GromitFan

Join Date 10/2007

Semi-Noob Questions

TA Beta 4

Some of these might be bugs, some of them might be intentional by design...but I figure there's surely people around here who know better than I do! Sorry if any of these are already dead horses...I tried to stay away from stuff like multiplayer.

1 -- I built a terror star next to the Drengin home star system. It sat there mobilizing for 10 weeks, and they didn't lift a finger on the "tough" difficulty. Granted, we weren't at war, but if someone was building a gigantic death ray aimed at my homeworld's star, shouldn't it be considered a "red flag"?

2 -- Is it intentional to have ships "gain" movement by stopping at a friendly planet on the way? Entering and leaving orbit takes no movement, so I can go a total of 5 distance using only 3 movement as long as I go through a planet.

3 -- I was playing the Iconian Refuge, and I chose some evil action on my only occasion for one of those "moral choice" events. Then, when it came time to pick my ethical alignment, my little ticker was sitting as high on the "good" scale as you can go. Aren't your choices supposed to move your alignment?

4 -- Anecdotally, it seems like I don't get any more ethical choices after I choose my ethical alignment. Is that true? And if not, would there be any penalties for the saintly Iconians to make evil choices?

5 -- Why do ships sometimes have more HP than their maximum, (eg. 37/32)?

6 -- What's the rationale by which ships gain HP? In my current game as the Iconians, I've had medium sized ships gain a few HP by knocking out measly enemy freighters. Yet in games as other races, gaining HP after victories seems rare.

7 -- Is it intentional to have no "buildup" of star dock resources? For example, if I am 50% towards building a 400BC ship, and then I switch to building a 100BC ship, I'll get one 100BC ship, but after that I start from scratch. I would have expected to get two 100BC ships.

8 -- Why a limit of 1 starship per week per planet?

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Well, I have only limited experience with TA (i have the beta but play DA more) but some of these are true for either version.

1.) At Tough (intelligent) usually the AI will throw a fit if you have transports next to their worlds. With starbases, at least in DA, this tends to be more of a diplomatic hit than actual justification for war. I would surmise that they see your terror star as annoyance currently, and that will increase as it gets more developed.

2.) As I understand it that is in fact a bug, you shouldn't be gaining (or not losing) movement points by going through a planet. In DA you lose the movement point.

3.) One or two evil actions usually won't be enough to move the 'good' races from that alignment. Each evil action has a corresponding value of "evilness" (or goodness if selected). Some actions are considered "more evil" than others.

4.) No, once you select an ethical alignment thats it for the random moral choices.

5.) This could be due to a few reasons. Either you've developed trade goods, race-specific technologies or infrastructure, gained EXP, etc that can cause your HP to be higher than 'normal'

6.) Each battle gives a ship experience. The amount of experience depends on how many ships and how they relate to you.

7.) yes, that is intentional. There is no carry over on manufacturing projects. There is some carry over in the research screen but only to the next tech in that line.

8.) just the way the games was designed .

I'm sure people more experienced with TA than me will chime in also.

in any case, enjoy your game!

-silver-

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Thanks silver!

1 -- With regards to the terror star, the "intelligent" Drengin just sat there and drooled until I blew up their home star system. THAT got their attention.

4 -- Bummer! I like those moral quandaries...but I like the bonuses from declaring ethics too!

5 -- Actually, I did ALL those things you mentioned. Quite a few of my Iconian medium ships have over 100 HP. I just thought it was weird to see a fractional display of HP greater than 100%.

6 -- That's the thing though. Usually, I get a few HP here and there for the tough battles. But my Iconians were racking up HP by picking off unarmed enemy freighters and space miners.

Thanks on the rest...

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1) AFAIK, they're still working on having the AI treat the Terror Stars with the appropriate response. It is, after all, still in beta.

2) Silverbeacher is incorrect; planet hopping does indeed work to "extend" your movement points in DA (1.80g for the curious). I've always wondered why exactly this is, but then again it's nice to be able to relaunch a ship in the appropriate direction without using up a move point. My guess is it's probably a pain in the ass to fix that, code-wise. And while it may be useful, it doesn't crash the game or anything, as far as I know, so it might be a low priority.

5) When you have a ship in orbit around a planet, it repairs faster (i.e. more) than in space, but it still does repair in space as well. IIRC, the TA Iconians get a fairly ridiculous repair bonus. In any case, the amount that is repaired does not take max hp into account. This gives rise to a ship with say 13/15 HP repairing another 5 HP and being at 18/15 HP, or similar. Repairing does stop after it has reached or exceeded the max hp, as I remember (I can't recall ever having a ship with significantly more than max hp, just a little), however.

6) Generally, I find I only get experience when fighting ships with attack and/or defense, in DA at least. Maybe I got experience for killing off the AI's 0/0 defenders; I can't remember. I've been playing TA, but not extensively, and haven't really paid attention to when and how I get experience. My best guess would be that it has something to do with the ship maintenance, but I'm probably way off base. You do mention that this happens as the Iconians more than with anyone else (if at all), so it may very well be related to the HP and/or repair bonuses they get. Who knows, maybe it's a bug?

Nothing more to add on the other points; Silver is dead on.

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i'll have to pay attn to the movement points; since I always load my starter colonizer into my HW and then relaunch (i figure the Class 3 or 4 secondary world can't grow above 1.32 Billion anyway why waste valuable money (people) on it at the start) and I know I was losing my movement point then.

