See also: Strategy guide- a structured how-to-play document.

Autopilot: the new automatic Reserve Levels feature is one of the most important innovations of VGAP4. You set ships to autopilot and set the "reserve" levels on planets to desired values. So say you want to build a powerful shipbuilding base at planet Kanton. You set its reserve levels high, and neighboring planets low. Nearby ships of yours will automatically shuttle minerals etc to Kanton for you for the rest of the game if they are set to "Autopilot". Autopilot mode was disabled. It didn't work.

Cities are the most efficient way to raise money. Colonists in a city will generate 100MC (times the race's tax factor - for the Feds, the "income" factor is 130% so they'd get 130MC). The same number of colonists living outside the city would only generate 10MC for an average race (13MC for Feds). So build cities ASAP. You'll need 100,000 colonists, 100MC, and 100 supplies to build them, followed by a maintenance level of 1 Med, Food and Supply unit per turn thereafter. In frontier zones, you may prefer to build undercities - which cost more and generate only 80MC per turn, but protect the colonists from orbital attack.

Unfortunately, Cities reduce population growth rates.

Tax rates for various races: Liberal is best for Feds. Enslavement is best for Borg. See individual race guides for the best rates. Sometimes you need to switch to Liberal for a few turns to get native happiness above 70 and get Free Stuff.

If you want to raise money by taxing natives, it is worth noting: natives living on a planet will move into your ground base only if they like you. If there is an enemy base on the same planet they may leave your base and join the enemy base. The natives can also attack a base that they do not like if they get unhappy over things like terraforming. . . etc.

Spying

To spy on another race, you don't need to have a common border. They could be on the other side of the galaxy. All you need to do is instruct your agents: "the target race is X".

It is a good idea to keep your Empire's happiness high to help resist spy attacks.

Empires will be more resistant to spying if they have high leadership (ie, the willingness of the people to follow their leader); lawfulness; and PSI ratings. These are fixed values for each race, for example the Fed values are 60 /110 / 5, which is OK / very high / very low.

Low lawfulness causes the race to LIKE crime and not resist spy attacks. Lawfullness is fixed for a given race, you cannot influence it.

Large empires are easier targets of spy attacks, by virtue of having more weak points to infiltrate. Tim has implied the Host program actually has a size factor built in when calculating the effectiveness of spy attacks.

Spying can gather information or sabotage an enemy. If they are set to incite disorder, the enemy will have a happiness decrease, and riots may start. The reduced happiness will lead to more crime. Note that whilst an increase in crime is not necessarily a bad thing for a low-lawfulness race, a decrease in happiness leads to lower tax revenues. Decreased happiness will lead to other effects in later versions of Host - Tim has indicated that unhappy natives will attack or leave bases, and there may be other effects too (maybe the colonists' combat effectiveness will be reduced?)

Q. Do spies target one planet or all enemy planets when they incite disorder or sabotage bases? If just one planet, does the spymaster specify one or is it a random planet?

A. The spymaster picks a random planet.

Q. What kind of effect do they have on happiness [ie when inciting disorder]? 5 happiness points per turn? How can the target counter this? Your lawfulness, etc seem fixed (though you can build resorts I suppose) but the advantage seems to be very much with the agressor. Presumably a rich player could simply turn on "Incite Disorder" for 20 turns and watch the person he's attacking suddenly erupt into civil war.

A. Right now, one random planet loses 20 to 30 happy points.

Q. On the subject of spying - is it more effective if your mana is higher?

A. Yes.

There is some further information on Spying on Timo Krieke's Website.

New info on Spying, December '99:

What effects Sabotage Bases is supposed to have?

Buildings are destroyed.

What about Sabotage Ships?

Ships can be destroyed if small, damaged if large. This needs to be changed so that there is a defence against Sabotage. Perhaps if a ship has an experiance level above a set level or if highguard are on the ship the damage is reduced or prevented.

