Updating the Wiki

[Diazo]

First, new page.

http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Force_Field_Interactions

Secondly, Armor Piercing, right. I'll go add that.

And yes, I have not gotten to the Knowledge page yet. I intend to cover how to increase your ship cap and the relative power of marks in more detail there as you need Knowledge to unlock ships.

Right now I'm just kind of throwing pages up as I can so there is something there. Once everything is up the pages will need a second pass to fix all the broken links and make the pages look nicer.

Both the Armor and Force Field pages are kind of blah looking right now.

D.

[Bognor]

How does Armor Piercing fit into the calculations, and into the Armor wiki page in general?

Mmm, Raptors have armor piercing which will throw the numbers off, though the general principle still holds.  Actually, what caps are you looking at?  Based on my spreadsheet, at high caps Mark I Raptors do 1000 damage and Mark I Space Tanks have 750 armor.  You've got 4000 damage and 1500 armor, but I wouldn't have thought the ratio of those two would change with caps.  Could be wrong.

If you want a ship from the base game with a single attack per volley, lowish base damage, and no armor piercing, Deflector Drones would probably be a good example.

Diazo, many thanks for all your hard work!  Documentation rocks!

^This 

[Diazo]

How does Armor Piercing fit into the calculations, and into the Armor wiki page in general?

Mmm, Raptors have armor piercing which will throw the numbers off, though the general principle still holds.  Actually, what caps are you looking at?  Based on my spreadsheet, at high caps Mark I Raptors do 1000 damage and Mark I Space Tanks have 750 armor.  You've got 4000 damage and 1500 armor, but I wouldn't have thought the ratio of those two would change with caps.  Could be wrong.

If you want a ship from the base game with a single attack per volley, lowish base damage, and no armor piercing, Deflector Drones would probably be a good example.

Alright, added the Armor Piercing info to the armor page.

Change the Mark level example to use Deflector Drones so the armor piercing is not a factor in that.

As for the numbers, I'm pulling them from the wiki itself, not the game at this point. The only explanation I can think of is that the wiki uses Normal Game Style and Normal Ship Caps and that having one (or both) of those different is throwing the numbers off.

Having said that, the Raptor was done way back in patch 5.026 and may be wrong by this point.

D.

[Diazo]

Alright, I'm doing up the cloaking/tachyon beams page and I really have no clue how the Cloaking Boost ability works. (The one scouts have, not the super-boost cloaker starships have.)

Is it as simple that if a scout is cloak boosting another ship, it cannot be cloak boosted itself?

Also, a cloaked ship without mine immunity runs into a mine, does the mine trigger?

Also (again), does the tachyon warhead counter the effects of the planetary cloaker?

D.

edit: page up at http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Cloaking_and_Tachyon_Beams%28Stealth%29
I may have to tweak it depending on the answers to my questions above.

edit the 2nd: http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Engines_and_Speed_%28including_Tractor_Beams_and_Gravity_Effects%29 is now up also. Comments?

edit yet again: Went and pulled the "this is a draft table" text from the table formatting template as no one commented and I've started using it.

revenge of the edit: check data files for Starship Fabricator, this structure exist? (note to self)

[PokerChen]

Is it as simple that if a scout is cloak boosting another ship, it cannot be cloak boosted itself?

Yes. One of the reasons scout-IIIs tend to penetrate deeper than scout-Is, aside from a higher cap and faster speed.

Also, a cloaked ship without mine immunity runs into a mine, does the mine trigger?

Also yes, if I remember correctly...

Also (again), does the tachyon warhead counter the effects of the planetary cloaker?

Don't know.

I'll make a few minor edits to the pages to add, e.g. scout starship-IV. I also wonder if the fleet mechanic also circumvents engine damage?

EDIT: I've seen several Exo-waves that *crawl* across a Grav-Drilled planet in my games - it seems that they are not immune to this particular type of gravity effect. Can someone confirm this, and if they don't mind checking whether hybrid-fleets are also not immune to Grav Drills?

NB: Do note that if a Spirecraft was chosen as the fleet leader, that ship itself is grav-immune, which might translate into the fleet behing effectively immune.

EDIT-2: I was going to do this myself, but wanted to check which way we should resolve the discrepancy... The decloaker and tachyon drones are technically both starships, correct? They are also both built in space and not from a starship constructor. The Tachy Drone is under economic structures at the moment and I was thinking of moving it into starships.

EDIT-3: Dazio, can you do up a ship-page for the Force-fields? The Ships and Structures page  http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Force_Field

[Hearteater]

The Tachyon Drone certainly isn't a starship.  It is more an Engineer or even a mobile turret.  Same categorization as a Cleanup Drone actually.

[Diazo]

NB: Do note that if a Spirecraft was chosen as the fleet leader, that ship itself is grav-immune, which might translate into the fleet behing effectively immune.

EDIT-3: Dazio, can you do up a ship-page for the Force-fields? The Ships and Structures page  http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Force_Field

I can confirm a gravity immune spirecraft that is immune to gravity turrets gives its escort fleet that same immunity. Saw that in my last game myself.

