A function of thruster components and ship size. Don’t upgrade to a larger ship before you have sufficient thrust.
Anybody know how the infrastructure rating of a planet is determined? Let’s say the planet has a few penalties on it because of various threats and political attacks, and there are quests to fix each of the problems. Which area should I focus first, population, food production, water etc? I understand that a planet with low infrastructure can slowly build more, but I’m wondering how to get the most out of what little I can do for a planet in a short amount of time… especially when a few of my ally’s planets are in dire straights and I’d like to see them building up their infrastructure before worrying about much else.
Is infrastructure merely a representation of population?
Also, sometimes my ally will have just a couple ships and I’ll give them a ton of gold to build more, but they won’t build any more even though some of their planets have no ongoing penalty effects that should keep them from doing so, and even though the area is teeming with bad guys I’d like them to be prepared for. I’m wondering how to get them to actually spend that money. Unless they’re at war they typically seem slow to respond to roamers.
Building ships requires both credits and minerals AFAIK. If your ally’s planets aren’t producing minerals (you can check via status), I don’t think they’ll be able to build ships.
That’s good to know! Normally I try not to put a whole lot of attention into any one planet, but I was trying to hold a certain system for my ally and they had a very small, fragile foothold. So much as a pot-shot from a bad-guy fly-by would have taken them out.
This game can feel a lot like Majesty at times.
Also, when you look at a planet’s status, it should tell you the estimated time until the next ship is built.
Yea, this always adds to my confusion, because most of the time the build-time is 0:00.
Right so that means nothing is being built. That could be because the mineral costs aren’t met, or it could perhaps be that the AI isn’t trying to build any more ships. Freighters can transport minerals between planets (again, AFAIK), and I think mineral production needs population but I’m unsure about that. Helping the health of the planet in general I think helps with mineral production. You definitely want to get rid of the debuffs the planet may have.
The structure of a planet is basically the population times a multiplier where the multiplier is related to the level of the sector and the difficulty.
The 0:00 time estimate on a planet basically means they have as many guard ships for that planet as they want.
How is mineral production affected by population?
Thanks for the information. Back into space with me.
Mineral production works something like this (food and tech are similar):
base amount from planet type (I think minerals are the same on all types)
- population * perPop from planet type
- bonuses/penalties on planet (Poor/Rich)
- starbase (minerals starbase would increase)
- race mult (Dryads are bad at minerals, etc)
- corruption mult (increases as they get bigger especially if they have a lead)
I think you didn’t expect players to want to know these precise formulas, but I think getting involved in the 4x is exactly what makes the game so good.
So another note for Drox 2 is: give the player some notion of what they can do to help with elements of the 4x. For example, all the player needs to know is that minerals are used for building ships, and population and planet-specific stats affect mineral production. Unfortunately Drox doesn’t tell the player anything about this stuff :(
Does anybody here actually use ballistic/self-aimed weapons? It seems like I have to spend a lot of extra effort to get the projectiles to connect for not much more payoff. Unless I need to get higher levels (my highest ship is only 20 or so) to discover bigger and better versions (like spread-shots or something), this particular weapon style seems a little too fiddly, since I need to keep leading and predicting my shots etc.
I get the feeling I’m using them wrong. Maybe they’re just good for planet-busting?
One advantage I think is that they have very long range. They are indeed good for attacking planets from afar, since you can kite and pull the defenders behind you while bombarding the planets.
EDIT: Another advantage of long range is that you don’t have to maneuver as much to get in range. So if you’re being chased by a bunch of monsters, you can keep your distance while firing back at them more easily. If you’re at low thrust, your turn radius may be much larger than enemies’, and again the extra range helps you hit them before they can hit you.
Good to know. I’ll have to change my control scheme to take advantage of the manual aim weapons I think, because I can’t aim backwards without turning my ship right now, and that works for auto-aim, but manual aim just throws off the projectile’s trajectory.
I’m currently running a game and the Drox Guild just stabbed me right in the face, figuratively speaking. I’ve spent all game trying for a Legend victory (exploring, killing monsters, not harming AI players directly), the game is down to just 3 AI players, two of them hate my guts (0.0 rating with them), and I’m allied with another. Because I’m allied with that third one they’ve benefited from my awesomeness by getting all their quests done, tech’s for free, and planet info scouted and given to them for free.
And what does the Drox Guild do to me? It gives me a mandatory quest that must be completed in the next 28 minutes or I can’t win the game. The quest makes it so I have to either lower my ally’s (Utopian) power ranking, or raise either the Draxx or Talon up above them, so that the Utopians are no longer the most powerful AI out there. The thing is, the Draxx and Talon are fighting over scraps and aren’t currently in a position to do much of anything. And I can’t simply buy their loyalty (or sponsor them for much) because I’m kinda broke on this character at the moment (this is the character’s first campaign). But regardless of the many hours I’ve put into the system so far, I’ve got 28 minutes to pull the rug out from under my allies and boost some losery AI Civ up before I lose. I’ll probably try to prop the Draxx up somehow, because they have 50% of the power ranking as my current ally, but I’ve got my work cut out for me.
Damn Drox Guild.
So I’m working with the Drakk, trying to lend them a hand. I wonder how much they appreciate the help.
Okay, so maybe I’ve got some work to do on that front. But in the mean time, I am actually trying to help them (behind the scenes I guess) for now.
I really like these Drox Guild quests, but because they don’t really account for the current situation, they should give a lot more time than they do.
Predictably, I lost. It turns out trying to raise one faction’s power is a whole hell of a lot harder and slower than simply annihilating the ones at the top of the pack, and I waited too long to break my alliance with the #1 guys and start wiping their planets and ships off the map. This is a lesson for next time.
I probably could have done it within the time limits if I had just gone full aggressive from the start, but I still held on to some slim hope I wouldn’t have to alienate the guys who owned 80% of the galaxy.
I love these missions. It’s pretty rare that you’d go up against the Empire that dominates the galaxy otherwise. It just needs to give a LOT more time to do these things, because it’s not doing any deep analysis of the current situation. I’ll make a mod at some point to extend these mission times (assuming it’s moddable).