How do I flag or add a note. Looking all around for this and dont see a way to do it.
Edit:
Ok - I see the note is on the fleet - I was looking to write a note on the planet.
You should be able to add a note in the system area (top left window). It’s looks like a little yellow post-it note. Then when your fleet moves on, the system has an exclamation mark showing it has a note attached.
One thing I did was mod the game’s .ini file to tweak a few things - getting rid of the annoying Von Neumann probes, for instance.
I agree that a lot of weapons are side-grades. That’s necessary in a game with a random tech tree. The weapons do have pleasant niches, and cheap and cheerful ships full of basic mass drivers will get wrecked by high armour technologies, or simply outclassed by fusion era weapons. Winning a war of attrition that way is probably more about how cost effective Zuul ships are than their weapons (though check out Tarka cruisers and Human dreadnaughts for some other cost effective designs!).
It’s a disaster the wiki has gone. There’s so much detail and differences amongst the racial ships and techs that you might not notice without the numbers in the wiki to draw your attention. Did you know Liir colonizer destroyers do a little terraforming on landing, something normally reserved for cruisers (and possibly only with a tech improvement)? I didn’t until I read the wiki.
But getting rid of the probes gets rid of the berserkers, and good lord the berserkers are fun and rewarding.
Found it - thanks much!
Need help against Von Neumann probes?
Post four destroyers - preferably with strafe sections - as a defense line for each planet you own. These will cost chump change for you. Upgrade (trash/rebuild better destroyers) as time progresses and make sure to add point defense turrets to help with the rare asteroid strike when that happens. When a probe comes to a planet, leave them in their starting line-abreast position and they’ll pick the little probes apart and yet won’t destroy the big ship. This will prevent “big brother” from coming and seeking vengeance; however, once you’re ready for berserkers, then go to town.
Irritated by the planetary traps?
Level up your Morrigi xenotech to level 4 and you’ll automatically disarm the traps and earn a little cash whenever you come across them. Yeah; guess who left those there ;)
Also, this tech map may be useful
And this tedious optimal play is exactly why I disabled them!
What do you [lace in the ini file to disable the probes?
I looked it up - it’s actually a bit more complicated than that…
I think you need to make a little mod, and then modify one of the VNEUMANN_ variables. But it’s been so long I’m not sure what I did!
Shame you can’t really capture the 3D’ness of the star map in SotS.
I suppose the political map overlay at least gives you a vague 3D impression.
I set the other AI’s to random, got what I thought was lucky with two other Tarkas empires in the galaxy with me, but so far the best I’ve managed is a ceasefire with one and the other declared on me and has been snatching away planets.
That’s just rude, we should be brothers in arms.
Tarka diplomacy is weird! You really need to show them you’re in charge.
It’s a bit crude, but I really appreciate the little details that go into each race’s diplomacy (along with so much of every other aspect - engines, ship designs, growth rates, tech chances…). The Liir are quite friendly, for instance - unless you attack them. And then they will hunt you down and mercilessly destroy you.
Good advice! I’ll slap’em around a bit and research how to subjugate’em!
So just had my homeworld destroyed by Locust. I’m guessing then that setting random encounters to zero (which is what I did) has not in fact removed everything besides the other alien races as I’d expected?!
Some expert at this game answer me this: Is there in fact no way to remove things like this?
Ideally I’d like to set up a galaxy where me and 6 or 7 other alien races occupy it and we then have at it. And would like to very much not include guest appearances by things like Locust that feel arbitrary and game ending.
I think you might have to mod the game to make the 'grand menace ’ chance zero.
There’s an archive called sots.gob in the game files. It’s actually full of config files. I think somewhere in there will be the setting.
Sigh, was afraid that was the case. Pity this random encounter setting didn’t in fact remove random encounters. ;)
Edit: Guess I’ll need to fall back to an earlier save and google what’s effective weaponry against Locust and kill’em.
Grand menaces are definitely not random encounters, they’re a completely different level of threat.
Funnily enough, one of the things the random encounters help with is forcing you to militarize earlier than you need to with only AI opponents which, in turn, put you in a better position to deal with new threats of this sort. Heck, one of the random encounters is a primitive form of the locusts, so you generally even have specialized ships for the task…
Lots and lots of phaser point defense to wipe out the drones. As a heads up, there are different grand menaces and each game gets one no earlier than turn 100 but often well after.
This is spot-on. And the .gob files are actually just archives of the config files; use 7zip or whatever to open them, and then edit away (I recommend saving copies of the originals).
For this, open the Sots.gob, then navigate to Data, then edit encounters.txt. You’ll see data for three of the grand menaces, including the Locust. You can set the odds to 0.0 for that or change the minimum turn for any of them to launch. The fourth is found in the Combat subfolder of Data, and that’s the ortgay.txt file where you can do the same for that menace.
I was looking into grand menaces as a part of trying to figure out if they were covered by the random events setting, never could find a direct answer but I’m guessing they’re not.
Looks like then one of four doomsday weapons shows up after turn 100. Each more or less with a trick or two you needed to field to handle them. Locust as an example swarm you so you need PD of some kind to handle them (and/or shields?).
Which I guess is fine if I can’t easily turn it off in settings it is what it is. The only real complaint I have is in my last two campaigns the Locust show up and take out my homeworld as the first thing they do. It’s been at a point where I can see everyone else so I know where everyone’s homeworld is that mine is attacked first.
Is this just the RNG gods frowning on me and perhaps (fingers crossed) when whatever shows up this go round they might for a change attack someone else?
Worse case scenario thanks for the paragraph on how to edit!
IIRC, that one does cut a swath straight to the leading player’s home world (or yours if you’re the only non-AI). The other three have different behaviors, and honestly I love the chaos, er, “peace” Ortgay brings, lol (edit - this dude is much more fair). System Killer and Puppet Master are purely indiscriminate, fwiw.
Follow up question, probably an obvious one but I’m at the stage in my new campaign where I need to ask it.
In the last 40 or 50 turns I’ve sent dreadnoughts to all the homeworlds I have visibility to and pretty much anything else I can see.
And having wrecked everything visible I guess I’m at a stage where I have to start sending scouts in all directions to find the remains of their empires?
Because curiously one of them is shown as #1 in colonies (since I’m shown as #2) which I find somewhat difficult to believe since I’ve got like 22 at this point and I’m not seeing any of theirs?! If they’re larger than I am I shouldn’t I be bumping into this supposed huge empire?
This is a 150 star galaxy so I realize it’s not exactly small but I have been roaming around it for 140 turns.
Edit: think I answered this one myself with scouting, looks like this phase of the campaign does turn into a bit of hide and seek as I can be relatively close to them and they remain undetected until I sent a ship directly to a planet.