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[Descan]

BTW, the Repeat order on the task-group page is exponential. If you have 1 order set, it makes two. If you have 2, it makes four. It doubles what's THERE, not what you started with.

Don't click it 10 times or you'll end up with x¹⁰ orders, instead of x_10.

If you start with 5 orders, and click it 10 times, you'll end up with 5120 orders. Needless to say, your game will slow down, freeze, then crash long before it gets to 5120.

[Flying Dice]

Yep. I tend to get crashes for anything more than 200-250 repeats.

[EuchreJack]

Have to say, I didn't know how to create ships out of thin air until I read about the Fast OOB here today.

I love this game, always something new to discover!

[Tibbz2]

Ah I see, thanks for the warning!

[Johuotar]

Hey guys, does goverment type matter? Is player Race a real option? Are you suppose to use it or is it like "Choose your type" filler?

What does orbital motion for asteroids mean? Does it affect difficulty?

EDIT: Wait, music on? This has music in it?  I think I'll stick to my OTTD soundtrack though.

[Osmosis Jones]

Hey guys, does goverment type matter? Is player Race a real option? Are you suppose to use it or is it like "Choose your type" filler?

What does orbital motion for asteroids mean? Does it affect difficulty?

EDIT: Wait, music on? This has music in it?  I think I'll stick to my OTTD soundtrack though.

From memory, government type gives you various advantages with things like economics, research, recruitment, etc.

Orbital motion for asteroids means that they'll orbit around the star like planets do. Thematically nicer, but can slow the turns down a bit as it calculates all the orbital paths.

No idea about the music, I've never heard any...

[Johuotar]

Alright, I hope insane dictatorship doesnt have too bad penalties. The tech/money/production boost I gave myself hopefully helps though. The first thing to do is probably setting research, starting automine construction and construction factory making. Designing anything will probably be nothing but a grand failure from my part though. Last time I got stuck when I couldn't get any of my designs actually built for some reason.

[Karlito]

Everything but player race and maybe meritocracy has some penalties, though I'm not sure if they just affect the initial setup or not. I think some governments can have an impact on your translation skill?

[Metalax]

Your initial government type effects your initial distribution and quantity of facilities, initial number of research labs, initial research points, initial number of shipyards and hence initial Build Points, and the various 'cultural' modifiers you see on the race details screen. I don't recall off the top of my head if they effect the wealth creation modifier/production modifier/etc that you can set on the game setup page.

You can at any point change your government type via the race detials screen which will change the associated cultural modifiers.

Asteroid orbital motion just makes the asteroids orbit their star in the same way as planets. I usually put it on if I'm playing a multifaction small game but I'll turn it and possibly planetry orbits off in large games as calculating all the orbits does eat up a fair bit of processing on each turn.

Designing anything will probably be nothing but a grand failure from my part though. Last time I got stuck when I couldn't get any of my designs actually built for some reason.

If you get the same problem again just zip up the stevefire.mdb database, throw it up on dropbox or something similar and post the link here so we can take a look and see if it is something obvious.

[Johuotar]

I managed to make guy governor of earth, but it still says that governor of earth is unassigned, but the guy appears to be governor. Huh. Also, hes just 21 years old and is governing whole planet. We truly are living crazy times. Next stop is design workshop. ->

EDIT: So I can remove and add traits to people just like that? Its still cheating right? Can I do it without spacemaster mode?

EDIT2: Class design doesnt have any engines or weapons (other than ICBM launch control) available. I thought that giving extra tech at start would give me engine tech rightaway. :/

EDIT3: Is compact database in Miscellaneous important? It seems to cause infinite errors which force me to ctr alt delete aurora. 

[RedKing]

You probably need to go design some engines. Unlike most 4X games, successfully researching Nuclear Pulse Engines doesn't give you a generic "Nuclear Pulse Engine" to add to the design. Instead it gives you the option to design nuclear pulse engines (with all the other modifiers eventually available to you such as fuel efficiency, thermal reduction, hyperspeed capacity, power efficiency/inefficiencies, etc.)

AFAIK, you can add/remove traits on commanders because they have zero game effect, just RP fluff.

As far as the Governor showing unassigned, sometimes that screen doesn't update properly. Try exiting the commanders screen and going back in to see if it changed.


I was bummed to find that my idea of using geosensors on missile/drone-delivered buoys won't work, because you can't target planets from distance.
I understand why (because otherwise planetary sieges would be non-existent...you'd just bury enemy planets in a long-range enfillade of missile fire) but it still stinks. I could make a design that would manually drop sensor buoys at the planet, then scoot off to the next one, but that defeats the primary purpose to the missile-delivered sensor idea -- keeping my scouts safe from lurking Precursors and whatnot. I suppose I could design a scout cruiser/carrier that would carry recon "fighters" with a single sensor buoy on a railmount....hmmm.....

