A few small questions:

[Lord Of Nothing]

Hello.
I have two questions:
Are youngling firefly death explosions supposed to penetrate shields?
Secondly, when does the game decide on the shard locations for Fallen spire? At the start of the game, at the end of the survey, or at the beginning of the survey?
Thanks in advance.

22/11/2012: More questions: (On the nature of 'are these bugs?')
1. Why, in the last nebula, does the neinzul mourner facility spawn next to the small, starbase, not the large? (Matters beacuase of assist from the large starbase.)
2. Is it intentional that, with full-map visibility on, you still require a scout (Or a ship that acts as one) at a planet in order to give a display  of the number of AI ships there? (In the top-left corner, and also on the Galaxy map.)
3. With Exo-Galactic strikeforces, is it intentional that the lead ships sometimes 'peek through' the wormhole, before retreating to wait for the other, slower ships? Beacause it goes rather badly for them if the destination has a Black Hole Machine!

[zoutzakje]

the only of those questions I think I can answer is the question about the shards. I think (not sure) that it decides a spawn location when the survey ends. I vaguely remember having saved once while the timer was running, got world x as spawn location, then reloaded for some reason and got world y as spawn location. This was many months ago so I could be completely wrong.

[TechSY730]

Hello.
I have two questions:
Are youngling firefly death explosions supposed to penetrate shields?
Secondly, when does the game decide on the shard locations for Fallen spire? At the start of the game, at the end of the survey, or at the beginning of the survey?
Thanks in advance.

First one, I don't think so. Sounds like you found a bug.

For the second one,
The deterministic criteria for the locations of the shards are now fixed upon game start; their set of eligible spawn locations is now based solely on locations of homeworlds and which shard number you are on.
However, in the case where more than one planet meets this criteria, it randomly selects one planet from that set. I am not sure if that random selection is determined at game seed or when the shard is "discovered".

[Kahuna]

First one, I don't think so. Sounds like you found a bug.

The explosion is same as a Lightning Warhead. Just smaller and does less damage. And Lightning Warheads ignore Force Fields.

[KDR_11k]

We might as well abolish electric shuttles now that we have fireflies. A wave of few hundred of those already deals a LOT of damage to everything around and "around" is a pretty large distance here.

[TechSY730]

We might as well abolish electric shuttles now that we have fireflies. A wave of few hundred of those already deals a LOT of damage to everything around and "around" is a pretty large distance here.

Not sure if it is so much that as fireflies may need a bit of a nerf and electric shuttles need a decent buff (in stats and/or behavior).

[Hearteater]

Completely random Elec. Shuttle proposal:

EShuttles use a "chain lightning" style attack that strikes a relatively small number of targets, like 10, by bouncing from target to target.  This can be a true bounce where each target is selected after the previous one, or just an AOE around the first target that picks 9 other targets.  If the former, it could even have some delay between bounces, such as one bounce/frame so as not to overload things.  Obviously with this smaller number of targets, their damage could go up.  Since they'd be ranged instead of Point-Blank AOE, they also wouldn't be getting suicidally close anymore.

In addition to this though, EShuttles always combine attacks when possible.  That is when an EShuttle fires, all allied EShuttles within range of it (the firing EShuttle) fire as well, summing their damage together.  This would greatly reduce the target selection even with massive amounts of EShuttles.  In addition, I think everyone would be much more pleased when their cap of EShuttles unloads its full DPS on a focused group of 10 targets, rather than spreading it out over 200.

How this "chain lightning" attack gets animated could be just the current Lightning Turret effect on the initial target, multiple smaller "Lightning Turret" effects on each target hit, straight lines (like Beam Frigates) between each target, or an actual "Lightning Bolt" image stretched between targets.  I think getting the right mechanic though would be most important over the visual.

[TechSY730]

Completely random Elec. Shuttle proposal:

EShuttles use a "chain lightning" style attack that strikes a relatively small number of targets, like 10, by bouncing from target to target.  This can be a true bounce where each target is selected after the previous one, or just an AOE around the first target that picks 9 other targets.  If the former, it could even have some delay between bounces, such as one bounce/frame so as not to overload things.  Obviously with this smaller number of targets, their damage could go up.  Since they'd be ranged instead of Point-Blank AOE, they also wouldn't be getting suicidally close anymore.

In addition to this though, EShuttles always combine attacks when possible.  That is when an EShuttle fires, all allied EShuttles within range of it (the firing EShuttle) fire as well, summing their damage together.  This would greatly reduce the target selection even with massive amounts of EShuttles.  In addition, I think everyone would be much more pleased when their cap of EShuttles unloads its full DPS on a focused group of 10 targets, rather than spreading it out over 200.

How this "chain lightning" attack gets animated could be just the current Lightning Turret effect on the initial target, multiple smaller "Lightning Turret" effects on each target hit, straight lines (like Beam Frigates) between each target, or an actual "Lightning Bolt" image stretched between targets.  I think getting the right mechanic though would be most important over the visual.

EShuttles already use the chain lightning mechanic (in fact, IIRC, they were the first to get it), the same way lightning turrets do. This is why I agree with making them not try to "zero in" on their target suicidally.

Your suggestion to have a group of in-range EShuttles attempt to choose the same N targets is interesting.

[Hearteater]

I don't believe that is correct.  EShuttles are just AOE with a cap.  This roughly simulate a chain lightning mechanic, but they aren't truly chaining between targets.  Note that there are very few un-capped AOE in the game.  Warheads and Martyrs are the only two I believe, both because of their downsides.

My "just an AOE around the first target that picks 9 other targets" suggestion is pretty much what they do now except with fewer targets and more like a Grenade Launcher in that they have actually have a range to hit their initial target.  The combining of attacks, besides being interesting, has two main purposes: The first is to make fewer actually attacks so that the targeting routines are used less even with massive number of EShuttles.  The second is it results in very focused fire which should produce a much better feel.  I think there probably should be a cap on the number of EShuttles that can combine just so really large AI formations don't waste 5000 EShuttle's to kill only 10 targets each attack because the all combined together and overkilled the heck out of them.

[Aeson]

However, in the case where more than one planet meets this criteria, it randomly selects one planet from that set. I am not sure if that random selection is determined at game seed or when the shard is "discovered".

Prior to the change in spawning logic, the planet a shard spawned on was set at the time the shard was "discovered." While I have not checked to see if this is still the case, I see no reason why this would have been changed and assume that the shard location is still set on discovery rather than at map generation. If nothing else, having the game set the spawn locations during map generation would require some extra information be saved, and for something that isn't really worth setting at the start of the game.

[Lord Of Nothing]

22/11/2012: More questions: (On the nature of 'are these bugs?')
1. Why, in the last nebula, does the neinzul mourner facility spawn next to the small, starbase, not the large? (Matters beacuase of assist from the large starbase.)
2. Is it intentional that, with full-map visibility on, you still require a scout (Or a ship that acts as one) at a planet in order to give a display  of the number of AI ships there? (In the top-left corner, and also on the Galaxy map.)
3. With Exo-Galactic strikeforces, is it intentional that the lead ships sometimes 'peek through' the wormhole, before retreating to wait for the other, slower ships? Beacause it goes rather badly for them if the destination has a Black Hole Machine!