Some Newbie questions

[The Flock]

An ally of mine used a BOMB order a while back (since the Zraaknod were purely peaceful, they'd never dream of such a thing) and verified it's worthless. Thousands upon thousands of WMDs killed one or two pop and a couple installations. Easier to just land troops, especially since the collateral damage is lessened that way.

 

It is worse than that, if they bomb you and 10,000 Industry are destroyed, that pop and ine Contracution material will be in stock and the next turn you can repbuild, the industry, and the MDD's that will destriy the planet, only destroy empty planets.

[Highwayman]

i bet that is a bug in the system. doubt you are supposed to keep your pop and con mat ....

[cestvel]

An ally of mine used a BOMB order a while back (since the Zraaknod were purely peaceful, they'd never dream of such a thing) and verified it's worthless. Thousands upon thousands of WMDs killed one or two pop and a couple installations. Easier to just land troops, especially since the collateral damage is lessened that way.

 

It is worse than that, if they bomb you and 10,000 Industry are destroyed, that pop and ine Contracution material will be in stock and the next turn you can repbuild, the industry, and the MDD's that will destriy the planet, only destroy empty planets.

 

No, Pop and Materials will and are *NOT* be in stock after a BOMB.

 

I was subject to such an attack and it killed millions of POP and IND.

[Highwayman]

i would like to meet that player and shake their hand or tentacle...

[Flagritz]

i would like to meet that player and shake their hand or tentacle...

 

Same here, couldn't have happened to a better player

 

Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke I would be happy to BOMB one of Cestvels other worlds :}

[Gixxer]

Hi, been a while since I looked at this forum, nice to see this topic is still active :-)

 

I have a question: Does anyone know the formula for Action Points? Is is worked out on a ship by ship basis, or for the entire fleet?

 

I suspect the formula is simply total thrust/mass of ship, with a lower limit of 2, is this right?

 

Its just that I found some Mk1 fusion engines laying around on my planet, and am trying to work out if I can build new pathfinders with higher action points. If the formula is what I think, I'd need to use 36 of these engines to get 3 AP, and 48 to get 4 AP, (slightly less if I take out the weapons, shields and computer, but I don't really want to do that).

 

I have now been playing for 7 turns, and this turn I found I can't do everything I want in 40 orders :-(

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can give

[Flagritz]

Thats right, to calculate AP the formula is: Total Engine Thrust/Total ship tonnage.

 

All ships get a minimum of 2AP's and a fleet will move as fast as its slowest ship.

 

The most efficient ship designs (AP wise) are 50% engines.

 

So if you are using MK I fusion engines (a level 3 tech) and you design a ship which is 50% engines then you can achieve a speed of 5AP

 

Every level higher of engine will double the AP you can achieve on a 50% design so with a level 4 engine you can design a ship with 50% engines which has 10AP, a level 5 engine will give you a 20AP ship etc.

 

Hope that helps

 

As time goes by you will find that 80 orders may not be enough... then 120.... then 160... as you discover more and explore it gets more and more fun

[Gixxer]

Thanks Flagritz,

 

Getting AP 5 would be useful, being able to NM to a planet and do all 4 scans in one go would be nice, so I now have to decide whether to build a couple of ships that can do that, (I found 124 of these engines on an explore order) or to build lots of ships with AP 2 with free engines, lol Meanwhile, I an not far from researching these engines myself, so should be able to build lots of them soon. I'm still at the stage of exploring and mapping my local area, looks like I will have to make the move up to 80 orders each time soon - especially if I build even more Pathfinders :-) Either that, or just CSV and ORB each planet I find, and only PMAP and GEO the more interesting ones.

[Flagritz]

That was a good EXP hit, early on EXP finds will be very useful

 

Both solutions are viable, I always favour fewer higher AP ships though but there is merit to both solutions

 

each type of exploration order has its benefits, I would actually recommend if you are looking to reduce orders to just sticking with GEO and PMAP orders.

 

A PMAP order will give you a full breakdown of the planet which you can compare yourself with your home world and manually work out if you can survive on it, it will also tell you if there are any neutral colonies on the planet. A GEO will let you know if there are useful resources to set-up outposts.

