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Been ages since I played but if I recall correctly, you have to send a construction ship to actually repair them (they turn over to your control once operational). It's important to take advantage of it as soon as possible and fix as many ships as you can before the AI players get in there. I always went for the largest ships first and gradually worked my way down.
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Aug 27, 2012 03:34
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I played this a few years back when it was distributed by Digital River (I think?) Though I liked the scope of it, the lack of polish and general clunkiness was a big turn off. I seem to remember the interface lagging a lot too. Have they largely eliminated these issues with all the expansions?
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May 24, 2014 01:00
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Demiurge4 posted:A popular min-max strategy is to design a cheap barebones starbase that's basically just a space dock with no weapons shields or armor because they're super cheap in maintenance and the hospital and entertainment modules will help new colonies grow. I built one of these and a bunch of research stations around my homeworld. If I put med centers and recreation centers on each orbiting structure, will they all add up, or does only one station grant benefits to the planet? Also, I have a bunch of designs on manual upgrade but also set to retrofit automatically, and yet I've never seen this occur (not even the popup suggesting a retrofit that I sometimes see when everything is set to auto). Getting kind of tedious going through all my gas stations and retrofitting them manually. Is there a setting I've missed?
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May 26, 2014 23:22
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Yeah, that's what I've been doing, but I guess I was expecting that if certain designs were set to retrofit automatically they'd retrofit . . . automatically.
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May 26, 2014 23:39
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Mad Wack posted:I just had a game where there was a four sector (the big grid blocks) wall between me and my greatest enemy full of SilverMists - they were all fully leveled up. I turned it into a gigantic DMZ and had it ringed with monitoring stations to watch my idiot enemy send swarms of ships in there to feed the demons. I tried a few expeditions in the late game with specialized ships but the prospect of taking all of them down just seemed like a waste when I could just ignore the sectors and get on with winning. It would be nice if you could actually designate neutral zones and no-go areas that would prevent automated ships (especially construction ships) from entering them willy nilly, or perhaps give some kind of range restriction on how far they can travel from your colonies. I recently had a constructor fly to the other side of the galaxy because dude just had to plant a mine on that 90% mega nut planet (despite my empire already overflowing with the drat things). Now he's bouncing back and forth because the system is infested with pirate scum, but guy really wants his goddamn nuts. Love the pre-warp start, by the way. I don't think it was an option when I played the base game some years back, and indeed one of the reasons I found it hard to get into the game back then was that it seemed like there was too much going on too quickly. A pre-warp startup feels much more natural and allows you to become accustomed to the game far more easily, but is still challenging in its own way due to how you have to deal with pirates and resource shortages. DancingMachine posted:Now that I bought it, reading this thread is making me less inclined to actually play the game. It's overwhelming. Are there any decent getting started guides around that are actually up to date with the latest version? There's a list of guides here: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3497284. I'm not sure how up-to-date they are, though, and at least a few of them aren't really guides per se but advice threads. I think one of the best things you can do at the start is leave most empire settings on either fully automated or 'suggestions,' and then just play around with various areas of the game in your own time. Once you get the hang of things, you can gradually ween yourself off automation and use manual settings for aspects of your empire you want to take fully in hand, while still using automation for things you either don't completely understand yet or simply don't really care about controlling. Note that you probably shouldn't put ship construction on automated at the start, since its one of the more important aspects of the game to learn how to manage, especially early on when resources are low. Also a pre-warp start on easy difficulty with pirates set to low (or turned off entirely) would probably be helpful, because all you have at the start is your homeworld, and therefore have to build your first spaceport and then your exploration ships etc, which allows you to get a handle on the basics more gradually. If you start in the hyperdrive era you have a whole load of junk flying around right from the get-go and it can be pretty drat confusing at first.
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May 28, 2014 05:39
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The race graphics are so much better in the Extended mod, though I think it's kind of a shame the modder chose to replace the stock Naxxilian picture with a brutal-looking humanoid guy. Goofy as it was, I liked the space T-rex.
