Some Questions on: Tax options, Component build order, Adding a component, Construction distant...

[NZFade]

First off, thanks to Matrix games, I have recently purchased a copy of Distant Worlds: Universe after having briefly played an earlier one in the series in 2012. It is a great package and is a huge amount of fun.

Now for the community at large, I am a reasonably regular gamer however at DW:U I would consider myself new and at the newb|early player stage, I have read a number of posts here in the forums and in other places and have gained much of what I needed, so I thank in now for those tips.

Currently my games are at the 10 x 10 with 1000 or 1400 stars, 11 to 13 races and normal numbers of pirates.

The Questions (in no particular order) - I have tried to break these up and give a little back ground around each to give some context and game play style.

1. Construction Ship Area Limits:

- Is there any way to limit the distance from your colonies that a construction ship will travel to build a mining facility while on auto?

I have already tried limiting their fuel cells but then they just jump around independent colonies and end up on the other side of the map building mining stations that I have no way of defending.
Note that after I have my first few colonies up and running and resource follows are acceptable I usually add sensors, armor, shields and weapons to my mining stations to make then a little less easy to pick off and mean my strike fleets have time to get to them while the pirates are hitting them.
Ideally I would like my mining stations only to be up to 1 sector away from a colony so I have a more controlled spread into the galaxy but I do not yet think I have the skill to manage them all on manual.

2. Adding new components:

I understand how to add new components through the modding guide, have done it successfully in the form of a low damage, high fire rate mini torpedo (Component # 129). More for interest than anything else, also added a new research branch to the tech tree to account for it, fine, tick... but when I come to add another one, so this would be component #130 in the components.txt, the game will not even load and when I get it to there are different pictures that show up, looked in the |images|ui|components folder and there are almost 200 component images but only 128 components in the file.

- so my questions are, do the components in the components.txt need to be in numerical order? or can I randomly start making component #214 as the last entry?

- What are the pictures for in the |images|ui|components folder if they are not linked to a component in the components.txt? Or are these for upgrades? some look the same, but some a slightly different in colour.

3. Developing an espionage intelligence character:

I am looking for tips on the most effective ways to train an espionage character, I do not play an intelligence orientated game usually but managed recently I took over a colony of Ketarov which game a bonus to my intelligence guy, who in turn stole the best fuel cells off the Haakonish which really opened my eyes to the benefits of a good espionage character.
So what is the most effective way to build the espionage skill, I understand that I need to use it, steal stuff effectively, but do I need to change targets?

-Do the same missions or check between the different type?

-Is it worth stealing the territory map prior to stealing the galaxy map or do I just go direct to galaxy maps?

4. Tax options, levels and max pop.

Thanks in advance to all the posts from past pers where I have a good understanding of growth and tax rate interaction. My play style is currently manual tax options, 0 tax on all new colonies until they get to 8000m or more then push the tax rate up until I am happy, usually about 25%. Or if a small planet gets to max pop, say a moon, I will put the tax rate up on that as well. When I start out this is fine, but as I expand I start to lose track of the smaller planets an end up losing lots of potential income when they reach max pop and only catch them when I am clearing out pirate bases, in some cases, many years later.

- Is there a way to sort or ID planets that have max pop on the colony management screen without having to go into each colony separately? Or maybe even just a notification in the ticker window to let me know?

- In the automated tax options, there are only 3 options, 0 to 200, 200 to 2000 and 2000 above, is there any way to edit these in one of the files to customise further?

- Can you set when that low, med and high tax levels are that you can select from?

5. Component build order for mining stations, def bases and star ports.

Given my skill level (or lack there of) and the size of the maps I end up playing a 'take and hold' method of expansion and war. This means defense bases over everything that does not have a star port on it, both of these are armor heavy with plenty of shields and pretty much an ever increasing amount of weapons depending on where they are. I usual build a custom small star port and then upgrade it to a larger one once the system has resource mining established. Also as noted in the above (Q1) I have fortified mining stations also, later game I also add fighters to the large star ports to help with over increased attack range. So bases are pretty important to my current style of play hence the investigation into this.

- Does the component order in the ship/base design window also identify the build order?

It has been alluded to in other posts but not specifically explained about build order, my own observations are that as long as there is power the automated functions such as shields and repair bots will work just fine. Following this theory and the fact that a base only get fueled at the end of construction this is my current build order in general terms:
Comd Centre
Energy Collectors
DamCon|Repair Bots
Shields
Missiles or Torps
HAB & LS
Remainder of Weapons
Armor
Sensors
Construction | Mining Equip
Reactors & Fuel
Anything else

- If you can affect component build order is the above list in line with others thoughts? If there are differences what are they and can you elaborate on why so I can learn.

