<r> <QUOTE><s>[quote]</s>ORIGINAL: Chris H<br/>
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Why would you want to? I would doubt it in game as the templates you are talking about are there to get you started. With the ability to create, edit, mark/unmark them obsolete, save/load your own designs you have enough tools to do any thing ...

<t> Related to my question in the Design and Modding forum...<br/>
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Can design templates (not the designs themselves) for ships be modified after a game has started? I'm trying to find a way not to go full manual with ship and base designs and retrofitting, but still be able to make ...

I see I may be misreading the Quameno design situation, since the Quameno start without Beam Weapons in the mod. But I've been poking around more broadly at how mod files are handled and have lots of questions, so I made a more general post to the Design and Modding subforum.

<t> Context: I don't want to make a true mod. I just want to be able to occasionally tweak ship design files over the course of a game so that I can automate ship design according to those templates and not have to design/retrofit so much manually. I've been using Icemania's AI mod without digging ...

<t> Something seems odd with the ship design template usage in my game - my (standard) empire appears to use the pirate design templates. I may be misunderstanding something - I've always manually controlled everything before and never looked closely at the auto-generated designs. But, for example ...

Resupply Ships don't require resources for repairs either - mine definitely doesn't have anything in its cargo bays other than fuel, and there were no freighters transporting goods to the ship either. But as noted, it could be that bases operate differently than ships.

<t> As it happens, I had a chance to try this out just now... this time, I got the "Repair at..." option just fine with the damaged ship selected. It works whether or not the Resupply Ship is deployed. But I think this didn't work for me in some earlier game? I don't remember for sure.<br/>
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<t> My understanding is that you need plants for the repairs, though I haven't tested it. One plant of each type will be enough for quite a few construction yards, almost certainly more than you need for a repair star base. I'm pretty sure all repairs use Construction Yards, but I haven't tested ...

Are PDU's worth their high price and difficulty to move around? I know they can shoot down incoming troops, but I've yet to actually see that in action. At 4x the cost, it seems like that ability would have to be amazing to be better than just having 4 infantry units instead.

Unless you can get that planet within your empire's borders by planting a colony nearby, there's no way to prevent another empire from settling there.

<t> I believe that's true, but I think that when you transfer Fleet Admirals you only get fleets in the dropdown, so the red fields don't come up. You only see those when you transfer Ship Captains. Is the idea that the game is warning you that you're putting two eggs in one basket, so to speak? I ...

Lead ships

Ah... OK. Thanks. Is there any reason to care about that? The lead ship designation is basically just cosmetic, right? It's just the ship that marks the fleet location on the map?

When you choose the transfer drop-down in the Characters screen, certain options are highlighted in red. I can't discern the meaning of this. Any insight?

<t> Usually I'd target super lux planets without any questions, but in my current game I'm not so sure. I've got a stretch of two sectors of almost empty space between a central colony of mine and Zentabia, which belongs to the Boskara. There are no quality planets of any type in that stretch, but I ...

<t> Thanks for the quick reply.<br/>
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The Dhayut AI vastly overexpanded, dropping colonies multiple sectors from his homeworld with no defenses or development, while I had very few colonization options available. So I figured I'd just scoop up a few of those and enslave the bugs into chain ...

<t> The problem isn't always so bad. It seems much worse in classic than it did in pre-warp - even with low percentages, those pre-warp starting planets include a lot of rare resources that would otherwise give your freighters fits, and the pirates' strength keeps you from settling more than a ...

<t> I just conquered a small Dhayut colony that their empire dropped right on my (Human) border. It's a decent (75% plus good ruins) Desert Planet, so I wouldn't mind trying to build the planet into something useful. However, I don't have the Desert Colonization tech yet. Will my Humans migrate ...

<t> I had a save taken immediately after the colonization, so I've replayed it a couple of different ways just to see if I could find some rhyme or reason to freighter behavior. I can't, but here are the results for the record. Again, this is all in the context of a single new colony with no other ...

<r> <QUOTE><s>[quote]</s>The true key to it is to not build too many star ports.<e>[/quote]</e></QUOTE>
I get that in principle. But this was my first colony, more than a sector away from my homeworld. If nothing else, how do you handle repair and military refueling without a space port in that ...

Or would it help not to start building a space port until a colony built up its own strategic reserve? Would that lead to fewer, larger orders that would tie up less of the freighter fleet?