Questions From Noobs

[BobTheJanitor]

Oh good, a random questions thread. Let's start with what the heck is "RCI"? Like, is it an abbreviation for something? The game uses the term like I should know it and never bothers to explain. And while I can see from the tutorial messages that it refers to the overall economic/social/infrastructure/etc outlook on a planet, I don't understand why it uses that exact term. The only vague bells it's ringing are from old Simcity days, where it was just an abbreviation for the residential/commercial/industrial type of zones you could build, and that doesn't really seem to make sense, so.... ?

(Also hi to everyone, been a while since I was around, but a new Arcen game always drags me back in )

[DrFranknfurter]

I've played Simcity where RCI seems to represent demand for residential, commercial and industrial growth. Also googling RCI index turns up regional competitiveness index... but yeah any abbreviation should be explained at the very least the first time it's used and there are plenty of tooltips around to add a disambiguation for it.

[alocritani]

about RCI:
I think they are direct reference to simcity: as in that game, their value represents "health" of the planet, so I think alpha testers started calling them RCI and the name remained until now

[BobTheJanitor]

That's... of dubious usefulness. For one thing, the two concepts don't really relate all that well. The Simcity meaning is basically 'demand for these types of zones' whereas in TLF, as far as I can tell, it's more of a general planetary socio-economic health measurement. Not to mention the generally questionable idea of lifting a term from another game that, for all we know, could even upset some lawyers at EA.

Anyway, that aside, further questions. It seems, from my limited play time so far, that once a race starts to dislike you a bit, your only options to raise your popularity with them are the very slow long term projects. Is that correct, or am I missing something? And is that the expected way to play the game? Like oops I'm at -50 with these guys, guess I'm spending the next 20 years of game time raising my influence by 0.3 per month on fast forward? I don't have a feel for how I'm supposed to be managing time really, is spending many years on fast forward just an expected part of the game? Is there any kind of hard time limit that I should worry about?

I guess I could really use a hand holding 'do this, now do this' sort of tutorial like AI War has. The pop up messages are helpful, but as far as suggestions on how to play, there was pretty much just 'do one of those quests, then go help out some races' and that was it.

[Joempire]

To get a quick boost in my relations is just defend their world from an attacker. Usually its +15 per battle and even if its a friend of mine attacking is seems to only be -5 for them.

That or steal a science outpost from anyone and use them to create vaccines. That is +30 every time as well. I've found it not worth it to do any of the +.3 timed missions because your better off letting the planet suck and getting missions to improve for higher instant amounts.

[chemical_art]

Anyway, that aside, further questions. It seems, from my limited play time so far, that once a race starts to dislike you a bit, your only options to raise your popularity with them are the very slow long term projects. Is that correct, or am I missing something? And is that the expected way to play the game? Like oops I'm at -50 with these guys, guess I'm spending the next 20 years of game time raising my influence by 0.3 per month on fast forward? I don't have a feel for how I'm supposed to be managing time really, is spending many years on fast forward just an expected part of the game? Is there any kind of hard time limit that I should worry about?

If you are on good terms with the Andors, and they have good relations with both you and the race you are trying to improve, AND they have the ruling party as Federalists, they have the option to boost relations on your behave. Just bring the credits.

[GC13]

How do you deal with planet crackers? My allies have more than 500,000 fleet power worth of ships floating around the homeworld of the species that's starting one up, but they're all "Defending Planet" rather than blasting them into the stone age like civilized people. I can't find any option to deal with the planet cracker, and it's edging towards completion.

[occipitallobe]

How do you change the secondary weapons on your ship? I keep unlocking new Hydral technologies in asteroid belts or by buying them, and I never ever get to use them. Is there something obvious I'm missing?

[GC13]

How do you change the secondary weapons on your ship? I keep unlocking new Hydral technologies in asteroid belts or by buying them, and I never ever get to use them. Is there something obvious I'm missing?

There's a tab on the bottom-right for the advanced stuff. Go there and go to the button for flagship customization, and you can select your loadout.

[Misery]

That's... of dubious usefulness. For one thing, the two concepts don't really relate all that well. The Simcity meaning is basically 'demand for these types of zones' whereas in TLF, as far as I can tell, it's more of a general planetary socio-economic health measurement. Not to mention the generally questionable idea of lifting a term from another game that, for all we know, could even upset some lawyers at EA.