Incite Disorder?

Causes the happiness of the colonists to go down.

If you succeed in stealing enemy ship plans, will you get these just into one base or all your bases and drydock equipped ships?

One ship will end up with the plans on board, you will get a spy message telling which ship has the plans.

Some more general questions: What about the effects of negative happiness? Are we supposed to see civil wars and some real damage as in v3?

Nothing happens right now, but things like riots and civil wars and even colonists joining an enemy will be added.

What effects does higher happiness have (except that it makes spying more difficult)?

It is a great buffer against incite disorder attacks.

Are there any effects for high happiness for ship crew?

There is a (small) combat bonus. Ships with a negative rating might deside to join an enemy.

Q. "...you intend, eventually, to introduce counterspy functions such as, high guards reduce chances of successful spying. I'm thinking that Borg will probably try to steal mid-level ship plans ASAP to fill the gap in their ship lists."

A. Yes, I am going to have high guard block spy attacks on ships that do damage to the ship. The Borg can not spy or be spied on.

Q. Should players put High Guards on EVERY ship they wish to protect, or are ship plans derived from something else like, the Bases, so you can't stop them being nicked?

A. High guard will not stop plans from being stolen. The plans are stolen from active ships. The ship has to exist before its plans can be stolen. If there are 1090 ships in a game and one of them is a SuperNova and you are trying to steal a ship plan there is a 1 / 1090 chance you will steal the plans to the SuperNova. . . If there are 1090 ships in a game and 1080 of them are SuperNovas and you are trying to steal a ship plan there is a 1080 / 1090 chance you will steal the plans to the SuperNova.

New info on Spying, January 2000, following a Host update:

New: 20 or more high guard on a ship will block a spy attack on the ship

New: If (Random number from 1 to 200) < your race's Force Good rating and you have one high guard on a ship the spy attack on the ship is blocked.

New: If (Random number from 1 to 600) is less that your ship's happyness rating the spy attack is blocked.

New: There is a 5% chance that a spy attack on a ship will get around all the above listed blocks

New info on Spying - May 2003 Host change: If you want to steal ship plans using the Steal spy mission, you must have a ship within 40LY of a ship belonging to the target race. In addition, Privateers are quite dangerous to ships carrying Plans.

New info on Spying, October 2000:

Stealing ship plans: it's been imlied by Tim that the plans stolen are randomly chosen. If 40% of a player's ships are B200 probes and one of his ship plans is stolen, it is 40% likely to be a B200.

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

New: 40% of the time a high guard ranger can stop an enemy spy attack on a base that would have otherwise caused damage

New, October 2000: Much harder to get spy mana points. (Feds produce a maximum of 12 spy mana points a turn.)

"Feds can get a max of 12 spy mana points per turn. What is the max amount of money one can spend per race? What happens to excess money?"

The max that any race can spend on spy mana is 1000, how much that gets you in spy mana points depends on your race's spy powers.

Natives

I think it worth noting that it pays to keep your natives happy. In VGAP3 they were a resource to be abused - like an animal you could farm. In VGAP4, I think it is better to think of the natives allowing your ground bases to exist on their planets. The natives are much more a technological force to be reckoned with. Perhaps VGAP4 Empires should be thought of more as loose federations led by one race, than homogenous empires. Consider the following comments from Tim:

Natives will live on a planet and if they like you they will move into your ground base. If there is an enemy base on the same planet they may leave your base and join the enemy base. The natives can also attack a base that they do not like if they get unhappy over things like terraforming. . . etc. Some will trade in black market goods.

Natives make money, they are taxed. They can leave a planet on their own as well as come to a planet. They like some buildings like resorts and cantinas. Some natives HATE some buildings like the gimpies hate the terraformers.

Natives will be able to build their own ships and bases. It should be interesting.  <--- I've never seen this - PH, 2005

I have seen somewhere, that you can transport natives from one planet to another to help boost a planet's economy etc. However, you need to be careful because (a) some natives eat other ones and that makes them unhappy; (b) if you over-depopulate a planet of natives they get very unhappy.

