Gameplay tips & tricks

[Parasite]

I would check the planet with the RCF again. I have had one on on repeat orders to launch sat, mines, or fighters, then when I convert resources, it gets moved up into the repeat as well. Check all the RCF planets, then check them again. If you are getting Out of Resource messages, that is almost certainly it.

A minor possibility is you are getting hit by intellegence attacks to steal or destroy them. Could this be happening? If you have any counterintel up, you should get at least notification of attacks.

The game does not say which one is out, but you mentioned that you keep track of all three. Even Organics can be a problem if you are doing SM ships or Master Computers. Check all the messages, if some high cost ones fail first, later cheaper ones may still convert.

[CaptainAL]

Thanks. You guys know this game inside & out so this answers my question - it isn't a bug. I read something about a scrap resource bug (maybe this thread, I forget) and that may be doing it. I am going to be very careful when cutting it close & not count on any scrap resource gains. There's a lot of good stuff in this thread that has helped me out - thanks to all contributors.

[Alienboy]

Hi CaptainAl,... Have just been catching up on this subject. I have read your posts and I thought I'd add my ten cents worth. (with the exchange rate and tax that comes out at about half a cent!)

From what I have read you are talking about a problem which you have encountered on a perticular turn. I am not sure if repeat orders would be the cause of what you discribe. If I'm not mistaken you have added up the cost of your total upgrades for a turn. You have taken into account your availible resources and converted resources to make up a mineral shortage, making sure you have left enough Organics and Radioactive resources for your upgrades. On the next turn you say that none of your upgrade actually worked.

I have always had a problem doing large amounts of upgrades but I have never encountered a turn where none were upgraded at all. What I am about to say is only based on my own theory as I don't know how the turns are processed. I am taking this opertunity to table my theory now.

Firstly, and probably quite simply,... are we forgetting the actual costs of ship repair??? In the situation where you have a number of ships that are damaged from W.H.Y and they are being repaired that turn. Have those costs been accounted for in your available resources total? I don't think so. Remember that each space yard can only repair at a certain rate. Sometimes a ship that has 50% damage may still have 20% damage to repair for the following turn. It is because of this that I believe that the cost to repair damaged components must be taken out at the beginning of the following turn BEFORE the cost of any upgrades are accounted for, and then it is dependant on how many components have been repaired from the previous turn. Did that make any sense at all??? I hope you catch my drift. It is also my understanding that if you are too low on resources no repairs will be completed regardless. If the above is correct then that could explain why you didn't have enough resources to upgrade you ships,... repairs must come first!?? .... anybody????

Another thing you might want to check is exactly how much resources did actually get converted,.. eg,..is it posible that you accidently converted 100000 Organics into Minerals when you only intended to convert 10000???

Another thing I have wondered about relates to the cost of an upgrade. As we all know you can only upgrade to 50% the original cost of that ship. If you are like me you may do several upgrades to get to the end result. eg,.. you start with a basic hull. Lets say you require four upgrades to get the ship you want. If you start with the first upgrade and accidently try to upgrade it to the fourth upgrade then you would receive a message telling you that you can not upgrade a ship more than 50% the original cost. That is well known,... but if you do not have enough resources to do that upgrade,... you will get the "you do not have enough resources to complete this upgrade" message before the "50% upgrade message" I believe the game considers the cost of an upgrade before the ability to upgrade. So,.. this may be another posible explaination for what you have discribed, and you would have no way of telling which upgrade you were trying for. Maybe this might also be useful in the new version. ie,.. if an upgrade order is not completed it would be great to know what you were trying to upgrade too, and if you were short of resources, how much and which resources would also be handy????

Sheeesh,.. maybe thats just a little too hard. We should just like it or lump it I reakon! lol..... and what about riots,... haven't even gone there! lol

Merry christmas to you all from Alienboy. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif[/img]

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
Firstly, and probably quite simply,... are we forgetting the actual costs of ship repair???...