If build order cannot be changed then it is safe to say that I waste a significant amount of time re-ordering my damn components each game.
As a side note, if it does matted, Matrix Games - can you please put the ability to move components up and down within the design menu.

Thanks for making it the end of this post and hope to hear the communities thoughts and feedback on the above.

Regards.

[CyclopsSlayer]

re #4 - I chose a tax rate based on the happiness of the world and not just a fixed value. Later in a game my home world might have wonders and entertainment facilities in place and keep my Home at a +14 [:)] and yet support a 45% tax rate. All depending on the Development, Quality and Happiness of a world.
But yes, new colonies and conquered worlds are always at 0%.


re #5 - Assuming full availability of resources components are always built in a top down order off the systems list.

Systems that do not require or produce power seem to function immediately. One facet of that I use all the time is Fighter Bays. When building a Trade Base over a colony I always place the Fighter Bays first in the list. That way the base start building and will lunch fighters to defend LONG before the rest of the systems are complete. Shields and most guns will not operate until the last of the base is complete, yet I often have fighters swarming around bases that are barely 10% built.

Caveat, you cannot command the Fighters to launch or land until the base is finished, but they will respond in defense when the base comes under attack.

[Solastar]

I would like to add in reference to #5 and CyclopsSlayer's input that I believe armor functions the same way as the fighter bays in that it is immediately viable. Putting a reasonable amount of armor on your bases will help them survive if they get attacked before they are completed. I am not 100% sure of this but my incomplete bases that have been attacked that have lots of armor seem to survive some serious damage. I would also like some clarification of your #1 question as that is driving me mad as well.

[Bingeling]

1: There is no way to influence where an automated construction ship will go. The AI can be quite eager to get a certain kind of mine, and won't care if it is on the other side of the galaxy and impossible to defend, and also impossible to send a freighter to.

I have run a lot with automated constructors and I may have told them to "stop" if I see them head off (and then automate them), in the hope that they will come up with some better mission the next time. Apart from that I don't defend those mines and research bases. Which can be a bit hurtful if I also automate characters (I just about always do), and the AI puts the star scientist on that research station far away...

2: I don't mod, but... Check the guide, peek at existing mods. I would guess that having them in order could be necessary. For "not loading", the game is probably still rude if you have a typo in the file. Like a misplaced comma or semi-colon. Opening the file in a spreadsheet (divide by the separator in the file) may be enlightening if it is a mess. If I ever were to make a mod, I would probably do all the component, race, etc files in a spreadsheet and just live with them looking like a mess if viewed in a text editor.

3: Never paid much attention to intelligence, but I think you need to do some mission to get the stats revealed. Do the easiest mission until they are, and focus of those with traits and stuff in the area you want to focus on.

Hopefully some spy master can give more input.

4 and 5 was answered above.

[Aeson]

So what is the most effective way to build the espionage skill, I understand that I need to use it, steal stuff effectively, but do I need to change targets?

I don't know that there's a most effective way to build the espionage skill. The safest way would be to figure out how to drop your intelligence agent on the same location that you have an Inspiring Presence character. If you find an easier target (say you've been hitting the Ketarovs, who have a 50% bonus to intelligence, and now you find the Boskara, who lack any bonus to intelligence), you should probably switch to the easier target unless you don't want to offend them when a mission fails or unless you already have what you consider to be an acceptable success chance against your current target.

If you're going to try building an agent's skill levels, go for the safest, fastest mission of a type governed by the skill you're trying to improve. Also don't get too attached to agents who aren't sitting at home; assuming that the success chance is independent of the number of missions, even someone with a 95% chance to succeed on each mission only has a ~77% chance of surviving 5 missions and a ~60% chance of surviving 10 missions. At an 89% chance of success to succeed on each mission, those numbers drop to ~56% and ~31%, respectively, and it only gets worse with lower chances of success.

-Do the same missions or check between the different type?

Depends on success chances and what you want to do. According to the game manual, the Espionage skill affects the missions Steal Territory/Operations/Galaxy Map and Steal Research, so those should be the missions which improve your character's espionage level. Sabotage affects Sabotage Construction, Sabotage Colony, and Destroy Base; PsyOps affects Incite Rebellion and Incite Revolution; Assassination and Counterintelligence affect the obvious; Concealment affects Deep Cover and I believe it also helps prevent agents from being detected/captured on all other offensive mission types. If the manual doesn't contain errors, I would expect that the missions governed by a given skill are the only missions that will significantly improve that skill, except if you get a good trait pick. If you're trying to build an Assassin, clearly Assassinations are the only mission type you'd want to be focusing on (maybe Sabotage, too; Scientist characters tend to be aboard stations, it might be easier to blow up the station than to kill the character directly, and the character dies either way), while an Espionage agent has more options to choose from. It also depends what you want out of the mission; stealing Territory Maps or Galaxy Maps repeatedly in a short period of time isn't very useful except as training missions (and territory maps tend to be the easiest thing to steal), but constantly sending agents to steal research or operations maps could be very useful as a boost to your own research efforts or to keep an eye on a potential enemy/target.