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May 29, 2014 02:38
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What does the number after planet and star types mean, e.g. "Desert planet 29.4k" or "Main sequence star 99.1k"? Is it something to do with resource quantity? Phlegmish posted:That makes sense, I think I just have the mindset where I want to start from nothing and grow into a transgalactic empire. I assume I'm just frustrated because even with my lack of experience I don't really see what I could have done differently. I tried to expand as quickly as possible, build the appropriate mining stations, colonize, but my finances were constantly in the red and pirates were harassing me non-stop, pretty much putting me in a vicious cycle of stagnation. You can just do a custom game where you start in the pre-warp era but turn pirate numbers & strength to low (or off entirely, if you prefer). I finally gave up on my AoS game despite getting pretty far because it was just too drat exhausting. I started in the center of the galaxy and had more than a dozen pirate clans around me. At any given moment in time something was under attack, and many planets were just 24/7 brawls as me and several pirate fleets fought for supremecy over them. I was slowly making progress against them, but the sheer volume of poo poo to deal with made it agonizingly slow. I don't think I even bothered interacting with the normal empires - they were a complete irrelevence next to the constant, uninhibited and all-out pirate attacks. I feel like ships should be harder to build or something because the rate at which they were churning out deathfleets was just unreal. Thank god for the silent alert mod, at least. Also I think if you turn off the AoS storyline in the victory settings screen it removes a lot of the early scripted stuff, like that racketeer who always pops in to say hi right at the start.
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May 30, 2014 00:04
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Panzeh posted:I'm finding that missiles aren't tremendously effective in this game because it's tough to make a ship that is actually fast enough to stay out of other weapon range while also doing a meaningful amount of DPS. I find them useful on static defences. Because the enemy will be coming towards them or whatever it is they're guarding, manoeuvering isn't an issue, and the greater range of the missiles means they can bring them under fire much sooner. They aren't that great at actually killing enemies due to being fairly weak and 50% less effective against armour, but as I largely view static defences as a means of warding off attacks (by forcing retreats) or delaying them until help can arrive, it's not a huge problem. They're also useful for attacking static objects (like bases) when used enmasse. Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 00:21 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 00:17
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Travic posted:What's the math behind the resource percentages on planets? http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2966128&mpage=1&key= This guide seems to say that it acts as a sort of multiplier for your mining engines and also a cap on how much you can mine per week. Hasn't been updated in a couple of years, though, so who knows how accurate it still is.
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May 31, 2014 04:05
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Agree about the lack of charm, though a lot of the new pictures do look pretty sweet. I especially like the look of the Avian races now, and that machine reptile species that look like they've got tire treads for skin. There's also another reptilian race that looks like a dino, so maybe the modder thought one was enough? (one is not enough!  )I keep getting Babylon 5 vibes playing this game.
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May 31, 2014 04:38
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Watching two fleets in-system constantly warping to each other's last position in a futile attempt to engage truly is a sight to behold . . . Meanwhile, as if the regular pirate jerks weren't bad enough, I just encountered legendary pirates for the first time. Aside from their deathfleet mashing all my mining/gas stations, one of their frigates has been buzzing my core systems. It's got one of those ultra-tuned hyperdrives that engages in like 4 seconds or something, making it thus far impossible to bring enough firepower to bear on it before it jumps away to safety. Because it causes all the freighter traffic to poo poo themselves and run wherever it appears, a lone frigate has singlehandedly brought my economy to a grinding halt. 
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May 31, 2014 13:05
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Anyone got any suggestions on music for the game? Internet radio sites or whatever? I usually turn the in-game music off (some tracks are good, but others are too bombastic for my tastes), and put on some Stellardone instead. It's pretty much the perfect space ambient music for this kind of game. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN3mTAHrp90
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Jun 2, 2014 09:16
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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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I feel like there should be an extra setting or two between flee at 20% shields and "fight to the bitter end - no retreat! ". It's getting a bit stupid watching uber-battleships with 50+ plates of ultradense running home to mommy as soon as a couple of them get dinged.
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Jun 4, 2014 02:14
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Westminster System posted:One the one hand, theres nothing that you could really consider a downside. It always makes my day when you see some independent colony being harassed by a fleet of pirate ships preventing trade from getting through, and then some random Ancient escort trundles by and hoses them all in about 10 seconds flat. Yeah, don't piss them off, especially in the early game. They are pretty much the Vorlons/First Ones in this setting. Stevefin posted:Yeah I agree. especially if you put rail guns on everything, you can win fights and raids as rail guns can bypass shields and the moment they start taking armour damage they want to flee I have a similar issue with gravity beams. It's not they're hard to fight against, as their slow ROF means you can often overwhelm ships that are equipped with them between shots, but since they go straight for the guts of your ships, it causes fleets to scatter and creates a massive logistical headache in the aftermath of battles. Especially problematic if you're trying to keep a force together for an attack on a powerful base.
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Jun 4, 2014 02:43
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Flippycunt posted:Two questions: For fleets, I find it useful to have them stop and assemble a short distance away from whatever it is I want to attack, and then jump the fleet again once all ships are present. This makes it it much more likely they'll arrive in a somewhat cohesive group rather than in dribs and drabs. For resupply ships you need to move them to a planet with caslon or hydrogen gas (ship reactors use one or the other - it'll tell you in the design screen) and right click on the planet to bring up the option for deploy. Once deployed, it basically acts like a gas mining station your ships can dock and refuel at.
