A few noob questions:

[Qwerty88]

upgrading can also be very wierd, I always seem to have an old 2-2-4 skimship I haven't upgraded so when I discover fusion it asks to upgrade to a 1-1-4*2 skimship, so don't always trust the "must keep weapon/armor" rule, if you take one of them down to 1 it may allow it. also on infiltration, is it just me or does anyone else think a single probe act that doesn't violate treaties and gives you perminant actcess to information that you really shouldn't know seems a bit unbalency. that and empath guild doing the same.

[Aabraxan]

Yeah, sometimes it seems to ask me if I want to upgrade to a design that appears inferior to what I've already got, at least in terms of the weapons/armor/etc numbers.

As far as probe teams, I can see that not violating treaties (at least if your probe team doesn't get caught), but it does seem like you should have to infiltrate every so often, just to keep your intel current.

Planetary Datalinks: If I build the Planetary Datalinks, is there any way to know which three factions so generously donate their techs to me?

[Kirov]

Originally posted by Qwerty88
upgrading can also be very wierd, I always seem to have an old 2-2-4 skimship I haven't upgraded so when I discover fusion it asks to upgrade to a 1-1-4*2 skimship, so don't always trust the "must keep weapon/armor" rule, if you take one of them down to 1 it may allow it. also on infiltration, is it just me or does anyone else think a single probe act that doesn't violate treaties and gives you perminant actcess to information that you really shouldn't know seems a bit unbalency. that and empath guild doing the same.

I think the discussion was about "deliberate" upgrade, i.e. Ctrl+U command. The pop-up windows "asking" to upgrade look very buggy and sometimes really absurd ("Do you want to upgrade your fungicidal formers to ordinary formers for 30 EC?")

Infiltration is indeed very unbalanced. I remember that the first time a friend of mine infiltrated me in a Hot Seat game, I thought it was an exploit and took offence...

Empath Guild is considered a gamebreaker and is actually banned in many PBEMs.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kirov


Empath Guild is considered a gamebreaker and is actually banned in many PBEMs.

I don't know about "gamebreaker" but I dislike the automatic infiltration it gives , just as I dislike the same feature for governor. I like a lively probe game and can think of a number of ways that this could be more dynamic. requiring frequent infiltration though becomes tough since probe defenses stiffen up. I wouldn't want to be trying to infiltrate anyone in peacetime once airpower is on the scene.


Oh and I also dislike the HSA for its impacts onm the probe game. It is a very big deal to get this project but it just seems a bland game once I am probe -immune -- Its much more fun when you have to continue to probe defend

If I were designing infiltration ( and putting aside whether the programming would be hard to do)

1. The governor would get an infiltration look on a continuing basis of the opponent's CAPITOL only-- ditto for the empath guild

2. Probe infiltration would give you a snapshot of the opponent's empire for that turn only-- basically you have stolen ALL their plans ONCE plus you get an ongoing ability to see inside the base you actually probed. The theory is you now have a spy in that base-- It would always be valuable to probe-infiltrate again and again to get the snapshot but you can't just infiltrate once and be done . Governorship and EG would have some value but wouldn't eliminate the need to infiltrate forevermore


Then again . . . if I were designing the game, I would allow the player to designate certain bases as "outposts "-- such bases would contribute no science back to the empire nor would you be able to steal tech from such an outpost ( I always find it ludicrous that an empire would send ALL its most closely guarded secrets to a size one base on a military frontier)

[Sperber]

Me deems you just hate probes because they disrupt your conventional build & conquer playstyle

But without features like that, you'd turn a scissors-paper-rock game into a scissor-paper game of far lesser complexity. Besides, being able to see the situation in your opponents' empires makes this game more of a strategy game rather than if you only had to guess about what opposition to encounter, in which case it would be more of a tactical game.

It's just like chess - where you know exactly where the pieces of the opponent are.

[Sperber]

Originally posted by GameGeek
Planetary Datalinks: If I build the Planetary Datalinks, is there any way to know which three factions so generously donate their techs to me?

Yes ... just annihilate three of them! Consequentially it must be from the remaining ones.

[Aabraxan]

Of course . . . why didn't I think of that?

Are the two factions who donate their tech static? Or does it shift as you eliminate factions?

Ecodamage: the manual says that each improvement that I build in a base's production radius increases damage. Does that mean that I can avoid this ecodamage by building my thermal boreholes outside that radius and then just crawling them? Or is there some other ecodamage occurring that I'm just not seeing?

Thanks for all of the info.

[Lazerus]

It doesn't matter which 3 factions have the tech, aslong as there's 3 you'll receive it.

No, the manual is abit incorrect on that, game developers didn't really take into account crawlers. Ecodamage is determined by minerals, im sure somebody here will be able to give you the link for a detailed explanation. (jist of it being 16+ causes damage, and "green" enhancements like tree farms raise this number)

[Aabraxan]

Also:
I've got a game right now in which the Morgans have a square that has a mine built at a monolith. Didn't think you could do that. It won't let me build a mine at a monolith. There's only one mine in the vicinity, so I don't think it was a robot mining pod. What gives with this?


Lazerus,
The ecodamage was a bit of a dumb question, as I knew that ecodamage is also tied to mineral production. Sorry about that.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by GameGeek
Also:
I've got a game right now in which the Morgans have a square that has a mine built at a monolith. What gives with this?

Was this an accelerated start, cuz sometimes in accelerated starts the game places pods on top of improvements. These pods, when popped, can then produce monoliths.


D

[Aabraxan]

Nope, not accelerated. Standard rules.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Lazerus
It doesn't matter which 3 factions have the tech, aslong as there's 3 you'll receive it.

My recollection is that you will not get any tech that 3 factions "have" unless someone else discovers/acquires it-- The game only checks if the Planetary Datalinks should get the tech at the time a new faction acquires or researches it. So if EVERY faction has a tech before you build the Planetary datalinks, I don't believe you would ever acquire it

See this threadhttp://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=132214&highlight=planetary+datalinks

Nobody ever disputed what I said there but I am ready to be corrected

[Aabraxan]

I guess it'd help if I'd read the manual more carefully, eh?

"The Planetary Datalinks give you instant access to any technology that is already known to any three other factions."

[Qwerty88]

assuming the ecodamage formula in the game is right, you avoid some damage from the borhole if yo crawl it, but you get damageboth from enhancements and from minerals, tree farms/hybred forests/forests are supposed to decrease teraform damage, but mineral damage is decreased by preserves/temples/nanoreplicators(ironicly) and I'm guessing secret progects. 16+>pop< decreases teraform damage to 0, then goes twords free minerals, and all orbital minerals are free

[Flubber]

Originally posted by GameGeek


"The Planetary Datalinks give you instant access to any technology that is already known to any three other factions."

As I pointed out, the manual is not quite correct in this.

As a general rule, citing the manual as a source doesn't covince any of the veteran players. We all have found instances where it is wrong.

If you don't believe what I said, test it out