Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Steve Walmsley]

And what is "Point of intersest"?

It's not a terribly well-used feature and I suspect it is mainly a bit of NPR code which Steve exposed to the player for those rare use cases.

Yes, it is. The NPRs use them as a reminder to check out something interesting they spotted once they have finished dealing with higher priority tasks.

[nakorkren]

Will civilian traffic make use of my jump ship (in one or both directions) if I park it next to a jump point? I haven't really used jump ships much yet, since historically I tend to rely on jump point stabilization.

[Migi]

Will civilian traffic make use of my jump ship (in one or both directions) if I park it next to a jump point? I haven't really used jump ships much yet, since historically I tend to rely on jump point stabilization.

Civilians will only use stabilized jump points.

Unlike stabilisation, a single jump tender will provide access in both directions.

[nakorkren]

Steve (or anyone else who uses fighters a lot): Have you ever considered giving your fighters one (or more) size-1 box launcher(s) with a size 1 ASM in it, as a way to divert AMM fire (or PD fire) from the fighters during or after approach? Occurred to me yesterday, haven't play-tested it myself but was curious if someone else had. Since a size-1 box launcher is so small (8t), one on each fighter would give you a very high number of salvos for the enemy to shoot at instead of shooting at your fighters. Thoughts?

[brondi00]

It's a perfectly viable way to cheese the game if you want.

It's certainly been done before many times. 

Beware that this type of box launcher spam makes combat essentially irrelevant if you can keep your ships supplied.  As the AI simply can't handle it even a little.

But at the end of the day it's your game so go for it if you want.

Another way to cheese the game is to make a large civilian ship with nothing but massive amounts of armor and just sail it in front of your combat vessels and let it cheaply tank all the damage for you.

[nuclearslurpee]

Another way to cheese the game is to make a large civilian ship with nothing but massive amounts of armor and just sail it in front of your combat vessels and let it cheaply tank all the damage for you.

This worked quite famously in VB6, see for example the first Blue Emu AAR on the Paradox forums. However I think in C# the NPR is able to distinguish between military and commercial engines and target the former preferentially though I haven't seen this tested in practice.

[brondi00]

Fair point my friend.  I no longer am interested in exploiting the mechanics.  To the point I don't even use missiles anymore except for planetary defense.  So I can't say I've messed with the heavily armored civ in C# version.  So good point that it may not be viable any longer.

Though I suspect if you sent one against a spoiler missile base they would exhaust their ammo against it and you could sail in withoit having to worry about their missiles.  But just a guess.

Edit: for the guy who asked the question though, box launcher spam is still quite viable as other posts in this forum will attest

[Black]

Though I suspect if you sent one against a spoiler missile base they would exhaust their ammo against it and you could sail in withoit having to worry about their missiles.  But just a guess.

This definitely still works, especially if you also pack some CIWS on the missile sponge.

[Vandermeer]

This worked quite famously in VB6, see for example the first Blue Emu AAR on the Paradox forums. However I think in C# the NPR is able to distinguish between military and commercial engines and target the former preferentially though I haven't seen this tested in practice.

I tested this half a year ago and documented it in the "Saving Europa.." game.(here) The setup was various different kinds of 7-9kt missile destroyers with the NPR faction vs 12x 7.5kt missile destroyers on mine (+2 beam defenders) and a large civilian armored freighter with CIWS on the other side of the engagement.
One might have expected the AI to prefer one or the other target, but though they seemed to somewhat prefer to shoot at the military targets (..maybe just because there were more though?..), there were always some salvos also shot at the freighter, which he then absorbed.
So in effect, the tactic is not a perfect shield anymore, but definitely a useful pressure release valve. That is if it happens every time like this. Though I doubt it, the AI might have also considered the freighter a threat due to it sitting on the jump point escape route in the back. That seems like rather advanced reasoning however, so I am not convinced. Active sensors on the very close freighter could also have something to do with it.
Anyway, one way or the other, civilian shields can still be put to use.

[Rince Wind]

I have a question about diplomatic ships. I sent one with an officer with 20% diplomacy to an npr. I see them with active and passive sensors and they see me, as they keep suggesting I leave the system. But I don't get any diplomacy points.
Not sure if they startet positive, but if not I only got some when I was surveying there, since then they went down to 0 and stayed there.

They don't seem much of a threat, the few military ships I've seen are way slower than my out of date Ion Drive ships, but I'd like to try to get on their good side and figure the diplomatic approach out, because I never got the diplomatic ships to work so far.
So how do I get the diplomatic points to actually rise?

[Garfunkel]

The diplomacy rating you see on the Intelligence screen is your empire's opinion of the aliens, not the other way around. You have no way of knowing your exact score with them, just that eventually they will start trading with you and so on.

[themousemaster]

Another way to cheese the game is to make a large civilian ship with nothing but massive amounts of armor and just sail it in front of your combat vessels and let it cheaply tank all the damage for you.

This worked quite famously in VB6, see for example the first Blue Emu AAR on the Paradox forums. However I think in C# the NPR is able to distinguish between military and commercial engines and target the former preferentially though I haven't seen this tested in practice.

The AI does know to shoot a military ship before a civvie... IF both are in range.  The cheese-method is to make the missile sponge, sail it in front, let the AI waste all of it's missiles on it, THEN send the fleet in.

Warning:  against a planet, the AI "wasting all it's missiles" might take you an real-life day of clicking 5 second increments ;p

[Mayne]

I currently have an NPR bombarding a frontier colony with beam weapons.  Will they eventually run out of MSP and leave, or will they continue until all my ground forces are eliminated?

Long time lurker and first time poster, so hi folks :)

[Sebmono]

The NPR will not run out of MSP since they don't suffer the same beam weapon failures that human players do.

[Steve Walmsley]

The NPR will not run out of MSP since they don't suffer the same beam weapon failures that human players do.

I have added NPR weapon failures, but it might only be in the unreleased version.