Planetary scanners: I think these scan space for a 100LY diameter round the planet. Do they increase a base's chance of being scanned itself? And just how good are they? Are they more likely to spot cloaking ships passing by?

They make no extra noise (Birds love that fact, stealth bases with no noise scanners) they have the default power of a ship with power 100 scanners doing a long range scan. Not bad for being so quiet. - Tim

You can entice Ghipsoids onto a Base, from the planet, by leaving Kierra Crystal Artifacts in the base (instead of selling them).

If a base vanishes from people just leaving it the cargo and other goods in the base are moved to the planet's surface.

The number of engines have nothing to do with fuel burn. Fuel Burn depends on the warp drag, engine type and ship speed.

The number of engines comes into play in battle (They produce power) and contested towing.

The new super laser safety only affects super lasers outside of combat -- Does this mean that a super laser fired IN combat will NOT destroy a planet?

If the super laser is targeting the planet as its kill target it will fire the laser at the planet as soon as possible in combat. It is the same as before combat wise. The ship now has the option of firing the super laser outside of combat. A planet can be destroyed during combat OR after combat / movement.

Does newly-bought exotic tech get added before or after movement? This could be important if you think "aha, for the coming battle next turn I shall buy exotic tech." If ET is implemented after movement, it's too late.

The buying and turning on of Exotic tech is before movement/combat. - Tim

I should have had ship plans beamed down last turn by an ally. It didn't happen. At least we can transfer ship plans to other ships!

• When you beam down a plan it should overwrite any existing one. . .
• Allies are blocked from transfering plans to a base, that is too dangerous a power.

- Tim

Ramming: Can you give us some general pointers on what to expect, and what to warn you about if things don't seem to work? I assume both ships involved in a collision are damaged, but does damage depend on hull mass.. armour level... engine speed..? A Deth Spec has a huge attack bonus but is very light; would it be a good rammer or more of a kamikaze device? Can glory ships ram and pop?!

• No ram and pop.
• The Deth Spec rams and does a little damage, it is not that good of a rammer, its shields are way too small.
• The bigger the shields and armor the more ramming damage both ships can take and survive.
• The PERFECT ramming ship would be a small fast cheap ship with a very high attack bonus and big shields.

- Tim

New in Host 63-ish: All fighters have a chance of taking out the base shield generator. Per shot there is a 1 in 100 chance for missiles and a 1 in 1000 chance for a beam weapon to take it out. The Enforcers have better odds of taking out the base shield. They have a have a 3 in 100 chance for missiles and a 5 in 1000 chance for beams.

Bring fighters along in your taskforce to take out base shields. For this purpose, the most effectiant ones are cheap ones with 1 missile and 1 beam. - Jon Nunn

Can fleets share Repair units?

Yes.

Can they share stuff in pods they have docked?

Not until the stuff is transferred from the pod to a fleet member.

Q. How do you get rid of a point in space once you've created it?

A. Make the point in space the hammer object, then choose the standard control button for the hammer object. This brings you to a screen where you can turn the point into a marker or message bouy, etc. On that window, there is a "Destroy object" button.

N.B. If you have a map memory item selected there is a DELETE button on the space command panel that will remove the item from memory if you know it is now out of date.

What determines how quickly I can gather Contraband and other items from a planet's surface?

It is based on your race's PSI powers:

rOdds = CSNG((raceA(meBaseT.pNum).psifactor + 30) / 400) + .2

If you have a PSI of 0 you have a 27.5% chance per turn of finding a >contraband item. - Tim

Could you please clarify that a bit. I suppose the first part ("CSNG((raceA(meBaseT.pNum)") has to do with other race's bases on the same planet?

rOdds = ( ( psifactor + 30 ) / 400 ) + .2

If your psifactor is 0 the odds of finding contraband is:

( ( 0 + 30 ) / 400 ) + .2

30/400 + .2

0.275

= 27.5% per contraband item

If there is a pile of spice your guys will find some about 1 out of 4 turns.

Tim

Do Base Shields reduce the chances of a Base being scanned?

Yes, 25% less likely to be seen. - Tim

What effect does a Labor Camp or Mine have on enemy happiness?

