New user: many questions and where I went wrong

[Zincat (OP)]

Hello everyone, first post here for a new addict player of this game.    Wall of text and many questions incoming, anyone answering will be greatly appreciated.    I tried searching around but with the new version, and some of my questions being particular, I have to start a new topic.   

So, I started a "learning game", which was doomed for the beginning of course.    I'd like to explain a bit what I did, what went wrong, and ask questions in the meanwhile.    This game is now retired, but I want to ask before starting a new one.   

The situation
Conventional start.    All three spoiler races active.    Losing is fun after all
I reached 2057, 32 years ingame.    26 research labs.    Explored about 2 hops away from sol in every direction (except for a system with 9 jump points, I left that alone for now).   

Earth colony, about 1 billion people
Luna colony, 80 million people, terraformed
Mars colony, 50 millions people, almost terraformed
A colony in an external system bordering Sol, 18 millions people, terraforming and obviously still destination of colonists
A large number of assorted civilian mining colonies on Sol, all set to buy minerals and zap it to earth through their built in mass drivers

The game is dead due to: all the frakkups I did learning how to play, the dreaded error 6: getmaxpotentialsensorrange, and the continuous interrupts.    And here come the first couple of questions.   
The interrupts are every 4-6-12 hours.    For the past 2 years, I could not get a turn longer than one day, even though I always pick 5 days turns.    From the logs, the NPR has a precursor inhabited system close, and it keeps using it for transit.    The precurors interrupt up to 5 times a day because they keep sensing the new contacts.    As far as I can see at least.    Bad luck on my part I guess.   .   .   
And here comes in the second problem.    Theorically I could use auto turns.    BUT.    EVERY turn I use, no matter how small, even 30 seconds one, I get the error 6.    Which interrupts the auto turns until I click ok.    (I read it could be due to too many minerals? I have found aworld with 150 millions duranium.   .   .   )
As such, because of these combined problems the game is dead.    Is there anything that can be done to reduce the likeness of this combo in future games?

Wealth
Unless I had a strange start, I am having problems with wealth.    I researched 2 civilian economy expansion techs, and I'm still just barely earning anything.    I have about 15 civilian mining complexes and I buy from all them, I am loathe to lose the minerals (which are not infinite) for some wealth.    Buying from civilian complexes eats up about 70% of my expenses.    Did I get a game with a very high number of civ mines? Or am I doing something wrong? Should I have built 500 financial centers or something? (and a quick question, can I mine/colonize a place where a civ shipping company is also present? or do I need the bomb the civilians first? )

Dumb civilian ships
So, I have 2 shipping lines, and while my colonies were in Sol, they were doing fine with helping me ship things around.    Fuel is an issue in a conventional start after all.    Then I colonized outside of sol, and they're going crazy transporting infrastructure (the trade goods one, not done by me) and colonists there (it's still under 25 millions people).    That would be good, except they now completely ignore any contract I propose them.    It's a 15 billions km trip for and to, they're always busy doing that.    Need I resign myself to wait until that colony reaches 25 millions people and I can set it as stable?

Exploration
As said, I explored two hops in every direction from Sol.    At first I explored the systems immediately adjacent to Sol, then once I started to move out in those, I went one step further.    I did so following the rationale that it was better not to move outside of my neighbourhood until I needed it / was ready to.    I see no reason to poke a hornet's nest with a big stick while I still have not even begun to seed the potential colonies in the systems I know of.    The question is, is this wrong? Should I be more aggressive with exploration? I am kinda afraid to meet spoiler races, but if my modus operandi is wrong I'd like to know.   

Ships - non military
So.   .   .    is there any reason at all to make geo and gravsurvey ships, non combat troop transports, team transport ships, jump gate builders and such as military ships? From what I can see these types of ship (the majority of the ships I made up to now) can safely be commercial ships.    They may be a bit bigger/slower, but they use less fuel, require no maintenance/overhaul, are not prone to failures, some of them do not even require shore leave.    Due to all these things, they seem clearly superior in all things compared to military ships with the same function.    For these design types only, of course.   .   .   .   

Ships - military
So, here's the harshest thing.    I had no combat experience this game (which means learning game number 2 will also be doomed from the start).    And since it was a learning game, I resolved to actually build military ships once I met someone (though I did research in the meanwhile).    Which is probably suicidal, as I just build a few PDCs with missiles to protect earth and that was it.    But anyway, the question is: when should I start building a military?
You see I'm kinda  a perfectionist, which means I tend to postpone building ships until I have "just another tech which can make it all better".    I actually did plan building some ships at some point, but I kept procrastinating till I had better techs.    But the question does remain.   

