Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[nuclearslurpee]

I don't think fleet training is completely pointless. Sure, you'll reach 100% eventually, but being able to reach it faster is a good thing when you're doing a lot of buildup and want to get your new ship crews able to fire on command before starting a war with someone. That said I do think it probably depends somewhat on game settings, if you play with 10% speeds for everything then the game will go by so slowly (in game time, in real time of course you're clicking "30 days" on repeat) that the time to reach 100% training is unimportant. Playing at full speeds where the galactic situation can change completely in a couple of years, then that quicker training becomes more valuable as you want to have good crews in shiny new ships right when you need them.

I do think the micro could be reduced though, particularly given that it is not needed for balance and honestly fleet training is probably overcosted for its actual benefits - since we can reach 100% eventually anyways, the cost in micro and MSPs is only paying for the time savings. I would like if training kept the fuel usage and maintenance failure rate but did not advance the deployment or maintenance clocks, instead taking a fleet out of training should have the same modifier as taking a ship out of overhaul prematurely so there is a motivation to keep some ships at the ready and not just chuck everything under a training command at the start of the game.

[brondi00]

I don't think fleet training is completely pointless. Sure, you'll reach 100% eventually, but being able to reach it faster is a good thing when you're doing a lot of buildup and want to get your new ship crews able to fire on command before starting a war with someone. That said I do think it probably depends somewhat on game settings, if you play with 10% speeds for everything then the game will go by so slowly (in game time, in real time of course you're clicking "30 days" on repeat) that the time to reach 100% training is unimportant. Playing at full speeds where the galactic situation can change completely in a couple of years, then that quicker training becomes more valuable as you want to have good crews in shiny new ships right when you need them.

I do think the micro could be reduced though, particularly given that it is not needed for balance and honestly fleet training is probably overcosted for its actual benefits - since we can reach 100% eventually anyways, the cost in micro and MSPs is only paying for the time savings. I would like if training kept the fuel usage and maintenance failure rate but did not advance the deployment or maintenance clocks, instead taking a fleet out of training should have the same modifier as taking a ship out of overhaul prematurely so there is a motivation to keep some ships at the ready and not just chuck everything under a training command at the start of the game.

I concur 100%.  I don't use training precisely because if the micro.  I like the idea of it, but it's too much work.  I mean I love some micro, who doesn't (why are you here if you don't).  But a man's got to draw the line somewhere.

[Droll]

It's not that the idea of fleet training speed is redundant, its that the need to track fleet training separately to crew grade is redundant in my mind. Putting a fleet to train should just make them earn crew grade points faster and order delays should be affected by crew grade and not this incredibly specific fleet training stat.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think fleet training is completely redundant. There is already a thing called crew grade, just have that determine order delays.

The other issue is that it makes any reaction bonuses also completely redundant, such as Flag Bridges and also the Captain provides its full reaction bonus as well, even crew grade effect reaction times. I think that fleet training is a redundant mechanic to be honest, crew grade is enough in my opinion and we should never end up in a situation where all your ship can react perfectly on your commands. We also get the fire-at will mechanic in the next versions as well... I think we can remove or at least rework what fleet training is and mean.

At least give us the option to Cap Fleet training at some fixed number... I would likely put this at 30-50% at max in my games.

[Barkhorn]

Currently, if you run 30-day increments, you can get blown up by total surprise because your foe was able to cross your detection radius in less than the sub pulse.  What I don't understand is how the AI doesn't have the same problem?  If I am running 30-day increments, sometimes that gets interrupted by NPR vs NPR interrupts.

Is there some reason the AI gets special privileges like this?  I mean, if a fight I'm not involved in at all can break me out of autoturns, why can't one I care about?

[brondi00]

The game does interrupt you.  When you first make contact and when the contact changes, like it's speed EM or thermal changes.

But after that if you click 30 days they can do whatever they want.  AFAIK you won't get interrupted again unless there are new contacts or you lose them and reacquire.

So it's totally in your control.  When there is a new contact you can be as cautious or bold as you wish.  The AI doesn't have that luxury as the human player is in control of the time advance.  So it interrupts you for everything it needs.

[Barkhorn]

That is not the case.  You can just get blown up by an enemy you never saw, even if you should have been able to detect them. 

[nuclearslurpee]

Currently, if you run 30-day increments, you can get blown up by total surprise because your foe was able to cross your detection radius in less than the sub pulse.  What I don't understand is how the AI doesn't have the same problem?  If I am running 30-day increments, sometimes that gets interrupted by NPR vs NPR interrupts.

Is there some reason the AI gets special privileges like this?  I mean, if a fight I'm not involved in at all can break me out of autoturns, why can't one I care about?

