Many questions

[settemio]

Hello all, newish player here. Apologies if this is not the correct place for these questions; I scanned the subforum categories and none of them seemed to fit better and couldn't find the answers on the wiki either.

When the game debug log pops up on screen, is it helpful to the devs for me to screenshot and send that somewhere? This happened a few times and I didn't know whether the 'bug' even affected gameplay.

Is the Spire Archive meant to show up as an icon on the Galaxy map, and/or in the objectives menu? It seems like it would be the kind of planet-special-find that would be showcased in both, but it is not.

When do trains appear? What do they look like? I have been playing for about 2 hours and scouted almost the entire galaxy and I don't think I've seen one yet, just a bunch of train stations and a depot I quickly Raided.

In AIWC, the Player's home base gets the benefits of every researched station upgrade. Is that not in AIW2 for balance reasons? Or too difficult to implement? Or is it there and I just can't find it?

Maximizing metal efficiency - if I build a full cap of MkI ships, then research their upgrade, I have just saved some metal compared to researching first, then building that many MkII ships, right? Is this intentional? It feels weird to me.

Coprocessor tooltip says AIP will be reduced by 120 when the last one dies, is this a negative 120 AIP on top of the positive 60 AIP from destroying the first three, for a net of -60 AIP? Or -180 for a net of -120?

How much negative AIP will a successfully hacked Superterminal yield? Is it like AIWC, where it depends on how long you hack it?

Are Arks supposed to be easy-mode? Thanatos kind of feels that way so far in my present campaign, and I recall the default is no Ark, but I didn't really know what they were.

[ulu]

Trains appear after a while. Can't say how many hours must have passed before the first one starts its way through the galaxy but you will get a notice about it. They look like little planes.

I think the Spire Archive is meant to show up on the galaxy map but right now it doesn't. It spawns next to the AI Homeworld but has no own icon on the galaxy map.

Destroying all Coprocessors result in an AIP reduction of 120. Before that you get an AIP increase for each Coprocessor.  The formula is 4*20-120 (or maybe 3*20-120).

[BadgerBadger]

For debug popups, those are often bugs. The ArcenDebugLog.txt in ~/AIWar2/PlayerData is what's usually needed for debugging them (and ideally also a recent save game, so playing with regular autosaves is a good idea).

Whoops, I forgot to give Spire Archives an objective. That will be added in the future. Sadly they also don't show up in the galaxy map.

Trains will appear every hour or two. They aren't very frequent.

In AIW2 you don't get every command station. It hasn't been implemented; it's not clear that it's a necessary feature.

Superterminals in AIW2 work like AIWC. Hacking reduces AIP, and the AI will send strong and stronger countermeasures. The amount you can reduce AIP depends on how many forces you have on the planet.

[TechSY730]

In AIWC, the Player's home base gets the benefits of every researched station upgrade. Is that not in AIW2 for balance reasons? Or too difficult to implement? Or is it there and I just can't find it?

In AIW2 you don't get every command station. It hasn't been implemented; it's not clear that it's a necessary feature.

The home base got the benefits of higher Mk command stations by ways of "mini-stations" that were auto-built on the homeworld upon unlocking higher tier command stations, that had the economy/military stats as the Mk of command station just unlocked.

If I remember the original reasoning correctly, the idea was that economic command station Mk. II was almost never a good first economic pick over metal harvester Mk. II because the metal harvester upgrade applied to your homeworld, and the economic command station upgrade did not.
In a similar sort of vein, military stations meant that non-homeworlds had the potential to be more defendable then the homeworld, which didn't "feel" right.
Logistics didn't have the same sort of compelling case, but it was included I guess for consistency.

Now, this is a new game, and the home command station may have a different balance making this not needed. But this was the original justification for why it happened in classic.