Am I supposed to start building some military in the nuclear engines era already? These ships.   .   .    would be really bad as far as speed and range are concerned.    Nuclear pulse engines would probably make for better combat ships, ion engines even better.    When exactly is considered smart to start building ships for a military, considering the fact I start with conventional tech?

I think that's is for now, any answer will be greatly appreciated.    Thanks in advance.   

[Konisforce]

I'll tackle a couple, and others can jump in, no doubt.

Wealth - ya, that's weird.  How many civ complexes are we talking about?  And no, you don't have to worry about them when you put down mines.  My Luna has about 8 civ mining complexes and a few hundred of my own.  They make money, I make resources.  But at 1 billion folks, you should be making some money.

Shipping - In my experience, civilian ships prioritize your contracts above anything else.  Are you sure that A) You have a contract to Demand the appropriate good where you want it to go, B) you have a contract to Supply the good somewhere that has the good, and C) there's jump gates (they won't do jump tenders) in between?

Exploration - So, you're doing it right (sorta) if you don't want to run into folks.  But there are 2 kinds of NPR we should distinguish.  First, there's the "Generate an NPR race at startup" option.  Which means there's an empire out there growing just like you.  The 2nd kind is the "NPR Generation Chance" option you get when you make a new game.  What happens there (to my understanding) is that you jump into a new system.  That system gets created when you jump into it.  If there are planets there that can support life, it then does another role to see if they support intelligent, space-faring, NPR life.  So in another sense, that kind of NPR is generated BY your exploration.  Every jump point you go through has the potential to make a new NPR.  Until you roll that system, though, they don't exist.  Spoilers are another spoilery story.

Non-military - Grav and Geo sensors make the ship military.  That's to avoid the "infinite range no crew morale issues" problem with survey ships.  Otherwise, ya - my freighters, colony ships, tankers, harvesters, terraformers, and troop transports are civ ships.  Magazines and maintenance storage are military, so those ships have gotta be military as well.

Military - Yup, I'm in the same boat.  "I'll just wait for the new sensor before I build that ship.  Of course, that means I'll need a new fire control, so I should research better missiles, then I'll . . . oh, I'm dead".  I'd say just start building things.  Think of them as overgrown system defense ships.  PDCs and weapons platforms are good as well, and can be quick and cheap.  A mobile force is best for flexibility, obviously, but having something around makes your people (and you) feel better.  That said, I usually get 2 levels of engines before I start messing with anything.

Edit: Ah, and another military suggestion for ya, since we seem to be kindred spirits in that sense.  First, a caveat: ship design is really the heart and soul of the game for a lot of people, since it brings together a lot of the elements, so you'll get into that and get your own flair.  But my suggestion at the start would be to try a sort of modular design - I kick off my fleet with a single engine design and three different ships of equal tonnage on top of it: an offensive missile ship, a missile point-defense ship, and a 'command' ship with all the sensors and maybe a jump engine if I'm feeling saucy.  They all end up the same speed (same engine and tonnage after all) and you can wrap them up in fleets of a command ship and however many of each type you want.  Not pretty but effective.

It's the general wisdom that missile ships (both offensive and PD) are easier to design and pack more punch for their size, which is true from both the capability standpoint and the design standpoint.  So if you want, that's a good place to start - a bit less research to get a good result, a bit easier to swap parts out and upgrade (since missiles are their own product).  But you'll start getting into beam ships soon enough, I'm sure.  Full disclosure: I'm at least a dozen games in and still haven't gotten an offensive beam warship that scored a hit.  Not that there was anything wrong with 'em, mind you, just haven't.

[Zincat (OP)]

I'll tackle a couple, and others can jump in, no doubt. 

Wealth - ya, that's weird.    How many civ complexes are we talking about?  And no, you don't have to worry about them when you put down mines.    My Luna has about 8 civ mining complexes and a few hundred of my own.    They make money, I make resources.    But at 1 billion folks, you should be making some money. 

I have 108 civ mines all in all right now, after 32 years.   Thats' about 3050 wealth per month that go to buying their stuff.   I do make (after the 2 techs I researched) about 4110 per month due to taxes, plus some hundreds from shipping taxes, but I also have other expenses.   production, research etc.   As such, I'm perhaps earning a couple of thousands wealth per year. 

