Posted by: SteveAlt
« on: April 27, 2009, 07:48:15 AM »Quote from: "Paul M"
On the topic of geosensors, what I don't like about them considered "civillian" is that a survey fleet will carry them and this puts you in the potential situation of having two maintenance schemes on the ships in your fleet which just complicates the survey sitation more then is necessary. Geological survey expands your empire as well so I'm not sure why there is any reason to rate it as civillian. I am not arguing for both systems (gravsensors and geosensors) to be civillian but for them to be both military. Just to keep the maintenance scheme the same for survey purposes is my main concern.Just because geosensors are rated as civilian does not mean the ship on which they are mounted will always be classed as civilian. It is far more likely, given the size and low mass-power ratio of civilian engines, that your geosurvey ships will be equipped with military engines, which will make them military ships. Particularly if you want to be equip them with a jump drive. A truly civilian geosurvey ship will likely be much larger and slower and will operate within the confines of the jump gate network.
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In my two campaigns the first time I encountered the aliens they had a homeworld that was 50% greater EM output then mine, I then found a colony in another system, spent a year making first contact and then they must have found a closed jumppoint into my home system...and well 19K Ton and 12K Ton ships against my 3K DDs armed with short range weapons wasn't even worth of the name fight. In the second case I encountered the ships during a planetary probe but had not detected a colony in that system so they were possibly precursers, nor was the planet they were near actually capable of supporting life easily if memory serves. In the first campaign they had lvl 28 active grav sensors and in the second the ships had lvl 21 active grav sensors if that helps.The NPRs are already keyed off the player. As I mentioned, it was the pre-TN start that caused the imbalance. Any precursors will be the same tech level regardless of the player's capability.
And yes it would be good if as John suggests the NPRs are keyed off the player. I started campaign 3 and increased my starting research stations to 6 (1 per 100 million pop) and that works much better.
Steve