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[Paul]

Haha, I never even did a tutorial thing. Is the tutorial game thing supposed to actually be a tutorial? I don't think I ever even launched it. All I did was read up on the game from Steve's forum posts, delete the "tutorial" thing, and make my own game from the start. I failed miserably on the first game (died to aggressive NPR right out of the home system, but that was probably just bad luck) but my second game did well until I decided to restart on the 4.91, and now I'm on game #3 and all is going well. If I find something I'm unsure of I usually do a forum search and read about it. Like when I first made my ships, I read up on sensors and weapons and then looked into other player's designs to get an idea of what all they needed to function. It's not that complicated once you figure out the basics.

One thing that's really useful that I overlooked for a while is the battle control window (F8). My first skirmish I wound up individually assigning every single ship in my fleet (20 at the time) to targets. My wing of 100 fighters took *forever* and all the while I kept looking and thinking there *has* to be an easier way to do this. Few rounds into it, after I had selected my 100 fighter's targets two or three times each (a few hundred selections, oh the horror) I suddenly found the F8 menu where you can hit one button to copy the target to everyone in the task group followed by another to open fire. Boy was that a time saver, haha.

[Aldaris]

I just found out you can set theme music for each faction.
Wow, just, wow.

[Micro102]

The tutorial I did was the wiki tutorial, I read the entire ting and did what it said, I didn't use the tutorial game....should I?

Also, I have ordnance and fighter factories but I don't know how to use them...I have some cruisers built with instant build and they are capable of fighting but I guess I need a naval shipyard to build those. What is the ordnance for?

Also, Something seems to be affecting my system every 5 seconds, where can i view what it is?

Also is it normal for a planet to have 30 million minerals of one type? Earth has so few...

[Greiger]

ordinance factories make missiles, which you design with that missile button down next to turrets and design.   Fighter factories make special small combat ships that have special requirements that can fit inside boat bays and hanger decks on larger ships.  Fighters have the advantage of not using up shipyards to be built, but they are horrible at fuel efficiency and are really squishy.

To make a fighter you design a ship with a fighter variant engine(which you specify when you design the engine on the bottom dropdown box), without a bridge, under 500 tons with only a certain weight in weapon systems and armor.  You'll know a ship you designed is a fighter if it says it is on the bottom of the class summary. 

P.S. Fighters do still have a crew, for me about 50-100 people. But you can cut down on crew quarters size by using the small crew quarters tech, the command module tech seems to work too, but I don't know if that has any other side effects. 

Doesn't make much sense really, but I try to wave it off as the 'ground crew' for the fighter, with the crew modules just being extra life support systems to supplement the carrier's life support to account for the extra number of crew on the carrier that the fighter carries but is unlisted.  Course that logic falls apart a bit when you pick up a fighter lifepod with 20 people in it, but I try to ignore that.  I just say it's the ejection capsule.  If the officer is in it it's all good if it's just crew I consider the officer to be dead in an otherwise empty capsule.

P.S. #2 I never did the ingame tutorial thing all I did was the wiki tutorial and I'm doing fine..

[Kishmond]

After investigating turn slowdowns in SM Event Viewer I saw "Increment length adjusted as ship is within firing range." Should I be worried?

Also is there any way to see what civilian freighters are shipping?

[Greiger]

It could just be an NPR fighting precursors or something.  Just keep an eye out for new thermal contacts during the slowdown.  if it goes back to normal speed it was just an NPR encountering a precursor.

For civ ships I think there is a way, but I never tried.  Might be under the shipping line information screen.

[umiman]

Why did I not pay attention to this thread earlier? I'm reading through the story the creator posted on the Wargamers forums and... holy shit... This is like... Holy Grail of Gaming Alpha. No offense to Toady... but this is... this is... Holy shit. I think I'm in love.

[Micro102]

Wait, so even if a NPR if fighting a precursor in a completely different system that you don't know even exists, it will affect you?

[Aldaris]

Wait, so even if a NPR if fighting a precursor in a completely different system that you don't know even exists, it will affect you?

Yup.
Enter the wonders of the Auto-turn button.

[Greiger]

It will slow down gameplay for a bit.  You can push the checkmark for automated turns and it will just keep automatically pushing the button until the 30 days or whatever you pushed is up.

The AI is made to use the same rules as an actual player has.  An actual player has to slow down to 5 seconds during big fights to keep their targeting systems targeting the correct ships.  Well the NPRs do too, they do it much faster than a player does it of course, but they still need to set it to 5 second or whatever increments so they have as much control over the fight as a player does.  They usually don't last very long early, those early ones are usually just like what happens to players, it's probably a survey ship getting jumped by precursors or something.

[Micro102]

The question is, are they one of those AI who know exactly what your doing and where but they act like they don't?

EDIT: Ok apparently i do have shipyards....But i can't figure out how to make ships.

EDIT: EDIT: Ok while automated turns works for stopping the NPR, it's not keeping my guys from giving me a message every 2 hours on how they followed my orders and refueled.

[Greiger]

I don't have a 'Word of God" on it but I think they have as much information as you do.  They don't know yer there until they pick you up on sensors, and they don't know who you are until they get an active sensor ping on you.  Just like how it works for you. There is a designer mode that is hard coded into the game that lets you take a look at the NPR from a player perspective and lets you see what they know. 

Steve does give out the password to access it when asked but he doesn't let it go fully public with it or anything.  It's apparently really easy to break the game using it, and he doesn't wanna go around chasing his tail after bugs that were caused by mucking about in designer mode.

[Micro102]

But if you go t war with them, could you build a base far away and hide? Or will they develop ESP and send all their ships at you at a place they have not found yet?

For some reason when i go ahead a day, the predicted time for completion for building things goes ahead a day as well?\. Why is this?

(I'm sry for my insane amount of questions)

[Greiger]

Don't believe so.  I think they know that you designated a planet as a colony if they can see the planet even if there is nothing on it. But that is apparently more a bug than anything.  And they don't know the planet is designated as a colony until they would be in orbit of it.

I highly doubt they have any idea what you are doing unless they can actually see you doing it.  They don't know theirs a jump point someplace unless they survey it normally or see somebody use it for example.

So the answer would be no, they wouldn't know you went off and hid.  I managed to get some ships through a star swarm inhabited system by having active sensors , and shields off and engines only running at 25% capacity.  While a ship going full tilt with everything on got hit before it made it even halfway through the system.

[Kishmond]

Argh, these NPRs have been fighting for almost 2 weeks now! Are active sensors on by default?