Matrix Games Forums

some questions if you please

1. Am I right in thinking that missiles doing low damages (like 8) are worthless against any armor that has some reactive rating? First, half of the damage are removed, and then the reactive value quick in...


2. Auto repair order given to explorers. My explorers, as soon as they get one armor damaged (stellar storm) will reroute automatically to nearest spaceport for repair. That's very sub optimal, as they are far from home and I could care less about one single armor damaged. In full expert mode, no automation at all and I have not found any setting altering that. Quite a bother.

3. Can a deep space station be a shipyard, producing ships? I prefer not discover it can't the hard way [:D]

4. I Have some caslon gas stations on distant systems that don't show the 'oil drop' icon, despite being full of useful (and used) caslon? Is that a bug?

1 Missiles are less useful against armor and work as you stated. However, All weapons still have a one in twelve chance of doing damage even if the armor rating exceeds the damage rating.

3 I believe so. However, without a colony's unlimited cargo space you will have to ensure the space station has a lot of cargo room to keep it supplied with resources.

Hey Pocus,

1. I haven't played for a while, but I was using Retreat's mod last (haven't tried Roger's mod yet). In Retreat's mod after you develop Type II missiles you can research and develop a side branch: Caslon missiles. They still are only half as effective against armor, BUT range is 1200, And they Never loss Any of their damage over distance!! Each level of tech you research Damage points go up substantially, too. I would recommend researching as much Targeting as you can (great against a stationary Star Base, not as good against a moving ship). I set all of my military ships to Stand Off/ Stand Off, and just let them pound away at a safe distance. Even a small attack fleet of 5 or 6 Cruisers each armed with 6 of the lowest level Caslon missiles will evaporate the largest Pirate Space Station in 3 or 4 volleys.

2. Yes, it is annoying. Even more annoying is to have 5 or 6 Explorers attempting to refuel at a pirate controlled independent halfway across the galaxy. Now they get damaged and auto return for repair without any fuel. [:'(]

3. I've only seen it work when you discover and claim an abandoned Space Station. Sometimes they have a vast stockpile of resources, which you can then use to build, repair, and retrofit ships. Note that freighters will attempt to relocate these resources to other bases with low supply. Found and claimed Star Bases or Monitoring Stations typically have no resources. I don't know (never paid that much attention to it) if freighters will attempt to resupply a found and claimed Space Stations (especially deep ones), they don't seem to do so with Star Bases.

4. Not sure. Long shot, but does you gas mine design have a Commerce Center on it?

Nice to see a "new" name taking interest here. Happy gaming!

hi again,

Could not sleep (5 AM something in France )
1. Indeed, I'm using Roger Bacon excellent mod topped with Retreat+UE+Das mod from Das (he did the integration, good man!), and Caslon missiles are the way to go. I'm a bit worried about AIs using the useless type II missiles though.
2. nothing to do then. Hopefully that will be fixed for DW 2.
3. It seems to work, I built a generic starbase with a shipyard, and it can produce ships. Couple that with Roger Bacon mod where you can redirect some private freighters yourself, and you get your deep space factory
4. Will check, but as most of my space refineries get the icons and not this one (same design), this can't be the issue.

Yeah,; I returned to DW when I saw Roger Bacon mod and the ability to alleviate the issue that prevented me from returning to DW: the unsolved shortages of some resources, because the civilian sector had weird choices in priorities. I'm still seeing that (like burning 300 caslon to transport 2 units (of caslon)), but at least now I can have my state-owned freighters in parallel for critical shortages, while letting the civilian sector do his usual business.
I also abandoned the hope that Stellaris will turn into a valid space simulation game. More and more gamey, abstract and further away from reality. Nothing can interest me less than a space game where a starbase over a sun controls abstractly an entire space system.
To be comprehensive, I also did a detour to Aurora (I know the game fairly well now), but I'll wait for Aurora C++ to be out, as current Aurora is slow as an asthmatic snail with narcotics.

I'm a bit worried about AIs using the useless type II missiles though.

Just so everyone knows, the races use what I consider "racial weapons". Atuuk will always use rail for example. I think Human will use Type II. Change the research script and design templates in RetreatUE if you want something different.

The type 2 missile and the Caslon missile look balanced on paper (mostly) but they are not due to the way the game handles weapons. Its my biggest complaint about the game and one that I can't change. It is as follows:
A weapon can only have ONE projectile in existence at a time. That means that a long range weapon with a quick firing rate is impossible unless it can travel its entire distance before the weapon recycles. So the type 2 missile, with its long range, mostly just sits there waiting for the fired missile to expire even though the reload time has long passed. The Caslon missile has a longer reload time so it doesn't suffer from this issue.
For this reason, in the Bacon Mod, whenever I increase the range of a weapon (like on bases) I increase the projectile speed the same percent.

Good to know indeed, and it has profound effect on non instant weapons balancing.

Those caslon missiles need a balance pass and should really be called torpedoes due to the high damage. Way op at the start and still very strong at the end of the tree. Sure they miss a lot and do half damage but the base damage is so high just a few will take a full health capitol ship out. They also more or less invalidate the energy torpedo tree. But hey they sure are fun to use. [:'(]

Well, the xls from the mod seems to be rather good in making sure the DPS is not over the top... except that the ROF from standard missiles is lower in reality, as per Roger Bacon remark. I would have sped up them, 'fast missiles', while slowing a tad the caslon line.

Anyway, 2 questions if you please.

How do I spot possible pirates networks, bases, whatever on planets? I'm stationing some troops but they find nothing, and I'm rather sure that a pirate has something on my world, as he is shown as owning some colonies, there is the Human icon nearby him and is anyway very close to my colonies. It adds up.

2nd question, I was rather sure that small spacedock could upgrade to medium them large (a special class of refit where you can change the category), but I find no possibility doing that, which is rather disturbing, as it would mean scrapping the small spacedock before rebuilding from the ground another one!

ORIGINAL: Pocus

Well, the xls from the mod seems to be rather good in making sure the DPS is not over the top... except that the ROF from standard missiles is lower in reality, as per Roger Bacon remark. I would have sped up them, 'fast missiles', while slowing a tad the caslon line.

Anyway, 2 questions if you please.

How do I spot possible pirates networks, bases, whatever on planets? I'm stationing some troops but they find nothing, and I'm rather sure that a pirate has something on my world, as he is shown as owning some colonies, there is the Human icon nearby him and is anyway very close to my colonies. It adds up.

2nd question, I was rather sure that small spacedock could upgrade to medium them large (a special class of refit where you can change the category), but I find no possibility doing that, which is rather disturbing, as it would mean scrapping the small spacedock before rebuilding from the ground another one!

xls.. ???
DPS.. ???
RDF.. ????? why always these enigmatic acronyms [&:][&:][&:]

you can spot possible pirate building on your planets in the planets screen.

for what regard your second question, when you refit a Space Port from small to medium (or to large) it is not scrapped from scratch, but refitted in the usual way. I have do that tons of time and I am pretty sure of this statement.

ORIGINAL: Pocus

2nd question, I was rather sure that small spacedock could upgrade to medium them large (a special class of refit where you can change the category), but I find no possibility doing that, which is rather disturbing, as it would mean scrapping the small spacedock before rebuilding from the ground another one!

You can't use the usual button on the infopanel in this case. You have to use the ctrl-right click menu when clicking on the base to be upgraded.