Stellar manip and movement in simultaneous game

[NullAshton]

Its easy to test something, using the cheats.

[Slick]

NullAshton said:
Its easy to test something, using the cheats.

You're hired!

[Rathar]

Imho, which is based on experience, all bad..

If you have a stellar maipulation capable ship start a turn on a "sector" wherein lies an acceptable target then well, it will be allowed to perform any
stellar manipulations it is capable of wherenver and whenever you manage to tell it to do so.

The key imho is starting out on a spot that contains the thing you desire to manipulate. Not the very thing necessarily but anything that allows you to push the stellar manipulation button.

Please note that you will NOT be able to close or open warp points if the ship you give the orders to starts in a system with more than 1 WP. I've found that this is due to it's asking for a specific taget in that case and wlell... If your specific target isnt one of those well.. you lose. I am pretty sure that in this case it will close/open the "topmost" WP and that might not be what you desire..

Note, I haven't had the chance to test this yet in a real game setting as wellllll.. I am always too busy and cautious to waste time checking stuff in games for mere forum bug purposes.

At any rate I have found that if you give a warp opener (or shutter) which starts at a warp point you want open (or shut I guess) and give it first the move to X sector and then close WP in X sector it will close said WP.

If you give it the order to stellar manipulate first and then to move it'll shut (or open) the point it starts in and then move and do nothing..

Be careful on your timing.

Ie if you have move 12 warp closers which will require 2 mps, for some reason to move to their desired closing space then only ships with a move of 12 or greater will get two moves before the point is closed and ships with less than 6 or so moves (gets a bit wierd here comparing stuff with such large differences but..) will get no moves before this happens. Ships with 6 moves will get one move before.


IE to explain again...If your WP closer is faster(in MP's) than a fleet (in the same sector..) which you wish to slip into a given system (which you are closing access to, you hope..) then if you done give a move to here, move to there order of sufficient length to the closer ship/fleet then your fleet will find a closed WP when it gets the chance to move.

Another IE..

Say you have a fleet with move of 6, say you have a WP closer with a move of 12. IF your WP closer moves and is going to close the WP on it's 12th MP then you have until said 6 MP fleets 5th move to utilize the open warp point.

I can't speak of WP/star things on sentry. Never been close enough to challenge their destruction, or my systems have been protected and well...

So basically I have learned or at least think its true that.. As long as you start on a sector with the capabilities you desire for stellar manipulation then if you have sufficient MP's to get to the spot where you "Actually" want to do said manipulation then it's fair game. Otherwise, no.

My question about this is that if you have a stellar ship and it does move its full 12 or whatever, does it still retain the capability (ie 0 months usage time) to do manipulations or does it have to wait?

Yes I drink and post. Sue me.

[NullAshton]

You must have a movement point in order to use stellar manipulation.

[douglas]

Unless I missed something, all ships involved are reported as moving at speeds from 10 to 18, and the movements in question were all the very first movement of the turn for each ship. Speeds 10 through 18 all get their first movement on day 2, so all movement happened on the same day (day 2) and ship ID determined order.

Edit: The statement about speed 18 getting its first move on day 2 assumes that such a high speed was attained by emergency propulsion, which doesn't kick in until the ship gets its first movement at normal speed and executes the use component order. If a mod allows building ships with a normal movement rate of 18, such a ship would move on day 1.

[geoschmo]

Why would a ship with a speed of 10 get to move on day 2? Oh wait. Day zero is the first day. Is that it?

In this particular case the star destroyer had a potential move of 18, but as you say five of that was emergency propulsion. I'll assume you are correct about the way emergency propulsion delays to the first normal day of movement, you've been right about everything else. But in this case it doesn't really matter because the emergency propulsion comp had been expended already on a previous turn. So the fastest that ship was going to move on this turn was 13.

But shouldn't a ship with move of 13 still move the day before (on day 1, the second day) the ship with move of 10 (On day 2, the third day)?

EDIT: I can confirm through testing you are correct. Speed 10 ships and speed 13 ships both move on day 2. And speed 18 ships move on day 1. I just don't understand it completely.

