Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Zincat]

Unless you have the weird situation where tugging speed is actually important (say, you have military stations that you want to be tugged around fast in order to defend against incursions) you almost always want fuel efficiency for tugs.

So, build large tugs with the largest, lowest fuel consumption engines you can. You fuel reserves will really thank you for that. Speed is generally not very important because you tend to move tugged stations very rarely.

[Kylemmie]

This may be a no-brainer for most, but I needed to see someone else mention it before I slapped my forehead Duh....

When designing the Tug, check your 'loaded' speed and range by temporarily adding the equivalent weight in Maintenance (or whatever) Modules that you plan on sizing your bases too.

[db48x]

Tugs...how do you determine how heavy or how much engine power a tug must have in order to haul a ship or station?

Thanks.

It's pretty simple. The game treats the tug and the ship under tow as a single ship. The mass is the sum of the two, and only the tug is using its engines. While designing a tug, you can give the tug enough extra mass (using hangars or cargo bays, for example) to represent the thing you're going to tug. Then the displayed speed and range will be correct for the towing condition, and all you need to do is remove the extra mass before refitting your shipyard.

[vorpal+5]

What passive EM detects beside colonies and active scanner? It seems thermal is the more versatile option of the two, if you have to choose putting only one on a ship ... As any ship on the move will generate a thermal signature; whereas only ships with AS will generate an EM one ?

[db48x]

What passive EM detects beside colonies and active scanner? It seems thermal is the more versatile option of the two, if you have to choose putting only one on a ship ... As any ship on the move will generate a thermal signature; whereas only ships with AS will generate an EM one ?

Shields.

[Droll]

Every ship (even ones without engines) will generate some form of thermal signature, no matter how small. So having thermal detection prevents ghosts from attacking you.

However, when a ship has an EM signature it is usually very large compared to their thermal signature - a ship with an active sensor pinging away or with active shields could easily generate up to and above 20k of EM emissions.
This means that detecting things at long range is much easier using EM passives as opposed to thermal, especially since there is no way to mask/reduce EM signatures that I know of.

[Borealis4x]

Its a bit unclear to me how spawning NPR's work. How far is a lightyear, for example? I want my NPR's to spawn way the Hell away from me to give me time to buildup. Preferably they won't spawn at all until I make them sometime later down the road in the game, and even then they'd be very far away from me.

Is there a way to do this?

[Froggiest1982]

Its a bit unclear to me how spawning NPR's work. How far is a lightyear, for example? I want my NPR's to spawn way the Hell away from me to give me time to buildup. Preferably they won't spawn at all until I make them sometime later down the road in the game, and even then they'd be very far away from me.

Is there a way to do this?

Set the NPR generation at Start to 0

Set the NPR chance Generation for Human Player to 0

Once you are ready change the NPR chance Generation for Human Player to any value. You could use 100% if you really want to meet an NPR eventually.

The light-years depend on random or real stars but I can tell you that 50 LY are roughly 14 to 16 jumps from Sol. But that is relevant only if you set some NPR at the start.

[Droll]

Its a bit unclear to me how spawning NPR's work. How far is a lightyear, for example? I want my NPR's to spawn way the Hell away from me to give me time to buildup. Preferably they won't spawn at all until I make them sometime later down the road in the game, and even then they'd be very far away from me.

Is there a way to do this?

Set the NPR generation at Start to 0

Set the NPR chance Generation for Human Player to 0

Once you are ready change the NPR chance Generation for Human Player to any value. You could use 100% if you really want to meet an NPR eventually.

The light-years depend on random or real stars but I can tell you that 50 LY are roughly 4 to 6 jumps from Sol. But that is relevant only if you set some NPR at the start.

Note that for when you do actually meet an NPR you might want to set the chance for NPRs to generate NPRs to 0. This will ensure you have more control over what spawns and doesnt.
(In case you didn't know the NPR generation chances can be changed at any point during the game).

[vorpal+5]

I can now design the same Jump Engine as the one I prototyped. I refreshed (and closed) the window several time, and yet, I don't have the button Steve mentions that allows researching a prototype.

[db48x]

I can now design the same Jump Engine as the one I prototyped. I refreshed (and closed) the window several time, and yet, I don't have the button Steve mentions that allows researching a prototype.

It depends on what type of prototype it is. There's no button that allows you to research a Future Prototype, and the Research Prototype button doesn't do anything at all for a Research Prototype (because that means the research project has already been created).

[vorpal+5]

There should be one ... I created the prototype when I had not all techs researched, so at the time of creation, it was a Future Prototype. Now that I can create it with my current tech, if I read correctly what Steve says, there should be in the ship design window, upon selecting it, as per

"If you select a prototype component on the Class Design window that can be created with current technology (i.e. not a future prototype), you will see a 'Research Proto' button appear. Clicking this turns the prototype into a Research Prototype. Research Prototypes have an (RP) suffix on the class window."

[db48x]

There should be one ... I created the prototype when I had not all techs researched, so at the time of creation, it was a Future Prototype. Now that I can create it with my current tech, if I read correctly what Steve says, there should be in the ship design window, upon selecting it, as per

"If you select a prototype component on the Class Design window that can be created with current technology (i.e. not a future prototype), you will see a 'Research Proto' button appear. Clicking this turns the prototype into a Research Prototype. Research Prototypes have an (RP) suffix on the class window."

Exactly my point. You have a Future Prototype, so there is no button. The Futureness of a Prototype is stored in the database, and it never changes. Future Prototypes never get the button. It's been reported as a bug several times, but it is working exactly how he's designed it.

[vorpal+5]

I'm still not sure I understand the underlying design then. It seems restrictive compared to what I thought was the intent.

What you say is that you can create components (that you could create) as prototypes, and convert them into real research project, and the functionality stops there ?

What I thought is that a (can't create) Future Prototype, once all its techs are known, can now be researched through the use of a button. I see no adverse issue to this design compared to the actual one, so if that's the case, yes I can understand the current design is reported as a bug.


PS: Sorry for the bad English, it is near certain that my convoluted sentences are not written in proper English!

[db48x]

I'm still not sure I understand the underlying design then. It seems restrictive compared to what I thought was the intent.

What you say is that you can create components (that you could create) as prototypes, and convert them into real research project, and the functionality stops there ?

What I thought is that a (can't create) Future Prototype, once all its techs are known, can now be researched through the use of a button. I see no adverse issue to this design compared to the actual one, so if that's the case, yes I can understand the current design is reported as a bug.

Correct. You can turn a Prototype into a Research Prototype, but there's no way to turn a Future Prototype into a Prototype or a Research Prototype. That's it. That's all Steve ever described an implemented, and anything else is people reading between the lines to see something that was never there.

PS: Sorry for the bad English, it is near certain that my convoluted sentences are not written in proper English!

Close enough.