Matrix Games Forums

Few hours ago I started my first game from prewarp.

Question #1: Everything was going smooth, but then I noticed that my research potential started going down. I found no reason for this. It went down from 320k to 155k during 8 years or so. Why's that? My population was growing, although automatic taxation kept it at 100%. I took manual control and lowered it to around 50-75%, so I still stayed in balance.

Question #2: Pirates captured many of my mining stations in my home system. So I built a troop ship, loaded it with troops, but it was unable to capture the stations back. It just kept circling the mining station endlessly. Then I retrofitted the troop ship and added a docking bay. Same still. Why's this? What do I need to do to re-capture those mining stations?

Question #3: This is sort of a follow up. My military ships kept attacking the captured mining stations and I found it very hard to stop them from automatically attacking them. Is only option to disable automation on the military ships or is there a way to prevent them from attacking captured stations?

Question #4: I'm also very confused how much "mining / luxury mining" potential should I pump up to a station when designing one. One (at prewarp) gave a potential of 3. But what does that mean? While I understand that 15 is five times greater, do I need more? If so, how much should I add those mining engines / luxury resource collectors? How does the number work?

Question #5: Are the resource potential numbers (like development level of colony) also logarithmic? Meaning 70% gives double rate to 60%? How does this work with the mining station, mining potential?

Question #6: Can I automate construction ships to repair damaged ships / prioritize that?

Question #7: Can I have only one smuggling quest on at any given time? I was running out of so many resources... Steel, Gold, Helium...

Question 1: Did they migrate from your capital so that the population dropped? I think I have seen it drop in the early game, but I don't pay much attention to that number.

Question 2: Troop ships invade stuff. Boarding pods capture stuff. Docking bays only belong on bases and resupply ships. A troop transport can of course have boarding pods, but they can be used on any warship (and probably are with AI designs?).

Question 3: You can change their stance to "when attacked" with one of the buttons around the selection panel. Apart form that, you seem to lack boarding pods and could probably destroy the mining station and build a new one.

Question 4: There is a max speed to mining. You should never need more than 4 extractors, and I think the 4th is minor gain only, and only with the basic tech.

Question 5: I figured it is a percentage of max (100%) speed only. I just figure that "higher is better" and live with that.

Question 6: They will repair when they find that the best thing to do. I usually scrap damaged ships (that can't fly home for repairs).

Question 7: No clue, I don't make deals with pirates

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Question 1: Did they migrate from your capital so that the population dropped? I think I have seen it drop in the early game, but I don't pay much attention to that number.

Question 2: Troop ships invade stuff. Boarding pods capture stuff. Docking bays only belong on bases and resupply ships. A troop transport can of course have boarding pods, but they can be used on any warship (and probably are with AI designs?).

Question 3: You can change their stance to "when attacked" with one of the buttons around the selection panel. Apart form that, you seem to lack boarding pods and could probably destroy the mining station and build a new one.

Question 4: There is a max speed to mining. You should never need more than 4 extractors, and I think the 4th is minor gain only, and only with the basic tech.

Question 5: I figured it is a percentage of max (100%) speed only. I just figure that "higher is better" and live with that.

Question 6: They will repair when they find that the best thing to do. I usually scrap damaged ships (that can't fly home for repairs).

Question 7: No clue, I don't make deals with pirates

Thanks for the quick reply!

As to Question #1, no - it was my only colony and as said, the population was growing.

Bingeling answered most of these already, but I'll take a stab below as well since you asked me directly
-Long.

Question #1: Everything was going smooth, but then I noticed that my research potential started going down. I found no reason for this. It went down from 320k to 155k during 8 years or so. Why's that? My population was growing, although automatic taxation kept it at 100%. I took manual control and lowered it to around 50-75%, so I still stayed in balance.

I think you should look at your policy, because a colony should never be taxed at 75-100%. Since you already take control of taxation, I would recommend bringing it down to 40% or less, otherwise they won't have enough money to pay for mining bases, etc. Keep an eye on the population's happiness and keep it at 16 (happy) or above. If it's too low, lower the tax. Given that it was taxed at 100%, I think everyone migrated away from your home world, which is the one generating most of your research.
Edit: added the following since you mentioned you only had one colony:
Given that you only had one colony, it could be tax avoidance because of the high taxes. Look at the colony summary, it shows something like revenue = X, Y % compliance. You want that to be like 100%. Maybe that affect your potential research. I'm not sure.
Also, do you have pirate bases (go to the Facility tab) on your home world? If so, the corruption could affect it. If you have them, build a bunch of troops and attack it (from the Facility tab).