I missed force fields? ugh, adding that to the to-do list.

As for the tachyon drone, its kind of an oddball. It ended up in economic structures because I really had no place to put it, not because it is a starship. I'm actually not sure where to put it, it does have to move because it's not economic in any way but where to is the question.

Current ToDo List:

Clean up AOE -> Area Damage descriptions
Add Force Field Page
Add Starship Fabs page
Tachyon Drone?

D.

[Diazo]

Alright, force field page done.

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Force_Field

I'll see what else I can get done this weekend.

D.

[Diazo]

Hmmm.

Question time, the ability "Halves Enemy Move SPeed", is this a gravity effect that can be ignored with immunities or is it always in effect?

D.

[Diazo]

Question again: what percentage does Vampirism heal a ship?

Still working on the abilities page, there are a LOT of them.

D.

notes to self:
refelcts incoming attacks
replicated build points at helath?
negative energy
cloak boost?

[Diazo]

And Ship Abilities are finally done! That's a big page.

http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Ship_Abilities

Also, if you take a look at a page I've made and it looks good, please say so. I'm throwing up all these pages that no one is commenting on, I'd like some feedback that the pages are looking okay and make sense to people please.

Now, questions time:
What Percentage does Vampirism heal a ship?
When the Zenith Mirror sucssesfully reflects an attack, does the mirror take damage from that attack?
If the Mirror is hit by an attack that it could normally refelect, but does not because the target is out of range, what happens?
When the blade spawner replicates itself, do the new ships spawn at 100% health?
Unaffected by negative energy means what? (On scouts)
Abililty: Halves enemy move speed, does a ship immune to gravity effects still get slowed?

ToDO
Starship fabs check
tachyon drone
clean up AOE to Area Damage

[Hearteater]

Yes, Mirrors take damage.  They actually takes x10 damage too, which is why their health is abnormally high.  But then that increased damage is reflected.  So if you get hit for 100, both the mirror and the attacker take 1000 damage (assuming the attack type can be reflected...missiles for example can't).  I don't believe a reflected attack can ever be out of range for them.

[Bognor]

Also, if you take a look at a page I've made and it looks good, please say so. I'm throwing up all these pages that no one is commenting on, I'd like some feedback that the pages are looking okay and make sense to people please.

Sorry for the slow response, but I've looked at the abilities and cloaking pages and they're both great - jam-packed with useful information, and I learned things from both of them.  Don't feel bad if I copyedit things you've written - I've done a fair bit of that on Wikipedia and tend to be pretty ruthless.

Zharmad - you wrote on the cloaking page that the counter-spy can kill perma-cloaked ships.  Does that include Mark IV Scout Starships?  They're listed as having insta-kill immunity, so that would be a notable exception.  Though it would kind of make sense, or the Counter-Spy AI type could have its special ability easily circumvented.

[Diazo]

Also, if you take a look at a page I've made and it looks good, please say so. I'm throwing up all these pages that no one is commenting on, I'd like some feedback that the pages are looking okay and make sense to people please.

Sorry for the slow response, but I've looked at the abilities and cloaking pages and they're both great - jam-packed with useful information, and I learned things from both of them.  Don't feel bad if I copyedit things you've written - I've done a fair bit of that on Wikipedia and tend to be pretty ruthless.

Go ahead, that is what I want to see. I am pretty confident about the facts and information I am putting up, I just have a history of not conveying what I'm trying to say very clearly so I'm really just looking for confirmation that what I've put up actually flows smoothly when you read it.

Zharmad - you wrote on the cloaking page that the counter-spy can kill perma-cloaked ships.  Does that include Mark IV Scout Starships?  They're listed as having insta-kill immunity, so that would be a notable exception.  Though it would kind of make sense, or the Counter-Spy AI type could have its special ability easily circumvented.

As I understand it, the Counter Spy is not affected by cloaking and always knows where all your units are in the system without requiring them to be de-cloaked first (but does not reveal them for other units like a tachyon beam would). It then Insta-Kills any unit that has the cloaking ability, but as this is an Insta-Kill ability ships with the Immunity: Insta-Kill are in fact immune to the counter spy.

So the Scout Mk IV would die very quickly  to a Counter Spy while a Scout Starship Mk IV (With Immunity: Insta-Kill) would only take the 200 damage per shot as it can't be insta-killed.

I can't test it at the moment, but that would be the behavior I expect.

D.

[PokerChen]

Zharmad - you wrote on the cloaking page that the counter-spy can kill perma-cloaked ships.  Does that include Mark IV Scout Starships?  They're listed as having insta-kill immunity, so that would be a notable exception.  Though it would kind of make sense, or the Counter-Spy AI type could have its special ability easily circumvented.

Yep. Lost a scout-IV to a counter-spy in a previous game.
 
I just checked with a scout starship-IV. The counterspies don't even shoot at it, so those ships are truly immune. Updated the wiki to reflect this.