Oh those Magnificent Spinals

[ali-t-akua]

Of course there are other ways of finding advanced items.

 

Sir Smeg you are correct about there being other ways. Advanced Neutrals can also help you get advanced items but that is even rarer at least for me since I have yet to find one.

 

However like Ixy I am not sure about a 25000 T limit on EXPL finds. I was under the impression that the size was limited by capacity of your explorers cargo holds.

[Prospective]

Regarding this 25,000t "limit". I remember from previous posts regarding EXPL ship designs, there was mention that when designing an EXPL ship, you would need to have 25,000 Cargo Bays in order to be able to recover any physical finds. The prevailing thought was that pretty much anything you would be able to recover would be 25,000 tons or smaller.

 

I also recollect something about Pete saying that in rare cases of physical finds greater than 25,000 tons, you'd get a special message or have a special option.

 

From my limited experience with EXPL's, I have never found anything that was greater than 25,000 tons in size on a single EXPL hit. Incidentally, near the beginning of my EXPL adventure, I had forgotten to empty the holds to free up the full 25kt capacity. I did a couple EXPL's even tho there was about 2000t of material in the cargo bay. Turns out that both EXPL yielded physical items. The first hit pulled in about 20,000 of some material and the second one was for a bunch of other material. The first EXPL hit was fully loaded. Since there was only about 2kt of room remaining, I loaded a portion of the second find and got the message that "excess material was being jettisoned". Since I did not see the "jettison" message on my largest find (Fusion Transwarp Drive) which is 25,000 tons in size, I assumed that 25kt is the maximum "normal" item that you will find.

 

If you are interested, I would suggest a search of old posts looking at EXPL ship designs or something of the sort. You should probably see something there about the 25kt "limit".

[Lord Deependra]

I was under the impression there was a generation cap on physical exploration finds. Is this not the case?

[CLEernest]

Highest genreation item found commonly on EXPL hits is good strength, although I think the Shrikes may have found 1 higher once. I'd be surpirsed to find anything above good very often, if at all.

[sir smeg]

I believe a previous post by Pete, indicated that 25000 tons was the largest item you would find when doing expl, the same post also indicated that expl's where limited to a maximum of 2 levels above your current tech level.

 

As for Lord Deependra's question, while there is a generation cap on what your explorers dig up, this seems to be determened in a strange way, that isn't determaned completly by where you are on the development chain, for an example my empire is not telepathic, however thanks to expl's actions I have a nice little stockpile of telephatic shredders.

 

Finally as ali-t-akua has indicated Adv Neutrals appear to ignore every rule that I have ever heard of in regards to finding stuff in Supernova. Not only did I find the impressive little Holegrapic Cybernetic Battle Director, but we found such mysterious items as Mk V long range sensors and Mk III Fusion Jump Drives, both are very interesting since I havn't progressed down either path. From a game balance point of view it doesn't appear to be to big a problem, since each item was only found in single digit numbers, also there where no weapons or defenses, so I won't be able to build an all powerful ship with which to tip the balance of power, assuming that I find something more than all the neutrals that appear to infest my little corner of space.

 

Sir Smeg

[Octus Imperium]

Well, the two generation limit doesn't seem to be in effect...thank goodness!

 

I am well behind 2 generations on these two recent hits, for example.

 

Mk VII Standard Missile

4th Generation Android Technology

Mk V Gravitic Pulse Engine

 

Make that three recent hits.

 

Octus

 

And good cheer to everyone this Holiday season!!

[cestvel]

Not research hits, actual item finds were meant.

[hobknob]

There is no limit to the size of the find. The whole 25,000 cargo space thing was derived to make it possible to collect TWD's when found. There are loads of items out there that are bigger thatn 25k and they are all possible from an explore hit. Some folks have even collected whole ships using explore orders.

 

What Pete has told me was that some of those finds are rare, but they can happen.

 

My single largest find was 90,000 tons, when I recovered 9 troop berthings. Not too glamerous, but still a useful item.

 

[Breoghan]

Question, for those that know - do an EXPL order's finds have to taken aboard a ship if the player has a population group on the planet/whatever in question? Seems a bit unreasonable that any excess would be jettisoned if a player already has boots on the ground.

[SargonKingOfSlith]

Question, for those that know - do an EXPL order's finds have to taken aboard a ship if the player has a population group on the planet/whatever in question? Seems a bit unreasonable that any excess would be jettisoned if a player already has boots on the ground.

 

 

It's a computer program thing. The EXPL mission is performed by a fleet, not a pop group. Therefore, the fleet has to be able to add the find to it's cargo holds, fighter bays, etc. But it would be nice if the found items could just be added directly to a pop groups' inventory. Assuming there was only 1 pop group on the planet.

 

For that matter, it would be nice if a pop group could perform an EXPL mission.

[hobknob]

Yep, anything not loaded onto a fleet is lost.

 

I lost my first 2 NTWD finds that way.

 

[ShadowKitsune]

Since we're a bit off topic anyway ...

 

The other thing to note is that you have to have the right kind of storage capacity available. Thus, if you find Standard Drones, but your Fleet has no available space in it's Drone Racks (or <gasp> no Drone Racks), those Drones are lost. Even if you had 1,000,000 tons of spare cargo space, those Drones are gone. Same effect applies with Fighter types and Fighter Bays. You have been warned.

 

Regards,

-SK