Strategy Articles!

[deccan]

Does anyone use the Emergency Propulsion Pod, and if so, for what reason?

[Slick]

I use them on a few designs:

My planet maker Battleship, because I need repair capability any way, it has a huge maintenance cost due to its Matter Gravity Sphere component so I don't want to spend excess turns in transit to asteroid fields. Each turn I use the pod and the on board spaceyard repairs it making it ready for the next turn. Note that you don't need a spaceyard to repair the Matter Gravity Sphere (only a repair bay), but you do need a spaceyard to repair the EPP.

My Ambulance Destroyer (which has a Medical Bay, speedy engines, solar sail and lots of supplies) because I want to get any plagues cured as fast as possible. I don't have a spaceyard on the DD obviously. I build, then mothball usually 3 or 4 of these Ambulances strategically placed in the empire so that I can get it to any plagued planet in a few turns.

Slick.

[teal]

Last time I tried to use a Matter Gravity Sphere nothing would repair it after it was used. A repair bay wouldn't repair it and taking the ship back to a shipyard wouldn't repair it. I was quite confused and decided to give up on the whole making planet idea entirely. Any rampant speculation as to what I was doing wrong... ?

[Slick]

Originally posted by teal:
Last time I tried to use a Matter Gravity Sphere nothing would repair it after it was used. A repair bay wouldn't repair it and taking the ship back to a shipyard wouldn't repair it. I was quite confused and decided to give up on the whole making planet idea entirely. Any rampant speculation as to what I was doing wrong... ?

I sure can't think of what it might be. I have never had such a problem. Try it again and if you can replicate the problem, we can help troubleshoot. If we can't figure it out, you can email the saved game to MM.

Slick.

[teal]

Tested it again by starting up a high tech game and making a planet maker very quickly. No problems. My repair bay III repaired the ship the next turn. No idea what happened that first time...

[teal]

After doing some further testing (and reloading the original saved game). I think that the problem was that I just won the game on the turn that I made the planet (or else well before making the planet I was playing vs. the AI and wanted to mess around some more). Once one player declares victory certain things seem to stop happening...

[Fyron]

Actually, repairs do not stop happening after victory is met. I often start games with no AI to test some things, and building planets is sometimes used in such tests (esp. testing what can be built ).