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The latest is 1.9.5 right?
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Jun 2, 2014 21:06
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| # ? May 24, 2024 14:46 |
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WYA posted:The latest is 1.9.5 right? 1.9.5.1 The new patch fixes some rare CTD's and makes the font larger/more legible.
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Jun 2, 2014 21:08
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Yea, well I'm dumb (and numbers are hard). The latest patch is installed in the steam version.
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Jun 2, 2014 21:32
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Thanks for the answers so far, couple more quick ones: - I Colonized an independent colony, and there was a pirate base under construction on it. Can I attack it now and crush it easily or will it still be stacked with troops? - There is a pirate ship that I guess is warping in and out rapidly? I'm trying to kill it with my regular fleet but having no luck as it just zips out after its shields get low. Warp Inhibitors should stop that and let me kill him right?
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Jun 3, 2014 06:35
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Thanks for the answers so far, couple more quick ones: The base will have some defenders, but not as many as it would when completed. You don't need many troops to take a pirate base, but you do need more than one. Also yes a single warp inhibitor stops all ships in an area from warping away, put it on a strong/fast/agile ship for best results.
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Jun 3, 2014 06:43
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I won my first game...not sure how. By the end I just set automate EVERYTHING, and was getting bombarded with messages, diplomatic requents, 60 pirate attacks a minute, -50k income meaning I can't choose to build anything anyway, and oh, I just won the game. How can I automate fleets? If I set individual ships to automate, they immediately drop fleet and presumably ship spin in a station somewhere. Despite setting fleets to be 70% of all ships, most of the ships seem to be just bumming around or vainly trying and failing to catch the 1-attack-every-second pirate ships running around everywhere. If I tell a fleet "Go defend System X", it either disbands itself or stops defending system X and goes off somewhere by itself. If I set my empire policy to be that Fleets should be 20 ships, the AI just makes them in groups of 8 instead.
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Jun 3, 2014 08:32
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Comstar posted:How can I automate fleets? If I set individual ships to automate, they immediately drop fleet and presumably ship spin in a station somewhere. Despite setting fleets to be 70% of all ships, most of the ships seem to be just bumming around or vainly trying and failing to catch the 1-attack-every-second pirate ships running around everywhere. If I tell a fleet "Go defend System X", it either disbands itself or stops defending system X and goes off somewhere by itself. If I set my empire policy to be that Fleets should be 20 ships, the AI just makes them in groups of 8 instead. The only thing I can think of is that you aren't setting ship types correctly. I'm not entirely sure but I think the AI uses the types when assembling fleets, and they are important in a lot of other ways anyway (i.e. separating state ships and private, deciding which stations get built and where). Escorts are for escorting, frigates are the fleet backbone, destroyers are firepower support and everything else should be self-explanatory. And always leave your ships on automate, they will literally not do anything at all if you don't (there are exceptions, like ordering your exploration ships to go after ruins at the start or if you want to order a fleeing colony ship to go back because you paid off the pirates attacking it). Some other miscellaneus tips: Manufacturing only needs one plant per ~30 construction yards, the ai way overdimensions it. Stations at colonies do not need any cargo space and also do not need more than one fuel cell (you can put in 2 for contingency if you expect it to fight). No static stations need to have more than one reactor if you have energy collectors. Put commerce centers and some shields on all your mining stations. Centralize all your research into one heavily defended shipyard on your homeworld, as the way research bonuses work is that they are applied globally and therefore you only need 2 research components (the minimum) on research points. Mark all your non-mining/non-defense/non-large-shipyard (these are exclusively built by colonies, in a shadows game you can use this to avoid buying a construction ship at the beginning) obsolete so that automated contruction ships won't build them. And make sure to always set taxes as low as you can afford, as that is the main way to improve your economy in this game (no seriously). e: maybe read this if your problem isn't that you have too many escorts, it's a pretty good guide on how to use fleets http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2973167 And I'm sorry if I sound a bit spergy, I spent way too much time finding this stuff out Private Speech fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 09:14
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With resupply ships do I just move them to a gas giant at good location, and leave them there?
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Jun 3, 2014 12:58
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Pretty much - you right click on the planet and choose deploy. Make sure the gas planet in question has the right fuel for your ships (hydrogen or caslon).