 

ORB and CSV orders can be saved for a world you think has good resources and has similarish environments

[Breoghan]

Thanks Flagritz,

 

Getting AP 5 would be useful, being able to NM to a planet and do all 4 scans in one go would be nice, so I now have to decide whether to build a couple of ships that can do that, (I found 124 of these engines on an explore order) or to build lots of ships with AP 2 with free engines, lol Meanwhile, I an not far from researching these engines myself, so should be able to build lots of them soon. I'm still at the stage of exploring and mapping my local area, looks like I will have to make the move up to 80 orders each time soon - especially if I build even more Pathfinders :-) Either that, or just CSV and ORB each planet I find, and only PMAP and GEO the more interesting ones.

Not quite,mate.

 

First you need transwarp capability. Without that your APs drop to zero after you jump, regardless how many you have left over.

[Krelnett_of_Kraan]

And honestly, drop the beginning weapons and armor. They're weight you don't need on a throw-away ship like a Pathfinder.

It's going to lose any battle it gets in (statistically) so why spend precious industry making it bigger (and slower) than it has to be?

Now, if your EXPL orders have yielded a couple higher level weapons, definitely have fun deploying those on survey ships.

[hobknob]

I don't find it useful to use anything less than Mk II fusion if you want higher AP. Not sure it's worth the orders to use up random found items like that either. Spend some SRP's and buy higher engines...

[Kurassier]

Thanks Flagritz,

 

Getting AP 5 would be useful, being able to NM to a planet and do all 4 scans in one go would be nice, so I now have to decide whether to build a couple of ships that can do that, (I found 124 of these engines on an explore order) or to build lots of ships with AP 2 with free engines, lol Meanwhile, I an not far from researching these engines myself, so should be able to build lots of them soon. I'm still at the stage of exploring and mapping my local area, looks like I will have to make the move up to 80 orders each time soon - especially if I build even more Pathfinders :-) Either that, or just CSV and ORB each planet I find, and only PMAP and GEO the more interesting ones.

Ahh, I remember the days (vaguely) when I thought a 5 AP ship was fast...... Cheers and welcome to space!

[Flagritz]

The great thing with this game is that there are many different paths to follow and empires have different set-ups and different priorities, what may not be useful to one empire may be exactly what another one needs.

 

As a side thought, if you are looking to just do some PMAP, GEO, ORB & CSV orders in your home system, consider building a ship with just 10 Mk I fusion engines, it will be the minmium 1,000 tons and have 10AP....

 

in a few years EXP hits may not be as useful as they are early on, but they not only help give you ideas of what is out there but come in very handy!

[Gixxer]

Thanks for all the help!

 

Flagritz, your tip about using PMAP and GEO makes sense, those two scans will tell me whether it is worth investigating further. I was using ORB to tell me if there were any possible EXPL finds on a planet, but so far only my homeworld has shown any, so I'm guessing that they only appear on worlds with population.

 

Krelnet, your tip of dropping the weapons and armour to save weight (and production cost) makes sense also, I wouldn't expect these ships to survive an encounter with anything much, so reducing the ship down to essentials is a good idea, especially for my early mapping missions :-)

 

Breoghan, I appreciate the reminder of that, I was thinking more of when the ship is in the system, jumping from planet to planet. Along with Flagritz's advice, I now realise that AP 3 ships would be sufficient to speed up the job of initial surveys. Starting from the point I warped in last turn, I could move to, and PMAP/GEO 1 planet/moon each turn, for each ship in the system. 1/3 faster, and neater too, not having to check which scans I still have to do at each location. :-)

 

In fact, it has just occurred to me, that it may be more efficient to have 2 separate ship designs, 1 for exploring systems/jumpgates, and 1 for scanning planets. The planet scanning ships wouldn't need Jumpgate sensors, which are a relatively heavy item, so needing less engines to make them AP 3!

 

Talking about ship designs, is there any particular item you need on a ship to carry out PMAP/GEO/ORB/CSV scans? I'm thinking in particular about Survey landers and Science Labs, the descriptions of these are too general to tell if I actually need these for this task. Flagritz, you have just posted another message whilst I am writing this, which answers that question, lol.

 

I am using ANZ orders to get details of my EXPL finds, tonnage, power, etc, but this turn I have found something that I need to ANZ just to see what it does, lol. most things I can tell by the name what the item does, shields, engines, mine detectors, etc, but now I have found something called a Nucleonic Attractor, so I'm looking forward to seeing the results of that ANZ, just to see what it does :-)

 

I love that this game makes you think on all sorts of levels, strategy, economy, ship design, prioritising ,etc,

 

And thanks for the welcome, Kurassier!