One who wishes to know

Ganraeln · #1 August 29th, 2002, 09:45 PM

I'll say one two things about this game - it is absolutely the best strategy game I've ever played, and I absolutely hate the lack of good, nitty-gritty documentation. I hate having to waste my time experimenting to figure things out. So, here are a few questions I hope you all can help me with.

1) What precisely, defines a seeker? Is it a drone, or a missile, or both, or some combo of this and something else?

2) What exactly to each of the types of scanners do? What are the differences between them? Can they all see cloaked ships (with a sufficiently high level, of course)? If there are no functional differences between them, what is the point of having so many different types (Active EM, Passive EM, gravitic, etc.)?

3) For that matter, what exactly do long-range scanners do?

4) Where is this "select mounts" window I keep reading about here, and have seen references to in the data files?

5) How exactly can I read the data files to determine what the precise values of techs will be? I was trying to figure out how to calculate the costs of each of the techs ahead of time, but the data in the datafiles seems to be incomplete to do these calculations. What effect(s) are the "game setup factors" (is it only the tech cost low/medium/high setting, and what exactly does low/medium/high do)? I just can't make heads or tails out of how much each tech is costing, even though I see some similarities between similar techs. I'm missing some piece of the puzzle, and it's frustrating me (and i'll be darned if I'm going to sit down and have to write down each and every tech cost for all three tech cost settings!).

6) Is it just me, or are the minerals/organics/radioactives harvesting techs about the most useless in the game? I'm all about stellar manipulation and monolith facilities.... do the systemwide mineral scanner and the systemwide robotoid factory stack?

7) What is the price of rice in China when it's raining on Tuesday?

Ok, one too many questions....

Maybe one more - anyone here that used to play MOO2 Online back when it was big on TEN?

Regards,

-Ganraeln

Jmenschenfresser · #2 August 29th, 2002, 10:06 PM

Long range scanners give you the ability to see what's on the inside of ships (weapons, armor, etc). There is a scanner jammer that blocks this.

Mount window button can be found on the top right of the design screen (once you have started to design your ship, base or whatever)

In the stock game all the different scanners do the same thing--give the ability to detect cloaked ships at different levels of cloaking. However since they've given us something like five different types of cloaking (temporal, active, passive, blah blah blah), it would be possible to make different devices which require different scanners. Or something like that.

Ragnarok · #3 August 29th, 2002, 10:14 PM

"1) What precisely, defines a seeker? Is it a drone, or a missile, or both, or some combo of this and something else?"

What defines a seeker is if it isn't a direct fire weapon. As you should know direct fire weapons go directly from your ship that's firing to the ship you're firing at with no delay. (with the chance to miss of course) But a seeker fires from your ship, and has movement points just like your ship for a certain distance. It will ALWAYS hit your ship you're firing at IF it isn't shot out of the sky by Point Defence Cannons or runs out of movement points. I hope that answers that question.

"6) Is it just me, or are the minerals/organics/radioactives harvesting techs about the most useless in the game? I'm all about stellar manipulation and monolith facilities.... do the systemwide mineral scanner and the systemwide robotoid factory stack?"

Yes they are useless once you go stellar manipulation and get the monolith facilities. But untill that time they are nice to have around.

"7) What is the price of rice in China when it's raining on Tuesday?"

It all depends on how much you're wanting to buy. 5 pounds will of course cost more then 3 pounds. It also depends on how much rain has already fallen. If 10 inchs of rain has fallen in the past 5 hours then that will bring about a more expensive item then if only 3 inchs had rained in the 5 hour time period.

Hope this answers all of your questions. Jmen got the rest before I did.

Ganraeln · #4 August 29th, 2002, 10:22 PM

Re: Question 6:
"Yes they are useless once you go stellar manipulation and get the monolith facilities. But untill that time they are nice to have around."

No doubt, I am just saying that the expense of the technologies for minerals/organics/radioactives harvesting are individually even more expensive than stellar manipulation. Seems somewhat puzzling to me <shrug>.

Still looking for the tech cost question to be answered, thanks very much for all the rest!!!

TerranC · #5 August 29th, 2002, 10:22 PM

1) What precisely, defines a seeker? Is it a drone, or a missile, or both, or some combo of this and something else?

Anything that is fired from a distance, seeks out it's target and hits it.

2) What exactly to each of the types of scanners do? What are the differences between them? Can they all see cloaked ships (with a sufficiently high level, of course)? If there are no functional differences between them, what is the point of having so many different types (Active EM, Passive EM, gravitic, etc.)?

Yes. They can all see cloaked ships with levels that can overcome them. I really don't see any difference except the cost.

3) For that matter, what exactly do long-range scanners do?