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Jun 4, 2014 07:59
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If your troop ships are actually loaded they should just land soldiers automatically when you attack the planet. Sometimes the defensive troops on a planet are so strong (especially if they have planetary defense units, which attack troops on the way down) that they cut down invading waves from individual transports almost immediately. Since you say you're attacking their home world, this could be what's happening. For such planets you really need to use overwhelming numbers of troops to stand any chance. If you click on 'troops' in the planet screen, it'll tell you what the combined defense strength is, which is useful or planning attacks.
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Jun 5, 2014 09:37
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It's a bit of an awkward process (hey, what isn't in this game?): Go to the colonies screen and select the colony with the pirate base. There will be a facilities tab - click on this and you'll see what pirate facilities are there. Select one of the pirate facilities (if there are several, it doesn't matter which one you select - they all get attacked at the same time), and then click attack. Your troops on the planet will then attack the pirates, and you can watch their progress as you would any normal ground battle. Make sure you have a fair number of troops on hand first, though. I've seen firmly entrenched pirates with a strength of ~300k before. My personal strategy is to have a dedicated pirate cleanup crew - a transport packed with tanks and grunts that just goes from planet to planet clearing out whatever scumbags have set up shop there.
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Jun 6, 2014 05:38
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WYA posted:Why airnt my private ships getting hyper drives? Are you saying they're not retrofitting to the latest design, or not even designing new ships with hyperdrives in the first place? If it's the former, assuming you have the resources to do so (you almost certainly will) and your private sector has a decent balance, they usually queue it to be done after their current task. Since in the pre-warp era you'll likely have ships strewn out across your home system slowly plodding along, it can obviously take a fair bit of time for them to finish their job and then return to the shipyard. If the latter, then I can only assume that you've set their designs to manual, meaning you have to add hyperdrives yourself. Personally I'd just go automated for the various private ships, especially with the latest patch ensuring they have enough energy to power their hyperdrives at max speed. Esroc posted:Is there a way to get rid of the infinitely respawning Slugs on Korribian Spice planets? I've built defense batteries that take'em out whenever they pop up but its still really annoying when they destroy some civvie ship before the batteries can do their job. I haven't actually found Korabbian spice yet, but I would guess maybe colonizing the planet might stop them from spawning? (assuming you haven't already tried that).
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Jun 7, 2014 04:58
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WYA posted:How much excess energy do I want on my ships? When designing ships you should account for cruise speed energy + shield recharge + weapons energy, as this is how much energy it will typically use per second in a fight. If your excess energy is equal to or greater than the sum of that, you're good. What I would like is for the maximum energy use for all weapons firing at once to be displayed in the design screen, instead of having to calculate it yourself. It's possible to design a ship with enough energy/second to consistently fire its weapons, but have too small a capacitor to unleash them all in an alpha strike. Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 05:52
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Happy Hedonist posted:What's the "Maximum Weapons Energy usage" in the design screen if it's not the max energy use for all weapons fired at once? I wish this poo poo was clearly labeled, it's god drat frustrating and is why I've put the game away about 10 times in the last two years. It's actually max. energy use per second. For example, if you add a shockwave torpedo to your design, although the weapon uses 60 energy per shot, because it only fires every 3.8 seconds, your actual energy usage/second will be 16. However, your ships also have a capacitor size (energy storage) which caps how much energy they can use in one go. Say you have a quantum reactor - 120 energy output and 230 storage. That's enough energy/s to give you sustained fire with 7 shockwave torpedoes (111 energy/s), not accounting for engine or shield recharge energy. However, because the torpedoes actually use 60 energy per shot, your capacitor will drain after firing 3-4 of them, and the ship will settle into a pattern where it fires a continuous stream of torpedoes one after the other at a rate of about 2 shots a second as the capacitor charges just enough to fire one shot. If you added a second reactor, all 7 torpedoes would fire together every 3.8 seconds. If this all sounds spergy to you, don't worry about it. As long as you have enough energy for sustained fire, that's probably good enough for most situations. I just like the idea of my ships being able to unleash all their death cannons at once instead of dribbling shots out.