Oh, and government type actually affects a number of things. One of the most practical and immediate things it affects is how active the "corporate sector" will be, based on your Trading attribute (Shift+F9 to view your race's traits). Hive Mind is a -30 to trading....you won't see much commercial activity if any. Corporate Government adds +30 to Trading. You will wind up with multiple shipping companies, mining colonies galore and LOTS of merchant shipping traffic.

Also affects the total enemy ground strength needed to force a planetary surrender (based on Determination and Militancy ratings). But since I've never seen the AI launch an invasion, that's kind of moot.

[Johuotar]

You probably need to go design some engines. Unlike most 4X games, successfully researching Nuclear Pulse Engines doesn't give you a generic "Nuclear Pulse Engine" to add to the design. Instead it gives you the option to design nuclear pulse engines (with all the other modifiers eventually available to you such as fuel efficiency, thermal reduction, hyperspeed capacity, power efficiency/inefficiencies, etc.)

AFAIK, you can add/remove traits on commanders because they have zero game effect, just RP fluff.

As far as the Governor showing unassigned, sometimes that screen doesn't update properly. Try exiting the commanders screen and going back in to see if it changed.

Ahh thanks so much, that explains a lot! I managed to start engine research project, now if I just make some sensor and weapon tech...

EDIT2: I'm going to need help with ship design a bit. I followed the tutorial on the wiki and got this survey ship, does it look like it works?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[RedKing]

First ships I usually build:
1. Small geosurvey craft (1-2 civilian engines, geosurvey sensor, enough fuel to cover ~10 billion km). You can build more than one of these if you really want, but you don't really need to. Set the provisional orders to "Survey Next Five System Bodies". Now you can forget about it for the next couple of years and it'll survey every chunk of rock in the Solar System. Once that's done, you can scrap it or hang onto it. As a civvie ship it's going to have extremely low maintenance cost. I tend to hold onto them for when I find those systems with 300+ asteroids in them, then either use jumpgates I've built or hook it in with a civilian jumpship to get it there.

2. Asteroid miner (once you have Asteroid Mining Modules). Designs can vary here. I like to make big mammoth designs (~100,000 tons), but you can certainly go smaller. You can go multiple routes with this:
a. Dedicated miner (no cargo holds) -- then either drop a mass driver on the same asteroid/comet and point it back to Earth, or send periodic cargo ships out to load up on minerals.

b. Hybrid miner/loader -- add a couple of cargo holds to the miner and just have the miner run till it can fill up its holds, then return. Less efficient, but requires less logistical worries and less ships. A hybrid-hybrid would carry enough space to haul a mass driver so the ship can just pick up and drop its own driver as it moves from rock to rock.

c. Immobile platform -- just design a huge mining ship with no engines and no fuel storage, then use a seperate tug (once you have Ship to Ship Tractor Beam) to tow the platform into position.


3. Eventually you'll want a Gravsurvey ship so you can find the jump points out of Sol. You'll also want a jumpscout that can pop through those jump points and find out what's on the other side. I typically combine the two into a single ship (and add geosurvey sensors so it can check out promising planets/moons on the other side).

4. Freighters. Typically, I build 5 cargo holds in a freighter, so that it can carry one installations per freighter and not have to deal with all these messy fractional moves. Then I group them in squadrons of 5, so that a single squadron can carry something large like a Mass Driver or Terraformer or what have you. Plus, once you've designed them, your civilian shipping can make them. Don't forget to add a couple of cargo handling systems, to cut down on the load/unload time.

[gimlet]

I was bummed to find that my idea of using geosensors on missile/drone-delivered buoys won't work, because you can't target planets from distance.

Hmm to do the geosurvey?  I just read a "lets play" on the goon site where the guy did exactly that - the trick might be to target the missile on a waypoint on the planet?  "Click on the planet, go to the other screen and use 'last'" is the bit I remember.   I meant to give it a try in my next game, which I HOPE I can hold off til 5.70 but reading AARs is making me impatient

EDIT:  Yea RedKing's got the basics.  I never build the hybrid miners, I just micro a little more.  Definitely make the geosurvey ship civilian, AND one tip is to add a one hull space Thermal Sensor - that way since you'll be surveying planets anyway, you can check for aliens or installations.  It's not a bad idea to add the 1 HS Thermal Sensor to some/most non-tiny ships - it's small and cheap.

My SOP is to make the early grav survey ships non-jump capable since they get zapped a lot.   I make a few jump capable oiler/maint supply carriers that transit the survey ships, they can refuel/resupply at that time.   A handful can cover the first decade or so of exploring, after that it's too much hassle to keep moving them AND by then the fleet can use them.

Also you might want one colony ship, so you can get colonies started.  Design this first and when you retool a shipyard to it, you can USUALLY also build the freighter on the same slips without retooling.

[Johuotar]

The tutorial on the wiki suggested military engine for geosurvey ship, would this work?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)