So here we have found a concrete and significant reason to hang on to those old early game escorts and frigates. Retrofit them with the fastest engines you can and stick them in your important fleets so they will have a chance to escape the star destroyer traps late in the game.

The gamey part here really isn't that some fleets can escape, it's that only those with an arbitraty lower ID# ship in them can. It's actually not all that extraordinary to think a fleet sitting on a warp point at the periphery of a system could escape being caught in the blast of the sun blowing up.

[Joachim]

geoschmo said:
The gamey part here really isn't that some fleets can escape, it's that only those with an arbitraty lower ID# ship in them can. It's actually not all that extraordinary to think a fleet sitting on a warp point at the periphery of a system could escape being caught in the blast of the sun blowing up.

Gamey is one way of phrasing it. It is a clear and problematic bug, it is the same as the old firing by player number problem.

As for "escaping" the supernova, unlikely, it blasts out at the speed of light.

[Spoo]

Joachim said:
As for "escaping" the supernova, unlikely, it blasts out at the speed of light.

No it doesn't. Fast, yes, but not light speed.

EDIT: Although there would be a component of gamma rays that wouldn't be too nice.

[geoschmo]

Joachim said:
As for "escaping" the supernova, unlikely, it blasts out at the speed of light.

Well, we are getting into a discussion about what it realistic or not in game terms, which is problematic. But if you assume that the warp points are at least as far from the sun as Pluto then even traveling at light speed the shockwave would take over 5 hours to reach the warp point. It's not unreasonable to say that it wouldn't take that long for a fleet to enter a warp point.

[douglas]

The information on when stellar manipulation happens currently in the FAQ is incorrect. I have tested it pretty thoroughly and posted my results in the Updated the FAQ thread a little while back. Here are the most relevant parts to this discussion:

douglas said:
A ship's ID number is a unique identifier assigned to ships when they are built. It is not visible to the player. The first available ID is the one assigned. When a ship is destroyed, its ID becomes available again.

Within each day in a turn's movement, ships move in order by ID number. This matters for certain stellar manipulations, seek after orders, and minesweeping. Fleets move all at once when their lowest-ID ship moves.

Stellar manipulation: Whether trying to open a warp point and go through it at exactly the same time works or not depends on whether the warp opener has a lower ID than the moving ship. Also, destroying and recreating a planet in one turn with two different ships requires that the create order be executed either on a later day or on the same day by a ship with a higher ID.

Now for a way to make all this information actually useful: Ships are sorted in the fleet transfer screen by ID number, lowest ID at the top. This sort order is in effect both in the list of ships not in fleets and within each fleet. The order of the fleets is by fleet ID, which is used for nothing else that I can tell, except the order fleets are displayed in the ships screen (F6). The order ships are gone through by the "Next ship" operation, typically accessed by the space bar hotkey, is also by ship ID. Unfortunately, this order is cyclical and your current position in it appears to be stored in the savegame, even through turn execution. Of course, you could try building an escort on turn 1 specifically to keep it around forever as your known lowest-ID ship, but this isn't guaranteed to work perfectly unless you're player 1 - anything players before you build on turn one will have a lower ID, which could possibly be freed later and taken up by another one of your ships.

douglas said:
Another kind of stellar manipulation where ship ID can matter: star destruction/nebula creation/black hole creation. A ship moving on the same day as the scheduled mass destruction order has two possible options if it has a lower ID than the stellar manipulation ship. First, if it is on a warp point, it can warp to safety an instant before the superweapon goes off. Second, if it is one sector away from the stellar manipulation ship, it can move there and prevent the ship from doing anything, provided that you do not have a non-aggression or higher treaty with the owner of the stellar manipulation ship. If it has a higher ID than the stellar manip ship, it can't do anything but wait to die.

All orders that do not spend movement points happen just before the ship's next move action. This means that if a ship runs out of movement with a stellar manipulation or load/drop or similar order at the top of the queue, that order will not be executed until its first movement of the next turn.