Darquies

Join Date 03/2008

i need a lil understanding about the life support deal

Greets,

playing a custom game on gigantic map. My lil corner of the universe and i'm set. i see some trade hopeful's about 12 sectors away(sector as in the big blue square that your only allowed to have 4 starbases in) anyhoo, i slap on a whole mess of life support, and see that via the details screen on the ship builder, that my happy lil freightor should get there and make me some green. only it doesn't. and stops like 7 sectors away. So i upgrade life support, and this time my details in my screen says 22.3 sct so, i build another freightor, and wammo, the thing can't go past, the same area where my "obsolete" freightor couldn't go.

Finally i totally maxx out my life support and miniturazation and go for broke. And the freightor still can't go past my first "obsolete" freightor. so if there's any info on helpin me figurein out this. I would be much appreciatve.

(pls excuse the spellin, it's 3:22 am here)

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Thats a new one to me. Can you see the little white boxy lines designating where your ships can travel to? Does that show up at all? Because occasionally in DA I'll get this weird little bug where my ships will have movement points left and be right next to a planet but it will give me the "run in the dark" line about being too far away. I just reload the game and it goes away.

Another silly question, but are you simply researching the life support techs, or are you also adding life support modules to your new freighter? Because your range should definitely increase simply by learning the techs, but increase even more if you actually add the modules to the ships.

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Hi!
DL and DA have a hard cap of 7 sectors on the range of ships. There's no other way to extend it but to build a starbase, or get a planet.

BR, Iztok

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Question: Does mining a resource extend your range? Or does it have to be a starbase? I typically only bother with the smaller maps so life support and range are rarely, if ever, researched.

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Mining a resources requires you to build a starbase, so yes.
As long as the structure is closer to the "border" than the previous closest object, your range will extend. I usually send a single constructor out in the dark and construct an economy base to extend my range if I can't get something 'functional' like a planet or resource.

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thankyou Iztok.

Piznit, yea i do have the white ship boundry, and it never changed, which make's what iztok says all the more reliable.

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now for my next question. . . is that gonna change? I would like to have life support mean what it's means. if that's the right way to say it

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

DL and DA have a hard cap of 7 sectors on the range of ships.

That's very annoying on two levels: 1) hard caps should scale by map size, and 2) the game shouldn't let you add all that life support, or should at least warn you that it's useless. You shouldn't have to make a post like the OP to figure that out.

Really, what good does a hard cap there do at all? Even the speed reductions we got a while back were done without resorting to a silly thing like a hard cap.

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Which makes colonizing PQ4s or less the more useful on bigger maps, the stepping stone of range may be smally but at least it can provide freighters a sort-of corridor to fly through and from. I'd second on the Hard-Cap oxymoron... a relative value would be necessary in any cases. And, what's with the TotA giga-distances found in the biggest map now - range will actually become an important (if not essential) issue.

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*Gasp*

X-Worlds not mentioned!

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*Gasp*

X-Worlds not mentioned!

Shh! He'll come back and bring it up, just because you said it!

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Hey, i won't. I don't. I shouldn't, either!

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-Worlds.

NO! I'm sorry, SC. I DIDN'T MEAN TO DO IT!

NO!!!

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While a hard cap certainly can be annoying, I think sometimes it is necessary. After all, putting a ridiculous amount of engines on ships in DL was the reason for the new engine costs.

I imagine that the life support cap has a similar reason, AI programming maybe. It sure makes starbases and small planets actually matter on the larger maps. But a warning, something like 'max range already reached' would be nice.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

While a hard cap certainly can be annoying, I think sometimes it is necessary. After all, putting a ridiculous amount of engines on ships in DL was the reason for the new engine costs.

But the engine "nerf" was not a hard cap. I guess for me it comes down to preferring options over hard limits. I'd rather be able choose to design a really weird or expensive ship if I have a map moment where range is a problem.

I suspect quite a few folks would agree with both of us that the game shouldn't let you think you have a 22 sector range just because you piled on all those support modules.

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