Basically there are two things that happen here.

First is that an NPR fleet can cross your detection threshold during any sub-increment, which can easily be longer than 5 seconds if you are advancing time by days per main increment. For example a 5-day increment by default has sub-pulses of 7200 seconds (2 hours) during which an NPR fleet can cross your detection threshold and appear very close to your fleet. This is a quirk of the sub-pulse system and nothing can be done about it besides manually setting the sub-pulse length to a very low amount which would drive up your turn times quite a lot.

Second is that NPRs for whatever reason are able to fire on the same increment that they detect a hostile contact, unlike the player who must wait for the next increment after detection. Thi means an NPR might accidentally fly close to your fleet, detect you/get detected, and fire in the same sub-pulse. Boom, R.I.P. one fleet. You see the same thing happen with jump points if the NPR is camping one and you transit a scout or something.

I'm not really sure why the NPR gets to do this, though it may have something to do with how fire control logic is handled for NPRs. At any rate while it is annoying and occasionally a nasty surprise, the NPR can certainly use the help and it is really up to the player to use effective recon to know when a hostile force is inbound and respond accordingly.

[Caesar]

It appears that I'm not capable of setting my diplomatic relationship towards alien empires. I know the block where it's supposed to show up (I saw it on a screenshot), but there are no boxes to tick for me there. I would like to set what I believe to be the precursors to hostile, but I can't. I haven't established communications with them, though I doubt that matters. I think this is a known bug, but I wonder whether there is a workaround for it.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

 - Now here's a question; if I stick an Ordinance Transfer System on a ship with Box Launchers... would it reload them with it? I may test this at some point, but I thought I'd pose it here too, in case someone has already tried or wants to try for themselves. As for the inevitable "But why?" the answer is because I can then have a ship that reloads from colonies, Forward Operating Bases and Colliers on it's own, and thus multiple ships can reload at the same time without an Ordinance Transfer Hub. I'd be trading 500 tons of Mission Tonnage for increased strategic mobility.

[Jorgen_CAB]

- Now here's a question; if I stick an Ordinance Transfer System on a ship with Box Launchers... would it reload them with it? I may test this at some point, but I thought I'd pose it here too, in case someone has already tried or wants to try for themselves. As for the inevitable "But why?" the answer is because I can then have a ship that reloads from colonies, Forward Operating Bases and Colliers on it's own, and thus multiple ships can reload at the same time without an Ordinance Transfer Hub. I'd be trading 500 tons of Mission Tonnage for increased strategic mobility.

I don't see a reason why they should as Ordnance Transfer Systems can't reload box launchers. You probably would be able to transfer missiles to the magazines and the magazine are always treated as a magazine no matter what the launcher fitted to the ship. So it would surely be odd that you have the missiles onboard the ship but you can't load them into the launcher.

In my opinion box launchers should have it's own special type of magazines so this could not happen but we don't.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

I don't see a reason why they should as Ordnance Transfer Systems can't reload box launchers. You probably would be able to transfer missiles to the magazines and the magazine are always treated as a magazine no matter what the launcher fitted to the ship. So it would surely be odd that you have the missiles onboard the ship but you can't load them into the launcher.

In my opinion box launchers should have it's own special type of magazines so this could not happen but we don't.

 - I'm like 99% sure you use Ordinance Transfer Systems to reload Box Launchers now. Hangars too, but Maintenance Facilities don't serve this purpose anymore. They were supplanted by Ordinance Transfer Systems and Ordinance Transfer Hubs... at least I'm pretty sure they were...

 - EDIT: It's only Ordinance Transfer Hubs, and Ordinance Transfer Stations. The Ordinance Transfer Systems don't work...

[db48x]

It appears that I'm not capable of setting my diplomatic relationship towards alien empires. I know the block where it's supposed to show up (I saw it on a screenshot), but there are no boxes to tick for me there. I would like to set what I believe to be the precursors to hostile, but I can't. I haven't established communications with them, though I doubt that matters. I think this is a known bug, but I wonder whether there is a workaround for it.

Show us a screenshot.

The radio buttons for hostile and neutral always show up regardless of the diplomacy rating, but like most items they can probably become invisible if your font is larger than the one Steve has on his computer, or if your text scale is different.

[Caesar]

Show us a screenshot.

The radio buttons for hostile and neutral always show up regardless of the diplomacy rating, but like most items they can probably become invisible if your font is larger than the one Steve has on his computer, or if your text scale is different.

Ah, that might be it, thanks. I'm not quite sure which font size Steve uses, but I've attached a screenshot for comparison! Don't mind the fact that I named the race after myself. I have... Reasons. And it's funnier left unexplained.

[Ektor]

Those are precursors. You can't reason with them.