They scan the components of anything that floats in space except planets. that is in your scanner area depending that they are not:

Out of range
Equipped with Scattering armor or Scanner Jammers

They also tell what is under construction and how long it will take to be completed if the ship/planet has a space yard facility/component.

4) Where is this "select mounts" window I keep reading about here, and have seen references to in the data files?

Don't know about the data files but when designing ships/bases/fighters/satellites/mines/drones/weapon platforms, look in the upper right corner and click weap mounts.

5) How exactly can I read the data files to determine what the precise values of techs will be? I was trying to figure out how to calculate the costs of each of the techs ahead of time, but the data in the datafiles seems to be incomplete to do these calculations. What effect(s) are the "game setup factors" (is it only the tech cost low/medium/high setting, and what exactly does low/medium/high do)? I just can't make heads or tails out of how much each tech is costing, even though I see some similarities between similar techs. I'm missing some piece of the puzzle, and it's frustrating me (and i'll be darned if I'm going to sit down and have to write down each and every tech cost for all three tech cost settings!).

Maybe you should download lemmy's tech tree viewer? (Don't know where the thread went, sorry.)

6) Is it just me, or are the minerals/organics/radioactives harvesting techs about the most useless in the game? I'm all about stellar manipulation and monolith facilities.... do the systemwide mineral scanner and the systemwide robotoid factory stack?

Monolith facilities may be good in the sense that they havest all three resources at the same time, but they take too much time and resources to build. Also, not all planets have 100%+ values in all resources so it's better to have specialized colonies pumping out only minerals, only organics, and only radioactives rather than all of them pumping out lots.

And no. They don't stack. It's better to build the Robotoid factory because of that.

7) What is the price of rice in China when it's raining on Tuesday?

I don't know about china but In Korea and Japan, it's pretty expensive.

geoschmo · #6 August 29th, 2002, 11:00 PM

The value of monoliths versus resource specific facilities has been debated at great length in the past. We even wasted a bunch of time at once point and did detailed statistical analysis comparing the two. (Man, we had too much time on our hands back then didn't we?

)

Boiled down the answer is it depends on how long you epect the game to Last. IIRC the break even point when a monolith started giving you more total resources than a resource specific facility built in the same spot was something like 30 to 50 turns. When you figure the average PBW game ends about turn 150, you can easily see why a great number of people don't bother building them in multiplayer games. Waiting 40 turns for the resources you could have already had and built ships with in a multiplayer game is suicide.

If however you are in a long game and things are stable, no immediate need of resources, then yes long term monoliths are more efficent. And your point abou tresearching the resource specific technologies is valid. Very few people research those either. They are very pricey for very little return.

Technically Fighters and Drones are not seekers at all. They are units. They get lumped in with seekers often beccause they are targetable by Point-Defense.

Tech cost has a formula. It depends on the level cost, which is different for each tech (You can see the level cost in the techarea.txt file) and the Tech Cost chosen at game setup.

For low tech cost games it's Level Cost (LC) times Tech Level (TL)

For Medium Tech Games it's LC times half of TL�(this one may be wrong, I'll have to look it up)

For High Tech cost games it's LC times TL�

Geoschmo

[ August 29, 2002, 22:12: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Puke · #7 August 29th, 2002, 11:15 PM

not to drag up old ghosts or anything, but im going to drag up old ghosts.

you really need BOTH resource extractors AND monoliths. it would be silly to put a monolith on a planet that has 150% minerals and 0% radioactives and organics. it would be foolish to put a mineral extractor on a planet that has 150% of everything.

Mister Cat · #8 August 29th, 2002, 11:53 PM

Depending on various other factors, of course. If you've got organics and rads coming out your @$$ and/or are in urgent need of minerals, a 3x150% planet might still be a good candidate for mining.

As pointed out below, loading planet out with even 10 Liths takes a lot more time and resources that just mining it.

Puke · #9 August 29th, 2002, 11:59 PM

nah, thats why they invented resource converters. mine the planet for whatever it produces best, then convert the resources to another type.

Wardad · #10 August 30th, 2002, 12:14 AM

Definitely, the extraction facilities are the way to go. For really long games you might want to scrap one extraction facility at a time and replace it with a monolith. Hopefully by then you will have a spaceyard 3 on the planet to speed up the build time.

The robotoid facilities are much more expensive to build than the (mineral) scanners. The scanners cost more research points to discover.
The robotoid will boost production of all three resources. So overall your better off with the robotoid facility.
BTW, be carefull how many you try to build at once, you could run out of rads and organics.

Only the best bonus is used, but the planet bonus and system bonus do add up.
ex,
planet bonus of +10, +30, +30 = +30.
System bonus of +10, +20, +30 = +30.
total bonus of +60

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