It will have a pretty strong effect. It will pick an enemy planet cause a 20 to 50 point drop in happyness and send a message to the enemy saying "There has been a protest riot over the enemy holding out colonists hostage on planet and forcing them to work in labor camps! Fizbin! ( 2334, 3111 ) They demand that you take action! They will get one of those for EACH working labor mine / camp. It will force a complex tax system planet to spend money to recover the happiness. - Tim (a message from long ago, may not be accurate any more)

The last couple of games I've played in / last several I've simulated, Contraband prices have stayed at 1.28mc / unit for everything over many turns. What starts them rising? A critical population level? Trading in them?

A high population level that likes the stuff with very few people selling will drive the price up. - Tim

NB: someone on the List figured the critical population level in a game is 13 million colonists, total. At this point prices begin rising dramatically. Obviously a game with more players will hit this level sooner. - PH

Christian Jadot suggested...

"...I guess what I am saying is that in the almost complete version of VGAP 4, every now and then find a unique starship hull on a planet, or every now and then have a native race produce a unique weapon. It would be cool to find a "Black Egg", or have Ancient Ruins on a planet that helps you out on that planets some way."

Tim replied:

The plan is to add an unknown plug ins. Also the scenarios will have special planets and toys. The first of the new toys added was the jump gate. It is just the beginning of the new things that can be added.

Ships also have slots that I can plug in new upgrades and problems. . . Something like if you go to the "planet of the nox" With 100 food units they will upgrade your ship with a TraxOmega device. That absorbs half of all incoming weapons fire and uses the power to charge your weapons. If you build a base on that planet it will vanish. . .

Here are some things that can go wrong:

• Holodeck Accident
• Bionock Leeches
• Computer virus
• Destructive Nanites
• Rygillian Fever
• Plasma Fire
• Alien Monsters
• Implants

Right now the goal is to get the bugs out of the basic game system and get all the races finished.

If you Spy to steal ship plans, the plans which you get (if successful) are determined randomly. If an enemy has 35% of their ships all one type, you have a 35% chance of getting that plan... which is why so many people successfully steal the Propaganda off the Peeps!

Taxes:

Liberal taxes are now 50%. 50% of what? Colonist income? How much does a colonist get paid?

A colonist on a 100 happy point world who is a member of a rating 100 income race has an income of 1/1000 mc.

A Liberal tax rate would take 50% of that 1/1000 mc.

The central bank gets 30% of every mc collected, with the base getting 70%

Tax: income rates: Ultra Conservative, 40% etc. This is multiplied by the happiness (I hope this is still true) so at 50 happy you are getting 50% income. Now, if Complex tax rates only gives 2.5x normal on happiness 300 worlds, why would anyone use it? Because they are already giving 3x normal every turn, modified by whether you are Liberal, etc so in 2 turns they will outstrip the Complex return WITHOUT crashing happiness...

On normal tax settings any happiness above 100 does not add to the amount you get. Under Conservative tax rating happiness 300 worlds yeild the same amount as happiness 110 worlds. Complex tax rates are the only system that will take you beyond 1X.

-300

Income generally drops out at 50 points... right?

At 50 happy you are getting 50% income. The lowest level income you can get is 5% of normal that happens when you have a happy rating of 5 or lower.

Host 57 release notes state: "Bird Plasmatron... acts like mine + smelter + has no negative effects on colonists and natives". So how much happiness effect do mines, smelters etc have?

If you have 51 mines you start losing 8 happiness points and you lose an extra happ point for each addtional 5 mines. If you have less than 50 mines there is no happiness problem.

13 smelters cause you to loose one happiness point with 1 happy point drop for each additional 3 smelters.

If a ship has at least 1 high guard range onboard and an enemy trys to steal your ship plans there is a 75% chance the attempt will fail.

You will be more successful at training new High Guard if you leave some at the training centre. The more there are, the higher the chances of training more.

In order for cloaked ships to be attacked do they just have to be visible (ie. scanner profile greater than zero) or do they actively have to be spotted by the would be enemy first?

Being visible at point blank range is all that is required to start a fight.

There are ground bases and a kind of ship called an orbital base. Starbases are now just ships, but without engines - they must be towed if you wish to move them!

Q. Old conference logs refer to chemical/biological weapons that make planets unlivable, or take time to clean up: "Biogenic weapons of mass destruction." Are these still planned?

A. Yes, those are race weapons, they will appear in the help files of races that use them.

Q. Ship boarding... How do you board a ship to capture it once the shields are down? I don't see mention of this in the Help files, but I'd have thought there was a ship combat setting (just like there is "AttackSoft" etc).

A. Ship boarding takes place when you transfer crew to the target ship. If both ships are set to NOT fight it will be a boarding only action.

