Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Kurt]

A quick question.  I set up my ground military without really paying attention to my officers, and just set it to auto-assign.  When I went back and checked it I realized that that was a mistake, as the base level unit was set to too high a rank and the rank structure was all screwed up.  So I went in to the ground forces screen, formation template tab, and manually reset the ranks for the various units to the rank that I needed it to be to make the rank structure work.  I assumed that officer auto-assign would take care of the shake up over time so went back to focusing on other things.  However, there was no real change.  I then decided to manually assign officers of the appropriate rank to the correct ground commands, but Aurora won't let me.  The base level battalion unit can be assigned to the lowest ranking officer, but the next level HQ is requiring a rank two levels higher than what I've set in the Formation Templates screen to be assigned. 

Example:
Battalion, required rank is major, actual required rank is major
Brigade, required rank is lieutenant colonel, actual required rank is lieutenant colonel
Division, required rank is colonel, actual required rank is major general
Corps, required rank is brigadier general, actual required rank is lieutenant general

I've saved and closed, advanced time, waited for it to work itself out, to no avail.  I assume that I'm doing something wrong, rather than this being a bug. 

[nuclearslurpee]

A quick question.  I set up my ground military without really paying attention to my officers, and just set it to auto-assign.  When I went back and checked it I realized that that was a mistake, as the base level unit was set to too high a rank and the rank structure was all screwed up.  So I went in to the ground forces screen, formation template tab, and manually reset the ranks for the various units to the rank that I needed it to be to make the rank structure work.  I assumed that officer auto-assign would take care of the shake up over time so went back to focusing on other things.  However, there was no real change.  I then decided to manually assign officers of the appropriate rank to the correct ground commands, but Aurora won't let me.  The base level battalion unit can be assigned to the lowest ranking officer, but the next level HQ is requiring a rank two levels higher than what I've set in the Formation Templates screen to be assigned. 

Example:
Battalion, required rank is major, actual required rank is major
Brigade, required rank is lieutenant colonel, actual required rank is lieutenant colonel
Division, required rank is colonel, actual required rank is major general
Corps, required rank is brigadier general, actual required rank is lieutenant general

I've saved and closed, advanced time, waited for it to work itself out, to no avail.  I assume that I'm doing something wrong, rather than this being a bug.

For already existing ground formations there is a button to change the required rank for the selected formation on the Order of Battle tab. Bottom-right I think.

Don't feel bad as you're not the first person to miss this button. I suspect it works this way because once built, a formation is not tied to its build template (which would otherwise specify the rank) aside from the replacements mechanic, since formations can lose units or have them added to make a custom OOB. Ground unit are quite different from ships in this way.

[Steve Walmsley]

A quick mechanics question I realized I don't know the answer to like I thought I did:

Planetary terrain modifies the maximum fortification of ground units, according to Steve's dev posts. Suppose I have 12,000 tons of INF or STA ground units which have reached their maximum fortification level (let's assume the CON units did this and then went somewhere else). On a "normal" terrain with no multipliers this would mean 6x fortification, and a 2,000-ton signature to ship active sensors.

Now suppose the terrain gives a 2x fortification modifier, so the maximum fortification of the same units is now 12x. Does the terrain fortification modifier affect the active signature of the ground units, i.e., will I observe a 2,000-ton signature or a 1,000-ton signature?

I used to assume the former but re-reading the mechanics posts make me think it could be the latter, which is important to know before it becomes important...

I had to check

The sensor signature is affected by the fortification modifier of the dominant terrain, so 1000 tons in your example above.

[ranger044]

Ark module vs Infrastructure?

When is one more valuable/desirable than the other? When is it better to use the Ark over just shipping Infrastructure over? I've never played around with Ark modules, but I'm planning on starting a new campaign soon. Been way too long. This is something I've been curious about since they were released.

[AlStar]

Ark module vs Infrastructure?

When is one more valuable/desirable than the other? When is it better to use the Ark over just shipping Infrastructure over? I've never played around with Ark modules, but I'm planning on starting a new campaign soon. Been way too long. This is something I've been curious about since they were released.

Basically any time you're dealing with Venus-type worlds.

I'm sure someone's actually done the math and can give the exact CC where one overtakes the other, but I don't know it.

[nuclearslurpee]

Ark module vs Infrastructure?

When is one more valuable/desirable than the other? When is it better to use the Ark over just shipping Infrastructure over? I've never played around with Ark modules, but I'm planning on starting a new campaign soon. Been way too long. This is something I've been curious about since they were released.

Basically any time you're dealing with Venus-type worlds.

I'm sure someone's actually done the math and can give the exact CC where one overtakes the other, but I don't know it.

