3.2 Bugs

[jfelten]

I found I can build ships and add slipways/capacity to the same shipyard at the same time.  Is that a bug or should it be allowed?

[jfelten]

The one that is getting worse instead of better I didn't notice for the first year or two.  Then when I noticed something fishy I recorded the habitability at 2.9803.  One year of terraforming later the habitability was up to 2.9853.  Unfortunately I didn't write down the other environmental specifications the first time.  Below is the only data I've recorded so far.  The planet started with zero atmosphere and hot (it is the inner most planet) but due to mineral resources was still worth colonizing even though it was near 3x.  Since there was no atmosphere at all I just started adding oxygen.  Why would going from no atmosphere to 0.0103 O2 cause the habitability to go down?  Is the O2 making the planet hotter?

Any increase in atmospheric density will increase the temperature slightly, although greenhouse gases have a much more noticeable effect. If the col cost is almost 3 then the temperature will be the major issue. Add anti-greenhouse gas to lower the temperature. Once the col cost stops falling at 2.0, the lack of a breathable atmosphere will be the main problem and that is the time to add oxygen.

Steve

This turned out to just be my not fully understanding the terraforming system.  I switched that planet from producing O2 to producing the generic anti greenhouse gases and after 1.6 years the temperature had dropped 1.7C and the attrition rate started going down a fraction.  I would like to suggest however that the 30% O2 being toxic rule not apply until there is a meaningful atmospheric pressure (or perhaps its negative effect be multiplied by the pressure or such).  I know you are not going for perfect climate modeling but still, that tiny fraction of an atmosphere I had going at 100% O2 wasn't going to be breathed by anyone therefor it couldn't have been toxic.  

The new stats which show the temperature dropping 1.7 degrees and the attrition improving a tiny fraction are.:  

9/9/2030
Planetary Suitability (Colony Cost):  2.9342  (A decrease of 0.0511)

O2 73.5% 0.0135atm
Anti-GH 26.72% 0.0049 atm
Total pres:  0.0184

Base Temp C 134.14
Surface Temp C 140.99 (a drop of 1.7C after 1 year 7 months of terraforming (5? terraformers)).

Anti-GH Pressure 0.0049
GH Factor 1

[Brian Neumann]

JFelton and I just found a bug in the missile design screen.  You can't make a missile with any em sensors.  No matter how much space you allocate or your em sensor rating the actual em sensor rating for the missile/buoy stays at 0.

Brian

[jfelten]

I don't recall their population but I think a good bit of it is unemployed.  I did convert all of the conventional; just didn't watch the mineral stockpiles close enough and should have converted more of it to Mines instead of Factories than I did.  They built a small missile armed PDC as early as possible due to fear of the aliens (trying to role play them a tiny bit) which burned up some of their starting mineral stockpiles.  Basically they just started so small it was hard to get things jump started.  There was no way they could produce the 2400 BP or whatever it is for a 3rd research lab early on.  So they built up their industry to where they are producing about 500 BP / yr, but their mines were only producing about 400 Duranium / yr which was the new limiting factor, so they've been building mines.  But that only yields about 4 mines / yr which is slow going.  I would like to build their industry and mining up to about 1,200 / year so they could build a 3rd research lab in "only" 2 years of game time.  If they had started with larger stockpiles or a 3rd or even 4th research lab, it would have dramatically increased their jumpstart speed.  I don't think a pre TN should be able to leap to full TN in just a few years, but it would be nice if they could do so within a reasonable game time frame, say 5-20 years or something like that.  Of course in Starfire you had pre industrial races that had no hope of getting anywhere on their own within the time frame of the game.

It sounds like a large part of the problem here might be their very small starting size.  At a guess they had around 200million population.  If you think about it, that is actually quite small for an industrialized planet to have.  My own games have started out with between 1-3 billion popuplation.  This helps in two ways.  There are a lot more bp available from the conventional industry which while it takes longer to convert gives more flexability.  I learned about half way through the conversion process that I needed more mines than I was building.  The second point being that the number of reasearch labs is 1 per 100million population roughly.  At 1billion population I started with 10 reasearch labs.  That let me reasearch things a whole lot faster, which in turn let me build an early generation survey ship fairly quickly.  This in turn found me another source of minerals before I had run all of mine out (the moon luckily enough) and so the benifits increased.

Brian

I checked last night and they currently have about 600m population which is a lot.  Perhaps they started with 200m and have grown that much as it has been about 20 years of game time.  I don't recall their growth rate.  

To update, after a couple more years of game time they built maybe another 10 mines and are now producing a little more Duranium than their industry consumes.  So now they'll build a few factories to finally increase their industrial base a tad.  The compounding interest effect should kick in but it will be very slow going for a long while yet.  Their 2 research labs also completed about another 1/3 of the research towards their first engine.

They do have a huge treasury built up, IIRC around 90K MCr or whatever the unit of currency is.  They just can't really spend much so it is building up.  Unfortunately there is nothing they can do with plain cash.  I wish they could spend extra money to increase production or such even if it wasn't efficient.