Q. Do you need to carry special troop types in your pods for boarding or does some of your crew automatically ebb into the victim ship (as in VGAP3)?

A. No, troops can be carrried on you ship. For boarding actions you should, you board with an assault pod, but it is a very easy target.

Q. Is this how you gain Prisoners for your prison camps?

A. When a ships is destroyed in combat, the crew will excape in life pods, you can capture these.

Q. is this an alternative way of capturing ship plans (ie, you find them in the captured data banks) or is that solely a Spy function?

A. If you have a captured enemy ship and "Hacker Droids" they can produce a set of plans for you.

Q. Why would anyone carry ship plans in a ship that might be captured? I can only think of 2 reasons: (a) to trade to an ally and (b) because you have construction ships churning out defending ships as the enemy draws near. Apart from that... why would anyone wish to store plans in a ship?

A. They most likely would be carring plans that belong to another race, plans that they captured or traded for. Plans can only be stored on ships and bases.

Q. How much damage does ramming do? Ie when is it worth ramming?

A. It depends on the size of the ship ramming and the shield power of the two ships.

Q. What are the limits on an unregistered version of Planets4?

A. Only tech levels right now.

Q. How do you view scores?

A. At present - Beta 6 - there is no scrore screen. It will be added later.

Q. Can you store small ships inside another ship's hold?

A. The code is in place to do that, but Tim has not turned it on yet. He is leaving that open as an option that he may or may not add. "I will most likely end up adding it. The ship would be docking with the other ship's cargo bay."

Q. "I was just looking through the help docs and I didn't see anything about being able to capture ships from other races and clone them. Did I just miss it or will we not be able clone captured enemy ships?"

A. "There is no cloning. You can build other race's ships if you have their ship plans. You can get their ship plans if you have "Hacker Droids" and capture their ship or if your spies steal enemy ship plans."

Comment from Tim: "Movement is very different.

"There will be 200 movement phases per turn. If you are move at a speed of 100LY a turn you will move 0.50 LY a phase.

"All ships move one phase, and are then checked to see if there is any interaction. The ships will move another phase. . . . and so on until all 200 phases have taken place. If a ship is intercepting it will update its course after every phase to track the intercept target.

"If a ship is in an auto intercept mode it will switch to intercept as soon as it sees an enemy target in its intercept range. This can happen right in the middle of the movement phases. A ship sitting "at station" will lock onto the intercept target and move to meet the target as soon as possible. The ship will log a message to you in the log file system to let you know it has aquired a target and is moving to intercept."

Q. Just looking at the Device Control Screen... It becomes obvious you can switch each device of a ship on and off. Just wondering: Once I have switched off a device, is there any way to tell the difference between this device, which I am able to switch on again, and all the other devices which aren't fitted and cannot be switched on? It would help a lot. Otherwise I would have to remember the ship's capabilities all the time (or simply try).

A. No ship should ever have more than 10 devices, but yes if there are more switches than will fit on the screen you will not be able to turn them on and off.

Right now I can not think of a single ship device that will not have a switch. Even holodecks have switches.

Every thing that you have on will have a green light on next to the switch for the device.

One thing that I added that I don't think I told many people about yet is sensor coverage. If you click a sensor coverage option on the map option menu the main map will display solid colored circles that indicate areas on the map that you have active sensors covering. - Tim

Q. Can you queque tech upgrades and ship parts? Let's say you're going away for 3 turns and want to have a ship built by the time you get back... ie 3 tech levels beyond present abilities. Can you say "increase tech 3 levels when cash is available and THEN build X whilst I'm away so it is ready to go when I return"?

Partial answer: Tech levels can only be increased at a rate of 1 level per turn. Inference: So if you think you may need high tech X one day, in a hurry, build up the cheap levels earlier rather than later.

Q. ...if something you don't understand happens, can you review what you did in your last turn? Ie is the situation explicable because you just forgot to cloak that ship?

A. In version 4 the state of your empire last turn just before you made your TRN file is saved in a file named *.WAR. If you save this file you can review what happened last turn, and what you were doing just before you made your TRN file.

- Maybe an easy way to do this would be, when someone compiles a TRN file, to copy all the game files to a temporary backup directory - like "\VPWORK1" is the game directory and "\VPWORK1A" is the "ghost" directory.

I could copy the old *.WAR files to a backup directory, maybe save the last 10 files or so.

