Questions, part 5

[Singollo]

6. When you capture an enemy ship and scrap it for analysis, what determines if you get any tech out of it? I've tried it a few times and nothing happened.

Just a quick clarification to avoid any possible confusion: the "scrap" command is not the command to use if you want to get new techs from the ship. Scrapping it will just give you the resources. If you want to get new techs from the ship (provided there are any to obtain), you must use the "Analyze" button; this will destroy the ship without giving you any resources, but you will get the tech.

I'm not sure if this was understood or not already, but the wording of your question suggested that you were scrapping when you should have been analyzing.

Out of curiosity, what is this sneaky "upgrade method" of getting multiple shipyards?

[Suicide Junkie]

You're the second person I've seen mention this. But what are you talking about? There's some kind of trick? When I upgrade space yards, it simply upgrades the existing ones--it doesn't add another.

It is not available in the standard game, or any of the currently public mods (as far as I know).

However, it can be fairly easily added to a mod.
How it works is that:
1) You build a normal space yard.
2) You build a facility without spaceyard abilities.
3) You mod an upgrade for that second facility that has some spaceyard abilities.
4) You can freely upgrade that second facility into the third facility, and the spaceyard rates will add up.

[dogscoff]

I was trying to analyze the enemy ships to get the wave motion gun. I didn't have the tech, yet analyzing the ships still didn't give it to me. Of course, I had so many research points that I just gave up and researched it normally in a few turns.

The other thing about analysing is that you don't necessarily get all the knowlede to build the analysed item immediately. FOr example, if I had DUC I and I analysed a ship with DUC V, all I would get is DUC II. Similarly, if I had solar *panels* I and analysed a solar *sail*, all I'd get is solar panels II (because that's the next item on that tech tree.)

Oh, and analysing a mine layer could give me mines I, but it wouldn't give me the construction tech that is normally required to gain access to the mines tech tree.

[Singollo]

Aha. Sneaky indeed. When you say that the "spaceyard rates add up", does this include manufacturing rates as well as repair rates?

The other thing about analysing is that you don't necessarily get all the knowlede to build the analysed item immediately. FOr example, if I had DUC I and I analysed a ship with DUC V, all I would get is DUC II. Similarly, if I had solar *panels* I and analysed a solar *sail*, all I'd get is solar panels II (because that's the next item on that tech tree.)

Are you sure about that? I once analyzed a carrier that had Fighter Bays III when I only had the technology for Fighter Bay I, and I was immediately granted two discoveries in the Fighter tech tree, enough to give me Fighter Bay III.

[dogscoff]

I think it's just space yard ability that the game won't allow you to have more than one of on a planet. The repair ability is completely seperate from the spaceyard ability, it just happens that in the standard game they are both used on the same facility. There's nothing to stop modding a "repair" facility into the game, which can fix ships but not build them.

multiple facilities with repair abilities on a single planet *do* stack their repairs, as proven by the cultural centrews in Proportions mod.

Another way to get the effect you want (sort of) is to build spaceyards on a planet and all of it's moons.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Singollo:

Are you sure about that? I once analyzed a carrier that had Fighter Bays III when I only had the technology for Fighter Bay I, and I was immediately granted two discoveries in the Fighter tech tree, enough to give me Fighter Bay III.[/QB]

Yeah, somebody else noticed that. No one seemed to know if that was a bug or not. Analyzing a ship with two DUC5's doesn't give you DUC2 and DUC3 in the same turn. But, apparantly analyzing a carrier with fighter bay III took him from fighter I to fighter III.

No one checked to see if it was a bug or if it was a Heavy Carrier (requires Fighters V) with Fighters III (requires Fighters III) that took him from I to II to III.

Or if he was 0.1 turns away from researching fighters II, got there with the Analyze then immediately applied the research points to II to get to III. Which is what I always try to do deliberately. After all, you don't want the same technology as someone else, you want to be at least a little bit better Muh ha ha ha.

[ August 02, 2002, 17:04: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Singollo]

Or if he was 0.1 turns away from researching fighters II, got there with the Analyze then immediately applied the research points to II to get to III.

That wasn't true in my case, at least. I was researching something completely different. Interesting.