Question #2: Pirates captured many of my mining stations in my home system. So I built a troop ship, loaded it with troops, but it was unable to capture the stations back. It just kept circling the mining station endlessly. Then I retrofitted the troop ship and added a docking bay. Same still. Why's this? What do I need to do to re-capture those mining stations?

Add a couple boarding pods (require boarding tech) to your destroyer (or whichever design you like) and buidl them to capture bases.

Question #3: This is sort of a follow up. My military ships kept attacking the captured mining stations and I found it very hard to stop them from automatically attacking them. Is only option to disable automation on the military ships or is there a way to prevent them from attacking captured stations?

In your empire policy, scroll down to the boarding section. There is an option for when to board base. Usually it is set to "when in our system" or some such. If that is true, and if you have ships with boarding, they will try to board the base and capture them.

Question #4: I'm also very confused how much "mining / luxury mining" potential should I pump up to a station when designing one. One (at prewarp) gave a potential of 3. But what does that mean? While I understand that 15 is five times greater, do I need more? If so, how much should I add those mining engines / luxury resource collectors? How does the number work?

I wouldn't try to min/max this too much. The default (2 mining/gas mining + 1 luxury) seems to work just fine. It might take a bit longer or shorter to mine resources, but it won't break anything.

Question #5: Are the resource potential numbers (like development level of colony) also logarithmic? Meaning 70% gives double rate to 60%? How does this work with the mining station, mining potential?

I think they are linear. When you look at a mining station design, it says something like "mining: 40", that means the station will mine 40 unit / time at a 100%. at 50%, it'll mine 20 unit / time.

Question #6: Can I automate construction ships to repair damaged ships / prioritize that?

Yes, automated constructor will go around reparing thing. I'm not sure how you would prioritize it except to take manual control of them. There maybe something in the policy. Overall, however, I wouldn't worry too much about reparing ships unless it's a big military ship.

Question #7: Can I have only one smuggling quest on at any given time? I was running out of so many resources... Steel, Gold, Helium...

You can have a mission for "All Resources". However, try not to get into situation where you are short on resources and have to feed the pirates unless absolutely necessary. Build and defend mining stations to cover the important strategic resources.

Thanks, johanwanderer!

I'll keep you guys posted how I'll do in my next game.

Probably going to be the next set of newbie questions then.

BTW, found about about the 100% TAX!

I played with random race + random government. Had human and corporate nationalism, which allows keeping tax at 100% without having any impact on happiness on the colonies.

...and corporate nationalism is the reason your research potential dropped. And your income. CN has a malus to almost everything that scales over time.

ORIGINAL: Tcby

...and corporate nationalism is the reason your research potential dropped. And your income. CN has a malus to almost everything that scales over time.

Good to know! So I supposed I need to avoid that in future. Random is random though!

Well, I didn't expect this.

So I was playing my 2nd game. 8x8 sectory galaxy with 250 stars.
Started prewarp, all normal settings, but starting civilizations.
No space monsters, no tech trading. No pirate respawning.

Random race, random government. Max amount of AI empires.

Game lasted around ~10-12 hours.

Was kinda surprised to see the popup on screen on year 2126.

Had serious refitting issues. Space Port(s) didn't seem to refit ever. After waiting more than a year, scrapped my only one and built it again.

Then later in the game, I had to do it again, but at this point I had a second space port.

Around year 2015 I found a massive colony that just "turned to be mine", with around 10B population. At same time my capital was around 5B, so that felt...cheap.

Until the last year, I didn't have a single military ship (except the few that I found and retired). Last year I built few cruisers to test how fighter bays work, but they never get to see any action. I wasn't at war at any point in the game.

This is how the game ended.

Increase difficulty, increase aggression, increase stars. I think so few stars makes expansion difficult for the AI, when you factor in colonisation range limits and probability of viable planets.


As for your spaceports, did you order thm to retrofit, or were you waiting for the game to do it automatically?

ORIGINAL: Tcby

Increase difficulty, increase aggression, increase stars. I think so few stars makes expansion difficult for the AI, when you factor in colonisation range limits and probability of viable planets.


As for your spaceports, did you order thm to retrofit, or were you waiting for the game to do it automatically?

I ordered them. The retrofit was undergoing, but it just didn't finish ever. No material shortages.
Colonization range was 1.75 sectors.

And yeah, I certainly will for the next game.

If you happen to have a save with the retrofit taking place, I could probably tell you why it didn't work.

ORIGINAL: Tcby

If you happen to have a save with the retrofit taking place, I could probably tell you why it didn't work.