Q. As far as I understand it the structures have been removed from the "common structures" list but can still reappear as "custom structures" in the Empire or Privateer - Race Pack, for example.

A. Yes, exactly. The feds now have one custom structure. The resort. It is now fused into their race pack.

gand rey@@ worl dn et .att. net wrote:

It seems, looking at the message screens, that when a race receives a message from another player, s/he can see which planet that message has originated from. Do I understand this right? If so, players will be very carefull on when and to whom they send messages now.

A. You can also send messages from a ship. You could send a ship far far away and then send a message. . . Tim

Q. Do you have to have operatives in an enemy empire to launch a spy attack, or do you just say "target that empire on the other side of the galaxy"?

A. Just target the enemy.

Q. Is lawfulness a fixed value for a race or does it drop as happiness goes down? As I understand it, it's fixed, and races with Low lawfulness actually prefer high crime rates (ie are happier)? Surely this must have negative aspects, like, it becomes more difficult to resist spies if crime is rife?

A. It is fixed. Yes, low lawfulness causes the race to LIKE crime and not resist spy attacks.

Is it possible to raise significant MC by trading on the black market with your allies? Ie: as I understand it, say your race likes Lerchin Spices and your ally likes illegal music CD's. You are both low-lawfulness races so your empires are Happy if there is lots of crime. Being a low-law level race I have Smuggler's Cantinas and these attract lots of contraband should I wish to buy it (or do I accumulate it without paying?).

It can be bought and Cantinas accumulate it for you without paying.

So let's say I gather illegal music CD's from all over my empire and sell them at my bases in my ally's territory. This causes a jump in crime on his planets (selling coveted black market goods does that). Because he's unlawful, his colonists are actually happy about this. I make money by selling the goods to his population. Is this summary correct?...

Once it is sold players lose control of it until it is bought again, so it does not matter if another lawless race is near you, you will not make any extra money, but you will drive the lawful races nuts.

...Or are the negative sides that:

• my ally gains happiness but loses cash because the money has to come from his planetary reserves? - No, not his planetary reserves, the money comes from the black market, which he has no control over.
• his increased crime rate has other, negative effects - trade is a risky business and this will only work for a short while, then the market is saturated

The price of the item will drop, but if there is a race that uses the item their colonists will buy it from the blackmarket and the price will go back up.

Q. I have been puzzling over hypedimensional stress. I am not clear on what affects it. I understand that it affects climate and planetary stability, but are there weapons or ground installations which affect it? Terraformer installations perhaps? I'm just wondering if it is actually needed as part of the game. If I find a juicy planet which is probably going to blow up in 10 turns, that is all I am interested in - if I cannot reduce its hyperdimensional stress to a safe level I don't *need* to know any more. It seems pretty complicated at present.

A. It will rarely be used, it is in the game for senarios.

Q. Are there limits to where you can place message buoys? Ie do you have to send a ship to the drop point? Also, you only have 20. Is that 20 one-use ones, or 20 maximum at one time?

A. 20 at a time. You can just pick any spot in space, they are "projected" into deep space.

Q. Now we can build resorts, what do they do, and is there any point having more than one?

A. They improve the happiness level of the planet, you only need to build them if you have a happiness problem.

Q. "Fixed: Allied data sharing not changing" - it wasn't working at all AFAIK. What exactly should we expect, now?

A. It all works now, you can allow other players to send commands to your ships and planets. You can share scanner data with your friends.

Q. "Changed: Planets show up a little better on planet and ship scanners" - have you eliminated the extraordinarily detailed rundown we *used* to get on e.g. enemy planets, enemy ships and their armaments, etc, or have you added MORE detail?

A. The scanner was broken it was sending you way too much data on distant planets, I fixed that and the data on planets dropped to almost nothing. I then boosted the size on scanners of planets to make them easier to detect. When you look on the map you should see more grey planets and a few yellow ones near your ships and planets.

Q. "Changed: Population growth curves" - Should we expect populations to grow slower now, or faster? Does this refer only to colonists?

A. The population growth curve is now based on availible food. Growth is much like it was before, but begins to slow at 50 million and reach near zero at 100 million. Cities slow growth as well.

Q. "New: Boarding laser, used for hostile ship to ship transfers. Kill half the enemy's crew and damages the enemy's ship hull" - To use this, do you need to load your ship with Troops in the guest quarters?

