Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[themousemaster]

Which (if any) tech improves the rate Ship-based Sorium harvesters make fuel?

[YABG]

I believe they're impacted by the same tech that improves planet-based refinery efficiency

[nuclearslurpee]

I believe they're impacted by the same tech that improves planet-based refinery efficiency

Yes. Same also applies for orbital mining and terraforming modules, they share the efficiency increase from tech with ground-based installations.

[themousemaster]

Game Bug, or display bug?

I have a colony which I SM'ed in a Dormant construct.

I've had a 5000ton Xeno team on the planet for 50 years which didn't "un-dormant" it, so I upped it to a 15000ton Xeno team for another 50 years, and it's still laying fallow.

However, when I start a research on that planet, the bonus from my 50% researcher says "3.9x", which means it's active.

is the bonus display bugged, or the report of it being "dormant" bugged?

[El Pip]

Is it right that NPR planets don't surrender?

I'm facing a choice of nuking an NPR homeworld from orbit (which I don't like for RP reasons) or spending many, many years building a much, much larger army to have a chance of invading. Is there a 3rd way I'm missing or are those the only options?

[Andrew]

Those are I believe the only options, compound this with that in 1.13 a major invasion will probably do enough collateral damage to reduce planatery temperature below survivable levels. Sometimes NPR Homeworlds have no troops you could just watch this one and see if its army vanishes.
Also be careful about destroying the STO's from orbit that can easily produce enough dust to kill off the population even if you don't use missiles

[Andrew]

Am I correct in thinking that if you find Advanced Railguns/Lasers in ruins there is no way to actually develop and build such weapons without database hacking? Or am I missing something obvious

[TMaekler]

Yes. Looking at the changelog, there's a lot of differences and definitely a new database scheme involved. With major features like the new spoilers I wouldn't try to migrate a 1.13 DB onto 1.14.

I did for 1.12 to 1.13 - worked fine. Had to be careful with the change in research. So far no issues with the edited DB. So you can do, but at your own risk. We'll see how good that works for the change to 1.14... .

[AlStar]

Am I correct in thinking that if you find Advanced Railguns/Lasers in ruins there is no way to actually develop and build such weapons without database hacking? Or am I missing something obvious

In the Class Design window, if you go to the 'Miscellaneous' tab, there's a checkbox that says 'use alien tech'.

Checking that box should allow you to select the recovered components in your ship design. Note that to actually build the ships, you'll need to move them from the dig site to your shipyard planet.

You might need to refresh the Class Design window for them to show up - I had them pop up after I checked and unchecked the "Prototypes" checkbox.

[Andrew]

Ah I meant the technology to build and research my own advanced railgun and advanced lasers (not just 20cm raillguns instead of my 15cm railguns but Advanced 12cm railguns ) the technology line to develop them is there but  I can find no way to develop an Advanced 12cm Railgun and fit it to ships.
I can quite easily build ships fitted with captured or dug up weapons

[Droll]

Basically in the DB the weapon type of advanced variants are actually different than that of their base version. For the railgun case the standard is type ID 76 (or 75?) whereas advanced railguns have a type ID of 150. So if you change the advanced railgun type IDs to be the same as the normal railgun ones they'll show up as options alongside the standard variants.

You can do similar DB edits to the other advanced variants too. For example, in my save I found advanced particle beams which I design ships with.

EDIT: I actually forgot an important detail relevant to the case of railguns. When you change the tech ID from 150 to 76 to make the advanced variant useable, the game expects a standard railgun so by default it will have 4 shots instead of the intended 5. You need to go into the DB again this time under the designed components and manually change the shot count of the weapon from 4 to 5. Of course you might also have to consider what a reduced-size advanced railgun would look like vs a standard counterpart.

[AlStar]

If you disassemble enough of them, theoretically you should be able to unlock the tech.
No idea if it works, or if it does work, what (if any) base level of technology you'd need for the disassemble RP to go to the right tech.

[Andrew]

Obviously I am not clear.
I have in the Research screen fuly developed advanced 12cm Lasers or railguns (in different games) I have then moved on and developed the technology of the 15cm versions.
There is no way I can find using the Create project window to develop a 12cm Advanced laser for production, I can research normal laser projects and then add them to designs no problem, there are as far as I can tell any ways to design a project for an Advanced laser weapon which can then be developed even though I have the avility to research the underlying technology.
Without developing such a project combining Advanced 12cm Focal laser, UV laser and capacitor 4 for instance the research serves no purpose. I am investigating if this is like genetic research a left over from the earlier VB versions were you could develop and build such technology

And then I saw Drolls reply so ignore this. Thats what I thought the situation was , and my day job is databases which means I can't be bothered doing it for fun. Thanks for the answer

[nuclearslurpee]

Is it right that NPR planets don't surrender?

I'm facing a choice of nuking an NPR homeworld from orbit (which I don't like for RP reasons) or spending many, many years building a much, much larger army to have a chance of invading. Is there a 3rd way I'm missing or are those the only options?

Unless you use SM to do something else, that's pretty much it. It's not communicated by the game (as usual), but really if you plan to be conquering planets you have to invest a lot into ground forces from the beginning of the game, because it will take easily 10-20 years to build up the army sizes you need to invade planets.

Fingers crossed for Steve to someday implement some kind of peace treaty mechanic into the game.

[El Pip]

Unless you use SM to do something else, that's pretty much it. It's not communicated by the game (as usual), but really if you plan to be conquering planets you have to invest a lot into ground forces from the beginning of the game, because it will take easily 10-20 years to build up the army sizes you need to invade planets.

I read your most impressive thread on the subject, which was what convinced me I had absolutely no chance of invading.

Fingers crossed for Steve to someday implement some kind of peace treaty mechanic into the game.

That does seem a very obvious gap. But presumably it is coming, why put diplomacy ships in if you aren't going to add some more diplomatic options?