Various things

[zoutzakje]

I just threw this together real quick, hopefully it will help you with the Reference Tab.

this was actually quite helpful (to me at least). Might actually take a real look into it. So far I've always survived without ever using the reference tab.
And I agree that scrolling down a menu shouldn't affect the main display zoom lvl, though I do not know if it''s possible to fix that or not.

[keith.lamothe]

The Mark selection button should just be ignored/disabled/blank when a non-mark ship is selected on the left.  I wasn't thinking of it as a filter on the ship selection, but instead a modifier to what is already selected.  This would let me quickly bounce between marks of a single ship type.  Plus the selected ship dropdown becomes about 1/5th the size since it only lists each ship type once.

The difficulty is that if we literally only display each ShipType once (as opposed to ForegroundObjectType, which it is doing now), you'll just see "Guardian", "Guard Post", "Command Station", etc.  It would have to display a hybrid list: some object types, some ship types.  Not impossible, but nothing at all like fun

[Nodor]

A neat filter on this would be "Ships the AI has".

[keith.lamothe]

A neat filter on this would be "Ships the AI has".

Which I initially did (iirc), but then there were concerns that led to the desire being for "Ships the AI has that I've ever seen", which is way more complex to track.

[Cyborg]

A neat filter on this would be "Ships the AI has".

Which I initially did (iirc), but then there were concerns that led to the desire being for "Ships the AI has that I've ever seen", which is way more complex to track.

Could you just add it as a reconnaissance ability for scout ships and command stations? Perhaps they send out a pulse every so many seconds that adds the ship IDs on the planet to a global hash able to be referenced by the reference page? That would prevent spamming by the CPU, make it realistic scouting, and work around the problem of keeping track of what's in space from a view perspective. The other way to do it is to make these pulses occur on all planets that you have a view of every so many seconds, although I don't know the performance impact of that.

I had one more thought, could you piggyback that ship checking function with the ship summary bar located on the right side of the screen?

[keith.lamothe]

I had one more thought, could you piggyback that ship checking function with the ship summary bar located on the right side of the screen?

Oh, right.  Hadn't thought of that.  That I could do

[keith.lamothe]

I had one more thought, could you piggyback that ship checking function with the ship summary bar located on the right side of the screen?

Oh, right.  Hadn't thought of that.  That I could do

Oops, that's only computed for the currently-viewed planet; and it's not cheap.  Doing it for every planet would be a major cost.

I think I could just add the filter and not worry about whether you've actually seen the ship or not.  It sounds like the convenience of having it outweighs the iffyness of having that info 30 seconds early (assuming you've got scouts on a few AI planets that are on alert and thus get reinforced).

[Catma]

I'm wondering why noone suggest that yet ?

I just got used to doing it "backwards" by reversing "them > me", "me > them", and win/loss in my head.

There are two problems here. One is that the sheet is supposed to be usable in both "directions", and the header names make this weird.

The other, larger problem is that the default "direction" the sheet seems designed to display is, I think, not the one that people want to use the reference sheet for. This is not only because of the use of "me" to mean "thing in the 'display comparisons for ship' box" but is apparent from, for example, the "results" column. Players are far more likely to want information on an ENEMY ship, and thus enter it as the "target" for comparison. The question "how would this ship that I control fare against a variety of targets?" is not something that players generally want to ask; "300 of these are coming, how do I kill them fast?" is.

[sol_ilya]

- How do you kill AI Fortresses ? Bombers are shred due to the burst fire of the fortress and i dont see anything "artillery" that outranges it (+ no immunity)

I use for that bomber starships. Well, that is the first research I do. 4 Bomber starships III, 4 bombers starships II. That would be enough to down it. My tactic is - send bomber starships -- when they got yellow  retreat and repair them - send them again. If there are small ai ships around fortress I can send my non starships bombers to kill those ships and after retreat them back and finish fortress with bomber starships.

If the fortress defended by forcefields tactic is the same. In my last game it took me 25 minutes to destroy fortress that was defended by two forcefileds of V and III level. Also you can make a game settings and play with golems on easy setting. Tht does not change anything. You can repair golems, power off them and if you need them use them. Artillery golem can destroy fortress in 1 minute. So if you play against an AI that uses a lot of fortres just briing an artillery golem and laugh on all them. If you play stable version of the game your fortress has two times more HP then in last beta version. So you are realy playing on hard mode.

- How do you see WHERE a wave is coming from ? I build the warp sensors but i never figured out which wormhole to barricade. Cant you find out where the wave is coming from, assuming you dont kill all but one adjacent warp gate ?

choose minimap of system - you will see a flashing wormhole. that is one.