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Jun 3, 2014 13:07
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This game is really confusing but fun! It be nice if things were layed out a bit more neatly, the expansion planner is very useful but I really just want something which says "You need these resources for these techs/components" So far, I'm having to go in to the design menu to check what resources I need to build stuff. hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 14:52
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hemale in pain posted:This game is really confusing but fun! It be nice if things were layed out a bit more neatly, the expansion planner is very useful but I really just want something which says "You need these resources for these techs/components" It is a pain - one strategy I use to get around it is to sort by type to strategic resources and just build mining stations to cover strategic resource sources before i do anything else.
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Jun 3, 2014 15:03
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I've been gradually getting back into this game since Universe came out and it finally became not an enormous hassle to install and update  I had several disappointing starts, then a promising one that ended abruptly when I woke up some legendary pirates. After that, I took the advice of turning pirates to "Few" and "Weak", which has made the early game much less stressful and let me concentrate on re-learning how to expand and design ships. Increasing fuel cells on explorers definitely helps. I also decided to try manually controlling my construction ships, and that seems to be working really well -- I'm able to keep mining stations within range of my defense fleets instead of spread out everyone to get randomly wiped out. Turning down the tax rate might have been the most important tip, though. You can quickly run out of money trying to grab good planets quickly, and it's counter-intuitive that lowering taxes actually helps your income, but it does -- the population grows faster, which increases private spending, which puts cash in your pocket and resources in your construction yards. Now I have questions! 
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Jun 3, 2014 15:12
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Goncyn posted:Now I have questions! Both. There are independent traders running around, and they always try to bring stuff you need. You can also recruit pirates to ship things to you for a price, and finally both your and other non-trade-blockaded empires ships trade with your colonies. Goncyn posted:What's the best simple approach to getting research output up early? The high-tech field in particular seems to be taking forever to get anywhere. Stick a bunch of labs on your homeworld shipyard, I like to go with 7-8-9 for weapons/energy/hi-tech to start with. Stacking scientists in one place creates synergy bonuses (except if they have the 'demoralizing' trait, in which case either dismiss or dump them on a special research location if they have a big bonus). Other than that you need to grow your population, therefore lower taxes again (you can run with 0 in a shadows game for a while if you limit your initial spending to exploration and research). You should also start the game in democracy since it has the best expansion bonuses and switching isn't that painful as long as you do it before the proverbial poo poo hits the fan. Goncyn posted:What exactly do automated fleets with defense posture actually respond to? I've witnessed them ignoring space slug harassment of my miners for months, whereas they quickly respond to pirate attacks at colonies. Is this a sensor coverage problem? Will they chase space slugs if I can see them on the map? I'm not 100% sure about this one, I've definitely seen my ships wiping out slugs once they attacked something. It might only be the AI strike forces though (like small fleets with AI fleet automation (AKA fleet formation since it also messes with your fleet orders), not sure what their settings are). e: Just use some escorts, and make sure to put fighter bays on them. It is one of the two good places to put them in, the other being stations. This is because their only drawback is size and escorts are small anyway (and for stations it doesn't matter). You basically get 4 weapons + the equivalent of a shield + countermeasures for the price and energy cost of 1 weapon. Goncyn posted:How important are resource percentages? Should I build mining stations on barren moons with 29% lead to give my constructors something to do, or is that a net loss? It all depends on how scarce the given materials are, if it's something like loros fruit then holy poo poo grab that stuff as quick as you can. Goncyn posted:Will automated ships (e.g. exploration ships) ever automatically refit themselves to the latest design? I have the design empire policy set to manual. Yes and no. Which is to say probably no, but some ships like private sector ones do. You can tell them to retrofit from the ships screen though, just sort by ship type, shift-select and click retrofit. e: Fleets do retrofit, but not with manual upgrades. However you can make a whole fleet retrofit easily from the fleet menu / by pressing a button. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 16:13
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I can't seem to figure out how to deploy resupply ships. I'm assuming that the particular gas cloud I send the ships to isn't made of the right stuff to refuel my ships, which begs the question of what my space ships run on in terms of fuel. Can anyone help me with that?
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Jun 3, 2014 16:21
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There are two types of fuel Caslon and Hydrogen. The first reactors you get use Caslon, and then tech tree branches into Hydrogen and Caslon reactors. Deploy your supply ship to gas cloud/giant that has the right type of resource for your ships.
