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Posted by: blue emu
« on: May 07, 2011, 04:30:58 PM »

Quote
Argh! You peeked and spoiled the surprise!!

Yeah, I'm an old Dwarf Fortress player, and the nasty surprise in THAT game was enough to last me a while.

I tried assembling that PDC base, and got a series of error pop-ups. . .  and all of my PDC pre-fab components disappeared!  >:(

I used Space-Master mode to just slap down the PDC that I had been assembling. . .  is this a known bug?
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: May 07, 2011, 04:09:42 PM »

Argh! You peeked and spoiled the suprise!!   :)

Two brigades should be enough. Even if the guardians were on the very top end of the scale, those troops would give you plenty of time to ship in some reinforcements.

Posted by: blue emu
« on: May 07, 2011, 03:19:47 PM »

Thanks.   I'm guarding that alien dig-site colony planet with four Garrison Battalions, plus four Field Battalions (Hvy Assault x 1, Assault Inf x 1, Mobile Inf x 2) and a Brigade HQ.   Should that be enough to repel whatever guardians I might find in the nine Precursor sites on the planet?
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: May 07, 2011, 02:53:11 PM »

Quote from: blue emu on May 07, 2011, 02:13:02 PM
I have just shipped a brigade of Engineers to a colony planet that has the components of a pre-fab PDC, as well as nine Alien (Precursor?) dig sites.  How do I get the Engineers to assemble the PDC or dig up the Precursor sites? Will they do it automatically?

The digging up goes automaticaly.
To assemble the PDC, go to "industry", select "assemble PDC" and order the PDC assembled. The engineers work as if they were factories.

Note: There was a bug, that engineers would not start producing without at least a single construction factory present. I don´t know if this is still the case, as I am still on 5.20.
If it is, the work around would be to SM-in a single factory and SM-out it after the work has been finished.
Posted by: blue emu
« on: May 07, 2011, 02:13:02 PM »

I have just shipped a brigade of Engineers to a colony planet that has the components of a pre-fab PDC, as well as nine Alien (Precursor?) dig sites.  How do I get the Engineers to assemble the PDC or dig up the Precursor sites? Will they do it automatically?
Posted by: ZimRathbone
« on: May 06, 2011, 09:01:31 PM »

Quote from: blue emu on May 06, 2011, 04:19:19 PM
I have a few random not-quite-capable questions:

1) What's the best way to balance the economy? Three years into a Trans-Newtonian game, I'm about to go into debt.  Am I just trying to do too much, too soon? Cut back on Military spending? Unfortunately, I started without tech researchers in two of the important fields, including the one that has the Wealth expansion techs.
You can research techs without having a scientist in that specialisation – its just not quite as efficient – if you use a scientist with 30% in another field then they will still carry out the work, they only get the 30% bonus to research points created (if they were researching in their specialisation  they would get a 120% bonus).  If I have a scientist with a large No of labs, they will quite often be directed towards priority projects outside their specialised area.
You could also try building Finance centres, and I often try cutting back on military & support spending (eg missile production, fuel generation & shipbuilding) unless I’m in (or going to be in) an active war
Posted by: blue emu
« on: May 06, 2011, 04:19:19 PM »

I have a few random not-quite-capable questions:

1) What's the best way to balance the economy? Three years into a Trans-Newtonian game, I'm about to go into debt.  Am I just trying to do too much, too soon? Cut back on Military spending? Unfortunately, I started without tech researchers in two of the important fields, including the one that has the Wealth expansion techs.

2) How do you set up defenses in a system that has no habitable planets? In particular, how do you guard a jump-point that is far from any solid body? Build Orbital Habitats and tow them out there with a Tug? Can PDCs be towed out to a jump point and left there to guard it, or can they only be dropped off at planets?

3) How do you produce and lay anti-warship mines? Will they only attack hostiles, or are friendly and neutral vessels at risk?
Posted by: Shoku
« on: April 30, 2011, 05:07:11 PM »

I've realized why the second group go so beat up though. They were shot at as soon as they jumped into the system. For whatever reason I didn't think about how standard transit would mess the sensors up so badly. It would be nice if things could give more indication of why they are waiting to fire (or do they say that somewhere I just didn't think to look?)
Posted by: jseah
« on: April 30, 2011, 10:57:02 AM »

Quote from: Shoku on April 30, 2011, 03:22:43 AM
But as for combat was I correct about the several minute delays on some of the ships being from not having assigned the missiles and firing controls much earlier? I'm pretty sure they would deal much much more damage firing in sync.
You can force them to fire in sync (mostly) by ticking the Sync Fire checkbox in the automated firing options of the combat settings tab of the F6 screen. 

