a few more newbie questions

[SeanThornton]

So, in no particular order:

- How do I improve repair times? I sent a construction ship out to repair the destroyer that's found in your starter system, and the repairs took about 1.5 years, game time. How do I speed this up?

- How do I see how many hit points (for lack of a better term) I have on my ships? I see a green bar when they enter battle, and I see them colored red when I look at a fleet, if they have any damage. But when I click on a ship, the lower left window will show points for shields, and points for damage done and range, but not for hit points.

- The Ancient Guardians sent me a warning, something about "revenge of the destroyers". I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this information.

Thanks!

[RogerBacon]

Ships don't have any overall health tracking mechanism like hit points in DWU. Instead they have individual components which can be OK or destroyed (some weapons can temporarily disable them too but that's not relevant here).

You can see how many components are destroyed in the lower left hand window when you click on the ship. As far as I know there is no quick way to tell what is damaged on an individual ship. You have to double click it and then go to the components tab and scroll through it. This irritated me enough that I included a hotkey in my mod to create a popup listing damaged components. There's a big difference in a ship with one armor component destroyed and one hyperdrive destroyed.

[RemoteLeg]

Ignore the Ancient Guardians' warning for the moment. It usually happens early in the game when you're far too weak to do anything about it.
The plot will unfold as you play further.

[Aeson]

How do I improve repair times? I sent a construction ship out to repair the destroyer that's found in your starter system, and the repairs took about 1.5 years, game time. How do I speed this up?

I expect that the baseline repair rate is dependent upon your Construction Yard (CY) component's capacity and may also be limited by your Manufacturing Plant (MP) components' capacity. For standard ship construction, CY capacity translates to floor(capacity/100) components installed per six in-game days and MP capacity translates to floor(capacity/100) components fabricated per six in-game days, though I do not know if the repair process follows similar rules. Furthermore, if I recall correctly, it is supposed to be the case that it takes longer to repair components for which you lack the requisite technology than it does to repair components for which you have the required technology. I would suggest, then, that if you want to increase the rate at which your construction ships can repair derelicts, you should research the technologies in the Energy and Construction tree which increase the capacity of your CY and MP components. Researching the technologies needed for the components present on the derelict(s) being repaired is also a good idea but can take a lot of time, and especially for particularly advanced derelicts it may very well take more time to research the technologies used by the derelict than it does to repair the derelict in the first place. Note that only one CY can work on a project at any given time; adding additional CYs to your construction ships will not speed repairs or increase the rate at which the ship builds new stations.

I would also suggest that the damaged derelict in your home system is of extremely limited value; you should get a slight research bonus from repairing it early on because it has "advanced" technologies, i.e. it uses components for which you have not developed the required technologies, but if I recall correctly it lacks a hyperdrive and doesn't have anything particularly advanced on it (the components it uses are mostly or all unlocked by the first tier of technologies after the stuff you start a prewarp game with), and as a result it is likely to be too obsolete to be useful except maybe as a marginally-mobile defensive battery in the homeworld/home system defense role by the time your construction ship finishes repairing it.

This irritated me enough that I included a hotkey in my mod to create a popup listing damaged components. There's a big difference in a ship with one armor component destroyed and one hyperdrive destroyed.

For what it's worth, if you're reasonably familiar with the designs of your ships, you can figure out a lot about what components are destroyed simply by looking at the selection details panel with the ship selected.

The maximum fuel capacity, maximum energy storage capacity, maximum shield capacity, rated sprint speed, rated firepower, and maximum weapons range are all accurate for the ship's operable components. If maximum fuel capacity is 0, all fuel cells on the ship have been destroyed; if maximum energy storage capacity is 0, all reactors on the ship have been destroyed; if maximum shield capacity is zero, all shield generators have been destroyed; if the rated sprint speed is 0, all sublight drive thrusters have been destroyed; if rated firepower is 0, all weapon components on the ship have been destroyed. If the hyperdrive is disabled (the hyperdrives of recently captured ships are disabled, and ion weapons might be able to knock hyperdrives offline for a little while) or destroyed, or (as is the case in the image provided) the design lacks a hyperdrive component, then (NO HYPERDRIVE) will be printed in the bar indicating a ship's current speed. Ships which lose all fuel cells or all weapons cease to be combat-capable, ships which lose their sublight drive thrusters can turn in place if one or more of their maneuvering thrusters remain operational but are otherwise immobilized, ships which lose their hyperdrives are trapped in the local area until the hyperdrive is repaired, and ships which lose their reactors are effectively dead as they are unable to fire weapons, move, charge their shields, or really do anything at all.

[stuart3]

the repairs took about 1.5 years, game time. How do I speed this up?

The research bonuses to be gained from repairing and then disassembling the destroyer are random, but can be worth the effort at the start of a pre-warp game. Repairing the destroyer shouldn't be a priority, but there will be times in the early game when you don't have the money to order the construction of a new mining station and it may be more productive to repair destroyer rather than leave your construction ship sitting around unemployed.

The total time that your construction ship is committed to a mission includes it's travelling time there and back to your home world. You don't want your construction ships returning slowly from half way across the star system if you have developed warp drives while it was out there. If you have begun researching warp drives then it is often better to keep your construction ships near your home planet where they can be retrofitted with warp drives, making the travelling time relatively insignificant.

Also, note that while construction ships will always return to your home planet to replenish their supplies before setting off to build a mining station, they will always go straight to a ship to repair it. So it can often be efficient to send a construction ship on a repair mission if it has just completed a mining station on or near the moon that the destroyer is orbiting.

[Hattori Hanzo]

ORIGINAL: stuart3

the repairs took about 1.5 years, game time. How do I speed this up?

Repairing the destroyer shouldn't be a priority, but there will be times in the early game when you don't have the money to order the construction of a new mining station and it may be more productive to repair destroyer rather than leave your construction ship sitting around unemployed.

you don't need any money to build a Mine Station or a Gas Station.

Mine Station and Gas Station are payed by the private sector to the State, so in fact you get money building one of them.

[RemoteLeg]

you don't need any money to build a Mine Station or a Gas Station.

Mine Station and Gas Station are payed by the private sector to the State, so in fact you get money building one of them.

This is true. Just be careful that you don't build too many too quickly and bankrupt your Private Sector economy.

[stuart3]

you don't need any money to build a Mine Station or a Gas Station.

Mine Station and Gas Station are payed by the private sector to the State, so in fact you get money building one of them.

Building a mining station doesn't cost anything, true. But if you don't have the purchase price in your treasury then the option to build a mining station is greyed out until your bank balance improves sufficiently.