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Jun 3, 2014 16:29
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Selecting a gas cloud will say in the "system" screen in the lower left corner what it's made of and what resources are available. What your ships use as fuel depends on what reactors they have - it will usually be Caslon but some advanced reactors use Hydrogen. I've never been able to figure out how to deploy resupply ships in a gas cloud, though. Maybe there's some spot to click that isn't clear, but I've always had to use gas giants.
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Jun 3, 2014 16:30
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Thanks for the thorough answers. Lots more to experiment with tonight. This game feels a lot like Dwarf Fortress in that hours can disappear on you while you watch the ant farm do its thing. The one management aid I really wish it had is fleets that "remember" which ships they have lost. If I have 5 frigates and 2 destroyers in a fleet, and 2 of the frigates get slagged, it would be so helpful for the fleet selection panel to display the losses and have a one-click "build reinforcements" button.
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Jun 3, 2014 16:56
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Inglonias posted:I can't seem to figure out how to deploy resupply ships. I'm assuming that the particular gas cloud I send the ships to isn't made of the right stuff to refuel my ships, which begs the question of what my space ships run on in terms of fuel. In gas clouds, you need to CTRL-click to pull up a context menu. It should then give you the option to deploy.
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Jun 3, 2014 18:13
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Comstar posted:I won my first game...not sure how. By the end I just set automate EVERYTHING, and was getting bombarded with messages, diplomatic requents, 60 pirate attacks a minute, -50k income meaning I can't choose to build anything anyway, and oh, I just won the game. There are two forms of automating a fleet, one is automating fleet formation in the options window and the other is the normal automation of the ships/fleets in main window. If you have fleet formation set to AI control via the options you basically don't control your own fleets/ships. The AI not only creates, disbands, and expands/contracts, fleets at will they also set fleet posture and home port. Basically you can't do jack with them. In addition, any individual ship that is automated is subject to the whims of the AI with regards to fleet status. Also it will try and meet your ship limits/maximums when forming fleets, but the game has some internal measurement to assess if that is possible or not and will ultimately do whatever in the hell it wants regardless of your wishes. Moral of the story, don't automate fleet formation unless you're looking to completely eliminate all forms of actual control over your empire's military assets.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:09
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Lowen posted:The base will have some defenders, but not as many as it would when completed. I don't suppose there is a way to just bombard a facility from space is there?
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Jun 3, 2014 21:16
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:I don't suppose there is a way to just bombard a facility from space is there? You can bombard planets but you'll get a bunch of the population and tank the planet quality before you knock out facilities.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:18
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Comstar posted:I won my first game...not sure how. By the end I just set automate EVERYTHING, and was getting bombarded with messages, diplomatic requents, 60 pirate attacks a minute, -50k income meaning I can't choose to build anything anyway, and oh, I just won the game. I've been watching this thread for a bit to decide if I should drop the cash, and I'm not gonna lie, reading this is not particularly encouraging 
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Jun 3, 2014 21:39
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Don't worry, this is Civ so you'll play it more than once. You'll likely, if you're attentive or a sperg like a lot of us, understand most of it by.the end of your first game and won't have that issue yourself.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:46
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:Don't worry, this is Civ so you'll play it more than once. You'll likely, if you're attentive or a sperg like a lot of us, understand most of it by.the end of your first game and won't have that issue yourself. It's not the learning curve, it's that you can seemingly automate the game and win?
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Jun 3, 2014 21:50
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Also, victory conditions are configurable and some are based on your race. Difficulty level is also highly adjustable, and apparently you can set it to automatically make the game harder if you are well ahead of the AI.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:53
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victrix posted:It's not the learning curve, it's that you can seemingly automate the game and win? Why not, one of the AI/player empires has to win. It might as well be the one the player is watching.
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Jun 3, 2014 21:56
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victrix posted:I've been watching this thread for a bit to decide if I should drop the cash, and I'm not gonna lie, reading this is not particularly encouraging Yeah, best not. All of the other reviews are a bit suspect. Edit: I can't seem to map a jump button. What poo poo is this?
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Jun 3, 2014 22:05
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Who plays with victory conditions?
