phasing in and out of combat?

[Epistax]

While in combat, various task forces on either side of the battle sometimes fade into blackness, then fade back into sight. What gives? If it means you've lost contact, that would only make sense if your own didn't fade out.

Also, sometimes I get a message that Planet X didn't pay enough maintenance and must scrap building this and this. Now I have a spending policy so I'm expecting planets to take all the money they need. What isn't existing in a high enough amount here? Production points? Planetary grants?

[asleepathewheel]

Re: phasing in and out of combat?

Originally posted by Epistax
While in combat, various task forces on either side of the battle sometimes fade into blackness, then fade back into sight. What gives? If it means you've lost contact, that would only make sense if your own didn't fade out.

not sure, noticed this too. I thought this was from cloaking (that would be too sweet) I've heard it might be from the ECM or whatever, but have no idea. Is very annoying. Maybe a graphical problem? I will do some more digging for the answers.

Originally posted by Epistax
Also, sometimes I get a message that Planet X didn't pay enough maintenance and must scrap building this and this. Now I have a spending policy so I'm expecting planets to take all the money they need. What isn't existing in a high enough amount here? Production points? Planetary grants?

The spending policy means that they are spending money on new projects, IIRC, not upkeep, but I could be wrong on that. you might consider switching to the other two modes to see what happens. Curious: how much was your deficeit? I've never been in the red by more than a few hundred, so I don't know what point that is.

Also: perhaps you should play with the taxes

Perhaps for whatever reason the planet taxes on this particular planet are low and it isn't self sustaining. Genearlly system and empire taxes are spread out, so perhaps you are fine except for that one planet. check it out.

[Kc7mxo]

While in combat, various task forces on either side of the battle sometimes fade into blackness, then fade back into sight. What gives? If it means you've lost contact, that would only make sense if your own didn't fade out.

Electronic Counter measures. Electrounic Counter Counter measures. ECM and ECCM effect your ships like the fog of war in starcraft. Their EECM decreases your vision, and your ECM increases yours. It also might have an effect on your accuracy, but I don't know if they modeled that into the game.

Also, sometimes I get a message that Planet X didn't pay enough maintenance and must scrap building this and this. Now I have a spending policy so I'm expecting planets to take all the money they need. What isn't existing in a high enough amount here? Production points? Planetary grants?

Do you have any planetary Viceroys turned off? If any of them are turned off you might have too many buildings for your money. I dunno though.

[Epistax]

umm didn't think you could turn viceroys off. Actually I had heard again and again that you can't. Not that I'd want to unless Moo3 had better planet planning available.

I let myself go into spending debt up to 10k a turn, because I can maintain that for a long time. Most turns I'm around +1kj however, and it doesn't seem to effect that problem.


If the fading in and out has to do with ECM, ECCM, that's cool... just... where's my taskforce?

[Craig P.]

I had a planet go into the red on my last game. I promptly jacked the tax rate up to turn a profit, and then I was able to slowly bring it back down over the next couple of turns as the viceroy made other adjustments. I'm not sure how I got into that situation in the first place -- it might have been due to an event ending.

[habadacus]

I've seen the planets scrapping buildings too. If you look at those planets you might see they have a special like planetary storms, or rapid rot. Those specials "greatly increase" the maint. costs of planetary structures. But still, my empire has so much money in the bank, I don't understand why it's not just assumed that I would want it to foot the bill for those worlds where local tax can't pay for strong development. Worst of all, a few times the AI decided to scrap the starport, the only other source of income on the world, instead of a mine or a farm, when my empire is producing twice as much food/minerals than it's using. Hope this gets fixed, doesn't really affect the gameplay once the empire is rolling, but is very annoying all the same.