There's no absolute, exact CC where Ark Modules become better. Cost-wise, Ark Modules cost a bit more million pops than the infrastructure for a CC=5.0 world, so for a world with a CC greater than 5 you definitely want to use Ark Modules if you can. However, for somewhat lower CCs even if Ark Modules cost more than the infrastructure for the same population, Ark Modules may be preferable since they require no population dedicated to agriculture, so you get a larger manufacturing fraction for the same total population with Ark Modules. This is why the crossover point is not exact, in one situation you might prefer to save the build costs but in other cases while in another case you would rather maximize population efficiency. I would guess that the approximate crossover point is around CC 4.0 or so, or basically the maximum CC of Mercury. If you are really starved for population, though, it may be the right choice to use Ark Modules even for worlds with CC 2.0 or better, just to avoid the agriculture fraction.

One other consideration is terraforming. Infrastructure-based populations can remain on a planet after terraforming, and that infrastructure will become more efficient during the terraforming process allowing you to ship in additional colonists while terraforming is ongoing. This means that once you've terraformed a planet, you already have a large population in place and you can move the infrastructure to the next colony site. Ark Module populations remain at a fixed size per module, so you can't grow the population on a planet in anticipation of reaching zero CC (although once you do, you can unload the Ark Modules onto the planet surface and send them back to pick up new pops from the home world, so you won't be starting from zero). I would suspect that this means infrastructure is better when you use ground-based terraforming installations (which are cheaper at 300 BP each). Of course if you use the more expensive orbital terraformers (500 BP per module) then this is a moot point.

One last note: given that the "effective" crossover point is probably around CC 4.0, and LG infrastructure costs twice as much as regular infrastructure, once you have Ark Modules there is very little reason to use LG infrastructure except in rare cases where there is a low-gravity world with a CC less than 2 (or if you're terraforming low-grav worlds; remember that there is always a minimum CC of 1.0 for low-grav bodies, though).

[ChubbyPitbull]

Follow-up question about Maintenance Vessels and Supply Ships, again with the caveat that I've modified the database to add more space-efficient maintenance storages.

I'm using the Gryphon-class Maintenance Vessels to create mobile maintenance/resupply points either in deep-space or at colonies in advance of having dedicated on-planet maintenance facilities. In this case, I have a Deep Space Population set up in a backwater system near an NPR's capital. In my last post I figured out that my intelligence ships need to overhaul with the fleet containing the Gryphon's, versus the DSP itself.

However, it now appears that when they do so, the Intelligence Ships are drawing MSP from their own MSP stores to perform the overhauls despite the Maintenance Vessels having 150k MSP available. Furthermore, I cannot get the Intelligence Ships to actually resupply from the Maintenance Vessels. I tried with the Intelligence ship as a seperate fleet using the "Resupply from Stationary Supply Ship" order on the fleet containing the Maintenance Vessels, and I also tried having the Intelligence Ship join the Maintenance Vessel fleet, and use the "Resupply from own Supply Ships" order on the DSP. In both cases the order completes with the normal "Orders completed" event, however, no ship in the fleet has had their MSP value changed. The MV's remain at 100% MSP.

How do I resupply from the supply ship? Is there a component I'm missing or do the supply ships having Maintenance Facility components somehow block resupplys? The MV is flagged as a supply ship in the design window:

[nuclearslurpee]

How do I resupply from the supply ship? Is there a component I'm missing or do the supply ships having Maintenance Facility components somehow block resupplys? The MV is flagged as a supply ship in the design window:

Supply ships require a cargo shuttle bay to resupply other ships. While it is weird that the maintenance modules are behaving in this way, adding cargo shuttle bays should at least address your resupply problems.

[ChubbyPitbull]

Supply ships require a cargo shuttle bay to resupply other ships. While it is weird that the maintenance modules are behaving in this way, adding cargo shuttle bays should at least address your resupply problems.

Thanks! Will make that change. Going to make a post in the suggestions thread as well to add a Warning to the Class Design window if a class is flagged as a Supply Ship, but does not have any Cargo Shuttles.

Does the cargo shuttle rating impact the rate at which MSP can be resupplied?

[Garfunkel]

Yes it does, if I remember correctly.

[brondi00]

It does, IIRC, the formula is (10)*(# of cargo shuttle bays)*(Racial Tech)

So if you have 10 bays its 100 times the tech in supplies per hour.  Top tech is 5, so at top tech 10 bays gets you 500 supplies per hour. 

If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me.  This is not shown anywhere in game that I can recall but there is a post about it somewhere and I recorded the formula in a spreadsheet I still have (source for this post).

[Caesar]

Hi everyone! Quick question; is there a way to adjust which events pause the ticks of time? I think hiding them does, but sometimes I don't want to hide them.

[Garfunkel]

No.

[Caesar]

No.

Alas.

[Akhillis]

Do ground force commanders provide any bonus to subordinate units in the hierarchy, or is it still just the one they're assigned to?