[Erik L]

I found I can build ships and add slipways/capacity to the same shipyard at the same time.  Is that a bug or should it be allowed?

That is working as intended.

[jfelten]

I'm not 100% sure what the armor codes in the ship design display windows are but something doesn't seem right when upgrading armor.  

I copied an existing ship design in order to refit it and one thing I upgraded was the armor via the "new armor" button I think it is called.  That seemed to work as it now shows the new armor type in the design windows, but on the ship display it still shows the armor starting with a 1.  I am assuming that the first number is the armor generation and the 2nd is the number of "hit points" the armor provides?

Before the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-25".  After the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-24".  I believe since I upgraded from starting 1st generation (Duranium armor or whatever it is called) to 3rd generation armor ("ceramic composite"?  Whatever it is) the ship display should show "3-24" instead of "1-24".  Or is that first number the thickness of the armor?  I did not change the thickness and left it at the minimum value of 1 since this ship hopes to never see combat.  Hopes.  

Also, I'm not sure why the 2nd number went down by 1.  Perhaps the new refitted design is a tad smaller.  But shouldn't that number go up due to the improved protection provided by the new armor?

[jfelten]

Something else I don't know if it is a bug or just the way things work.  I keep getting scan reports of my race's civilian ships with some really weird numbers such as speed capabilities of 42 Km/sec.  The number is all over the place but is often ludicrously low.  In any event it should only report the speed scan if it is higher than the best known speed for that class.

[Brian Neumann]

Before the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-25".  After the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-24".  I believe since I upgraded from starting 1st generation (Duranium armor or whatever it is called) to 3rd generation armor ("ceramic composite"?  Whatever it is) the ship display should show "3-24" instead of "1-24".  Or is that first number the thickness of the armor?  I did not change the thickness and left it at the minimum value of 1 since this ship hopes to never see combat.  Hopes.  

Also, I'm not sure why the 2nd number went down by 1.  Perhaps the new refitted design is a tad smaller.  But shouldn't that number go up due to the improved protection provided by the new armor?

What the armor code is showing is how many points of armor you have (the first number) which translates to how many rows of armor a weapon needs to get through.  The second number is how many columns of armor there are on the ship.  This is based on the total size of the ship.  When you upgraded the armor on the ship by two tech levels, you got the same amount of protection (rows) for less tonnage.  If nothing else changed on the ship, then your overall size probably went down somewhat.  That is why you have one less column.  If you had upped the total armor to 2 you would probably not have seen any change on the number of columns of armor.  One of the things which makes big ships survive longer in this game than smaller ships is once the damage starts hitting the armor, a big ship is going to have a lot more surface to spread it out on.  This translates to fewer hits overlapping, and needing more hits to get through the same thickness of armor.

Brian

[jfelten]

Before the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-25".  After the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-24".  I believe since I upgraded from starting 1st generation (Duranium armor or whatever it is called) to 3rd generation armor ("ceramic composite"?  Whatever it is) the ship display should show "3-24" instead of "1-24".  Or is that first number the thickness of the armor?  I did not change the thickness and left it at the minimum value of 1 since this ship hopes to never see combat.  Hopes.  

Also, I'm not sure why the 2nd number went down by 1.  Perhaps the new refitted design is a tad smaller.  But shouldn't that number go up due to the improved protection provided by the new armor?

What the armor code is showing is how many points of armor you have (the first number) which translates to how many rows of armor a weapon needs to get through.  The second number is how many columns of armor there are on the ship.  This is based on the total size of the ship.  When you upgraded the armor on the ship by two tech levels, you got the same amount of protection (rows) for less tonnage.  If nothing else changed on the ship, then your overall size probably went down somewhat.  That is why you have one less column.  If you had upped the total armor to 2 you would probably not have seen any change on the number of columns of armor.  One of the things which makes big ships survive longer in this game than smaller ships is once the damage starts hitting the armor, a big ship is going to have a lot more surface to spread it out on.  This translates to fewer hits overlapping, and needing more hits to get through the same thickness of armor.

Brian

So are you saying even though I upgraded the armor by 2 levels I ended up with essentially the same amount of protection?  The only benefit of better armor is saving a very small amount of tonnage?

[Charlie Beeler]

Before the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-25".  After the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-24".  I believe since I upgraded from starting 1st generation (Duranium armor or whatever it is called) to 3rd generation armor ("ceramic composite"?  Whatever it is) the ship display should show "3-24" instead of "1-24".  Or is that first number the thickness of the armor?  I did not change the thickness and left it at the minimum value of 1 since this ship hopes to never see combat.  Hopes.  

Also, I'm not sure why the 2nd number went down by 1.  Perhaps the new refitted design is a tad smaller.  But shouldn't that number go up due to the improved protection provided by the new armor?

What the armor code is showing is how many points of armor you have (the first number) which translates to how many rows of armor a weapon needs to get through.  The second number is how many columns of armor there are on the ship.  This is based on the total size of the ship.  When you upgraded the armor on the ship by two tech levels, you got the same amount of protection (rows) for less tonnage.  If nothing else changed on the ship, then your overall size probably went down somewhat.  That is why you have one less column.  If you had upped the total armor to 2 you would probably not have seen any change on the number of columns of armor.  One of the things which makes big ships survive longer in this game than smaller ships is once the damage starts hitting the armor, a big ship is going to have a lot more surface to spread it out on.  This translates to fewer hits overlapping, and needing more hits to get through the same thickness of armor.

