Updated the FAQ

[Fyron]

Yes, click here.

[Grandpa Kim]

Some updates and corrections:

0.0 current Version is now 1.91

1.1.1.2.2 Gestation Vats - increases the percentage for reproduction rate in system. Replicant Center - increases population by an additional fixed amount each turn in system. Medical Lab - prevents plagues in system (actually cures plagues, but this occurs 1 turn after plague hits so you still receive 1 turn's worth of plague damage), increases the percentage for reproduction rate in system, increases happiness in system. All three levels of the Medical Lab give only 1% improvement in happiness, unlike other happiness facilities which increase the rate with each level.

2.10.2 Ships do retain original strategies after being captured - you can overcome this by making a 1-ship fleet and giving it new fleet orders. *Deleted "retrofitted or" between "being" and "captured".*

5.9.10 Attacking with Cloaked ships/fleets: You must first give the order to Decloak before an attack. (Stone Mill) Only one ship in the fleet needs to be decloaked.

6.2.4.5 Warp Point Defense Formations: Wall and phalanx are not so good here. Better to use a more "circular" formation like spider, dome or bull.

*Please delete this entry, it is not true.*
6.4.1.1 In strategic combat your design will refuse to board if there is a SDD present on the target ship.(Dogscoff)

6.4.2 Or use a level 2 intelligence project called "Crew Insurrection" where you plant a spy on the enemy ship and attempt to convince the crew to join your cause. If successful, the ship is yours to do with as you please. (Gandalph) The insurrection will occur at the very end of the turn, so no battle will occur that turn. On the next turn, you will often find the insurrected ship amongst a fleet of enemy ships.

6.6.1.3 Once the population has all expired, the [plagued] planet reverts to uncolonized and may be recolonized by anyone without fear of residual contagin. (Arkcon)
Q. Do the facilities remain?

6.8.3 Ship moves on different days during the turn depending upon their speed capacity. (The 'movement day' is the day that the ship ends up in a new sector.):
Spd Movement Days
02: 15, 30
03: 10, 20, 30
04: 7, 15, 22, 30
05: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30
06: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30
07: 4, 8, 12, 17, 21, 25, 30
08: 3, 7, 11, 14, 18, 22, 26, 29,
09: 3, 6, 10, 13, 16, 20, 23, 26, 30
10: 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29,
11: 2, 5, 8, 10, 13, 16, 19, 21, 24, 27, 30
12: 2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 17, 19, 22, 24, 27, 29
13: 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 29
This is essentially correct but I've seen ships/fleets move on day one, so there are minor variation.

7.2.24 Bear in mind weapons on a troop transport will not fire at the planet, even when in range, but will fire at ships and units in space. Unless you change the strategy [from "Capture Planet"], and then they won't drop troops. Point defense is ok though I believe. Will help if the planet is shooting missles at you. (Geoschmo)

9.5.0 Some stellar manipulation devices work anywhere, others must be at a specific location. IE: A warp point can be opened from anywhere, but naturally, you can only close a warp point where a warp point already exists. This can cause problems with the orders you give to the ship.
For a warp opener, your orders can read "open warp point, move" or "move, open warp point, move" or "move, open warp point, sentry". Basically just about anything.
A closer must start at a warp point to use its close warp point order. Your orders will read "close warp point, move" or something similar. Putting a move order before the close order is a risk and often not even possible.

*Please delete section "a.". It is not quite right.*
9.5.6.1 Sequence:
a. In simultaneous games worm hole opening and closing happens before all players ships are moved.

12.0.2 Happiness affects resource production and reproduction (see settings.txt)

[Slick]

*Please delete this entry, it is not true.*
6.4.1.1 In strategic combat your design will refuse to board if there is a SDD present on the target ship.(Dogscoff)

I questioned this before adding it and DS stated that it was true. I don't use boarding designs; maybe I should. No offense, but are you sure this is wrong?

Slick.

[Grandpa Kim]

I'm dead certain for 1.84, but I'm not sure I've had an in-game occurance in 1.91.

