Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Fri, 20 June 2008 04:42 |
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beanspoon | | Chief Warrant Officer 3 | Messages: 182
Registered: June 2008 | |
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I've been playing a shareware version of stars 2.0 up until 2 days ago, and having downloaded the new stars 2.7, I have to say I'm a little out of my depth. So here's a few questions about changes that have been made:
1. Initiative - I'm guessing initiative is used to calculate which ships do what when. Am I right?
2. Accuracy - Obvious really, but new to me.
3. The Magno Pulse and Magno Needle - what happened? I rather liked the fact that they damaged everything nearby...ok I can see how they could be annoying, but still...
4. Infinite minerals - Back in my day, each planet only had a limited amount of each mineral that you could mine, and after that it was expand or die.
The last two are more like why did it get changed rather than what is it. Everything else new I've worked out and am very impressed with. Can you guess what I'm going to do while I wait for a reply? Damn I love this game so much...
The goat whats YOU.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Fri, 20 June 2008 05:15 |
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Adacore | | Chief Warrant Officer 2 | Messages: 156
Registered: February 2005 Location: Shanghai | |
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I'm a relative newbie myself, so some of the others can probably provide better answers (and although I've been playing Stars! on and off for over 5 years, I never played any version prior to 2.6):
1. Initiative determines the order in which weapons are fired. Weapon slot initiative is equal to the sum of the weapon initiative and the ship hull initiative - highest init fires first. The movement order is determined by ship weight (with a small random modifier)
2. Accuracy is indeed reasonably obvious on the face of it, however it gets considerably more complicated when computers and jammers are added into the mix. Basically capital missiles are more powerful but need high computing and are bad against high jamming, while torpedos are less powerful but are much harder to jam.
3. I have no idea what the magno pulse and magno needle were, but what you're describing sounds like it might be similar to the minigun/gatling weapons in Stars! 2.6/2.7, so maybe it was just renamed.
4. Planets have mineral concentrations which gradually decrease - once it gets down to a low concentration then the mining is incredibly slow. It never goes below 1, so yes you can always mine some minerals, but this effectively limits the amount of useful minerals to a finite quantity. Except on homeworlds, where the minimum concentration is 30, so you can always mine at a reasonable rate. The actual quantity of minerals in a planet can be calculated per the info in this article by Jason Cawley.
Hope that helps.
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Re: Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Sun, 06 July 2008 03:47 |
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Adacore | | Chief Warrant Officer 2 | Messages: 156
Registered: February 2005 Location: Shanghai | |
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If the opponent has fast, cheap ships set to maximise damage, wouldn't they end up doing far more damage to your own fleet than the enemy? It would certainly add more tactical depth to battle orders...
[Updated on: Sun, 06 July 2008 03:47] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Sun, 06 July 2008 22:40 |
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In any case they'd still be more useful than the range-zero weapons that replaced them.
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Re: Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Mon, 07 July 2008 08:09 |
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Soobie | | Officer Cadet 3rd Year | Messages: 270
Registered: May 2007 Location: Australia | |
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Adacore wrote on Mon, 07 July 2008 18:21 | There are very few uses for range-0 weapons that I've heard of in a serious game. The only one that sounds realistic seems to be using them on starbases against enemies that (for some reason, such as very low weapons tech in the early game) universally use range-1 beamer ships.
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I guess if you didn't have Range3 yourself and your enemy is using heavy range1 beamers and you have resources to waste you may vaguely contemplate using a lighter range0 beamer ... and I do mean vague ...
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Re: Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Mon, 07 July 2008 10:07 |
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beanspoon wrote on Mon, 07 July 2008 14:22 | Does anyone actually regularly use them at all then?
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For a limited time they are very useful on bases. They are efficient enough that you seldomly need them. This might sound like a contradiction but due to Blackjacks nobody would dare to attack a base with range-1-lasers. The risk to meet Blackjacks ripping apart your range-1-ships is just too big.
On ships they are special circumstance weapons. Sometimes and usually when you are desperate, there might be use for them as a specific counter design.
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Re: Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Mon, 07 July 2008 10:16 |
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Adacore | | Chief Warrant Officer 2 | Messages: 156
Registered: February 2005 Location: Shanghai | |
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Altruist wrote on Mon, 07 July 2008 10:07 | On ships they are special circumstance weapons.
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Totally off-topic, but that reminds me - I've still not read Matter (Iain M Banks, latest book in the Culture series), it's sitting on the table next to me waiting for me to finish my current book... I really need to get reading!
[Updated on: Mon, 07 July 2008 10:17] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Initiative, accuracy, the Magno Pulse and much much more... |
Mon, 07 July 2008 10:39 |
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beanspoon wrote on Mon, 07 July 2008 16:30 |
Altruist wrote on Mon, 07 July 2008 10:07 | This might sound like a contradiction but due to Blackjacks nobody would dare to attack a base with range-1-lasers.
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Why? As long as you stayed at range 1 blackjacks could do no damage.
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Remember that on bases all weapons have a +1 range bonus, so Blackjacks have a range of 1 instead of zero.
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