Shipping - In my experience, civilian ships prioritize your contracts above anything else.    Are you sure that A) You have a contract to Demand the appropriate good where you want it to go, B) you have a contract to Supply the good somewhere that has the good, and C) there's jump gates (they won't do jump tenders) in between?

I used the contracts massively during all of the game, so I'm sure they are done correctly.   The civ freighters keep going from earth to the exo-sol colony, then back, bringing infrastructure to that colony.   The contracts I made are for a transpostation of terraformin installation from luna to mars.   I assume that the civs reach earth, then find more infrastructure trade goods and bring it to the small colony, not bothering to go to Luna to get the installations. 

Exploration - So, you're doing it right (sorta) if you don't want to run into folks.    But there are 2 kinds of NPR we should distinguish.    First, there's the "Generate an NPR race at startup" option.    Which means there's an empire out there growing just like you.    The 2nd kind is the "NPR Generation Chance" option you get when you make a new game.    What happens there (to my understanding) is that you jump into a new system.    That system gets created when you jump into it.    If there are planets there that can support life, it then does another role to see if they support intelligent, space-faring, NPR life.    So in another sense, that kind of NPR is generated BY your exploration.    Every jump point you go through has the potential to make a new NPR.    Until you roll that system, though, they don't exist.    Spoilers are another spoilery story. 

Yes I know about that.   My reasoning was that, with the spoiler races out there, it would not be very smart to just explore tens of systems, so I tend to do it on a need-to-do-it basis. 

Non-military - Grav and Geo sensors make the ship military.    That's to avoid the "infinite range no crew morale issues" problem with survey ships.    Otherwise, ya - my freighters, colony ships, tankers, harvesters, terraformers, and troop transports are civ ships.    Magazines and maintenance storage are military, so those ships have gotta be military as well. 

Uhm, I have just drafted up some geosurvey ship, with commercial engine and commercial jump engine.   It has 3 geological survey sensors, and it's classified as a commercial ship.   I can even retool a commercial shipyard to build it.   Are you sure about that?

Military - Yup, I'm in the same boat.    "I'll just wait for the new sensor before I build that ship.    Of course, that means I'll need a new fire control, so I should research better missiles, then I'll .   .   .   oh, I'm dead".    I'd say just start building things.    Think of them as overgrown system defense ships.    PDCs and weapons platforms are good as well, and can be quick and cheap.    A mobile force is best for flexibility, obviously, but having something around makes your people (and you) feel better.    That said, I usually get 2 levels of engines before I start messing with anything. 

Yes, i asked because nuclear engines really seemed too weak to do anything

[Erik L]

Non-military - Grav and Geo sensors make the ship military.  That's to avoid the "infinite range no crew morale issues" problem with survey ships.  Otherwise, ya - my freighters, colony ships, tankers, harvesters, terraformers, and troop transports are civ ships.  Magazines and maintenance storage are military, so those ships have gotta be military as well.

Grav are military, Geo are civilian.

[Nightstar]

Wealth is frequently a problem if you try to expand at all. That said, your civilian mining complexes taking that much money is kind of odd. I generally don't buy the minerals unless I'm particularly desperate. Civilian minerals are expensive!

If you can make a design commercial, do it. The one disadvantage is that your build rate will drop. IIRC, by a factor of 2.5. Generally doesn't matter because commercial shipyards are so much cheaper. You can just build more at once. Geo sensors are NOT military, though grav sensors are.

Military: The longer you wait, the better. That is, until an angry enemy comes in and destroys everything you've worked for. Ships go obsolete fast. PDCs don't. Other immobile stuff, more slowly. I wait on building a mobile fleet until I have a major extrasolar colony to defend, or an enemy to conquer. As for design, against enemies that badly outtech you, like your spoilery little problem, beams are basically useless. That's one of the reasons people suggest missiles for a first fleet.

Civs have a priority problem where if they can go through a jump point, they will. Otherwise, they'd never leave the system. This might be causing your problem?

From my memory, turning on invaders and SS at the same time is a really bad idea. Might be what killed your game. It's probably unrecoverable without the dev password, and maybe not then.