A. Yes, it is used in a ship to ship hostile transfer of crew, troops, colonists or high guard.

Q. And, will high Guards make any difference and if so, would a whole hold full make a big difference?

A. Yes, full load of Guard being transfered with an active boarding laser would make a big difference.

Q. "New: Any pod will fit any ship pod bay. Pod bay size limits removed from game". - An important change. Does this mean a small freighter can now tow a pod with 1000kT of Stuff in it?

A. The tow limits are still in effect. If a small freight had a pod bay it would be able to load a 1000 kt pod into the small ship. If it does not have a pod bay it can not move the 1000 kt pod, unless it have a 100 kt class tractor beam.

Q. Or only 70kT (ie, one hold full)? Can you now stuff more than 1000kT into a pod?

A. All pods except the outfit pod is limited to 1000 kt.

Q. "New: Chupanoids resist being placed in a native pod" - Totally?

A. If they are very happy they might agree to go.

Q. Can you release any info yet on different natives' likes and dislikes? For example, which tax policies they prefer? >>

A. Natives do not care at all about your tax policies. Your tax settings only effect your own colonists.

Q. "New: Ore processing working" - were smelters not working properly? Or are you referring to something else?

A. The ship device known as ore processing is now working. Smelters were working fine before.

Q. "New: Holodeck working" - Does this just increase happiness? How does one use it? It's a function of a Starbase as I recall... does it help on the planet you're orbiting?

A. It makes the ship crew happy. 10 happy points a turn. Every turn that a ship is in space away from a planet it looses 1 happy point. Orbiting a planet will cause you to gain 2 points. If you are over a base that has more than 100,000 of your colonists on it you gain 10 extra happy points.

Q. Is there now, a way of Giving ships etc to other players?

A. If you remove your crew they should be able to transport crew onto the ship to capture it.

Q. Can one Give colonists to another player?

A. No.

Q. Do you intend ever being able to transfer money from one race's Central > Account, to another's?

A. No.

Q. Is there a list of native races and their characteristics anywhere? Maybe I'm not looking in the correct part of the Help files... it's evident that you need to choose the best way to tax, etc based on what your majority slaves - er, natives - are. You've referred to the dreaded Chupanoids from time to time, for example, but if they are based on a sci-fi race, it's not one I'm familiar with (and I consider myself fairly well read in the field; maybe they're from an American TV series?)

A. They are made up, mostly. There is nothing in sci fi called a Chupanoid that I know of.

Q. Can you explain the features of the Special Ship Devices?

A. Laser Mining Drill - Mines planets from orbit. Low powered device, works slowly, few side effects.

Particle Fountain - Mines planets from orbit. High power, works quickly, damages the planet (HD Stress), heats the planet.

Re: the ship devices 'Ore Processing' and 'Laser Mining Drill'. How could these be used if ore cannot be transported via ship, only via pod? How will they end up being used?

A. The laser mining drill produces metals that will be stored on the ship.

The Ore processing device uses any ore in the area, on a planet or on nearby pods. The ore is converted to metal and stored on the ship.

Q. Will there be any way for unreg players to get reg tech lebel items like there was in v3; or is that simply a thing of the past?

A. Yes, if they salvage the wreckage of a high tech ship or the natives build the items for you. Getting your hands on high tech engines and weapons is pretty easy.

Q. Does anyone know how jumpgates will work? Will they be 2 jumpgates connected, or will all the jumpgates be connected? Will there be a limitation on how far, or how big the ship can be?

A. Right now the plan is to have them all connected. And there is no size limit on how big a ship can use them. Each new gate will have a command code, to jump to that gate you just go to any other gate set your ship command code to the code of the gate that you want to jump to and next turn you will arrive at the other gate.

Alchemy - from a discussion between Sidewinder and Grant Robbins

"Both the Alaska class and Merlin perform alchemy tasks. I think the rations are definitly different from v3 ratios, not a lot, but the problem I had was I wanted to set the Merlin to mission beam up supplies.

"What switches does the Alchemy Device have? What are the ratios? I have to see them myself :-) "

"Answers. The Alchemy ship has two devices. tne alchemy device is on or off and converts supplies to the three metals. There is also an ore processor on board. The Alaska have the alcj\hemy device but maks fuel."

"Ratios: From what I can gather the Merlin ratio is 4 to 1. for evey four supplies you get 1 metal unit. However I have not tested the minimum and it may be actually 12:1:1:1 as all three metals are converted equaally. The Alaska seems to be 1800 supplies and 600 metals to 780 fuel."

