Questions

[Paul M (OP)]

I have encountered a few things that I am far from clear on:

1.  Damage Control Technology.  Since my ships seem to have damage control capacity without it; is it worth developing, and what does it actually allow?

2.  Terraforming:
--what effect is there of adding water to the atmosphere?  Especially to a world with 0% hydrosphere.  Does this reduce the colonization cost?
--what is anti-green house gas for?

3.  I built two ship types both 1500 Tonne, 1 engine, life support, bridge, and engineering space.  One design had 2 colony bays and was classed as a freighter, the other had 2 cargo bays and was classed as a non-combattent.  Any idea why this is?

4.  What does the armour value x-y mean in terms of damage absorption capacity.

5.  I see a value for max spare parts usable in a repair but my ships seem to be able to exceed this.  What is the meaning of that value?

6.  Do microwave attacks work against missiles?

7.  What exactly do financial centre's do?  Obviously they are increasing your wealth but how exactly?  Can they be moved from planet to planet?

8.  What are spaceports for and how do you use them?

9  What is civillian cargo facility for?  Can it be built on one world and moved to another?

Thanks.  Likely more will show up with time but these are the ones that I have now.

[Hawkeye]

I have encountered a few things that I am far from clear on:

1.  Damage Control Technology.  Since my ships seem to have damage control capacity without it; is it worth developing, and what does it actually allow?

2.  Terraforming:
--what effect is there of adding water to the atmosphere?  Especially to a world with 0% hydrosphere.  Does this reduce the colonization cost?
--what is anti-green house gas for?

3.  I built two ship types both 1500 Tonne, 1 engine, life support, bridge, and engineering space.  One design had 2 colony bays and was classed as a freighter, the other had 2 cargo bays and was classed as a non-combattent.  Any idea why this is?

4.  What does the armour value x-y mean in terms of damage absorption capacity.

5.  I see a value for max spare parts usable in a repair but my ships seem to be able to exceed this.  What is the meaning of that value?

6.  Do microwave attacks work against missiles?

7.  What exactly do financial centre's do?  Obviously they are increasing your wealth but how exactly?  Can they be moved from planet to planet?

8.  What are spaceports for and how do you use them?

9  What is civillian cargo facility for?  Can it be built on one world and moved to another?

Thanks.  Likely more will show up with time but these are the ones that I have now.

1. I´m not sure myself

2. AFIK, you can´t add water. If there is ice on the planet, it will melt, once the temperatur rises above 0°
   Greenhouse gas raises temperatur, Anti-Greenhouse gas lowers temperature

3. You might need a cargo handling system to qualify for a freighter

4. Armor 3-35 means: 3 rows of armor with a length of 35 each. This means, there are 35 "spots" your ship can be hit and it is protected by 3 layers of armor. A laser dealing 4 points of damage will penetrate all 3 layers and deal the remaining point of damage to the systems of the ships. Missile warheads deal "splash" damage, hitting several "spots" simultaneously. Each weapon uses a different damage template (if you know the old Renegade Legions games from FASA, you know what I mean)
Basicly, lasers deal all damage to a single spot like    

Code: [Select]

 
   X
   X
   X    4 points of laser damage
   X
                                                           
Missiles deal damage something like:  

Code: [Select]

 
  X X X X X
    X X X       9 points of missile damage
      X
                                                       
5. This is not the max usable, but the amount, the biggest and most complex part of your ship will require to be fixed. It is highly recomended to have at least as much spare parts on board (more is allways better)

6. Never tried, so I don´t know

7. They act like additional population. The formula, I don´t know

8. You need at least two spaceport in two different systems. Over time, a spaceport collects trading points, which allow you to establish a trade-route (the economy screen will tell you when enough points will be collected). Once this point is reached, you establish a trade-route, which will generate additional income.

9. It allows for ships classed as frighters to perform a "Freighter Maintenance Check". This fills the spare parts for free AND gives you a free overhaul, i.e. resets the maintenance clock to 0.

[Cassaralla]

3. - You need 5 cargo bays to qualify as a freighter.

[Brian Neumann]

1.)  The damage control value is based on the number of engineering facilities plus any damage control that is on the ship.  As of 4.0 there is a chance of fires when a ship takes damage.  How fast the fire is put out is determined by your damage control rating.  For a larger ship it can be very dangerous to not have the fire put out as the fire will continue to do damage and grow.  