I believe I've also seen a note that unhappy natives sometimes steal ships!

Perhaps one day, someone will create a race pack for a race who exist mainly by trade with natives, without ever building their own colonial ground bases. And there's scope for an addon - "Native Rebellion" - where a CPlayer runs Native-controlled planets which band together as an extra player.

With the addition of native politics, spying and the black market, Tim has transformed the whole atmosphere of the game to one of continual turmoil. Good players will be able to push their population to extract the maximum from their economies, but if they misjudge things the 'pot will boil over'. Less intense micromanagers will be able to do fairly well just by being sure to avoid Things Which Make People Unhappy (ie they should build excess resorts and government centres, which soak up resources, and buy black market goods their population likes in order to take them off the market - unless they're a low-lawfulness race which likes crime, see Black Market below - again this soaks up resources)

Problems with excess Amorphs or Chupanoids? They're supposed to kill some of your colonists and other natives, cause happiness loss etc. Use the Sidewinder Strategy: "build a pod launch pad on newly colonized planets and if there are no hostile bases within range, just self destruct the pods with the Amorphous worms and the Chupanoids (when they are in good enough mood to be stuffed into a Native pod). You can't send the natives back to the planet, they will end up back to your base. (if there is also a base from another race on the same planet, you can send the natives there, I believe)." Alternatively, the Lindner Strategy is to herd them into a pod and shoot them off as a gift to an enemy world.

Trading and the Black Market:

Contraband system revamped: more up to date version on page contraband.txt

If your race can build a Cantina, [Privateers, Rebels, Aczanny] it automatically gathers lots of contraband for you. [And generates Crime.] Otherwise you accumulate it slowly at your bases (or you can buy it if you want it through your bases). You can only buy it where it appears. I think you need to carry it from A to B with ships (pods), but once you sell it at a target planet (base) it is smuggled to nearby planets too.

At first I figured you would sell contraband somewhere that it is desired, for a profit, but if you swamp a market the price will fall in that area. Native races desire contraband too, so you could conceivably help quell native revolts by buying crime-generating contraband items they desire. However, it is now clear that contraband prices are universal, ie the same all over the galaxy. What happens is, in the first 10 turns everyone sells all they can, to raise a few thousand MC startup capital. The price crashes to about 5% of the original. But, Tim informs us: "as the population increases the price of contraband will sky rocket. On turn 138 of a test game I had the VR-6 chips up to 7300 mc a unit."

> Ah. I had the impression that contraband could be sold on an enemy's border to decrease lawfulness in that area and make spy attacks more effective (and reduce happiness in lawful races)... so I think the pattern will be: [stuff deleted about everyone makes loads of MC at first, then the prices crash permanently]

Yes, if you sell a pod of contraband (you have to be within 50LY) directly to an enemy base you greatly increase crime on the target base. You get the going price but you also do some damage to the enemy.

Also selling directly to an enemy base the price of the contraband is NOT depressed. :)

Reasons to buy contraband:

• If you have a highly lawful race, buying contraband which your race desires takes it off the market and reduces crime amongst your population. This makes a lawful race Happy. Buying contraband which races in that area do *not* desire has no effect on happiness / crime.