Q. How good are the ship devices "global coolers" and "warmers"?

A. I think they changed planetary climates by just 1 or 2 degrees a turn in Version 3, but in Version 4, Global coolers seem to work at 5 degrees a turn and Global warmers are 6 degrees a turn. The effect is cumulative (ie 5 Bohemians can change a planet's temperature by about 25 degrees / turn). The device seems to work at the beginning of a turn, ie the ship must be in orbit at the target planet before the movement phase. This is so good, it pays to build them early on in your game, so as to reap the farms' income ASAP. It will quickly pay for the ships.

However, some planets' temperature tends to drift a degree or so a turn.

How the autopiloted ships work - a posting by Tim to the mailing list

The host looks through all the bases for ones that have more than their reserve setting. At least 100 kt of cargo or 2000 mc. And a planet within 300 LY that needs the cargo.

It checks to make sure there is not an autopilot ship on route with fuel and with a good speed.

If there is a near fueless or damaged auto pilot ship on its away it will be deverted for fuel and repairs.

If there is no ship doing the cargo run the nearest idle autopilot ship within 300 LY will be assigned the job.

If there is a great deal of cargo on the base more ships will be assigned until the ships on traveling to the planet will be able to pick up at least 75% of the cargo.

Ships will only be assigned the task if both a base with excess and a base with need are found.

Idle autopilot ships will travel to any nearby planet with excess cargo and no ships assigned to pick up the cargo yet.

Questions and answers on the modifications introduced in Host Beta 27 (December '99):

Q. "New: Agrovator doubles food production". Do you need one Agrovator per farm?

A. Yes.

100 farms + 50 Agrovators = 150 food

100 farms + 100 Agrovators = 200 Food

100 farms + 200 Agrovators = 200 Food

Q."New: Public Spaceports attract more existing natives and improves native happiness" Could you quantify that a bit, and quantify how many natives the 'port USED to attract, for comparison?

A. Before it attached none. There is now a 10% chance that 10% natives will come to the planet, if you have a planetary native happyness of 100 or better.

Q. "New: Cyborg can have only one high guard unit. (The Cyborg king)" so - Borg essentially have no High Guards, only crew and colonists?

A. True.

Q. What happens if the King dies?

A. A new one will appear.

Can I refit another player's ships with an Outfit pod?

No. It only works on your own ships. If someone captures your pod they can use it.

Population growth

Is availability of food the only thing that affects native and colonist growth rate?

There are a few factors: For colonists: rate = (Race_growthrate / 100) * .05

If happiness is less than 30 the rate is decreased by a factor of 50% rate = rate * .5

If happiness is greater than 80 the rate is increased by a factor of 50% rate = rate * 1.5

Every training center decreases the growth rate by a factor of 1% rate = rate * (100 - training_centers)

Every full city decreases the growth rate by a factor of 0.2% rate = rate * (500 - cities)

pop = pop + pop * rate

Native growth rate: Range: 0.00% to 2.00% per turn Max rate for siliconoids is at: 100 climate rating planets. Max rate for all others is at: 50

If your colonists run out of food they will loose 5% of their population a turn and loose 2 to 8 happy points a turn.

If your colonists run out of food the chupanoid grow by an extra 10% a turn and the chupanoids will gain 0 to 5 happy points a turn.

Okay, Training camps have three ratings, colonists to crew at 10, >> crew to >>troops at 1, and troops to highguard at 1 (for the feds, anyway). what does >>that mean, exactly? How many training bases do I need for X number of >>troops to be trained, etc? > >Originally it was thought to train 10 colonists to crew each turn (take 10 >colonists, add 10 crew) and also train 1 troop from 1 crew and then again 1 >HG from 1 troop. My understanding is that these are percentages per >training center, but it might also be direct amounts. No one has tested >this thoroughly enough yet. It has also been suspected that having >additional training centers (in excess of one) are not making a difference. > Two changes to the original values apply. First the effect was "toned >down by a factor of 100 times" (in HB12) and it's also suspected that >making HG is made much more difficult than troops. Could be that getting HG >is handled by different logic.

Kristen Mallory noted:

Having more than one training center makes a big difference, I am playing a game at turn 40 now, and I have regular supplies of high guards coming in. actually though, it seems to work more along the line of chance because it is an irregular number per turn, and it they didn't start to come in until turn 25 or so. It seems to be a consistant frustration with some aspects of the game so far, in that things don't always happen "Next turn". Which is unfortunate considering it has become a much longer game with the overall design changes; these things make the game take even longer to get rolling.