2.)  The anti-greenhouse gas is for lowering the temprature of a planet.  If your race is comfortable at 1-20C and the planet is at 50C then adding anti-greenhouse gases will lower the temprature of the planet to what you need it to be.  I often end up turning on the SM mode changing the atmosphere untill I find what is required and then reseting the atmosphere to what it was originally and turning off SM mode.  This lets me know what settings I need without a lot of guess work going on.

3.)  For a freighter to do much of anything it will need 5 cargo bays.  This is because all of the installations exept for infrastructure that you will want to move require 5 cargo bays in a single ship to load.

4.)The damage that weapons due is not quite that simple.  Lasers do cause more than 1 line of damage wide, but they penetrate better than missiles and torpedos which cause a standard crater.  I don't remember the other weapons damage pattern but they are similiar.

6.) No microwave weapons do not work on missiles

7.) A finance center produces as much wealth as 1million people would produce.

8.) Spaceports are for setting up trade routes between two different planets in different systems.  They are a way to gain extra wealth.  They are also going away in the next version as Steve is replacing them with a more elaborate civilian shipping network.

9.) A civilian cargo facility allows you to have your cargo and colony type ships do a maintence check on the task force order screen.  Each time you do so the time on the clock between overhauls is reset to zero.  This is a mechanic to make it easier to run your shipping without having to take ships and put them into an actual overhaul on occasion.

Brian

[Paul M (OP)]

Thank you all.

The cargo requirements for installations was never stated anywhere hense my confusion on the topic.  Looks like I may have to consider a few redesigns of the freighter fleet and will sell off the older ones to the civies.  I may build my second gen colony ships with internal cargo bays for loading up infrastructure.  I know 50,000 cargo capity = 20 infrastructure or 1 cargo bay = 2 infrastructure.

Still unsure exactly what the effect of the addition of water is though.  Will it change the hydrosphere % of the planet over time?  Is it a greenhouse gas (it is in real life)?  And yes it is one of the options on in the menu.

I'm not sure I see the point in the anti-green house gas though, it seems to me to be better to just remove the greenhouse gases rather than putting the anti-green house gas in there.  At least I am assuming you can remove gas from a planet's atmosphere.

What happens if you take a world which is unsuited to colonization and start adding atmosphere to it?  I have a couple of Terrestial worlds in the homesystem which are currently unsuited to colonization but when I get my terraformers up and running will have that option.

The suggestion of modifying the atmosphere and playing about in SM mode is a good one, I'll have a glance at that and see what I get for results.

[Hawkeye]

With removing greenhouse gases to lower the temperatur you might run into two problems.

1) There might not be any greenhouse gases, but the planet is still too hot

2) You need a minimum atmospheric pressure to make a planet habitable (defined during race creation) so if you remove too much gas, you might go below that threshhold and ruin a planet.
If this happens after initial colonistation (say, you colonize a cost 2 planet, get the atmosphere up to your minimum. It is now a cost 0.5 planet due to heat. You now remove CO2 in order to lower the temperature and continue to ship in colos, because the colonisation cost is going down all the time when BANG! Preassure too low, new cost 2.0, infrastructure needs skyrocket, people die in droves, the population is rampaging through your colony, tearing down buildings, chaos in the streets; you get the picture  )


Terraforming unsuitable planets takes a long (a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG) time and is probably not worth it (there are usually easier terraforming targets in your home- or in neighbouring systems).

[Brian Neumann]

With removing greenhouse gases to lower the temperatur you might run into two problems.

2) You need a minimum atmospheric pressure to make a planet habitable (defined during race creation) so if you remove too much gas, you might go below that threshhold and ruin a planet.
If this happens after initial colonistation (say, you colonize a cost 2 planet, get the atmosphere up to your minimum. It is now a cost 0.5 planet due to heat. You now remove CO2 in order to lower the temperature and continue to ship in colos, because the colonisation cost is going down all the time when BANG! Preassure too low, new cost 2.0, infrastructure needs skyrocket, people die in droves, the population is rampaging through your colony, tearing down buildings, chaos in the streets; you get the picture

Wrong way around.  There is a maximum pressure that a race can handle.  In the system display screen (f9) upper right corner it shows the races tolerance.  To have a zero cost world the temprature needs to be within the range listed, the O2 or Methane level needs to be inside the range listed, and the total pressure needs to be below the max pressure that is listed.  This info is also on the Race detail screen.  There is one other thing to keep in mind with O2 levels.  If the O2 is more than 30% of the total atmosphere then it is considered to be a hostile gas (colony cost 2).  I am not sure if the same is true of methane, but my guess would be that it is.