Reasons to sell contraband:

• If you have a race with a low lawfulness, selling contraband which your race desires introduces it to the market and increases crime amongst your population. This makes an unlawful race Happy!
• It generates cash.
• (From the Help files:) "If a massive amount of contraband is sold on a planet that is near a race that has a high demand for that contraband item it will cause a big jump in crime on that race ' s ground bases." Good way to cause civil unrest on an enemy planet... Tim mentioned some further info October '99 (you won't find this in the Help files): "if you sell a pod of contraband (you have to be within 20LY) directly to an enemy base you greatly increase crime on the target base. You get the going price but you also do some damage to the enemy. Also selling directly to an enemy base the price of the contraband is NOT depressed. :) "

Miscellaneous tips about Contraband

The price is high for the first 10-15 moves, but once people begin selling significant quantities the price crashes to about 0.2MC per Thing. It goes up to 10MC I think, anyway it's a big crash! Apparently the price rises again as populations increase towards the end of a game, but the point is that you get one big cash bonanza by selling contraband from your first 3-6 colonies, I mean on the order of 5,000MC each, then suddenly you're lucky to get an average of 100MC / turn from a planet's contraband. So, spend that bonus wisely.

Q. How do you sell directly to a base ? Just sell contraband within 20 ly of the base ? What would firing a gold pod of contraband at an enemy planet do ?

A. [Sidewinder] "You need to first send your Gold pod within 60 ly of the target base (not 20 ly, it's 60), then set the target base as the anvil object and select "Sell pod to anvil object" button in Pod Control. You might get lucky and this works. You should get the money to your HQ and the enemy base gets increase in crime if they have high desire for the items sold."

"These contraband transactions are however inconsistent and irregular. Sometimes if you try it over 60 ly away, you get a log message that you should be within 60 ly from the target (not 20 as someone mentioned). Sometimes you don't get any log messages, it just doesn't work because of the distance. When the selling actually takes place, sometimes the seller gets a log message stating that the pod sold contraband for a value in mc and the pod remains, but empty. Sometimes there is no log entry and the pod disappears. Sometimes the receiving base log reads that the selling pod transferred cargo with the base, sometimes nothing. These problems could have something to do with scanners not detecting the target base in the turn the selling is supposed to take place. (it could be detected the turn before, when the selling order is set). I've only got race 1 to sell contraband from a pod, so it could also be a race related thing."

Q. Do you have to micromanage the transport of Lerchin Spices, etc from Planet A to B or are the mechanics somehow invisible to the player, and assumed to be through spies /smugglers in your employ?

A. You sell it on one planet and the effects are carried to near by planets by smugglers that work for you but you never see or have any control of.

Q. Is it possible to capture contraband?

A. Yes, capture a base or pod with it on board.

Q. Is it possible to LOSE money by dealing in contraband if the market conditions are wrong?

A. Yes, if you buy contraband and the races that like the contraband items gets killed off the value of your contraband decreases.

Q. Do you have to sell Contraband through your own bases, and if so, and your own race likes to buy it, does it always increase your own race's crime too... ie is the art of managing Contraband, never to deal in what your own race covets?

A. If you sell something your race likes you will have a crime problem increase if you sell something they hate nothing bad will happen at all.

Q. My homeworld seems to be completely out of contraband, as are the nearby worlds, though there is plenty to be found on newly colonised planets. I was wondering if Cantinas generate *new* contraband whilst Feds can only scrape up what was around at the start of the game. It affects how one plays - if there's a fixed amount, you should hoard it until it's really worth a lot.

A. Yes, they do IF the privateer's, rebels, stormers or colonies of man own it. A fed owned cantina does not generate new contraband. The Feds have no way of making new contraband. - Tim

BLACK MARKET TRADING WITH ALLIES:

Q. 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?).

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

Q. 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? Or are the negative sides that:

Comment. 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.

Q. - my ally gains happiness but loses cash because the money has to come from his planetary reserves?

A. No not his planetary reserves, the money comes from the blackmarket, which he has no control over.

Q. - his increased crime rate has other, negative effects

A. 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.

Stuff about Contraband

Contra prices are heavily population dependent. Example:

• In a 4 player game, Contraband prices plummetted to 0.2mc / unit around turn 10 and only began marginally increasing in price around turn 30,
• a 14 player game would have prices of around 200mc / Holochip by turn 20; increasing to 618mc by turn 28... allowing the building of SuperNovas every other turn.