Tim replied:

Each training center will produce this number of crew a turn: Delta_Colonist_To_Crew * ( Colonists / 100000 )

If you have a Government Center the number is: (Delta_Colonist_To_Crew + 10) * ( Colonists / 100000 )

Each training center will produce this number of troops a turn: Delta_Crew_To_Troops * ( Crew / 100000 )

If you have a Government Center the number is: (Delta_Crew_To_Troops + 5) * ( Crew / 100000 )

Each training center will produce this number of high guard a turn: Delta_Troops_To_Guard * ( Troops / 100000 )

If you have a Government Center the number is: (Delta_Troops_To_Guard + 1) * ( Troops / 100000 )

Then there is random chance that one new high guard (Per Base Per Turn) will come into existance. . .

v = forcedark + forcegood + leadership - psifactor

If (Rnd * 1000 < v) Or (Rnd < 0.02) Then

If Troops > 0 Then

Guard = Guard + 1

Troops = Troops - 1

End If

End If

Subject: multiple planets round one star

All the stars on the zeta map have one planet. It is possible to have several stars at the same x,y. That would give you several planets. That can be done using a script or editing the map file. However, I would rather avoid placing more than one planet / star at the same X,Y.

Yes, there are planets outside the 6000 X 6000 grid. The galaxy is about 6000 X 6000 with a few parts that are a little bit larger. It is not hurting anything.

Q. [Considering the possibility of building new planets with protomatter cannons:] How useful is a 2nd planet in the same system? Let's say you have a second, good farm planet in a system. Would the fuel costs involved in shuttling food to the primary planet be negligable?

A. A pod could move 1000kt of stuff for 25mc. A ship could move it for free.

(Q. Would invading fleets have to fight 2 planets and their fighters etc simultaneously?

A. You would fight one planet then the other.)

Tim

Tim has since mentioned, that multiple planets round a star would cause bugs / confusion in other bits of code, if multiple bases were within 3LY. For example Transporters. So he won't do it. - PH

David Ouimet: on Freighters:

Medium Deep Space Freighter: Perhaps my choice ship for moving cargo around via pods. With a signle engine and a pod bay combined with its low tech it is an effective ship for colonizing planets and bringing cargo to a central location. It is not as effective in collecting cargo from systems without pod launcers, for this I would recomened a Warship or Large Deep Space Freighter.

Large Deep Space Freighter: Its high base cargo capacity is this ships only shining factor. Usefull for stripping planets without pod bays bu tof limited other use. With only a signel pod bay a Medium Deep Space freighter is of more use in developed systems, and cheaper.

Comment: I strip down my 3 LDSF and build 6 Medium Deep Space freighters.. The delay usually lets me build pod launchers as well for my first wave out and escort them with small warships to prevent prove raids.

Personally, I find that using the new Exotic Techs "Pod Kicker A nad B", there is no longer any need for Medium Freighters - or, possibly, Large Freighters. Because the pods can then travel at 50 LY / turn without being docked, and 50LY / turn is the max speed for these freighters. Of course you need to be able to afford this exotic tech! - PH

I will be adding a switch to hconfig that when on causes a ring of 52 wormholes to appear around the edge of the map and one at the center. If you park on a worm hole you will end up the next turn at its twin on the other side of the map. They will be named Wormhole A1 to Wormhole Z1 Their twins will be named Wormhole A2 to Wormhole Z2.

Q: Whar is Hyperdimensional Stress? Where does it come from? Where does it go?

A: You can read about it here, exploding planets and heating effects and all: http://www.enterprisemission.com/hyper1.html

Jon Nunn: Since Tim is now going to be putting limits on max native gifts per planet. (Amorph spices, Siliconds production of ord for Crystals), there's some new uses for the native pods:

1. As soon a given planet has somewhere between 25% and 50% of the max effective gifts from a given native type, pod off a few thousand each to the nearby planets, primarily to those without such natives. If no planets are nearby, use ships.

2. Whenever a planet does exceed maximum, keep poding everything over the limit away to the adjoining planets.

3. If you have a space port, turn it off before executing the above.

Q: How can I set waypoints in deep space? I have often wished I could set a waypoint to nowhere, rather than a planet or other ship.