- The P armor is annoying and has many HP, better to capture it despite losses ?

Yeas, always capture them. Losses should not be much higher.


There was a good question about reference sheet. I am getting message about a wave of anti-armour ships. I need to know what type of anti armour ships are(like light, ultra-light), and what bonuses this ship have against others types. Well all my questions can be easily answered if I have this ship - i just click on it and see all info I need. But if I do not have this ship in my fleet how I can get this information.

[Hearteater]

The Mark selection button should just be ignored/disabled/blank when a non-mark ship is selected on the left.  I wasn't thinking of it as a filter on the ship selection, but instead a modifier to what is already selected.  This would let me quickly bounce between marks of a single ship type.  Plus the selected ship dropdown becomes about 1/5th the size since it only lists each ship type once.

The difficulty is that if we literally only display each ShipType once (as opposed to ForegroundObjectType, which it is doing now), you'll just see "Guardian", "Guard Post", "Command Station", etc.  It would have to display a hybrid list: some object types, some ship types.  Not impossible, but nothing at all like fun

Can you filter the everything list?  Knocking out anything ending in "II", "III", "IV" and "V" should eliminate all mark ships without catching anything it shouldn't.  Trim off anything ending in "I" to make it look cleaner for display.  That should be a short-term work around.

[TechSY730]

The Mark selection button should just be ignored/disabled/blank when a non-mark ship is selected on the left.  I wasn't thinking of it as a filter on the ship selection, but instead a modifier to what is already selected.  This would let me quickly bounce between marks of a single ship type.  Plus the selected ship dropdown becomes about 1/5th the size since it only lists each ship type once.

The difficulty is that if we literally only display each ShipType once (as opposed to ForegroundObjectType, which it is doing now), you'll just see "Guardian", "Guard Post", "Command Station", etc.  It would have to display a hybrid list: some object types, some ship types.  Not impossible, but nothing at all like fun

Can you filter the everything list?  Knocking out anything ending in "II", "III", "IV" and "V" should eliminate all mark ships without catching anything it shouldn't.  Trim off anything ending in "I" to make it look cleaner for display.  That should be a short-term work around.

There are a few ship types that do weird things with their name as they go up Mk. progression, but that sort of "string parsing" filter should take care of at least 95% of the stuff in the game, which is good enough for now.

[Ragnarok]

A follow up on my various questions thread.

- When capting ARLs, do they immediatly unlock a random ship or do they just offer additional unlock possiblities ?
- I play a size 40 galaxy with 1 AI progress all 10 minutes, is that too fast/slow or ok ?
- Can a really point be set in a way that
a) all ships from that facility go into free roaming defender mode
b) move through a wormhole w/ free roaming defender mode on ?


thanks

[zoutzakje]

If you just capture an ARS, you will always get a random unlock. However, if you have used a ship-design hacker on the planet of the ARS before you captured it, you can chose out of 3 ship types after you have captured it. Keep in mind that hacking the AI triggers an increasingly response. Be prepared to fight.

1 AIP per 10 minutes can be tough when you''re new to the game. My advice would be 1 per 30 minutes, that''s kind of the standard for most people (including myself).

I''m afraid I know nothing of rally posts, since I have never used them yet.

[keith.lamothe]

- When capting ARLs, do they immediatly unlock a random ship or do they just offer additional unlock possiblities ?

Prior to version 5.028 they always just gave you a random bonus ship type.  In 5.028+ they do that too, unless you use a Ship Design Hacker ship to hack it before taking out the AI command center there.  If it's been hacked, once you capture it you can pick 1 bonus ship type from the 3 available there.

- I play a size 40 galaxy with 1 AI progress all 10 minutes, is that too fast/slow or ok ?

1 AIP per 10 minutes is in the normal range (1-per-5 is the recommended value, but most players play with 1-per-30 or with it entirely off).

- Can a really point be set in a way that
a) all ships from that facility go into free roaming defender mode
b) move through a wormhole w/ free roaming defender mode on ?

Sure:
1) select the facility (or facilities) in question
2) press tab to go to the galaxy map
3) hold control, hold v, and right click the planet you want the produced ships to FRD to.

[Ragnarok]

More !

- How do you best defend against spire devourer ships ?
- How again can you "manually" alter the galaxy setup, i.e. move systems ?
- When setting up a game and choosing a homesysten & special ship, what does the small number right next to the vessels icon indicate ?