Untrained ships can still fire early. 
Posted by: Shoku
« on: April 30, 2011, 03:22:43 AM »

Oh I definitely assign them all. In that game I had already run out of asteroids I intended to mine any time soon just making seats for them all.

I didn't manage to run out of any minerals anywhere. With the mining emphasis on the governors Earth managed to start running out of stuff to mine but I still have at least 15k of everything sitting in the stockpiles (and it felt like my mining on other rocks was really just beginning.)


But as for combat was I correct about the several minute delays on some of the ships being from not having assigned the missiles and firing controls much earlier? I'm pretty sure they would deal much much more damage firing in sync.
Posted by: jseah
« on: April 29, 2011, 09:40:06 PM »

Quote from: Narmio on April 29, 2011, 09:00:07 PM
This is what I suspect might be happening. The bonuses you seem to be getting are light years ahead of what I get out of similar timeframes - and I try to make sure all the semi-promising officers are doing something, even if it's just babysitting a rock I intend to mine one day.
That could be another one. 

I use ALL my officers.  Even if I have to post them to rocks which I will never use. 
I only ignore ground forces (who cares about them) and naval (never have enough ships until I start my military production, and then not enough officers). 
Posted by: Narmio
« on: April 29, 2011, 09:00:07 PM »

Quote from: jseah on April 29, 2011, 06:08:35 PM
EDIT: or actually, it might be due to your 5-day interval?  Perhaps skill increase is checked per interval. 
 - I really should try that.  Do a 8 hour construction interval game, compare with 30 day construction interval game.  Run for 3 months and check governor skills. 
This is what I suspect might be happening. The bonuses you seem to be getting are light years ahead of what I get out of similar timeframes - and I try to make sure all the semi-promising officers are doing something, even if it's just babysitting a rock I intend to mine one day.
Posted by: jseah
« on: April 29, 2011, 06:08:35 PM »

I think Sol starts are slower in general since you were probably duranium limited (I am, technically, but due to mining rate, not lack of duranium).  And dumping all my points into construction rate 25 helped alot. 

I should really try a real stars game sometime. 

Although I'm not sure why your governors aren't more skilled.  I mean, I'm at 10 years now of the same game and the guy I posted in the chat section is pretty awesome. 

I haven't had any problems getting good governors.  I just make sure they're all doing something and poof, I get good ones. 

EDIT: or actually, it might be due to your 5-day interval?  Perhaps skill increase is checked per interval. 
 - I really should try that.  Do a 8 hour construction interval game, compare with 30 day construction interval game.  Run for 3 months and check governor skills. 
Posted by: Shoku
« on: April 29, 2011, 03:47:21 PM »

So at 7 years I've got 500 factories, 22 labs, level 3 academy and 600k people on Earth. I don't think starting with twice the population is going to take me from 40 labs to 100+ and probably won't get me to 2k factories either. There's more instant tech points available but still I don't see it happening. I didn't even actually run out of cash before I expanded the economy so there weren't all that many setbacks.

Oh also at the 7 year mark
Sector Governor is 10% welath, 20% factory production, 15% mining, 10% logistics
Earth's governor is Factory production 20%, wealth 10%, mining 15%, xeno 10, logistics 10.

e: so I've lost another fight now. I ran into 3 ships and outnumbered them heavily. It looks like my missiles could have done the job if I wasn't so clueless about combat. They caught me right on the jump point into my own system so I probably didn't have much longer before I'd see them anyway. Being at point blank range they hit me fairly often with some 10 damage energy weapon and launched salvos of 13 AMMs at my ships for 1 damage a piece. The big delays on getting my missiles to fire gave them plenty of time to devastate me. I think only half of my ships even actually fired.

The second group that I just instant teched a few levels further to and wouldn't have realistically have been able to warp into their system fared just as poorly except that they managed to fire about twice as many missiles. This time I didn't actually do any damage though, which is kind of confusing given then significantly beefier warheads. I was trying those two stage ones though so point is obviously not the intention for them.
Posted by: jseah
« on: April 28, 2011, 11:02:42 PM »

I'm partway to ECCM 4 already though, due to anticipating needing ECCM 6.  (wormhole off to one side of my only expansion route)

Also, doesn't ECM 40 mean without ECCM, you lose 40% of your MFC's range?  160 should end up at 96. 
(60 - 0.4 * 60 = 36, which is roughly right, since my MFCs are slightly longer ranged than my missiles and my final range was 38mkm)

Amazingly, shuffling some stuff around on my ship designs means I don't need to retool my yards.  They can build and refit the new design so long as I don't change the engines. 

EDIT: Not that I won't change the engines anyway.  The slightly more souped up engines will make my fleet speed higher than theirs, and with ECCM-40 to offset the range difference I will kick them around the block every time!