Gameplay tips & tricks

[Parasite]

I would check the planet with the RCF again. I have had one on on repeat orders to launch sat, mines, or fighters, then when I convert resources, it gets moved up into the repeat as well. Check all the RCF planets, then check them again. If you are getting Out of Resource messages, that is almost certainly it.

A minor possibility is you are getting hit by intellegence attacks to steal or destroy them. Could this be happening? If you have any counterintel up, you should get at least notification of attacks.

The game does not say which one is out, but you mentioned that you keep track of all three. Even Organics can be a problem if you are doing SM ships or Master Computers. Check all the messages, if some high cost ones fail first, later cheaper ones may still convert.

[CaptainAL]

Thanks. You guys know this game inside & out so this answers my question - it isn't a bug. I read something about a scrap resource bug (maybe this thread, I forget) and that may be doing it. I am going to be very careful when cutting it close & not count on any scrap resource gains. There's a lot of good stuff in this thread that has helped me out - thanks to all contributors.

[douglas]

The bug is that resources from scrapped facilities, despite showing up immediately when you're playing the turn, vanish without a trace in turn processing.

Resources from scrapped ships come in when the ship is scrapped, which happens when it executes its orders for the turn. When that happens relative to any retrofit orders depends on the speeds of the ships involved and on their ship ID's. Resources from a ship with speed 5 will never be available on the same turn to retrofit a ship with speed 6. If they both move on the same day (eg, same speed or speed 10-13), it depends on ship ID, which I most recently explained in this thread

Note that bases and ships with no engines "move" on day 0, so resources from scrapped bases will always be available to spend on retrofitting mobile ships, while scrapping mobile ships can never pay for retrofitting bases.

Also, there actually is one way to get resources from scrapped facilities in simultaneous play - abandon the planet and answer the prompt about scrapping the facilities with "yes". When the abandon/scrap order is executed (on day 0), you will get the correct amount of resources for scrapping every facility on the colony. Of course, this does completely destroy the colony, so you probably don't want to do it very often.

[Alienboy]

Hi CaptainAl,... Have just been catching up on this subject. I have read your posts and I thought I'd add my ten cents worth. (with the exchange rate and tax that comes out at about half a cent!)

From what I have read you are talking about a problem which you have encountered on a perticular turn. I am not sure if repeat orders would be the cause of what you discribe. If I'm not mistaken you have added up the cost of your total upgrades for a turn. You have taken into account your availible resources and converted resources to make up a mineral shortage, making sure you have left enough Organics and Radioactive resources for your upgrades. On the next turn you say that none of your upgrade actually worked.

I have always had a problem doing large amounts of upgrades but I have never encountered a turn where none were upgraded at all. What I am about to say is only based on my own theory as I don't know how the turns are processed. I am taking this opertunity to table my theory now.

Firstly, and probably quite simply,... are we forgetting the actual costs of ship repair??? In the situation where you have a number of ships that are damaged from W.H.Y and they are being repaired that turn. Have those costs been accounted for in your available resources total? I don't think so. Remember that each space yard can only repair at a certain rate. Sometimes a ship that has 50% damage may still have 20% damage to repair for the following turn. It is because of this that I believe that the cost to repair damaged components must be taken out at the beginning of the following turn BEFORE the cost of any upgrades are accounted for, and then it is dependant on how many components have been repaired from the previous turn. Did that make any sense at all??? I hope you catch my drift. It is also my understanding that if you are too low on resources no repairs will be completed regardless. If the above is correct then that could explain why you didn't have enough resources to upgrade you ships,... repairs must come first!?? .... anybody????

Another thing you might want to check is exactly how much resources did actually get converted,.. eg,..is it posible that you accidently converted 100000 Organics into Minerals when you only intended to convert 10000???

Another thing I have wondered about relates to the cost of an upgrade. As we all know you can only upgrade to 50% the original cost of that ship. If you are like me you may do several upgrades to get to the end result. eg,.. you start with a basic hull. Lets say you require four upgrades to get the ship you want. If you start with the first upgrade and accidently try to upgrade it to the fourth upgrade then you would receive a message telling you that you can not upgrade a ship more than 50% the original cost. That is well known,... but if you do not have enough resources to do that upgrade,... you will get the "you do not have enough resources to complete this upgrade" message before the "50% upgrade message" I believe the game considers the cost of an upgrade before the ability to upgrade. So,.. this may be another posible explaination for what you have discribed, and you would have no way of telling which upgrade you were trying for. Maybe this might also be useful in the new version. ie,.. if an upgrade order is not completed it would be great to know what you were trying to upgrade too, and if you were short of resources, how much and which resources would also be handy????

Sheeesh,.. maybe thats just a little too hard. We should just like it or lump it I reakon! lol..... and what about riots,... haven't even gone there! lol

Merry christmas to you all from Alienboy. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif[/img]

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
Firstly, and probably quite simply,... are we forgetting the actual costs of ship repair???...

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.

Alienboy said:
Another thing I have wondered about relates to the cost of an upgrade. As we all know you can only upgrade to 50% the original cost of that ship. If you are like me you may do several upgrades to get to the end result. eg,.. you start with a basic hull. Lets say you require four upgrades to get the ship you want. If you start with the first upgrade and accidently try to upgrade it to the fourth upgrade then you would receive a message telling you that you can not upgrade a ship more than 50% the original cost. That is well known,... but if you do not have enough resources to do that upgrade,... you will get the "you do not have enough resources to complete this upgrade" message before the "50% upgrade message" I believe the game considers the cost of an upgrade before the ability to upgrade. So,.. this may be another posible explaination for what you have discribed, and you would have no way of telling which upgrade you were trying for. Maybe this might also be useful in the new version. ie,.. if an upgrade order is not completed it would be great to know what you were trying to upgrade too, and if you were short of resources, how much and which resources would also be handy????

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.

[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.

[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.

[douglas]

Alienboy said:
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.

He mentioned scrap resources as a possible culprit a few posts later.

Alienboy said:
I have always wondered about ship repairs and I have been under the belief that all repairs do actually cost resources to complete. ...

I have played in a game where I regularly did an IMMENSE amount of repairing every turn (retroseries building for ordinary combat ships) and had a rather tight budget. If repairs cost resources, my calculations in that game would have been very far off and I would have run out of resources quickly. They weren't, and I didn't.

Alienboy said:
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 ...

The game may indeed check for resources before checking the 50% limit, but that is completely unrelated to CaptainAl's problem. He was getting out-of-resources messages after carefully calculating that he did have enough resources.

[Alienboy]

If you say so douglas, have a nice christmas.