Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[ArcWolf]

Is it normal to get an autopsy research item for Precursors? I've gotten ones for other races when I've blown up their ships and then rescued survivors, but I've never actually seen any Precursor lifepods, much less picked one up. I have a screenshot if it turns out to be a previously unreported bug, but didn't want to post it here because there's no way to spoiler tag an attachment.

No, no escape pods from Precursors

i also have never gotten an autopsy research for them. Report it as a bug with spoilers, if it's not someone will tell you.

[nuclearslurpee]

I have gotten this research before. I don't know that it is a bug, the autopsy techs seem to be generated from combat rather than only lifepods under-the-hood.

For this specific case it can make sense to generate the autopsy tech since you would presumably be able to autopsy their ground units or the remains of the ship crew after a boarding action, even if you don't capture any lifepods. Practically, all the autopsy techs give you is the biological stats on the alien race (i.e. the factors for colonization cost, gravity, temperature, pressure tolerances and so on) so it's not exactly problematic for the game.

[smoelf]

I recently realized that my orbital habitats get assigned officers with the logistics skill. Does this actually have any effect? I can't seem to find any indication that logistics affects anything other that cargo handling speed?

[nuclearslurpee]

No effect unless your OrbHabs also have some kind of cargo modules. Fortunately in v2.0 we can omit these classes from auto-assignment to avoid wasting commanders.

[LuuBluum]

What are the drawbacks of using fighters as troop dropships? Is that even remotely practical? Would they need troop drop transports or just troop transports, given that fighters can freely do cargo stuff without shuttles?

[nuclearslurpee]

What are the drawbacks of using fighters as troop dropships? Is that even remotely practical? Would they need troop drop transports or just troop transports, given that fighters can freely do cargo stuff without shuttles?

You usually need to land multiple millions of tons of ground troops to invade a planet, and fighters can carry like 250 tons each. Even if building and micro-managing that many fighters isn't a challenge, finding enough commanders to lead tens of thousand of 250-ton drop platoons will be.

Even the typical CMC is going to be defended by ~3,500 tons of dug-in troops, so you'd need a few dozen fighters to invade even a small asteroid mining base. I think maneuvering a single 50,000-ton drop transport into place is probably easier.

[LuuBluum]

What are the drawbacks of using fighters as troop dropships? Is that even remotely practical? Would they need troop drop transports or just troop transports, given that fighters can freely do cargo stuff without shuttles?

You usually need to land multiple millions of tons of ground troops to invade a planet, and fighters can carry like 250 tons each. Even if building and micro-managing that many fighters isn't a challenge, finding enough commanders to lead tens of thousand of 250-ton drop platoons will be.

Even the typical CMC is going to be defended by ~3,500 tons of dug-in troops, so you'd need a few dozen fighters to invade even a small asteroid mining base. I think maneuvering a single 50,000-ton drop transport into place is probably easier.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Even I'm not crazy enough to try and represent an OOB that detailed; even making captain the lowest rank is pushing things. Though at least the changes for 2.0 should alleviate that a bit.

[LuuBluum]

Apologies for the double-post, but new question. One of the things I noticed in the dev listings for STOs is that they have the option to select other STOs to target. Now, I expect this was intended to handle cases where you, say, establish a colony on a moon above a hostile planet and ship over a bunch of STOs to rain hell on your enemies, but what about a shared planet? Can STOs shoot other STOs if they share a planetary body?

[Migi]

Apologies for the double-post, but new question. One of the things I noticed in the dev listings for STOs is that they have the option to select other STOs to target. Now, I expect this was intended to handle cases where you, say, establish a colony on a moon above a hostile planet and ship over a bunch of STOs to rain hell on your enemies, but what about a shared planet? Can STOs shoot other STOs if they share a planetary body?

AFIK STO's can't target units on their own body which is WAI.
Large weapons shooting at targets in direct fire mode is basically covered by heavy anti-air and anti-vehicle.
STO's are designed to shoot things in orbit, so for headcannon purposes they aren't designed with the necessary targeting and declination/inclination to fire on ground targets.

[LuuBluum]

Apologies for the double-post, but new question. One of the things I noticed in the dev listings for STOs is that they have the option to select other STOs to target. Now, I expect this was intended to handle cases where you, say, establish a colony on a moon above a hostile planet and ship over a bunch of STOs to rain hell on your enemies, but what about a shared planet? Can STOs shoot other STOs if they share a planetary body?

AFIK STO's can't target units on their own body which is WAI.
Large weapons shooting at targets in direct fire mode is basically covered by heavy anti-air and anti-vehicle.
STO's are designed to shoot things in orbit, so for headcannon purposes they aren't designed with the necessary targeting and declination/inclination to fire on ground targets.

Yep, makes sense. Just wanted to be sure for the sake of considering my own campaign for 2.0. Would definitely make planetary invasions weird if you could just... ship your own counter-STOs directly to the surface.

Or the premise of a beam weapon that's supposed to shoot into space somehow then shooting back down to the surface.

[nuclearslurpee]

STO's are designed to shoot things in orbit, so for headcannon purposes they aren't designed with the necessary targeting and declination/inclination to fire on ground targets.

More to the point, the STOs in Russia cannot shoot through the Earth to blow up the STOs in the United States.

Actually mesons could do this in VB6 but with the mechanics changes I'm sure this wouldn't be allowed even if we asked... or if anyone actually used mesons for anything...

[LuuBluum]

Is there any mechanical difference for setting a race as a neutral race when creating a new race on a system body (particularly if it's player-controlled), or does it just set every installation except shipyards to 0?

I read that apparently it matters whether or not the race is also an NPR, but it seems to be impossible to actually set a neutral race to be an NPR.

[Droll]

STO's are designed to shoot things in orbit, so for headcannon purposes they aren't designed with the necessary targeting and declination/inclination to fire on ground targets.

More to the point, the STOs in Russia cannot shoot through the Earth to blow up the STOs in the United States.

Next your going to tell me that I can't just shoot a whole through mars...

[nuclearslurpee]

Is there any mechanical difference for setting a race as a neutral race when creating a new race on a system body (particularly if it's player-controlled), or does it just set every installation except shipyards to 0?

I read that apparently it matters whether or not the race is also an NPR, but it seems to be impossible to actually set a neutral race to be an NPR.

As far as I have ever been able to tell, there is no mechanical effect. It simply generates a player race which will never have anything to do and can be completely ignored for the duration of the campaign. Supposedly they are able to act as a source of colonists but I have never observed this in action.

[Garfunkel]

Neutral cannot be NPR.

Neutral is for multi-faction Earth starts, where you might want to simulate the non-imperialistic, non-space faring powers. The neutral power can be named as "Rest of humanity" or whatever you want. It will never do anything except breed.

What's the use then? Immigration. Your civilian shipping lines will not carry colonists from the Neutral power but your government-owned colony ships can do so. This is to simulate the sort of immigration flux that the United States (to give the most prominent example) benefited from throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It can also be a tool for RP, as you can get exact numbers for your story about immigrants coming from outside your actual nation/faction/power.

Just make sure that they are the same human race as your other faction. The most common mistake in multi-faction Earth starts is to have each faction be its own race which means that their colonies cannot be ever merged as Aurora always keeps races/species in their own colonies on a body.