Tim wrote:
"If a player sells 10000 units the price over the next few turns would do something like this: 156 140 130 122 123 124 100 90 98 99 101 80 82 80 82 . . . If another player sells the price would take an even sharper dive". - Not sure that's true any more, it followed a change in 1999

"The Feds should not be making 80% of their money in the contraband market, that is just too much."

Amorphs were altered in 2000 to make them generate some Lerchin Spices each turn. This however went too far and it became the dominant income source for most players! In response Tim capped such income at 5000mc / turn per planet; and is altering Amorphs so they still produce Lerchin Spices, but only if well fed. The bad news is, they don't eat the normal food. They eat... colonists!!!

Contraband: What starts them rising? A critical population level? Trading in them?

High populations that like the stuff and nobody selling the stuff. Buying can move the price up. - Tim

Happiness and crime

Question: why keep prisoners if your race lacks labour camps?

Holding prisoners does other things as well. It drives your enemy's colonists nuts. The more prisoners you have the more unhappy your enemies will become. - Tim

Population growth rates

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

A. There are a few factors:

Population grows slightly faster without cities. This is the opposite of what it says in the Help files on Tim's site, which were written in March '99; since then he's changed it in a Host upgrade and overlooked updating the Help files. Therefore, do not build cities on colony worlds until (a) population is >50,000 (or they won't generate any cash... some sources claim 100,000) and (b) you may wish to leave them to breed faster anyway.

I get the impression that Feds approximately double in population every 5 moves outside cities; I haven't completed a comparison with cities but I suspect it's about one quarter this rate!

Miscellaneous Stuff

Ricki Rohr asked:

The Carbon Freeze is used to reduce the pod mass. But why is it switchable ? What are the advantages/disadvantages to freeze the colonists in carbon ? Are they killed by a certain random percentage because they do not wake up anymore ?

The carbon freeze guys can only be released at another planet or base. If you don't carbon freeze your guys you can transfer the guys from a pod to the ship's guest area. - Tim Also, I've heard that Carbon Freezing reduces the cargo mass by 75% - which saves fuel as you drag the pod around.

• (Question:) Exotic tech "Point Defense charges 50% more rapidly". Does this mean you need bigger generators? (Answer:) No, the PD use 1/2 power.
• (Question:) would Lokis allow us to see nearby Cloaked minefields? I know Tachyon scanners may not light up *every* kind of object. Also I half suspect that Lizards and Feds may be immune to tachyon pulses as they invented them? We discussed that a while ago. I've checked my old notes but don't see the answer. (Answer:) Yes the Tachyon scanner causes cloaked minefields to show up. Lizards and Feds are not immune.
• (Question for Tim. Are Feds and Lizards immune to Lokis' Tachyon Pulses?) >> No! >>
• Minor bug report(?): I have been trying to capture some enemy wreckage to refuel my own little fleet guarding my northern border with them. I keep blowing up the wreckage! I have the ships set to Intercept it and Capture it... not sure what's going wrong. >> Be sure TARGET SOFT is off. Tim
• Labor mines and Labor camps can cause problems for you 50% of the time

> Never used Laser Mines for anti fighter tactics before, can anyone tell me how effective they are?

Not very for a fly-through, totally lethal if detonated with a free wing inside. - Ed

An exploding field of laser mines destroys every free floating wing inside its blast radius. Ships and pods are not damaged at all. Other minefields are not affected either.

They are a very effective tool against fighters if you know where they are coming from... - Axel

Some tips by Drew Sullivan during another thread:
For example you can drop an assault pod containing fighters (among other things) on a planet, have the ship that drops the pod be a carrier that has "Replenish Wings" on, and the fighters will wind up as a newly formed wing docked with the fighters. (This lets you make wings to order, picking what mix of 1s/2s/3s you want if you have no Air Attack Base but a bare planet nearby. You load the pod with exactly what you want in the wing, and that is the exact composition even if the original base had more 2s or 3s).