Brian

[Hawkeye]

Wrong way around.  There is a maximum pressure that a race can handle.  In the system display screen (f9) upper right corner it shows the races tolerance.  To have a zero cost world the temprature needs to be within the range listed, the O2 or Methane level needs to be inside the range listed, and the total pressure needs to be below the max pressure that is listed.  This info is also on the Race detail screen.  There is one other thing to keep in mind with O2 levels.  If the O2 is more than 30% of the total atmosphere then it is considered to be a hostile gas (colony cost 2).  I am not sure if the same is true of methane, but my guess would be that it is.

Brian

Your both, right and wrong

[Father Tim]

6.  Do microwave attacks work against missiles?

Yes, but not in the way you're thinking of.  Microwave weapons destroy specific electronic systems (mainly sensors), so if the missile has on-board sensors and if those sensors are the only ones guiding the missiles then destroying them will leavethe missiles unable to attack.

Ninety-nine-point-a-lot percent of the time the firing ship will still have you lit up, and it won't help.  You may occasionally dodge a fire-and-forget missile beig used in that capacity by an enemy not wishing to use their ship-mounted active sensors (perhaps they're hiding from you?)

[Paul M (OP)]

Ok a question regarding leader abilities:
What do logistics, operations, and ground unit (force?) training do?  The last one seems self explainatory except that I've never seen a crew rating for my ground forces.

On the anti-greenhouse gas.  The point I guess for me is that in most cases the green house gas effect is largely due to the presence of a large quantity of the stuff in the atmosphere, so you need to remove it to replace with O2 and such anyway in all likelyhood.  I just can't see it happening that you can use the anti-green house gas without reducing the temperature multiplier for colonization and at the same time uping the pressure mulitiplier.  Though if your problem is too thin an atmosphere in the first place then I can see what you mean I've just not really run into such a situation.  This may be because my current race need 0.103 atm O2 and likes 0.52 atm total with a max of 1.04 atm so I don't have lots of spielraum.

My first exploration gave me a 4 star system and the outer binary has 3 ?2 colonization sites plus a few others less welcoming one of which has ruins.  Not to mention resourses all over the place...it's the motherload.  Except for the curse long travel times from the jump point to the insystem jump point to the binary (well for nuclear thermal engine freighters anyway).  It's going to take some planning to colonize this place.

[Father Tim]

Okay a question regarding leader abilities:
What do logistics, operations, and ground unit (force?) training do?  The last one seems self explainatory except that I've never seen a crew rating for my ground forces.

Logistics:  reduces load/unload times (and when Steve gets around to programming it, refuel & rearm times) of ships (in the case of captains) or task forces (in the case of staff officers) under the officers command.

Operations:  reduces the time delay between issuing an order and that order being caried out by the ships/task force under the officer's command  (Note: the 'task force training' fleet order does the same thing, is capped at 100%, and stacks).  The ideal is get response time down under 5 seconds, so that upon issuing an order to the fleet, that order is carried out the next 'impulse'.

GFTR:  Chance to grant increase in the Morale of a random ground unit (including the HQ) in the same PDC as an HQ unit commanded by the officer.  Morale is a straight multiplier applied to the Attack & Defense ratings of the unit.

On the anti-greenhouse gas . . .  I just can't see it happening that you can use the anti-green house gas without reducing the temperature multiplier for colonization and at the same time upping the pressure mulitiplier.

Every race is different, thus there are a multitude of tools in the toolbox.  If your homeworld is relatively low-temperature and high pressure (which is quite common for methane breathers) there's a huge call for AGG.

My first exploration gave me a 4 star system and the outer binary has 3 ?2 colonization sites plus a few others less welcoming one of which has ruins.  Not to mention resourses all over the place...it's the motherload.  Except for the curse long travel times from the jump point to the insystem jump point to the binary (well for nuclear thermal engine freighters anyway).  It's going to take some planning to colonize this place.

