Various questions about the FAQ

[Silent Sorrow]

OK, I've finished reading through the entire FAQ (minus the multiplayer parts) for Version 03069 and have several questions related to areas that are either unclear or seem to be contradictory.

The format is FAQ section quoted followed by my related question.

2.3.3 Warp guns can give your ship extended life in "Dogfights" especially with gunships.

What does this mean, gives you "extended life"? I've never used a warp gun. Seems like a silly weapon to me. Moves ships one or two random spaces? So? To waste time with that while the other guy us hitting you with weapons that actually take out your armour and systems seems pointless to me. What am I missing?

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4.3.1 Atmosphere converters can be scrapped after the atmosphere is converted. Multiple Atmosphere Converters on the planet will speed up the process. (Quikngruvn)

4.3.6 Climate Control Facilities can be scrapped once the colony's conditions are Optimal. Multiple CCF's will speed the process. (Quikngruvn)

Interesting--more facilities speed up the process. Two questions: These are so expensive and take so long to work that building two or more of either on a single planet seems unrealistic. Does anyone ever do this?

Second, I never build the climate control facility. I just can't tell what kind of difference it makes to have the atmosphere go from, say, "unpleasant" to "optimal." Anyone have any stats on exactly what this accomplishes?

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5.6.1 Fleet supplies are shared (evenly, regardless of ship size) at the end of each turn. 1 quantum reactor will top off the fleet. ships can still have supply problems in combat if they don�t have QR�s.

By this I understand that a fleet moving around on the galaxy screen only needs one ship with QR to be able to do that. However, once in combat, will all the non-QR ships START with full supplies or will they have zero supplies?

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6.4.7 Since shields must be lowered to use Boarding Parties (and they don�t come back up unless you have shield regenerators), armor is a better choice on BP ships. Also consider use of shield depleting weapons on BP Ships.

This seems to suggest that your own ship which is doing the boarding has to have its shields down before its troops can leave the ship to board a target. Is this right? (I understand that the target ship must have its shields taken down.)

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8.1.2 Units in same sector stack and count as 1 unit. Any component on any in the stack applies to all, except shields (until that unit is killed). i.e. 1 multiplex tracking component on 1 sat in a group makes the whole group able to multiplex track until that component is destroyed.

This is unclear to me. Does this mean a shielded unit will in fact Last longer than other units in its stack? Same for armour? How does this work for weapons platforms on a planet? If I've got, say, 10 WP, and one of them has armour III's or stealth armour, etc., does that one WP Last longer than the others? Does its armour cover all the other non-armoured WPs? Also, should shields be put on WPs at all?

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8.1.5 Q: Are shields in fighter/satellite count as hitpoints or as shield? So how shield depleter and phased-polaron beam works against them?
A(Baron Munchausen): Shields on a unit just add to hit points, but as testing has shown, the PPB does skip the shields on units.

Unclear. "Add to hit points" how? Can anyone be more specific? But the PPB somehow skips the shields and attacks the unit's "base hit points" or something like that?

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8.6.6 Q: Is it worth to put ecm, stealth armor and scattering armor to weapon platform when there is -200% defence bonus by planet?
A(Imperator Fyron): No, there is really no point. The best you can do is to get it to -200 + 60 + 15 + 15 = -110. That means that a normal ship with no sensors or training has a 100 chance to hit at range 11 (or 99%, cause there is always that 1% miss without talismans).

Actually, isn't the other bonus of scattering and stealth armour that it adds to hit points by absorbing damage before other components? Therefore, while the to-hit bonus is neglible doesn't it make sense to have lots of armour on WPs? But again, I'm not clear on how stacks of WPs take damage when they're not identical. Will the armoured WPs help absorb damage even if they scattered around randomly? Or does just that individual WP have a better chance of survival because of its armour?

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9.2.2 If a planet with a spaceport is blockaded, the resource sharing ability for the whole system still works, but no contribution of resources is made by the blockaded planet. So in this case non-blockaded planets in that system would still contribute to the general resource �pool�.

Nothing unclear here. But I did want to just say that I think this is unfortunate. It would add a lot more strategy if blockading a spaceport planet actually stopped all that system's planets from contributing to the empire.

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10.1.3 Stolen tech reports (via intel ops) don�t show up under the race:tech tab. Only what is seen in combat shows under race:tech. Since you don�t officially �know� about stuff until it is listed in race:tech, this makes it impossible to target intelligence ops to get them until after combat. bug reported to MM.

Simply not clear to me. Anyone else want to reword this?

That's all for now. All replies appreciated.