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Jun 3, 2014 22:23
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victrix posted:It's not the learning curve, it's that you can seemingly automate the game and win? You can automate whatever bits and pieces you want. If you automate everything fully, you're basically just an AI player that you're observing. You might win or you might not, but you're basically not playing the game yourself anymore at that point. Essentially it's a semi-sandboxy kind of 4x, so you can set the difficulty and challenges and automation as high or low as you want. And as mentioned, you can adjust the victory conditions or turn them off entirely. Also the automation doesn't seem as smart or efficient as a human player would be much of the time. I imagine you will probably get away less and less with automating everything the harder the difficulty?
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Jun 3, 2014 22:32
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Woa, just saw this on steam when did matrix start this? I thought all the grognards were 100% against steam because its the devil?
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Jun 3, 2014 22:34
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Crash74 posted:Woa, just saw this on steam when did matrix start this? I thought all the grognards were 100% against steam because its the devil? Turns out that the devil has a lot of money.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:35
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I like to set everything to automate, and sometimes stop in to see what my empire is upto. Do some executive decision making, fiddle with some numbers, and leave again.
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Jun 3, 2014 22:42
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The General posted:I like to set everything to automate, and sometimes stop in to see what my empire is upto. Do some executive decision making, fiddle with some numbers, and leave again. Silvio Berlesconi, Is that you?
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Jun 3, 2014 22:46
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Hav posted:Silvio Berlesconi, Is that you? What kind of Bunga Bunga parties do Space Alien Tyrannosaurs have?
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Jun 3, 2014 22:54
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hemale in pain posted:This game is really confusing but fun! It be nice if things were layed out a bit more neatly, the expansion planner is very useful but I really just want something which says "You need these resources for these techs/components" In the Expansion Planner on you can click on resource names and a list of the components that it contributes toward will show up. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:47
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victrix posted:I've been watching this thread for a bit to decide if I should drop the cash, and I'm not gonna lie, reading this is not particularly encouraging It was sort of like watching Babylon 5 the 4X game. The first season you built up and explored, met interesting races and killed them, then you meet the ancients and hear dark rumours of past events. The fleets get bigger, the FX budget increases, you start saying LAUNCH ALL FIGHTERS LAUNCH ALL THE FIGHTERS and end up declaring for the Dark Empire Way Of Doing Things before just switching off during the 5th season and not caring any more. That was what that game was like. I'd also fiddled with the victory conditions and was playing on a smallish map. The game seems to be pretty close to being the 4X Space Game of Babylon 5, an if you play as Pirates, Battlestar Galactica. It's missing some easier interface abilities (the tech tree gives VERY little idea of what you should be researching - I still don't know if I should be researching everything or concentrate on single weapons and ideas (do I need better engines AND better thrusters AND better fuel economy AND med labs??) and having the AI manage *some* things seems to be a bad idea, but overall, if you want to play a 4X Space game, I'd recommend it.
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Jun 4, 2014 00:29
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If you play enough, you'll get to know what you want in the tech tree. Main thing I want is to stick with a short range weapon set, and a long range weapon set. My games at least don't last long enough to research all the weapons. Then I want to be able to expand to as many types of planets as possible, and get to the bigger ships as fast as possible.
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Jun 4, 2014 00:40
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Yeah I had no idea that researching Ocean colonization would increase the productivity of my Marsh planets until the game gave me a popup. I felt a little bad in my game today by advancing my colonization tech way ahead of everyone else by repeatedly stealing from the Ancient Guardians. There really seemed to be no downside as my spy was getting a 90% success rate on everything, and it let me brute force my tech tree every three months. Aside from the spy getting caught is there any downside to doing this, because it seems really really strong.
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Jun 4, 2014 00:59
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My best advice with the weapons tech tree is just decide what sci-fi race you want to Want to be the federation from star trek? Research phasors and epsilon torpedoes. The Kzinti? Missiles. The rebel alliance? Just put maxos blasters and fighter bays on everything, forever. It works fine. You can get away with only picking one weapon, if it's a long ranged one. Short ranged weapons are fine for ships that move around but will make your defence bases and starports useless. Do have something for point defense though, even if it's one of the default guns.
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Jun 4, 2014 01:06
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| # ? May 24, 2024 14:46 |
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Well, almost every weapon gets reasonable range at the end of the tree. The optimal way to play is to basically do exactly one weapon type to save research. This is one of the reasons the AI empires especially have trouble competing with a human late in the game. Having two kinds of weapons almost never brings any synergies.
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Jun 4, 2014 01:14
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