Some muli-star systems are just uncolonizable due to distance, and you have to live with it.  There are hyperdrive multipliers available that can be researched and built into engines, which will reduce the travel times between components, and if you're lucky super-jovians in orbit of each component will have LaGrange points that allow jumping back and forth.

[Paul M (OP)]

I may have found a place that can use the anti-greenhouse gas, it will be interesting to see how it works out.  The planet has a total of 0.09 atm pressure so I need to bring that up, temperature down, and then add some 02 (it's just barely breathable) and nitrogen filler.

I am still curious if adding water is useful and if it is a greenhouse gas or not in game.

On the motherload system I have some very nice LPs.  There is 4 stars.  Orbiting the central star is a singleton and then furhter out a binary pair.  The ruines and colony worlds are one of the binary pair.  The first singleton has a LP, the system with ruins has 2 LPs and the other binary has a a LP.  So the real travel time is from the entry jump point to the the singleton's LP once there then the whole situation is very quick.  It is just something that will take a bit of planning and preparation to set up.  I'm refitting my colony ships currently (they needed bigger tanks) and will redesign my heavy haulers now that I know they need only 5 cargo bays.  I have to get a mining//construction//fuel production up and running relatively quickly so it can become a "local" economy.  There are resources all over the place so this place will over time be huge...but it will also take time to get set up and going.  My homeworld is currently involved in doing some long term necessary projects (naval academy, shipyards, research bases, finance centres) so it's going to take a while yet.  But on the other hand this is much more fun then an uncomplicated system.

And thank you for the information on the staff skills.  That explain the "waiting for acknowledgement" things I've seen from time to time.

[Paul M (OP)]

What happens when a colony has a leader that is lower rank then the requirments?

Does the level of your academy affect the number of officers in each rank you can have?  Do all the naval academies have to be on the same planet?  Or if I build up to level 4 on the homeworld and then a couple out in the colonial boonies will they all add up?

[Father Tim]

What happens when a colony has a leader that is lower rank then the requirments?

Nothing, you just can't (re)assign a lower-ranked governor than the minimum requirement.  If the colony grows faster than the promotions roll in, she keeps her job - but she can't get it back if you take it away.

Does the level of your academy affect the number of officers in each rank you can have?  Do all the naval academies have to be on the same planet?  Or if I build up to level 4 on the homeworld and then a couple out in the colonial boonies will they all add up?

Yes and no.  If the numbr of officers at rank X is more than three times the number at the next higher rank, one gets promoted*.  So having an overall larger officer corps does allow more high-ranking officers.

All naval acdemies everywhere in your empire add together to produce one big officer corps.  The only difference between six level 1 academies and one level 6 is that the former will produce 6 officers every (year/5) time increments, whereas the latter will produce 1 officer every (year/30) time increments.

*Keeping in mind that no officer will be automatically promoted within one year of a previous promotion.  So if you retire/lose multiple high-ranking officers you might be stuck with a hole for a while until there is an eligible candidate to fill it.

[Paul M (OP)]

The currious thing is that I've just now noticed with my second level of naval academy that my pool has grown and I have one more R4 officer (I am still stuck with R6 as my highest rank though) but that was a big boost along with my R2&R3 increases.  My aggressive retirement policies had the effect of holding my pools relatively constant though the quality of the officers was high and the age interstingly enough was on the low side, plus the health of my senior officers is high.  But my pool of officers was small.

I'm not sure about the rank requirements being correct as one colony took a very high level officer mainly due to being a x16 world and having a ton of infrastructure (99% provided by the civillian firms).  Possibly this needs to be looked at and infrastructure not factored into the equation or with a high discount.

Thanks again for the helpful answers.

I have just run into a precurser colony I think...lost one survey ship...and I'm likely to loose another one as it tries to figure out why the first one is overdue.  My "destroyers" and "destroyer escorts" I  doubt will be able to engage these guys.  I am still trying to sort out what the gibberish on the active sensor report means S-is the strenght?  R-is the resolution?  and then the range is the approximate range?  Anyway it was a search sensor with 100m range which is damned good.  Strenght 15 warheads on the missiles as well.  My DSSV went down in a few hits.