Repairs do not cost any resources at all. Damaged components still cost maintenance, but there is no extra cost for repair beyond just getting the damaged ship and a repair bay or space yard in the same place.

Alienboy said:
Another thing I have wondered about relates to the cost of an upgrade. As we all know you can only upgrade to 50% the original cost of that ship. If you are like me you may do several upgrades to get to the end result. eg,.. you start with a basic hull. Lets say you require four upgrades to get the ship you want. If you start with the first upgrade and accidently try to upgrade it to the fourth upgrade then you would receive a message telling you that you can not upgrade a ship more than 50% the original cost. That is well known,... but if you do not have enough resources to do that upgrade,... you will get the "you do not have enough resources to complete this upgrade" message before the "50% upgrade message" I believe the game considers the cost of an upgrade before the ability to upgrade. So,.. this may be another posible explaination for what you have discribed, and you would have no way of telling which upgrade you were trying for. Maybe this might also be useful in the new version. ie,.. if an upgrade order is not completed it would be great to know what you were trying to upgrade too, and if you were short of resources, how much and which resources would also be handy????

If the problem were the 50% limit, the log message would say so.

The problem seems to have been figured out already. Unless I am mistaken, he was depending on resources from scrapped facilities for at least some of the upgrades, and there is a bug that makes those resources disappear in simultaneous mode turn processing.

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
Hi Douglas,
Sorry dude, the quote from CaptainAL that I was refering to in my last post is quoted above and does not mention anything about scraping facilities at all. I was not refering to the bug you mentioned.

He mentioned scrap resources as a possible culprit a few posts later.

Alienboy said:
I have always wondered about ship repairs and I have been under the belief that all repairs do actually cost resources to complete. ...

I have played in a game where I regularly did an IMMENSE amount of repairing every turn (retroseries building for ordinary combat ships) and had a rather tight budget. If repairs cost resources, my calculations in that game would have been very far off and I would have run out of resources quickly. They weren't, and I didn't.

Alienboy said:
With regards to the 50% thing. A little while ago I designed a ship that took three upgrades to complete. I must have made a slight error in my calculations because I was unable to do the last upgrade, due to it costing over 50% more that the second upgrade. However I did not find this out at the first time ...

The game may indeed check for resources before checking the 50% limit, but that is completely unrelated to CaptainAl's problem. He was getting out-of-resources messages after carefully calculating that he did have enough resources.

[Alienboy]

If you say so douglas, have a nice christmas.

[douglas]

Any space yard will do, and repair bays can help. Even a modded space yard with 0 repair rate allows repair bays in the same sector to repair emergency components.

[Slick]

I use that very "super fast" battleship design also for my Stellar Manipulation ships. You paid big bucks for them, you are paying big maintenance for them, you can't have them spending too much unproductive time moving around. It's good if you retro-series build and/or want to retrofit to a different configuration because the basic hull-engines-spaceyard-etc is the same.

With these designs, they usually operate solo so they have to be "minefield resistant". Keep them protected behind your lines, use armor instead of shields. So long as the spaceyard component survives, it will repair itself.

I also make a "super fast" rescue ship. Same basic idea with repair bays added also. I'll build these at strategic places and mothball them. In the rare occurrence that a fleet takes lots of damage and it will be several turns before the fleet's existing repair capability completes repairs (or the fleet's repair ships got killed), I'll activate these ships to assist.

[Glyn]

Set the base strategy to not fire on planets or satellites. Captured bases would no longer fire on the planet or satellites they once protected.

Note: If captured you could neutralize them by changing there strategy to not fire on anything.

Second Note: If you capture a base (or ship) retro fit it ASAP even if it’s to the same design. (Too bad if it has unique tech.)

[StarShadow]

This tip is for single player games and is somewhat cheesy (mmmmm cheese )...Save the turn before you create a planet, if it's not your type, try again. The planet you get on the second try will be the kind you get EVERY time (on the 2nd+ try). Most of the time it tends to be Carbon Dioxide. If it's still not your type, reload and try again next turn.