Thanks, but it's fine.

I'll just try a new game and see if happens again or not.

The game kept thinking I had the base in use somewhere, since I couldn't delete the (obsolete automarked) design. But that really wasn't the case, as I had only one space port. That had to do with the Space Port not being able to refit itself.

This *maybe* a work-around for the spaceport issue: just don't delete obsolete designs. Change your filter to show only non-obsolete designs and the result is pretty much the same.
 
I said that because I don't ever delete old designs. Didn't know you could do that until I saw this thread . Anyway, maybe deleting a design that's "almost unused" messed up the game somehow, which is why I suggested not deleting them.

If you order a retrofit whilst building something on your planet (e.g. colony ship) then the retrofit process wont commence and, instead, will be sitting in a queue.

ORIGINAL: PR

If you order a retrofit whilst building something on your planet (e.g. colony ship) then the retrofit process wont commence and, instead, will be sitting in a queue.

That sound like an plausible explanation! So how can I prevent private side from buying ships?

How can I pause my building queues to retrofit?

Retrofitting does NOT show in the build queue.

Just looking at question 1, I think research capacity is based on your empire's total output (either production or population, not sure which) compared to the other empires. So what happens in my games a lot is my research capacity picks up early with my homeworld's fast initial growth, then it goes down as my homeworld caps and the other empires outgrow me since they usually have hyperdrive at first but I don't and are able to conquer independents and colonize, then gradually goes back up again when I catch up with the AI empires. The bigger your empire gets relative to the other empires, the more your research capacity goes up. This seems counterintuitive because your research capacity can go down even while you are growing, but that is because you are not growing as fast as the AI's. It may seem strange but works pretty well from a game balance point of view and rewards those empires that expand the quickest in terms of getting a research advantage.

ORIGINAL: Fex

ORIGINAL: PR

If you order a retrofit whilst building something on your planet (e.g. colony ship) then the retrofit process wont commence and, instead, will be sitting in a queue.

That sound like an plausible explanation! So how can I prevent private side from buying ships?

How can I pause my building queues to retrofit?

Retrofitting does NOT show in the build queue.

Apologies Fex, I should have clarified it better.

I assume you had a problem retrofitting a planet based space port (i.e. the one that was built over a planet). These are built by the planets themselves and retrofitting is done by the planet as well (which is why it wont appear in the space port queue). There are two types of ships that are built by the planets (that I am aware of) - colony ships and constructors. So if you ordered, say, 5 colony ships and then a retrofit of your spaceport, then the latter wont start until all colony ships are built which will take a long time.

Since private sector uses space port yards only, it wont affect your retrofit order.

You can always check the construction queue of your planet by clicking the crane looking item in the top right and by then selecting the relevant planet out of the list.

ORIGINAL: PR

ORIGINAL: Fex

ORIGINAL: PR

If you order a retrofit whilst building something on your planet (e.g. colony ship) then the retrofit process wont commence and, instead, will be sitting in a queue.

That sound like an plausible explanation! So how can I prevent private side from buying ships?

How can I pause my building queues to retrofit?

Retrofitting does NOT show in the build queue.

Apologies Fex, I should have clarified it better.

I assume you had a problem retrofitting a planet based space port (i.e. the one that was built over a planet). These are built by the planets themselves and retrofitting is done by the planet as well (which is why it wont appear in the space port queue). There are two types of ships that are built by the planets (that I am aware of) - colony ships and constructors. So if you ordered, say, 5 colony ships and then a retrofit of your spaceport, then the latter wont start until all colony ships are built which will take a long time.

Since private sector uses space port yards only, it wont affect your retrofit order.

You can always check the construction queue of your planet by clicking the crane looking item in the top right and by then selecting the relevant planet out of the list.

That's it! I indeed had 5+ colony ships in the queue, which certainly explains why the retrofit didn't get through in a year.

Thanks for the help!

Now I wish there was a functionality that would allow "prioritized retrofitting".

#3: CTRL + Right-Click gives you the option to capture a target (assuming you have Boarding Pods). This works well to highlight numerous ships, as the ones with guns will batter the shields down and seem to shoot it up a little and then the ships with Boarding Pods launch their assault shuttles. The AI seems to handle this well.

#6: Not what you asked, but in case it's useful to somebody: You can give manual orders to repair stuff. Just click on your constructor, then right-click on any target that shows a hammer. This is necessary to retrieve certain abandoned ships in your colony (if they're damaged and abandoned).

Right clicking the repair adds it to the queue. I'd like to "stop whatever you are doing, repair instead and then continue your queue"!