So the pod drops first. And I am pretty sure BDA works on new planets. I seem to recall doing that all this time:

You land 1 col on a planet, beam _up_ all the metal and supplies and food on the planet, and set to BDA. That lets you "instant gather" all the stuff and see it in the new base on the turn you form it.

And Kevin Jones told me that he thought Falcons carrying pods (Falcons still hyp before normal movement rather than on tick 100) enabled him to drop assault pods before Tick 50, thereby assuring they land and are not killed by ships set to Attack Soft on sentry duty there.

Ralph Hoenig wrote Dec 2003:
"Lord Owl" <lord.owl@gmx.de> schrieb
> I wouldn't overreact on this. Yes, with 1000 psp at a 1 mil colos base you can get an additional mil colos each turn. Or, since it's a random number, lets take a 2 mil colo base to be sure. But you still have to build 1000 psp. Seriously, if you have the money free to spend it on 1k psp's, you should already have won the game in most circumstances. Except on the really extreme maps. So yes, it's a workaround, but not one that robs me my sleep.

"As it stands, you can increase your production of mc's 150 times, simply by selling them into slavery and getting someone else's colonists in exchange.  Only after the number has died to 1/150th of original population will you see a downside (discounting happiness effects, which don't effect slaves).  note that even if the benefit is decreased, it is still profitable to take them by force, because your net production is increased, and the race you are taking them from loses production (and happiness)."

..."according to my calculations, (.80^22=1/150) if 20% of the slaves die each turn (as per docs), the mc production won't be less than "enslavment" tax rates for 22 turns.
In other words, if two allies traded each other's colonists for labor camp/mine slaves, they get an exponential decrease in mc production, starting at 150x -tremendous boost to tech levels, and ship production too, if they use mines. Ultimately, they sacrifice total#'s of colonists and the happiness of the remaining non-enslaved colonists (which doesn't affect productivity, because the slaves productivity doesn't rely on happiness).
However, This only stops being an mc benefit after 22 turns, at which point, they've probably already got other prisoners, and have freed their own population to multiply. If not, they deserve the fraction of a population they've got left, but they've still probably got a hell of a Navy.   No wonder people complain of its abuse!"

In an effort to stop this abuse, Host 154 introduced some penalties for not attacking races who held prisoners of yours. (I don't know what they were, but when I tried a prisoner-selling scam with the Lizards around Host 189, my base Happiness and Crime levels went to extremes. Not that I cared - by the rules of that game, I just had to survive until turn 40!- PH)

> Yes, the Prisoners just go away, poof gone. . .  <--- not sure this is still true - PH, 2005

Their are few exploitable tricks which you can use with this feature.

You can give a base with many Colonists away to an ally, who has only a small base. And thereby depriving the attacker the well earned prisoners. Especially nasty against races which do need prisoners.

You can also use this feature to not let the owner get their Colonists back, in case you have a base with prisoners and do not want the attacker to get his Colos back. You just turn off the attack for that race. And before the ground attack next turn happens the prisoners are gone.Even if he cannot otherwise transport the prisoners away. You can just launch the prisoners on your other bases into orbit to not also loose them.

Of course none of that should be working when ally limit is zero (not tested if it does or not - does depend on host order).

> As designed, as coded. . .
>
>
> SUB PrisonerRelease(id AS LONG)
> '// Assumes mebaset is loaded //
> DIM pNum AS LONG
> DIM b AS LONG
> Dim i As Long
>    pNum = mebaseT.pNum
>    '// Make sure we are not at war with the base
>    IF pNum > 0 AND pNum <= 30 THEN
>       FOR b = 0 TO 29
>          IF GetBit(b, Player(pNum).flagAttack) = 0 THEN
>             IF meBaseT.pColonist(b + 1) OR meBaseT.pCrew(b + 1) OR
> meBaseT.pGuard(b + 1) OR meBaseT.pTroop(b + 1) THEN
>                LogOut id, "Released guests from race number :" & STR$(b + 1)
>                meBaseT.pColonist(b + 1) = 0
>                meBaseT.pCrew(b + 1) = 0
>                meBaseT.pGuard(b + 1) = 0
>                meBaseT.pTroop(b + 1) = 0
>             END IF
>          END IF
>       NEXT b
>    END IF
>    '//
> END SUB