Anyway, that aside, further questions. It seems, from my limited play time so far, that once a race starts to dislike you a bit, your only options to raise your popularity with them are the very slow long term projects. Is that correct, or am I missing something? And is that the expected way to play the game? Like oops I'm at -50 with these guys, guess I'm spending the next 20 years of game time raising my influence by 0.3 per month on fast forward? I don't have a feel for how I'm supposed to be managing time really, is spending many years on fast forward just an expected part of the game? Is there any kind of hard time limit that I should worry about?

I guess I could really use a hand holding 'do this, now do this' sort of tutorial like AI War has. The pop up messages are helpful, but as far as suggestions on how to play, there was pretty much just 'do one of those quests, then go help out some races' and that was it.

Doing things that cause that fast-forwarding of time is indeed the main way that you advance time within the game.  There are *alot* of different actions available to you that can have this effect;  these are "dispatch" missions.   Some of them allow you to select how many months you wish to spend on that particular action, while things like tech research and whatnot do not. Very important to keep that difference in mind. You're going to end up using these pretty darn frequently, as they're one of the most major concepts in the game. The trick is figuring out WHICH one to do, and when, and so on.  There's a seriously huge number of these to choose from.  It's a major part of the strategy aspect of the game, in the same way that political actions are.

You'll get a feel for the speed at which things happen, and thus how to best manage the number of months you spend on things at a time, as you play the game more.  I personally prefer to do dispatches that are anywhere from 10-20 months at a time.   Getting things like techs can have nasty fixed costs, but yuo can do things like hire goons, get outposts, or research/steal certain techs that can allow you to decrease overall time needed for things like research/construction.

Also there ARE other ways of gaining influence, if that's what you're after specifically.  As Chemical Art mentioned, the Andors can help you with that one, but it's situational.  You can also use bribe items, though the exact effects of using one differ from one race to the next.   Gifting techs is also another good way to get influence; and it can have the side effect of helping to accomplish goals that you have for that race.  Just make sure to keep in mind what each tech does before gifting; there are times when it might not be such a good idea to give certain ones to a particular race.

[occipitallobe]

There's a tab on the bottom-right for the advanced stuff. Go there and go to the button for flagship customization, and you can select your loadout.

I'm feeling really silly right now, but I seriously can't find it.



Here's a screenshot of one of my games, is there any chance you could just point it out to me?

[Histidine]

Here's a screenshot of one of my games, is there any chance you could just point it out to me?

"Detailed Intel" on the bottom-left

[GC13]

Gah. Sending you to the bottom-right rather than bottom-left might have had something to do with the confusion. It's the tab on the right, as Histidine pointed out.

[BobTheJanitor]

Doing things that cause that fast-forwarding of time is indeed the main way that you advance time within the game.  There are *alot* of different actions available to you that can have this effect;  these are "dispatch" missions. 

Ah, so that's what the game meant when it tells me to go run some dispatch missions in the very first pop-up after you get to the solar map. I know this game is intricately complicated, but it really needs a going-over and looking for unexplained jargon in the tutorial text. If it's going to say 'run some dispatch missions' then there should probably be a flashing button on the screen that says 'CLICK HERE FOR DISPATCH MISSIONS', or at the very least a mention in the tutorial tip that you need to go to the race's planet and click 'friendly actions' to find them.

Edit: Another question, is there any sort of logging for the combat portion of the game? I've had a few 'what the hell just hit me' moments. And as far as I can tell, there's no way to see what it might have been. The combat, I feel, is a bit too messy to really be all that strategic at the moment. It just feels like a massive amount of stuff flying around and sometimes I win easily and sometimes my shields and half my hull disappear in one second and I don't have anything to tell me why, which means I can't learn from my mistakes. (For that matter it can be kind of hard to tell relative strength and weakness and how much damage you're doing to things. Maybe some sort of graphical indication, like putting shield/hull bars visible below enemy flagships would be a good idea, at least it would probably make more sense then trying to parse 5-digit-number/5-digit-number hull and 6-digit-number/6-digit-number shields at a glance)