Help this newbie; the docs for this game are vague

[gregdabuckeye]

Please help me with these questions about this game. I am currently running the demo and want to get the game if I can resolve these problems.
How do population and happiness affect production? I seems a planet with a few people crank out just as much production as a populous one. Happiness and reproduction bonuses seem worthless. What does the tolerance modifier do?
How does intel work? It doesn't seem to be allocated like research and let me know how my projects are doing.
How do support pods work?
The 1500 racial advantages (e.g. temporal and psychic) seem of marginal value. Does their special tech tree ever seem to do anything but give you cool text about your weapons that seem just as good as standard ones?
Waypoints with cargo ships seems a pain because your ships end up dumping cargo at the waypoint and continuing on. Am I doing this wrong?

[Lucanos]

-DISCLAIMER-
This feels alot like "the blind leads the blind" -thing, but I'll do my best.

I promise!

"How do population and happiness affect production?"

...ummm more population = more production and faster construction rate.

First bonus starts with 100m pop, giving you 10% (or was it 5%?) bonus. Next is 500m giving you 20% (10%). Then it's 1000m, 2000m, 3000m - for the next bonuslevels.

"Happiness and reproduction bonuses seem worthless."

Taking drugs and screwing around could be dangerous, but it's not worthless.
...
Actually, reproduction is one of my Favorites, happiness can be fixed (increased) with troops, ships and/or buildings so I don't put any bonus there...
...PERSONALLY...
...but some might want to. "Why?" I don't know why.

"What does the tolerance modifier do?"

Now we're talking "worthless". It wastes your racial points and it increases your reproduction in relation to the planets condition, I think (as in "I BELIEVE").

"How does intel work?"

Sometimes it don't, actually - which is pretty annoying.

BASICALLY
As your researchers gain lvls in "Applied Intelligence" you also gain access to more intel-project. And some of them are pretty neat, like the Resource Proscurement, which steals resourses from another empire (not much else to steal from). You also got the Puppet Political Parties which creates new dump AI controlled empires by inciting revolutions on enemy planets.

"It doesn't seem to be allocated like research..."

Really? Well in my Version of the game it _seems_ to be allocated almost EXACTLY like research, but in a different window of course.

"The 1500 racial advantages (e.g. temporal and psychic) seem of marginal value. Does their special tech tree ever seem to do anything but give you cool text about your weapons that seem just as good as standard ones?"

It's all about strategy and taste. The traits don't just give you weapons, they give you builings and other components as well. But I agree - they could be more ...umm - characterized.

Sorry I can't help you with the cargo question.

Bye now...

[raynor]

There are different population cutoff points that determine your bonus. They start out at 5% bonus for 100M population and go up to the 20% bonus at 2000M you see on your medium sized planet homeworld. They start to become pretty substantial when you fill a huge planet to its max capacity of 8000M. At that point, your production bonus is, I think, 80%. So, reproduction and population do play their part in this game in later turns. Tolerance seems to play into reproduction somehow but I'm still hazy on that one.

If your enemy isn't running any counter-intel projects, then intel works just like research. You invest enough points in the project, and it succeeds. But if your enemy is running a counter-intel project, then he may accumulate enough points to counter your project so that it fails. Counter-intel projects are kinda weird because they may terminate *before* they accumulate their max points if they have accumulated enough points to beat an enemy project. The big thing to remember is that you need multiple counter-intel projects running since each one can counter at most one enemy intel project. The intel projects are a lot of fun. They range from gathering info on ship movements to capturing enemy ships and even planets.

Do you mean Supply Storage?

Each time you move your ship, the game deducts 10 points for every engine for every space you move. When you run out of supplies, your ship can hobble along at only one space(sector) per turn. The Supply Storage units extend the range your ship can travel before it must refuel. The simplest way for a ship to refuel is to pass through a sector that has a planet with a Resupply Depot. There are other ways to resupply as well if you are interested.

The Temporal Racial trait lets you build some extremely nice facilities in the full Version. For example, the Temporal Space Yard III lets you build 50% faster than the best space yard without this racial trait. There are some other facilities as well that are quite nice. I'm not as familiar with Psychic. In the full Version, they also have some very nice weapons.

I haven't used waypoints with cargo ships so I can't help you there.

[Will]

Hey, thanks for the questions! (working on an FAQ right now

Population gives increasing production bonuses as the population increases. I don't have it memorized, but I believe it's 100M=5%, 500M=10%, 1B=20%, 2B=30%, 4B=40%, 5B=50%, 6B=60%, 7B=70%, 8B=80%, and I don't know about RW and SW max population bonuses. Someone else will be able to fill in the holes, I don't have the files on this computer to answer exactly. Happiness is on a scale from Rioting (0% production), Angry (-20%), Unhappy (-10%), Indifferent (no change), Happy (+10%), and Jubilent (+20%). When you get a Jubilent Huge world with full population (8B), then you'll notice a nice improvement per facility over, say, an Angry world with 1M population. Happiness bonus, I believe, makes it easier to get happy, reproduction increases reproduction rate. Tolerance sets what kind of world your race can live on and still actually LIVE (or, at least reproduce). IE. a race with low tolerance won't grow much on a Deadly world.

Intelligence powers intelligence operations, espionage and sabotage. Once you get the higher tech levels, you get some rather nasty operations... It's done a lot like research, you select the operation, select the target (if offensive), and it's put in the limited queue of 12.

"Support pods"?

The racial tech areas are very valuable. Organic, IMO, has the best weapons, plus arguably the best armor (depends on the situation), and some useful facilities. Crystalline gives some weapons that are superior to the regular weapons, but a bit inferior to Organic when your opponent has shields, and also has very useful facilities (love the Crystalline Restructuring Plant and Energy Transmission Lens). Temporal gets you some more good weapons, mostly useful against shields, and makes this the ideal compliment to Crystalline, while also giving Events Predictor (+30% to combat) and Temporal SY (50% faster, like having emergency build on all the time). Psychic gives you some ok weapons, the Aleigence Subverter (read: boarding parties that don't need repaired, and have range), and a few useful facilities. Religious gives you Religious Talisman (weapons always hit) and some very nice facilities.

For waypoints... I would say check that your orders aren't saying drop cargo at that point, only move there.

Hope that helps...

--edit: Note on the Aliegence Subverter... did I mention that I absolutely love Religious tech and the Religious Talisman? What do you mean when it hits, it ALWAYS hits

[This message has been edited by Will (edited 21 March 2001).]

[Lucanos]

Looks like everybody posted their answer almost simultaniously.

Will:
"the Aleigence Subverter (read: boarding parties that don't need repaired, and have range)"

Yeah! If you hit!

[capnq]

I will guess that by "Support Pods" you mean "Emergency Resupply Pods", one of my favorite components. When a ship equipped with a Pod is running low on supplies, you can trigger the Pod with the Use Component button (hotkey ctrl-Z). At Level I this adds 2000 supplies to the ship and destroys the Pod until you repair it.

I like to put these on my scout ships to extend their range by a system or two. Especially if I can get a colony in place behind them to build a Resupply Depot, so the scout can resupply on its way back to the shipyard to repair the pod.

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Cap'n Q