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Jun 7, 2014 23:30
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The only weapons I'd be a bit careful with are railguns and their upgrades. They can either be incredibly effective or virtually useless due to the 50% penalty against armour. In particular, while they can be useful enmasse against smaller ship sizes, they are horrible against bases due to the massive number of plates the AI puts on its designs. They can also be a liability in actually tying down and destroying ships if you don't have sufficient hyperdenial systems, since ships that take component damage, which includes armour, immediately go into flee mode, and with railguns you're much less likely to overwhelm the remaining armour before they escape. Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 02:32
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Mining stations use private finances, so if they've got no money, you won't be able to build any. I've never actually seen my private sector go into the red on new ships before - they always seem to wait until they have a fair amount of cash on hand before doing so. If their cashflow is positive, though, it should balance on fairly quickly, especially now that you have hyperdrives. Also, if your own finances are sound, you may want to make things easier on them for a bit by reducing taxes.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:02
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Yeah, the problem is pirates continuously get stronger, and the stronger they are the more they'll ask for. To be honest, as a new player you probably shouldn't be doing the Age of Shadows start anyway. It's designed for veteran players looking for an extra challenge, and gets absolutely brutal very quickly once you begin expanding. I also don't think the AI empires handle it very well: every AoS game I've attempted so far results in most of the competing empires being very stunted. This makes them largely irrelevent in your affairs, and puts the focus almost entirely on you fighting pirates. Eventually you'll be under almost constant pirate attack, which is annoying as gently caress because it only takes one escort to scatter all your civilian traffic, and will likely drive you insane if you're not using the silent alert mod. I quit my last AoS game because almost all my colonies were the scene of 24/7 brawls between me and competing pirate factions. You can slowly make progress as you hunt down and eradicate pirate bases, but the whole thing is just incredibly exhausting. I like the pre-warp start, though, so I usually play a custom game with that enabled but the Age of Shadows storyline off, which makes pirates a lot more manageable.
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Jun 12, 2014 02:49
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I use this one: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3339520 It's such a minor change but it improved my playing experience amazingly. It's important to get alerts, but the sound effect is really grating, and was completely killing the game for me. It also makes the very minor visual change of adding green ticks/plus signs for positive events, which I consider an improvement.
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Jun 12, 2014 03:19
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Comstar posted:How many engines/shields/batteries etc do you need? I want to make my own ships, but I don't want to have to redesign them every 5 minutes when I get a new tech. Three main things to bear in mind when designing fighting ships: Max. weapons energy usage per second Shield recharge per second Cruise speed energy per second The sum of these is what your ship will typically use in battle (ships use sprint to move towards targets, but reduce to cruise when engaging them in weapons range) per second, so you will want your reactor power to match this. For example, a ship with weapons energy of 50, shield energy of 1 and cruise energy of 20 will need at least 71 excess energy from the reactor to do all those things with efficiency. It's also really important to think about fuel storage, because fuel doesn't just influence your range: it also represents fighting endurance, or if you like - ammo, as the energy that powers your weapons is converted from your fuel storage. Inadequate design will result in your strike ships reaching their target after a long journey, only to have about 10 seconds' worth of fighting fuel left (note that this is where resupply ships are worth their weight in gold, as they can set up shop near potential targets to give your fleets max fuel supplies before going into battle). PittTheElder posted:Should I be designing my own ships, or is the AI acceptably decent at it? Is there a particular branch of weapons that's good, or should u have a mix of everything? What counts as a real fleet? I'm currently focused on building just such a fleet so I can cancel the 1000 credit protection agreement I have. The AI designs are adequate for the most part, though naturally a human can make much more effective designs when they know what they're doing. Personally I design everything except private ships. There are lots of variables for weapons, and there's a massive potential for sperging about dps, damage/size ratios etc, but in practice, it generally doesn't matter that much what you choose so long as the other aspects of your design are consistent with the weapons you've decided to go with. For example, if you're using short-ranged weapons like blasters, then you want to make sure your ship is fairly quick, so it can close in quickly with ships that use longer ranged weapons, and keep pace with them if they try to move away. On the other hand, ships with long-ranged standoff weapons which you intend to use against stationary bases obviously don't need to worry about speed and agility so much. It's useful to pay attention to your opponents' designs, and what their shield and firepower ratings are like compared to yours. Obviously you will want to match or exceeed those if possible. If their size 230 frigates have 40 firepower and 180 shields, while yours have 50 firepower and 260 shields, chances are yours are going to win. Obviously it's not quite that simple given the variety of weapons available (some of which are highly specialized like ion cannons and gravity beams), but going through all those variables accounting for speed, armour, shield recharge, number of ships, range, cosmic background radiation levels etc would require an absolute megapost of sperglord proportions, so at your current level, I think firepower/shield values is about what it boils down to, and thus the main thing to keep in mind. Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 13:53
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