Ah yes, thats a possibilty. I was thinking about it more after I posted and thought I had seen similar things when i've upgraded ships.

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Sole Soul,

5 -- That makes sense. The dreaded "greater than or equal to" bug strikes again! It's usually no big deal, but I've seen an Iconian ship go into low orbit to repair some scratches on the paint and come out with something like 120/95 HP. (Not that I've been abusing this little bug, no not me)

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2) Silverbeacher is incorrect; planet hopping does indeed work to "extend" your movement points in DA (1.80g for the curious). I've always wondered why exactly this is, but then again it's nice to be able to relaunch a ship in the appropriate direction without using up a move point. My guess is it's probably a pain in the ass to fix that, code-wise. And while it may be useful, it doesn't crash the game or anything, as far as I know, so it might be a low priority.

Bolded QTF. I reported this the first time I came across being able to do this. The response I got from a dev was that it wasn't a game-breaking issue.

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This sound like an AI 'bug'. More like an oversight, though: they should definitely be worried. Brad usually notices these posts, though, and fixes the bugs.

2 -- Is it intentional to have ships "gain" movement by stopping at a friendly planet on the way? Entering and leaving orbit takes no movement, so I can go a total of 5 distance using only 3 movement as long as I go through a planet.

Never heard of this... sounds like a bug, though.

3 -- I was playing the Iconian Refuge, and I chose some evil action on my only occasion for one of those "moral choice" events. Then, when it came time to pick my ethical alignment, my little ticker was sitting as high on the "good" scale as you can go. Aren't your choices supposed to move your alignment?

The ethical alignment is a scale from 99 (pure good) to 0 (pure evil). The Ethical Choices only move a few steps on this scale, so someone like the Iconians, who I'm pretty sure start on 99 on the scale, it would be quite understandable if you didn't even get to neutral.

4 -- Anecdotally, it seems like I don't get any more ethical choices after I choose my ethical alignment. Is that true? And if not, would there be any penalties for the saintly Iconians to make evil choices?

This is true. The Moral Choices are to choose your alignment, basically. (they stop after you choose alignment) Although you get to choose in the end, making Good choices makes it 10,000 bc to become evil.

5 -- Why do ships sometimes have more HP than their maximum, (eg. 37/32)?

Many reasons. It's not really a maximum, just a normal 'full' HP.

6 -- What's the rationale by which ships gain HP? In my current game as the Iconians, I've had medium sized ships gain a few HP by knocking out measly enemy freighters. Yet in games as other races, gaining HP after victories seems rare.

Iconians have huge repair bonuses.

7 -- Is it intentional to have no "buildup" of star dock resources? For example, if I am 50% towards building a 400BC ship, and then I switch to building a 100BC ship, I'll get one 100BC ship, but after that I start from scratch. I would have expected to get two 100BC ships.

I don't know if it's intentional... it could be either way...

8 -- Why a limit of 1 starship per week per planet?

Why not, really? Easier to code, probably.

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Thanks for the replies, folks. I'm so grateful, here's some more questions!

9. How long should I expect to wait before enemy planets which are rebelious (>4.0) finally join my side? I've been waiting on some Drengin worlds for about 30 turns.

10. Is the Mind Control Center broken? Even after I built one, rebellious planets weren't joining my side immediately.

11. How do spying bonuses affect anything? I'm not aware of any die rolls in espionage. Do spying bonuses make it quicker to gain intelligence?

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9 and 10.) its a random variable each turn, basically its kinda like flipping a coin. I am unsure in TA how the MCC (if its even there now) works, but in DL and DA the MCC greatly diminishes world flipping even though it was originally designed to do the opposite. The worlds WILL still flip to you, just takes about 3 game years or a very high influence rating (base race ability over 150%). The big (main) use of the MCC is its 100% economic bonus, the largest single increase in economic power in the game; if you're going evil just build the No Mercy Invasion Center and invade (for free) instead. Its faster.

11.) espionage bonuses, AFAIK, change the amount of your economy you get to spend on espionage. With espionage always spend the LOWEST amount for the timeframe that you comfortable with (ie, if your ok with spies taking two weeks to "build", then stay at the lowest value that gives you the two week build time or you will waste money on their training)

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

9. How long should I expect to wait before enemy planets which are rebelious (>4.0) finally join my side? I've been waiting on some Drengin worlds for about 30 turns.

For every turn a planet could culture flip, a random number calculation is used to determine if the planet flips or not. As such, its theorectically possible that a planet could never flip, or it could flip the first chance it got regardless of the loyalty bonus.

10. Is the Mind Control Center broken? Even after I built one, rebellious planets weren't joining my side immediately.

Yes and no. I've never used it, but I've read that it doesn't do what its says its supposed to do. If I recall correctly, what it does is provide all of your planets with a +100% economic bonus.

Inaddition, it might prevent enemy planets from culture flipping to you as well. You might want to try a game without it to check since you mentioned in the previous question that planets weren't flipping.

11. How do spying bonuses affect anything? I'm not aware of any die rolls in espionage. Do spying bonuses make it quicker to gain intelligence?

You get spies quicker. I haven't bothered to figure out what the bonus does exactly beyond that.

More spies planted on enemy planets does increase the rate you gain intellegence though...

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The MCC doesn't do anything anymore. I'm playing my 1st TA game. I'm playing the Krynn. Got Ethics and chose evil. Got to Concepts of Malice and built the MCC. You no longer get the 100% economy bonus, but you still seem to take the hit on flipping planets.

Is this just a Krynn thing?

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