Questions, part 3

[Silent Sorrow]

Another batch ...

1. When using an armour such as emissive I, does the "negate 10 points of damage" feature stack? That is, if I have three of them on, does it negate 30 points of damage? (Otherwise, I don't see any use for it on that end since even a DUC I does more than 10 points of damage.)

2. Is espionage working properly? I got a message about political espionage claiming that enemy forces had "learned of your relationship with the Cryslonite empire." Um, except that I hadn't yet encountered the Cryslonites--and many turns later have yet to encounter them. What gives?

3. What tech increases population growth and where is it?

4. What exactly does a climate control facility do and is it worth it?

5. How does remote mining work on a system with more than two planets in it? Does the robo-miner mine from all the planets in that system or just the "top" one?

6. How do "force concentration" reports intelligence work? I got a report saying enemy forces were building up in a certain system but it didn't show me WHERE that system was. Less than useful.

7. Will a ship's pont defence weapons attack targets that are actually attacking some other ship? That is, will PD weapons on ship A also defend ship B against incoming fire if in range? (If so, this opens up a realm for dedicated PD ships which would be great.)

8. Is there any way to change or upgrade weapons platforms? It seems like you have to jettison them and simply build new ones--a real pain given new technology you want to add. Starting over each time is incredibly tedious.

9. After I've built a weapons platform is there any way to see its hit points before actually building one? (You can take them into the simulator it seems.) I want to be able to compare the effectiveness of different combinations of armour and shields, etc., before choosing to commission one.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Silent Sorrow:
Another batch ...

1. When using an armour such as emissive I, does the "negate 10 points of damage" feature stack? That is, if I have three of them on, does it negate 30 points of damage? (Otherwise, I don't see any use for it on that end since even a DUC I does more than 10 points of damage.)

2. Is espionage working properly? I got a message about political espionage claiming that enemy forces had "learned of your relationship with the Cryslonite empire." Um, except that I hadn't yet encountered the Cryslonites--and many turns later have yet to encounter them. What gives?

3. What tech increases population growth and where is it?

4. What exactly does a climate control facility do and is it worth it?

5. How does remote mining work on a system with more than two planets in it? Does the robo-miner mine from all the planets in that system or just the "top" one?

6. How do "force concentration" reports intelligence work? I got a report saying enemy forces were building up in a certain system but it didn't show me WHERE that system was. Less than useful.

7. Will a ship's pont defence weapons attack targets that are actually attacking some other ship? That is, will PD weapons on ship A also defend ship B against incoming fire if in range? (If so, this opens up a realm for dedicated PD ships which would be great.)

8. Is there any way to change or upgrade weapons platforms? It seems like you have to jettison them and simply build new ones--a real pain given new technology you want to add. Starting over each time is incredibly tedious.

9. After I've built a weapons platform is there any way to see its hit points before actually building one? (You can take them into the simulator it seems.) I want to be able to compare the effectiveness of different combinations of armour and shields, etc., before choosing to commission one.

1. No. However, the emissive armor has one weird quality. It is 'transmitted' to every component in your ship. So if you have an emissive armor ability on ANYTHING in your ship EVERYTHING in it will have the ability. Even if it's not armor your armor will be emissive, and even if it is armor your internal components will resist 'skips armor' or 'skips shields and armor' weapons as if it had the ability.

At this time the emissive armor ability has no effect if the damage is over it's rating. This is NOT how it worked in SE III and we're still pestering MM to fix it.

2. That's one of the bugs in the intel system. When it 'randomly' selects victims for some operations it doesn't check whether you are in contact with them. Of course, in this case it's not 'quite' a bug. If they learned that you are NOT in contact with them, they learned your relations to the, right?

3. The only standard tech that increases population growth is the Urban pacification Center which increases population happiness. You can also research Climate Control and imporve th condition on your planets, but that's very slow. Organic Tech has some facilities that improve reproduction directly.

4. The Climate Control facility improves the 'Conditions' on a planet, which allows slightly faster reproduction. That's it.

5. A robo-miner will mine all UNCOLONIZED objects in the sector where it is located, so yes a loation with three uncolonized planets can be very rich.

6. Force concentration simply reports the name of the system with the largest number of the target empire's ships. That's all. If you don't know the name of the system or where it is, too bad.

7. Yes, PDC will attack anything that passes into their range, regardless of what other ship they may be targetted at. I'd like to be able to set the range at which they engage. Currently they always attack immediately at max range.

8. No, weapons platforms cannot be upgraded. e've been pestering MM for ages to at least let us SCRAP them. So far, no go. You can only scrap units that can be placed in space. (Satellites, fighters, drones.)

9. Not at this time. It would be nice to be able to see the total 'hit points' of a ship or unit, especially a drone since drones are rammers. Something to request from MM.

[ July 12, 2002, 21:01: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Silent Sorrow]

Thanks. Couple things, though.

Emissive armour: Since it doesn't stack as I'd hoped, what is the point of it? After all, even the most basic weapon in SE--the DUC I--does more than 10 damage in one shot. Or am I missing something?

Also, I'm not quite sure I follow your description. Are you saying that if I put on, say, one emissive armour and three regular armours, the latter will behave as if they were also emissive?

If a component (let's say one of my propulsion engines) has a resistance of 20KT that means it can take 20 points of damage, right? But if there's emissive armour valued at 10, that propulsion will actually be able to withstand 30?

Population growth: When I Last used pacification centres I don't recall that they significantly increased population growth (though everyone was jubilant). Can you quantify the difference for me? Are they really worth it? Because my feeling is that I shouldn't bother.

[Baron Munchausen]

Emissive armor doesn't work like you expect. If the damage is LESS than the emissive armor rating there is no damage. It "bounces off", I guess. But if it's MORE than the emissive armor rating it doesnt do anything. The damage just hits for the full amount. This is NOT the way it works in SE III and lots of people have been complaining but it hasn't been fixed yet. It should absorb the damage up to its rating and only then pass on the damage to the component. But yes, if you have one undestroyed emissive armor component in your ship then ALL components in your ship have the emissive ability. Seems odd to me.

Populations do grow faster when they are happier. Look at the growth rates reported on the planet info screens. You'll see the difference from higher levels of happiness if you pay attention for a while.

[ July 13, 2002, 02:04: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Ed Kolis]

No, only the emissive ability adds on - not the hitpoints. Yes, Emissive Armor I is pretty much useless I guess Well unless you come up against ONE FIGHTER... since for some reason an entire fighter group's shots are combined into one for purposes of penetrating emissive armor!

The real benefit of UPC's is the increased productivity - A Jubilant population will produce resources at 120% the rate of an Indifferent population, twice as fast as an Angry population, and INFINITELY faster than a Rioting population

[capnq]

You can find the total hitpoints of something by right-clicking its components and adding up the "Tonnage Structure" values.