Brian

So are you saying even though I upgraded the armor by 2 levels I ended up with essentially the same amount of protection?  The only benefit of better armor is saving a very small amount of tonnage?

The type of upgrade your talking about (as an example Duranium Armour to Composite Armour) only upgrades the type as Brian points out.  The new types require less mass for the same requested protection level.  So, to answer your question, the type of upgrade your discribing adds no additional protection.  The mass freed by the lighter armor can potentially be used for more protection or used for addition internal systems or add nothing and have a lighter/faster version of the orginal ship.

[jfelten]

The type of upgrade your talking about (as an example Duranium Armour to Composite Armour) only upgrades the type as Brian points out.  The new types require less mass for the same requested protection level.  So, to answer your question, the type of upgrade your describing adds no additional protection.  The mass freed by the lighter armor can potentially be used for more protection or used for addition internal systems or add nothing and have a lighter/faster version of the original ship.

Thanks, that explains that then.  I was incorrectly assuming the same "thickness" of better armor would provide better protection.

[Charlie Beeler]

The type of upgrade your talking about (as an example Duranium Armour to Composite Armour) only upgrades the type as Brian points out.  The new types require less mass for the same requested protection level.  So, to answer your question, the type of upgrade your describing adds no additional protection.  The mass freed by the lighter armor can potentially be used for more protection or used for addition internal systems or add nothing and have a lighter/faster version of the original ship.

Thanks, that explains that then.  I was incorrectly assuming the same "thickness" of better armor would provide better protection.

Actually it does.  You select the thickness when your designing the ship.  Use the up/down arrows that are too the right of the armor rating to effect this change.

[Erik L]

I'm not 100% sure what the armor codes in the ship design display windows are but something doesn't seem right when upgrading armor.  

I copied an existing ship design in order to refit it and one thing I upgraded was the armor via the "new armor" button I think it is called.  That seemed to work as it now shows the new armor type in the design windows, but on the ship display it still shows the armor starting with a 1.  I am assuming that the first number is the armor generation and the 2nd is the number of "hit points" the armor provides?

Before the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-25".  After the upgrade the armor was showing as "1-24".  I believe since I upgraded from starting 1st generation (Duranium armor or whatever it is called) to 3rd generation armor ("ceramic composite"?  Whatever it is) the ship display should show "3-24" instead of "1-24".  Or is that first number the thickness of the armor?  I did not change the thickness and left it at the minimum value of 1 since this ship hopes to never see combat.  Hopes.  

Also, I'm not sure why the 2nd number went down by 1.  Perhaps the new refitted design is a tad smaller.  But shouldn't that number go up due to the improved protection provided by the new armor?

The number represents rows by boxes. 1-24 would be 1 row of 24 armor boxes on the ship display.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

So are you saying even though I upgraded the armor by 2 levels I ended up with essentially the same amount of protection?  The only benefit of better armor is saving a very small amount of tonnage?

Duranium gives 5 points of strength per ton while Composite gives 8 points. This means that Composite effectively provides sixty percent more protection for the same tonnage of armour. However, tonnage and thickness aren't the same thing. The armour model calculates the surface area of the ship and then works out the required armour strength based on that area divided by 4. The required total armour strength divided by the armour strength per ton provides the tonnage of armour required for armour thickness 1. So if a ship had a surface area of 160, it would need armour strength 40, which is eight tons of Duranium Armour or five tons of Composite Armour. This breakdown is shown in the Primary Information section of the Class Design window.

If you decide to increase the thickness to 2 then the design code calculates how much strength is required to add a new layer of armour on top of the existing thickness 1 armour. In other words, the surface area required for each additional layer of armour is greater than for the previous layer because it needs to cover the larger surface area of a ship that includes those previous layers.

Steve

[sloanjh]

So are you saying even though I upgraded the armor by 2 levels I ended up with essentially the same amount of protection?  The only benefit of better armor is saving a very small amount of tonnage?

The type of upgrade your talking about (as an example Duranium Armour to Composite Armour) only upgrades the type as Brian points out.  The new types require less mass for the same requested protection level.  So, to answer your question, the type of upgrade your discribing adds no additional protection.  The mass freed by the lighter armor can potentially be used for more protection or used for addition internal systems or add nothing and have a lighter/faster version of the orginal ship.

A subtlety: you probably didn't add extra systems to your ship to replace the mass freed up.  This means that the overall mass of the ship was reduced by the amount of mass savings, i.e. the ship was smaller.  This in turn led to a smaller surface area, which led to fewer columns of armor, i.e. the drop from 25 --> 24.  In reality, this represents a ~4% mass savings.  If you assume that the "payload" (non-engine/armor/crew/fuel/...) of the design is only 30-40%, then this represents something like a 10% increase in payload, which is a significant increase.

John