a few humble questions

[spiceant]

(I didnt realise the list got as long as it did by the time i finished writing it.)


Does the punishment sphere cut research in half or does it affect research like a negative network node?
Which energy outputs are counted to calculate a bases energy value in regards to the commerce calculations? (does it include commerce itself?)
How many commerce techs are there?
How does altitude affect artillery? Does a artillery unit in a air transport gain altitude bonus? Which modifiers / abilities affect artillery duels?
Do interceptors intercept copters? Does a interceptor intercept before or after a air moves into its 5x5 area? Do interceptors intercept relevant units that are attacking interceptors that have already intercepted in the same turn? (Can i bait a interceptor into a trap if it is not alone?)
What will a patrolling unit stop for? Will it stop for any non-pact unit that enters it sight radius? Do deep radar patrollers stop when it sees a unit 2 squares away?
What are the exact formulas used in combat? How is collateral damage calculated?
Do com jammers use their bonus when defending / attacking against speeders if both have dissasociative wave ability?
How is it determined how much damage a missile does against a particular unit and wether or not it hits its target? Does it do collateral?
Is it considdered an exploit to disband your starting position so that you replanetfall with a free former?
Does the punishment sphere cut research in half or does it affect research like a negative network node?
Which energy outputs are counted to calculate a bases energy value in regards to the commerce calculations? (does it include commerce itself?)
How many commerce techs are there?
How does altitude affect artillery? Does a artillery unit in a air transport gain altitude bonus? Which modifiers / abilities affect artillery duels?
Do interceptors intercept copters? Does a interceptor intercept before or after a air moves into its 5x5 area? Do interceptors intercept units that are attacking interceptors that have already intercepted in the same turn? (Can i bait a interceptor into a trap if it is not alone?)
What will a patrolling unit stop for? Will it stop for any non-pact unit that enters it sight radius? Do deep radar patrollers stop when it sees a unit 2 squares away?
What are the exact formulas used in combat? How is collateral damage calculated?
Do com jammers use their bonus when defending / attacking against speeders if both have dissasociative wave ability?
How is it determined how much damage a missile does against a particular unit and wether or not it hits its target? Does it do collateral?
Is it considdered an exploit to disband your starting position so that you re-planetfall with a free former?
Until when can a faction re-planetfall? Is respawning chance based?
how do i increase my integrity to noble? If it takes a certain amount of turns, how many?
Which actions increase integrity?
Do active loans modify integrity changes when diplomacy changes between 2 factions?
Which active methods can be used to rid of a agreement (truce/treaty/pact) in a integer manner? (sounds like an oxymoron...)
Which facilities / secret projects give a multiplicative (not additive) bonus or penalty? (like for example empath guild, clinical immortality, theory of everything)
Tree farms / hybrid farms eliminate the eco damage from everything but mineral production? Do factories increase eco damage by increasing mineral output?
Can i stop a river by putting a borehole dead smack on top of it or anywhere downstream?
Do rivers do anything besides increase energy, acting as roads and reducing wormspawns in fungus?
How is it decided how a river flows and how elevation terraforming affects it? (are they absolutely predictable?)
Which factors affect economy victory energy cost?
If i elevate New Sargasso (sea based landmark with fungus / many unity pods) will i have a cluster of resources as a result?
And lastly and most importantly: How do i calculate a techs research cost at any point of the game?

[gwillybj]

Q3: Six: Industrial Economics, Industrial Automation, Environmental Economics, Planetary Economics, Industrial Nanorobotics, Sentient Econometrics

Q4a: Altitude increases artillery's to-hit chance but not the damage inflicted.

Q22: You start at Noble. As long as you don't do anything "undiplomatic" you can maintain that throughout the game, even with factions you fight. If you lose your Noble status it's tough to get it back. You just have to be extra-nice to whomever it is that you upset.

Q23: I'm guessing gifting techs and ECs would help repair your integrity.

Q26: These I could see in alphax.txt, I may have missed some:
Perimeter Defense doubles defense for land units.
Naval Yard doubles defense for sea units.
Aerospace Complex doubles defense for air units.
Tachyon Field doubles defense for all units.
The Weather Paradigm increases the terraform rate by 50%, which in play means it takes 2/3 the time to do something.
The Citizens' Defense Force gives all your bases a Perimeter Defense.
The Neural Amplifier increases Psi Defense by 50%.
The Maritime Control Center gives all your bases a Naval Yard.
The Supercollider doubles Labs output at its base.
The Theory of Everything doubles Labs output at its base.
The Dream Twister increases Psi Attack by 50%.
The Space Elevator doubles Energy output at its base and halves the cost of all your satellite construction (including Nessus Mining Stations).
The Cloudbase Academy gives all your bases an Aerospace Complex.

Q28: Most often, yes, a borehole will become the end-point of a river, but sometimes the river will reroute and go around.

Q29: Rivers most often increase the moisture in their squares. This doesn't always work in arid squares far from hills and mountains or in the Dunes.

Q30: From what I've seen in my mapmaking, a river will generally flow into the highest neighboring square that is lower than the current one, which is why rivers sometimes flow along a coastline for a few squares instead of directly into the sea. There appears to be a significant random factor involved, so you can't always predict its flow. Sometimes a river will change direction during the game with no obvious cause.

Q32: Watch out for Sealurks. They don't like you messing with their coastlines.

Q33: There is a Tech Rate formula on page 23 of the Prima guide, but iirc it has been shown to be inaccurate.

[Vishniac]

Naval Yard doubles defense for sea units.
Aerospace Complex doubles defense for air units.If I'm not mistaken, it seems to me that, even if datalinks don't say so (they just tell about repair and morale upgrades), Aerospace Complexes don't double defense FOR but AGAINST air units. A scout patrol in a base would benefit from the bonus.
Same for naval yards: they double defense against naval attacks.


32: If i elevate New Sargasso (sea based landmark with fungus / many unity pods) will i have a cluster of resources as a result? Not sure. When I terraform them up one click to put a mining platform, they already loose the +1 mineral bonus!:angry:

[gwillybj]

I believe you are correct, Vishniac. The text in alphax.txt is ambiguous, but the text in helpx.txt is not.

#; Perimeter defense
#HELPFAC4
Increases defense multiplier of base by one. This effectively doubles defense strength (or triples it when combined with a Tachyon Field).

#; Tachyon field
#HELPFAC5
Increases defense multiplier of base by one. This is cumulative with Perimeter Defense, for a net tripling of defense strength at base.
It is the defender that gets the bonus from Perimeter Defense, Tachyon Field, Aerospace Complex, and Naval Yard.
Note also that the benefits are additive, not multiplicative: 1x, 2x, 3x instead of 1x, 2x, 4x.

[gwillybj]

1. Does the punishment sphere cut research in half or does it affect research like a negative network node?
alphax.txt says: "No Drones/-50% Tech"
helpx.txt says: "Eliminates both DRONES and TALENTS at this base, and decreases vulnerability to enemy mind control, but reduces LABS output by 1/2."
If this works the same as other formulas, the conclusion would be a Network Node increases labs by 50% and a Punishment Sphere reduces labs by 50%, so if both facilities are in one base they cancel each other out. A Punishment Sphere without a Network Node would cut research in half.

[vyeh]

Tree farms / hybrid farms eliminate the eco damage from everything but mineral production? Do factories increase eco damage by increasing mineral output?

Yes to both questions.


Do rivers do anything besides increase energy, acting as roads and reducing wormspawns in fungus?

It takes longer to build a road in a river square.