A: You can:

• set a virtual marker and use it as a waypoint. I do it quite often for dropping minefields in a pre-set pattern.
• Or click on the mini over view map while holding down the shift key.
• Or dropping the waypoint on the map while holding down the shift key
• Or just turn off the magnetic waypoint locking (Toggle button (Magnet) on main tool bar)

- Tim

If a ship is destroyed above a planet, there is a chance that the minerals (including cargo) and fuel from the ship will end up on the planet's surface, ather than in junk pods, particularly if the ship was overkilled by 500% excess damage (ie a superweapon shot). I once saw several thousand kT of each on a planet after a battle where 5 Borg Cubes were destroyed.

Fighter fuel feature
Lordfire reported the following to the Newsgroup, August 2003. Concerning the "All Fighters Move too far per turn bug" thread on the NG at the time, he mentioned to Tim:
  >I confirm this. Fighters clearly mysteriously get fuel. In addition I
  >have had ee tripods do long range intercept missions and have *much*
  >more fuel than they should afterwords.
Tim replied:
All fighters have solor panels / fuel scoops / ether cores that regenerate 10% of their max fuel needs per turn.

> Is it possible to see if enemy ships are carrying fighters in their fighter bays ?

[Lord Owl replied:] Select the enmy ship as hammer (left click) and press the t key (o for bases). You will enter a normal ship screen with limited info, but you will see how many fighterbays are occupied. For such an important feature its kind of hidden, I never figured out if this is a bug or not.

> Is there also any way to see which kind of weapons a ship is carrying(before you go into VCR) ?

No. You are just able to see superweapons. Of course with the exception of the Empire.

>Does anyone know how to change the image for the race commander?

If you want to change the fed leader place a BMP file of the new leader in the BMP directory named L101.BMP

  The Symbol is S101.BMP

  Lizards are L102.BMP and S102.BMP

  and so on. ..

These would be the new pictures for the Fed's leader and new symbol

    \BMP\L101.BMP
   
    \BMP\S101.BMP

• If you kill one or two enemy ships you get 2 bad blood points, if you kill 4 to 10 enemy ships you get 12 bad blood points. If you kill more than 10 ships you get 20 bad blood points, which is the maximum you can get in a single turn from ship killing.
• If you kill 1 million enemy colonists on the ground in a single turn you will get 20 bad blood points for the turn, this is the max for colonist killing.
• If you kill 10 or more ships and 1 million colonists on the ground you will get 40 bad blood points for the turn.
• You max out with 200 points and loose 1 point per turn.

How this affects prison camps
Prison camps will produce cash more often if the prisoners are frightened by Bad Blood. If you just capture some people and put them in a camp, they will only produce cash about 20% of the time; the rest of the time they just riot.
Gabor Törö explained it thus:

The more bad blood the better they work. And bad blood is the number of killed colonists in ground combat. See Code below.
Another "trick" to improve the prisoner rate is if you have prisoners of different players mix them in your camps and mines. This increases the "local" blood...

Details:

if the local blood is greater than 100 then rOdds=0.15
if the local blood is greater than 50 then rOdds=0.35
if the local blood is greater than 10 then rOdds=0.45
if the local blood is greater than 5 then rOdds=0.55
otherwise rOdds is 0.80

With a chance of 1-rOdds the camps will work. With a chance of rOdds the following happens:

If  there are less than 20 prisoners -> rioting (prisoners do nothing else then dying)

Throwing coin! -> rioting (prisoners do nothing else then dieing)
 |
V
Throwing coin! -> -10% supplies
 |
V
Throwing coin! -> 0-5 happiness drop of colonists + -2% loss of colonists
 |
V
cash=cash - 10mc * camps

So it should be a good idea to have not much colonists, supplies and mc left when the camp routines "go online".

LeeSMaz wrote: It now seems very hard to find a useful reason for getting prisoners...except by arrangement with a Non Aggression Pact player. (Ie, selling your own colonists as prisoners and split the profits.)
I'm finding, it's not worth taking the prisoners when you need to kill them to make them useful and same for the ships. ...and I'm playing as the EE with the 4 times cash prisoners...

The solution appears to be that the game system works if you kill about 50,000 enemy a turn - it is assumed you capture millions of prisoners, using e.g. mechs, not just a few thousand - and you should ship some of them to a planet where they are allowed to roam free before you kill them.

Improving base defenses

One day Azuremonster used up some spare cash building stupid numbers of factories on his bases. Pete Chambers and he noticed these soaked up lots of damage when Pete attacked them with ships - the more important structures generally remained intact.