Few Questions on Game Mechanics

[General Miles Avatar]

I believe they are deployed from drone racks. The system probe takes up quite a bit of space if I recall correctly

[Sheva Ka]

You could try a windows emulator on your what I assume to be an Apple Mac. It worked

For me in the distant past until I broke down and got me a tiny notebook to make things a little easier

I am running Linux, or can use open or free bsd, so have not tried Wine as of yet.. not experanced with that yet.. I picked up an old win7 laptop. for free just need to replace the LED SCREEN. in due time. may bve by XMAS can get a cheap windblows box up and running.

[Nyarlathotep]

Colony beacons are cargo and are deployed with the COLB command.

[Desmodus]

You could try a windows emulator on your what I assume to be an Apple Mac. It worked

For me in the distant past until I broke down and got me a tiny notebook to make things a little easier

I had a Mac Air that I just partitioned the HD and dropped a virtual Windows machine in the system to run windows based apps - I used VMWare Fusion, worked really well. Current version is about $75, you would need to buy windows OS unless you have a license for a no longer used PC.

[Grand Inquisitor]

 

You could try a windows emulator on your what I assume to be an Apple Mac. It worked

For me in the distant past until I broke down and got me a tiny notebook to make things a little easier

I am running Linux, or can use open or free bsd, so have not tried Wine as of yet.. not experanced with that yet.. I picked up an old win7 laptop. for free just need to replace the LED SCREEN. in due time. may bve by XMAS can get a cheap windblows box up and running.

 

 

I'd suggest downloading VirtualBox (it's free) and running a Windows 7 VM on it. This is the easiest way.

[hobknob]

System beacons and colony beacons are carried in cargo. System probes are way down the line, if they exist at all in Draco.

 

So, to drop a beacon you first have to build the components for a ship that include cargo for the beacon. You then move over the planet/moon in question and conduct a COLB order. The beacon is consumed and a pop group is created on whatever planet/moon you are over. Since the COLB takes and AP you will most likely have to move one turn and drop the beacon the following turn.

 

Also, you can have as many pop groups on a planet as you want.

 

[Grand Inquisitor]

1) what is the advantage of having multiple pop groups of your own on a world?

 

2) does anyone know how to parse the data in the PDF so that I can upload it into a database? Intent is to make an up to date, mobile view of my current armies, installations, fleets, locations etc. I was thinking of designing an android app that could show this info to me.

[hobknob]

There may not be much value in multiple pop groups, however there are uses. Once you get recycling centers you will want a separate pop group to put them in. They can also work like a trading drop box so your convoy route can just LC ALL instead of loading specific items every time.

 

There are also compelling reasons not to have multiple pop groups on a planet. I was just informing you of the game mechanics, as it were.

 

Andromeda started each HW with 5 pop groups. Most of these were consolidated so within a year or two Pete changed the initial load out to one pop group.

 

Others have parsed the pdf files so it is possible, but they will have to help you out. Look at some of the old messages about the find path utility and then ask Marcus what he uses.

[rfouasnon]

For your larger planets you might want to have multiple pop groups so you can build 2 or 3 shipyards to max so you can have a steady production of the larger ships later on in the game too . Remember , you have a 2 billion ton limit of ship build per shipyard per turn , which is annoying when you want to build a 20 billion or so ton ship , and at the same time build the escorts for the thing .

[cestvel]

Dose any one know what format (TEXT,OD,I can use on my turns so it can be exportred to your Programs, I assume it is MS access . are there any open source alternatives for non-window users. to your programs? is there a multiplatform alternative?

 

The orders generated by teh entry program are plain text.

 

They start with

"SNROTE Orders","<empire number>","password"

And the the orders, always 25 columns, not set ones filled with a space " "

"SRP","Assault Armor"," "," "," "," "," ","Type C Spinal Starbore","Type C Spinal Starbore","Type C Spinal Starbore","Type C Spinal Starbore"," ","Assault Armor","Assault Armor","Assault Armor"," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "

 

On linux there exists mbd-tools, which lets you extract data from mdb-files.

[Sheva Ka]

A starbase gets structural bonus of 3X the underlying armor value because it is assumed to have more internal reinforcing that would not be allowed in a ship that moves.

 

A Planetary base is even better, with an astounding 12x structural bonus! That would be the mountains and the yards of concrete built over this stationary beast.

SO I guess a PDC is a planetary base? Do they couynt as fleeets for EXPL orders?.

[Sheva Ka]

 

Dose any one know what format (TEXT,OD,I can use on my turns so it can be exportred to your Programs, I assume it is MS access . are there any open source alternatives for non-window users. to your programs? is there a multiplatform alternative?

 

The orders generated by teh entry program are plain text.

 

They start with

"SNROTE Orders","<empire number>","password"

And the the orders, always 25 columns, not set ones filled with a space " "

"SRP","Assault Armor"," "," "," "," "," ","Type C Spinal Starbore","Type C Spinal Starbore","Type C Spinal Starbore","Type C Spinal Starbore"," ","Assault Armor","Assault Armor","Assault Armor"," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "," "

 

On linux there exists mbd-tools, which lets you extract data from mdb-files.

 

MDDTools great yea I will look into that

[General Miles Avatar]

Yes a pdc can do explore orders

[Grand Inquisitor]

Does a pdc need cargo then since its already on a planet?

[Hughestrog]

Yes and no.

 

The PDC can conduct an EXPL order but if it 'finds' an item, as there isn't any cargo bays in the design, you'll get the "Your explorers discovered some Advanced Fuels here, but there was no room on board xxxth Exploration Fleet # xxx, so the items were discarded" message. Always happens when you find something really good

You could create a 'warehouse' design with cargo bays and attach this to the PDC 'fleet' which should then give you storage capacity if you do find anything.

 

For dedicated exploration ships (in Andromeda not sure if same applies in Draco), the number of cargo bays that could be recommended varies but somewhere between 25000 and 75000 I found useful on my ships. Again not sure between Andromeda and Draco but the highest level item you could find was 4th Generation?

 

Not sure where 'Primitive Artwork' fell into that category though......