged component with priority will also have a priority flag.

- Repairs will then be conducted in the following order:
1) Only ships with priority flags are considered. The priority ship with the lowest ID is selected first.
2) If no ships with priority flags are present, then all damaged ships are considered, and the lowest ID is selected first.
3) Components with priority flags are repaired first, in order of placement on the hull.
4) If there are still repair points remaining, then a second pass is made, and the non-priority damaged components are repaired in order of placement on the hull.
5) If there are still repair points remaining, and the ship has been fully repaired, the game selects a new ship as in (1) and starts over.

- If all the priority components on a priority ship are repaired, but there are not enough repair points to completely fix the ship, then that ship will not be a priority ship on the next turn. If there is a second ship with priority components damaged, that second ship will be repaired instead.

[Glyn]

Don't forget

- You must have at least one repair priority item on the right side, otherwise no ships will be repaired.

[SilverRat]

I noticed a duplication:

2.9.8 You can use larger hulls to make colonizers too. The advantage of this is that you can make an armed colonizer that can defend itself and possibly destroy an enemy planet (then colonize it!).
2.9.9 In my late-game, I now use this more expensive (takes two turns to build in most worlds) colonizer for colonization at any range, though the overwhelming majority of my colonization is short-range: Bridge, life support, crew quarters, colony pod, cargo bay, one (1) best engine (quantum III), solar sail, best emergency propulsion (emergency propulsion V). This has an effective one-turn speed of 12 allowing it to reach any planet in its system the same turn it’s built, but it runs out of fuel quickly. If I’m colonizing long-range, I usually send a bulk transport full of population along with it, and my bulk transports generate unlimited supply. So I don’t bother designing another ship. Or, I use an obsolete colonizer. I call this design simply "Rock Colony", "Ice Colony", and "Gas Colony", and you may use it if you like. (Nocturnal)
2.9.10 The default strategy for a colonizer is "Don't Get Hurt". If it gets into a battle, his will cause your colonizer to run for the corner and usually get killed. Here's a little trick. A colonizer has a pretty good mass. You can use this as a last ditch effort by changing your colonizer strategy to "Kamikaze" (Ram). Especially in the early game, you will be surprised at how many times an unarmed colonizer will destroy a smaller ship by ramming. This strategy has the added benefit if potentially killing the colonizer before it gets captured - you never want to give away your colonization techs or population easily.
2.9.11 In my late-game, I now use this more expensive (takes two turns to build on most worlds) colonizer for colonization at any range, though the overwhelming majority of my colonization is short-range: Bridge, life support, crew quarters, colony pod, cargo bay, one (1) best engine (quantum III), solar sail, best emergency propulsion (emergency propulsion V).
This has an effective one-turn speed of 12 allowing it to reach any planet in its system the same turn it’s built, but it runs out of fuel quickly. If I’m colonizing long-range, I usually send a bulk transport full of population along with it, and my bulk transports generate unlimited supply. So I don’t bother designing another ship. Or, I use an obsolete colonizer. I call this design simply "Rock Colony", "Ice Colony", and "Gas Colony", and you may use it if you like. (Nocturnal)
2.9.12 When colonizing distant systems, create a fleet with the Colony Ship and a small ship full of supply components and solar panels (an escort or frigate is enough) so the colony ship can have the supplies needed to reach the system. I normally retrofit my old escort and frigate ships to these "booster ships" when new hull sizes make them obsolete in the line of battle. (Makinus)

Just thought you would want to know.