In my experience boarding ships are unreliable. Sometimes they will close in to a target ship and neither board nor fire weapons. Sometimes they fire their weapons, sometimes they board and sometimes they board and both ships disappear indicating the presence of SDD. Further investigation has shown that, indeed, the target ship did have SDD. Unless something else is happening to cause the destruction of both ships, boarding ships will board SDD equipped ships, but not every time.

[Slick]

That's good enough for me. None of the 1.91 changes should have affected boarding. Thanks.

edit: just ran a little test and boarding ships attempted to board 100% of the time and both ships were destroyed 100% of the time.

Slick.

[ April 26, 2004, 02:55: Message edited by: Slick ]

[Slick]

Definitely need a link to this on the next update:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=23;t=011584

[Paul1980au]

Well it would seem that one of the bugs in v 1.91 is the boarding and SDD situation that said it runs reasonably well and will surfice until we have SE5

[douglas]

Edit: Nevermind. I have continued the experiment, and order of construction appears to be the deciding factor. The ship that was built first gets repaired first.

Edit2: Grr. It's a bit more complicated than that apparently. Hold on, this explanation is going to get technical and includes some suppositions about the inner workings of the game. It appears that on construction each ship is assigned a unique ID, possibly an index into an array of ships, that never changes. This ID starts at 1 or 0 for the first ship, and the lowest available ID is assigned to each new ship on construction. When a ship is destroyed (scrapped in my test game), its ID is freed and available for another ship. Repair order of ships appears to be determined exclusively by this ID number, with the lowest ID ship repaired first. In practice, once ships start being destroyed irregularly (i.e. some stay around, others don't; typically happens first when you're regularly building both warships and colony ships), repair order is very difficult to predict or influence with any great degree of accuracy.

Edit: old theory, discredited now. See above. I have just discovered a hidden factor in determining which ships are repaired first: experience. The most experienced damaged ship in a sector will get top priority for repair regardless of what your repair priorities set in the empire status screen are. The repair priorities you set are only used as a tiebreaker when ships have equal experience and to determine the order of components repaired within a single ship.

I discovered this recently when I set repair priorities specifically to repair a damaged minesweeper first (putting Unit Launch at the top, with minesweepers being the only "Unit Launch" components I use right now), only to discover the next turn that the two damaged warships present were repaired first. I then ran a test game with the following series of events: build two ships with just engines; retrofit one with a weapon (moved weapons to bottom of repair priorities) and the other with several extra crew quarters, move both to same sector with inadequate repair ability; the weapon was still not repaired; retrofit both back to base design, send one to ship training center for one turn; retrofit trained ship with weapon (again, weapons are at bottom of list) and other ship with extra crew quarters, send both to repair center; trained ship was repaired first, even though its only damaged component was at the very bottom of the priorities list while the other had six components at the very top of the list (vehicle control).

[Atrocities]

Question:
I only have about 5 planets with a ship yard on them. The problem is remembering which ones have a ship yard and picking them out of the colonies report menu. I realize I could write them down, but I was wondering if there's a way to view only colonies with a specific facility? When you have say 30 colonies and only 5 ship producers its quite difficult to pick them out you see.



Answers:
You name your planets with shipyards on them, or

1. click on the Minister icon (The Crown)
2. Click the EMPIRE OPTIONS Tab at the top right
3. Scroll down to SYSTEM DISPLAY.
4. Check the 6th line down "Show Resupply Depots (R), Spaceports (S), and planetary Space Iards (SY)
5. Click CLOSE
6. Click CLOSE

[capnq]

Atrocities said:
Question:
I only have about 5 planets with a ship yard on them. The problem is remembering which ones have a ship yard and picking them out of the colonies report menu. I realize I could write them down, but I was wondering if there's a way to view only colonies with a specific facility? When you have say 30 colonies and only 5 ship producers its quite difficult to pick them out you see.

Answer #3: Click the Status button on the Colonies report. The shipyard planets will have a shipyard icon.