Gameplay tips & tricks

[Alienboy]

CaptainAL said:
The ship upgrading has been a source of frustration for me. I think it may be a bug - I am sure that others here must have encountered it. Here's what happens:

I give the upgrade orders. [when this happens there's usually pretty many ships and a large amount of resources involved, with maybe a stellar manipulation upgrade or two] I add up all the resources needed and check my STORAGE amounts to make sure I have enough. Sure enough, I have plenty because I have been good at building many storage facilities. Now I also convert some resources, because I have so many extra organics and radioactives but am light on the minerals. I am careful NOT to convert more organics and radioactives then are available for the upgrades. Great, good to go... next turn I'll be ready to move...

NEXT TURN: Sh--! Not one ship upgraded. "Not Enough Resources" message for every one. But there are all the resources - still in storage.

Anyone have this happen (or am I just really burned out and not calculating everything right -- nine or ten times now)? Sometimes it happens, sometimes it does not. Anyone know how to avoid it? It has screwed me up so badly that now I never convert and upgrade in the same turn, unless I really don't need the upgrades that badly.

douglas said:

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.

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.

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.

I have always wondered about ship repairs and I have been under the belief that all repairs do actually cost resources to complete. I based this on my observations but of course I may have not taken something into account and therefore may be mistaken. If your ships are damaged during a battle surely it costs something to fix them? Thanks for your comments, I will have to pay more attention to see if my original thoughts are correct.

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 I tried to do that upgrade because I was too low on resources and in the next turn I got the"you do not have enough resources" message. I then tried it the following turn. My resources were fine but this time I got the "50% more than cost" message. Thats what I was refering to.,... thats is,.. unless somehow again I have overlooked something??? I'm sure I remembered it correctly though??

[Slick]

Repairs are indeed "free" (i.e. they cost no resources) In game terms, that's what the "Maintenance" cost is for. It doesn't seem too logical, but hey, that's how it works.

[Glyn]

Slick said:
Repairs are indeed "free" (i.e. they cost no resources) In game terms, that's what the "Maintenance" cost is for. It doesn't seem too logical, but hey, that's how it works.

It’s a little known fact that the monthly maintains cost for ships included an insurance policy for full replacement of any damaged components, so repairing a damaged component doesn’t cost extra. There is an exception clause in the case where the ship is totally destroyed they don’t have to replace anything.

[CaptainAL]

Thanks for all the posts.

Well, it happened again and I think I know why. I did not elect collision coverage Until recently I did not know about the 1.36M resource conversion limit for each RC III. So I started keeping an eye on that to make sure I did not exceed the limit. What I did not know until now is that resource conversion orders above the 1.36M limit carry over to the next turn. I must not have noticed the lit-up view orders icon when I gave the converter new orders for more conversion. The resource conversion backlog must have been for radioactives, and I guess that I put the radioactive conversion first on my new orders last turn. I figure this because only radioactives converted this turn and not the organics I ordered. So the backlog conversion of rads added to the new order to exceed the 1.2M rads I had in storage; therefore, nothing retrofitted. AAAAHHHHH - The Bug is ME!

LESSON I LEARNED: always clear any left over conversion orders before issuing new ones! OR - keep your eye on the eyeball! Sorry for wasted time guys - I would have noticed this sooner if I read sooner about the 1.36M converting limit. Perhaps these posts are worthwhile though in case someone else also does not see the 1.36M limit noted in the FAQs but does pick it up here.

Oh - and I have often thanked God that repairs do not cost anything. That would really drive me nuts!

Have a happy holiday all and thanks for your help!!!

[Captain Kwok]

I noticed you did a similar thing with your former empire in Stellar Battles after noticing a bunch of retrofits not going through.

[Slick]

I believe the Resource Conversion limit is per converter so you can convert more resources by making facilities on other planets.

[CaptainAL]

Captain Kwok said:
I noticed you did a similar thing with your former empire in Stellar Battles after noticing a bunch of retrofits not going through.

Yes, in every game that I had that many resources to convert I made this mistake. I just assumed it was a bug, but started to wonder when I didn't hear of it happening to anyone else. I don't know why I didn't notice before that there were conversion orders still pending when it happened and they related to resources that had not been converted. But anyway, I now know I no longer must deal with this affliction! [Cap'n Al rolls on floor imitating Gullom, shouting "I'm Free, I'm Free"]

You should be in pretty good shape in that game despite the wasted resources. I was giving some away to the Earth partner periodically - he seemed to be the most loyal ally to the Zappazoids in that game.

[CaptainAL]

Need a bit of help once more. I looked over the FAQ and didn't see this, but if it is there I apologize & just let me know that. Thanks.

Question is regarding firing priority: What does strongest and weakest relate to - is strongest gauged by damage points the ship can sustain or the firepower of the ship? My fleets keep hitting my opponents "decoy" ships first - you know, the ones with 25 Crystal Armor plates and 6 shields. I can't afford another big loss. I had strongest as priority, so maybe that seeks the ship with greatest damage resistance. But I tried weakest in the simulator - same thing happened. I tried it with no strongest/weakest priority, and still the ships targeted the decoy first. Hopefully someone can give me a quick answer to this one, or I might as well give up on the game (and without me the game is essentially over for everyone). Thanks again.

[Parasite]

This sounds a lot like the Artifact discovery. It is hooked to the random number geterator. I have heard that the Simulator will rerandomize it. This means you are not stuck with the second planet type. Just run a simulation and then create the planet again from the save.

And Yes, this is cheezy.

[Fyron]

When quoted text is more than half of your post, that's a good indication to either remove the quotes or shorten them, possibly with elipses, just showing the first line or two. Readers can always scroll back to see the full original post.