New player with a few questions

[dummiesday]

Hi,

I've recently started playing TLF. I love both the concept and the execution, but I have a couple questions.

-Can you customize at all the look of your ship? I know that your ship model changes depending on which race you choose at the beginning, but they all show the same green light. I would be happy if I could at least change this basic primary color, but I haven't found any option to do so.

-Is there any way to change the Boarines' priority? Towards the end of my last game, they were in the federation, liked me a lot and had the biggest armada in the galaxy, but I couldn't send them to wage war on the last non-federation race because their priority was Solar Unity.

-At some point in my game, an enemy armada instantly wiped one of the Burlusts' planets, which struck me as odd. There was no visible fighting -- even at normal speed, one moment the armada was on its way, and the next one they had arrived and killed every one of the Burlusts, which were doing fine, I think (they had a relatively high compatibility with the planet, although their medical index was definitely in the negatives). Could this happen under some circumstances or was it a bug?

-What's the best way to dissolve a hostile pact, if any? At some point in my last game, the Thoraxians and the Evucks formed the Solar Axis Pact and I had to send everyone to war with each of them because my influence with them was irreparably low.

-Is there a limit to how many moons can be colonized in each planet? What is the general purpose of this? Up to now, I've been using them to allow races to get resources so they can establish trade routes, but I'm not sure if there are any other uses...

Thanks in advance for any help!

[DrFranknfurter]

In no particular order:
For alliances outside the federation there is this page on the wiki:
http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Alliances_and_Federations
Mainly making people distrust each other or simply destroying them seems to be the way to go.

Moons are good for trade, for resources and uncolonised moons let the Acutians do fun things. The resources are good for more than just trading too, it allows races to build more powerful buildings and even triggers new things in a recent patch. (excess resources can be funnelled into 6 Surplus resources special actions that do things like doubling birth rates for a time).

The death rates, buildings, modifiers to invasion defences and really all the maths in the game has been changed recently (from multiplicative to additive). So there's a chance it could be a bug from that. But it could also be from some very late game technology that massively increases invading strength or something else entirely. (different races have different superweapons, there's always a chance something else was at play.) If in doubt, look at a save before and see what happened... if it seems like a bug pop it on mantis. (the bug tracker). Arcen are quick to respond and a save game helps them find any problem if it exists, or just to tweak balance using that save as a test subject.

The boarines, well the wiki page is here:
http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Boarines
They change moods based on RCI values (low or high), but I don't know how many other ways there are to influence them beyond trying to get rid of the reagent.

As for the ship art. It's not easy to change things but possible if you are artistic and have some ideas, see this thread if you're interested:
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15532.0.html

[dummiesday]

Thanks for the answers! I don't think I have a saved game right before the Burlust extinction event, but I'll keep an eye out in case I can reproduce it again.

As for the graphics change, I've entered a suggestion in Mantis after reading through the thread you've pointed me to.

[DrFranknfurter]

glad I could help. Did you have any luck with the Boarines?

[dummiesday]

Not really... although the skylaxians, on the other hand, were up to the task of doing the dirty work. It took some time, but I did manage to win the game eventually (and only half the races had to die, ha!).

[DrFranknfurter]

I've played quite a few games but have yet to win with every race in the federation so don't feel bad about bumping off the Boarines. Also I don't think the Skylaxians like to bomb from orbit (being nice like the Andor, but not so nice as to withhold ground troops). So I find it easier to use a different race as the muscle.
(Although I did play a very early version where the Andor captured a world by landing one of their ships down after the world had been bombed by another... it doesn't happen now but it's funny some situations this game throws up).