Frequently Asked Questions for Newbies

[Suicide Junkie]

1.1 Racial Traits
1.1.1 Organic
1.1.1.1 Organic Components
1.1.1.1.1 Organic Armor:
Self Repairing armor. Once one of the armor components is destroyed, all surviving Armor components will add their regeneration ability each turn until the total collected points are higher than the damaged component's hitpoints. At that point the damaged armor will be repaired, and the process will repeat itself for any other armor damaged in the meantime.
Note: in Versions earlier than 1.80, the ability points begin collecting before the ship takes damage, with no upper limit.
1.1.1.1.2 Organic Facilities:
Organic technology research will give you facilities that prevent plagues, increase production system-wide, and even add a fixed number of people to all planets in the system, regardless of population size and conditions
1.1.2 Crystal
1.1.2.1 Crystalline Armor
1.1.2.1.1: General
Crystalline armor requires an operational shield generator on the ship in order to work. Every hit that does non-armor-skipping damage to the hull will cause the shields to be recharged! Only hull damage counts towards this recharge, up to a maximum of the total crystalline armor ability points on your ship.
The end result is a damaged ship, with extra shields to protect against the next attack.
1.1.2.1.2: Effect vs damage amount.
If the total CA ability amount is roughly equal to or greater than HALF the damage of a single weapon hit, then the Crystalline Effect will reduce damage by 50%.
If the total CA ability amount is less than half the damage from a single weapon impact, then it will act very similar to Emissive Armor, and reduce damage by its ability amount.
If the CA ability is greater than the weapon damage, AND the weapon damage is less than half the hitpoints of a CA component, the damage will be completely negated.

1.1.4 Psychic
1.1.4.1 Allegiance Subverter
This weapon causes a ship to be automatically captured without further damage, and is immediately combat ready.
1.1.4.1.1
The damage amount is the percentage chance that a hit will cause the crew of your target to be subverted. 20 damage = 20% chance. Values above 100%, typically seen when using mounts, are rounded down to 100%.
If the shot misses, there is zero chance of subVersion.
Self Destruct Devices, boarding parties and security stations have no effect.
Ship experience only affects the chance of the shot missing its target.
1.1.4.1.2
Ships with a master computer can NOT be captured.
In Versions earlier than 1.80, ships with a destroyed master computer CAN be captured.
A computer virus is the most effective method of destroying the computer and allowing a capture.
1.1.5 Temporal
1.1.5.1 Time Distortion Burst
This weapon is moderately weak against armor and internals, doing roughly half the damage of an AntiProton Beam. However, it also does Quadruple damage to shields.
Since most ships are heavily shielded, this weapon is very effective.

[Skulky]

1.1 Racial Traits
1.1.3 Deeply Religious
1.1.1.1.2 Deeply Religious Facilities:
Religious technology research will give you facilities that give system wide combat bonuses, system wide damage bonuses, increase resource production system-wide, increase value and conditions system wide, and system wide reduce bad events, sabotage activites and increase happiness. Each of these 5 facilites has 3 levels.

[ October 14, 2002, 03:42: Message edited by: Skulky ]

[Quikngruvn]

Picking up where SJ left off...

1.1.3.2 While researching the talisman, the religious race will discover five different shrines with all sorts of nifty systemwide abilities, including to-hit bonuses, damage bonuses, production bonuses, planetary improvements, decreased chance of bad events, and increased population happiness.

[edit] Skulky beat me to it! [/edit]

1.1.4.2 Psychic Ship and Fleet Training Facilities provide training to all ships/fleets in the system, at the same rate and maximum experience as normal training facilities. Thus, you do not have to park your fleet over a particular planet to get training (but could, for example, be trained while defending a warp point).

1.1.5.2 Temporal Space Yards produce much more quickly than normal spaceyards. But, you cannot upgrade a normal Space Yard to a Temporal Space Yard-- you have to scrap your Space Yard first.
1.1.5.3 The Temporal Vacation Service makes the population in its system happier, and is twice as effective as the Urban Pacification Center.

5.9.8 Cloaked ships cannot perform stellar manipulation.

I would suggest that 6.7 Capturing Planets be moved under 7.0 Ground Combat, since they are practically the same thing.

15.2 PBW -- seiv.pbw.cc [This is a link, so be sure to include the UBB code for the link.]

I must say to all who are maintaining this FAQ: Excellent job! A daunting task that I for one would not be up to....

Quikngruvn

[ October 14, 2002, 04:02: Message edited by: Quikngruvn ]

[dbillett1]

I am having problem with starting colonies outside of my home system. They always start with a population of 0. Why is that? I am using the colony ship from the tutorial.

[Sandstig]

dbillett1, you need colonists onboard your colony ship to populate a planet. If your colony ship is over a populated colony and you decide you want to colonize another planet, either hit "C" or the "Colonize" button, then the planet you want to colonize, and it will load colonists onto your ship automatically.

The manual method is to take your colony ship back to a populated planet and transfer colonists from the planet onto your colony ship.

[Ruatha]

dbilett1 see 4.2 Colonizing

[Sandstig]

8.4.5 Do cloaked minesweepers automatically decloak to sweep mines?

They don't decloak.

[capnq]

4.8.1 Defence Bases and Satellites always show up on the wrong side of the planet during combat.

It only seems that way.

4.8.1 Bases and Satellite Groups are placed around the planet randomly. This means that there's only about a 3 in 8 chance that they will be closer to the attackers than the planet itself.

15.2.1 The Play By Vire Service is free of charge.

"Play By Web", not Wire.

[Shyrka]

The ship experience gives a % bonus in both attack and defense, isn't it?

But, what does the fleet experience do?

[Slick]

Originally posted by Shyrka:
The ship experience gives a % bonus in both attack and defense, isn't it?

But, what does the fleet experience do?

Fleet experience adds to the individual ship's experience while the ship is in the fleet. The total experience from crew and fleet percentages adds to "less likely to be hit" and "more likely to hit with direct fire weapons" chances.

Slick