Exploration: If you find an annoying race far away from you, it probably won't track you back to your home. Of course, it might not have existed in the first place if you weren't exploring... For that reason, systems closer to home are actually more dangerous to explore. Equal chance of spawning something nasty, more chance that it will hurt you. Stupid artifact of the game design really. Of course, nearby systems are of more use to you. Fun stuff!

[Konisforce]

Uhm, I have just drafted up some geosurvey ship, with commercial engine and commercial jump engine.   It has 3 geological survey sensors, and it's classified as a commercial ship.   I can even retool a commercial shipyard to build it.   Are you sure about that?

Ah, English.  Ya, I read your question as (Grav and geo survey ship), instead of ship(grav and geo) = gravship and geoship.  Yes, you can make geo civilians that bumble around your systems.

Yes, i asked because nuclear engines really seemed too weak to do anything

Well, faster than current chemical rockets!  But ya, depending on your goals - particularly considering some other things you see in Ship Design - they're not the speediest.

[Paul M]

On the contract you can only use ships for this that are not doing something else.  So if they are off making a 15 billion km trip to colonize neuvo terra then they aren't floating around earth waiting for that prime "move 300 mines here to there" contract.  If they accept the contract depends on the availability of ships near where the contract is placed.  So you can say "yes you have to resign yourself."

On the military.  A bird in hand is better than three in the bush.  You can always have and, in principle, always will have better somethings in the pipeline but they don't count for anything if when you need the ship you don't have it because you are waiting for the slightly better sensor system.  So long as what you have sorta works then you can say "I will wait for the best optimal solution" otherwise build what you can and figure out how to make it do the job you want.

As far as engines go, push that forward.  Each step in engine technology buys you a lot of bang for the reaserch investment.

As far as building "civillian ships" for lots of tasks, that is dependent on what you intend to do with the ship.  I use civillian engines on my Oberon Class, while my Vancouver and Scout's use higher efficiency military engines but both ships are classified as military vessels.  But there are no right and wrong answers to questions like this, it is all entirely dependant on what your overall strategy is.   To maintain the civillian classification you are limited to no active defences, no weapons and pretty much pathetic sensor technology, you have to decide at what point a lack of maintenance no longer compensates.

[davidb86]

I have 108 civ mines all in all right now, after 32 years.   Thats' about 3050 wealth per month that go to buying their stuff.   I do make (after the 2 techs I researched) about 4110 per month due to taxes, plus some hundreds from shipping taxes, but I also have other expenses.   production, research etc.   As such, I'm perhaps earning a couple of thousands wealth per year. 

Civilian mine complexes cost the same amount to buy minerals (and generate the same tax revenue if you do not buy) regardless of the quantity or quality of minerals being mined.

I find that the civilians look for large high quality deposits of a single mineral.  Sometimes this is the only mineral on the body, other times it is a body that has multiple minerals.  My method is to establish preemptive colonies on bodies with 9 or more of the 11 minerals, buy from complexes that have approximately 5 or more minerals, and tax complexes that have less (unless I have a desperate need for a particular mineral).  I also check every couple of years to see if my purchases are roughly equal to my tax revenue.  If they get our of balance then I adjust my purchase limit to get balance.

[Zincat (OP)]

Thanks for all the answers I got here, I will find them useful in my new (and alreay doomed) second game

A couple of other questions though, based on the answers I recieved.

I see the reason for the need to make some decisions about which civ complexes to buy from.  Obviously civ complexes with many different minerals are good prospects, but is there any reason to move MY automated mines there instead? (ofc I'm supposing it's not a colonizable planet here, thats a different matter) I mean, sure, I am not forced to buy, but then again in the beginning automated mines are long to build, and use many minerals.  A civ complex, even with just 4 civ mines, is a huge improvement then, because it's as if you immediately gained 40 automated mines + 1 mass driver.

And second, what minerals are generally considered extremely important in the beginning, considering a conventional start? From what i learned, I'd have to say Duranium (duh! That's like half the cost of any building), mercassium, corundium, sorium.  Did I miss anything? I'm rather paranoid about getting a serious shortage. . .

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Duranium, corundium, and neutronium are the usual shortage suspects in early games. Sometimes also gallicite.  However, it's completely dependent on your start, situation, and mineral rolls.

If you are short on wealth because you are buying from civ mines, you arn't short on wealth.  Only buy from civ mines if you can actually afford it.