> Self destruct is quite useful actually:
> ee can hyp, lay mines and self destruct the same turn - nobody knows where the mines come from this way :)   - [Surely the owner is clearly visiable as Player 5 though? - PH]

Well if the mines are seen or not actually depend on more things.
The number of ships which are in Scan Range of the self destructing H-Ross (I suspect that it is) - second Grav Minefields are not invisible and might therefore be seen even the turn they are layed.
Also Scan Data which is displayed as old one precisly 0 turns old might be received.

Evil tricks with Centaur Raffa hulls

Centaur Raffas are a hyperjumping pop ship. (Do Peeps have one too?) If 5 or so can reach an enemy homeworld and pop, they will destroy the planet by increasing HD stress above 1000. That's why only Stormer pop ships are immune to combat.
The trick is to prevent the Raffas etc being killed before they pop. One way is to HYP in, and transfer crew to the planet below on the same turn. The ships are now captured rather than destroyed by defenders, and the devices still tigger at the end of the turn!
combat now gets triggered, with the newest host, but it is getting triggered after the Raffas did empty themselves. Therefore the empty Raffas are getting captured at the start of a vcr.

Opportunity for a fiendish strategy!  HYP in dozens of Raffas with Glory device set to go off.  Leave them unarmed, with no shields, and only 1 crew member... the enemy captures them in combat immediately (so they aren't destroyed), but the Glory devices still go off! Buwhahaha...

Yes, that should be fixed.  Personally, I think that a captured ship should have ALL devices switched off and all command codes cleared.

Well more things to think about concerning Raffas:
- Flee option (Centaurs), this triggers combat but then it is away around combat tick 500 - of course in that case it should be a Raffa with Crew which had to fullfil other jobs earlier on - and especially if you are sure that the enemy will not be able to destroy the ship. Maybe with attack ground targets activated - in case there is a base below without Base Shield but ith a Pod Launch Pad which you might wan to take out...

- Have them jumped with a few Sharizas with fighter wings set to attack ground targets - and hope to have an enemy base shield and Pod Launch Pad taken out, that way it is even more disastorous for an enemy. Since it might take longer for the enemy to take out the wings before they have done some
damage to the base.

- Have the Crew beamed of the Raffa with another Ship and have the  Crewless Raffa intercepting an enemy fleet - the other ship set to escort and autointercept on with some distance, so that it initiates its transfer after the first few movement phases and so that the transfer also does not fail, if an enemy object which might get autointercepted by it is in the way - you might have a Crewless Raffa without escort popping an enemy fleet, without risking your escort - of course you can use more than one Raffa etc. for it. Of course you do not need autointercept in that case - you might just want to make sure that the escorting ships get destroyed in the shockwave.

- Or have an empty Raffa towed by a ShaiShan. Of course with activated Grav Well (and as always activated GD).

- Or just make sure that the Raffa jumps Crewless because of another ship beaming off the Crew before hyp and after the first few movement phases - that way the Raffa is not limited to planet popping sides.

- You can use the tactic with the empty Raffas on a fleet with a few ships with hull damage - if you know that they cannot move that turn. Of course having set the damaged ships as transfer target.

And the only real protection against the Crewless Raffas are having only Fighter Wings around nothing more no Assault Pods or Ships - of course assuming that there is no Grav Well and Grav Mine protection which might hinder one or another tactic or better forstale one or another. After all it is nearly impossible to have a Raffa sweep mfs by popping - especially if it is not directly in the front line.