Error 6 is probably coming from some bugged ship somewhere.  It may be possible to trouble shoot it. Go to the Event Logs screen while in Spacemaster Mode and export the text logs.  These logs can reveal current NPR activity, which you may be able to use in SM mode to find the system with the troubled ships and delete it. 

p.s. what version of the game are you running?

[Zincat (OP)]

Duranium, corundium, and neutronium are the usual shortage suspects in early games.  Sometimes also gallicite.   However, it's completely dependent on your start, situation, and mineral rolls.

If you are short on wealth because you are buying from civ mines, you arn't short on wealth.   Only buy from civ mines if you can actually afford it. 

To the new user, afraid of shortages, not buying minerals is a sin  But well, now I understand better than you can sometimes avoid doing that, for the sub-par civ complexes.  Maybe.

Error 6 is probably coming from some bugged ship somewhere.   It may be possible to trouble shoot it.  Go to the Event Logs screen while in Spacemaster Mode and export the text logs.   These logs can reveal current NPR activity, which you may be able to use in SM mode to find the system with the troubled ships and delete it.  

Well, I decided to restart anyway, but at any rate
20th April 2057 20:38:41,SM Only,System 0,Error in GetMaxPotentialSensorRange
Error 6 was generated by Aurora
Overflow
Please report to hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php/board,11. 0. html

And as for the interrupts every few hours every day
11th April 2057 22:38:41,Precursors,Unknown,A strength-31 thermal contact associated with MC-30 005 has been lost
12th April 2057 02:38:41,Precursors,Unknown,New Transponder Contact!  Contact ID:  002, Class ID: Alien Class #348, Race ID: Unknown Aliens #287
12th April 2057 02:38:41,Precursors,Unknown,New Transponder Contact!  Contact ID: Alien Class #348 004, Class ID: Alien Class #348, Race ID: Unknown Aliens #287
12th April 2057 02:38:41,Precursors,Unknown,New Transponder Contact!  Contact ID: Alien Class #348 003, Class ID: Alien Class #348, Race ID: Unknown Aliens #287
12th April 2057 02:38:41,Precursors,Unknown,Hostile transit detected!

On average about 5 times a day, though even if I pick a smaller time period and that does not happen, the overflow error is still there, so no, I don't think it's related.

p. s.  what version of the game are you running?

Obviously 6. 2. 1

[Arwyn]

Also, as far a military ship designs go, don't be afraid to put a couple of military designs together early on.

In 6.2x, the new engine rules mean that missile ships are pretty good, because early anti-missiles kinda suck. That being said, missiles can and will suck up a bucket of minerals if you build a bunch of them.

Missiles early work, IF you have the economy to support them. Missiles are all about logistics, you have to build enough to have reloads if you fight. If you don't fight, you will wind up with a lot of obsolete missiles. So, missiles really are kind of the route to go if your going to be offensive. If you do start going out to conquer the starts, you WILL have to build colliers to keep your missile boats reloaded. Colliers tend to be big, and can be expensive.

Beam weapon designs are a easier on the economy, don't require the logistics to support, and can be used in an offensive/defensive role. Especially if your going the turtle route and expanding slowly, beam designs on jump points work VERY well as close defenders. Early beams are also cheaper to develop from a RP perspective, though they get expensive quickly as the tech goes up.

[Zincat (OP)]

Thanks once again, I will be sure to try the missile way in my next game.  In fact I think I'm off to start it now

But another quick question.  Is there a way to customize what is an interrupt? I guess not becuase from whatI read around the interrupt events are the same for the player and for the NPR, but it would be nice.

[SteelChicken]

The "dreaded error 6: getmaxpotentialsensorrange" is annoying as hell and from what I can tell it has been around a long time.  I've only seen it once in a 6.2 game with an NPR with high levels of tech.   It bothered me so much I "discovered" the designer password and deleted the offending ships...as if the hand of God just came down and snatched them away.

[Zincat (OP)]

Err something strange is happening to this new game as well.  I wanted to ask here before posting a bug somewhere.  I did a search, but maybe because the search terms are too generic I could not find anything.

As it should be, when I drop a team on a moon or planet to completeyl survey it, the game sets it as a colony.  And that is normal of course but. .  sometimes, when I do so, some random and impossible civilian orders get created at the same time, I do not know why.

For example, I dropped my team of Titan, Titan gets marked as colony, and checking the civilian tab I found a supply order for 60 automated mines.  And all my civilian ships get here and hang around doing nothing. . .

Thoughts?