If what you want to do is agent-development, always check the different types of missions AND the potential targets for whatever is easiest and go for that. Remember that even within a given mission type there can be varied degrees of difficulty; more expensive research projects and species-specific research projects tend to be more difficult to successfully steal, I think better characters might be more difficult to kill, larger/more important bases might be more difficult to destroy, unhappy colonies are easier to incite into rebellion than happy colonies, unhappy empires are easier to incite into government changes than happy empires, empires with large intelligence bonuses tend to be more difficult to succeed against than empires with small intelligence bonuses, etc.

-Is it worth stealing the territory map prior to stealing the galaxy map or do I just go direct to galaxy maps?

Pick whichever one has a better success chance, unless you feel there's no point in taking the easier one or unless the difference in difficulty is small. Also remember that if you automate explorers, they tend to ignore ruins in systems that you have maps for, whether or not those ruins have been investigated, until the explorers have nothing better to do.

1. Construction Ship Area Limits:

The only suggestion that I can give you is to limit the range of the construction ships. I don't think they like building things in places if they cannot get there, build the station, and then return to a refueling point without running out of gas, but I'm not sure about that.

It has been alluded to in other posts but not specifically explained about build order, my own observations are that as long as there is power the automated functions such as shields and repair bots will work just fine. Following this theory and the fact that a base only get fueled at the end of construction this is my current build order in general terms:
- If you can affect component build order is the above list in line with others thoughts? If there are differences what are they and can you elaborate on why so I can learn.

Components are built in the order in which the first component of each type was added to the design, and in addition to what CyclopsSlayer said above, systems which require power (e.g. weapons) will begin to function as soon as both a reactor and an energy collector have been completed (though it's unlikely that a large warship's weapons will be fully operational off of just an energy collector or two and an unfueled reactor). If you have a design and you want to change the order in which components are added to it, perhaps because you have brand-new Deucalios Shields that you wanted to replace your Corvidian Shields with, you'll need to strip off all the components that you want to move around in the build order (including any components that you just want to shift down in the build order), and then add them back to the design in the order you want them built.

With that said, the only thing I'd change about your list is that I'd move the habitation and life support modules further down the build order and move the reactors up. I personally like having armor, fighter bays, shield generators, energy collectors, reactors at the top of my build order (though the particular order can vary), followed by the various defensive components (damage control, countermeasures, ion defense), and then the rest, with engines, hyperdrives, fuel storage, and other components that do nothing until the ship launches towards the bottom. If you're not putting Long-Range Scanners on your bases and instead are relying on ships for that bonus, you might want to put those further up the list, as well, since I think they'll become operational once completed, or at the least once they, a reactor, and an energy collector are completed.

[NZFade]

Thanks for the input people.

CyclopsSlayer:
re #4 - I chose a tax rate based on the happiness of the world and not just a fixed value. Later in a game my home world might have wonders and entertainment facilities in place and keep my Home at a +14 and yet support a 45% tax rate. All depending on the Development, Quality and Happiness of a world.
But yes, new colonies and conquered worlds are always at 0%.

Ack that, but is there a way to identify those planets that have reached max pop apart from individual checks?

CyclopsSlayer:
re #5 - Assuming full availability of resources components are always built in a top down order off the systems list.

Systems that do not require or produce power seem to function immediately. One facet of that I use all the time is Fighter Bays. When building a Trade Base over a colony I always place the Fighter Bays first in the list. That way the base start building and will lunch fighters to defend LONG before the rest of the systems are complete. Shields and most guns will not operate until the last of the base is complete, yet I often have fighters swarming around bases that are barely 10% built.

Caveat, you cannot command the Fighters to launch or land until the base is finished, but they will respond in defense when the base comes under attack.

Thanks, interesting point about the fighter bays, will have to try it out.

Solastar:
I would like to add in reference to #5 and CyclopsSlayer's input that I believe armor functions the same way as the fighter bays in that it is immediately viable. Putting a reasonable amount of armor on your bases will help them survive if they get attacked before they are completed. I am not 100% sure of this but my incomplete bases that have been attacked that have lots of armor seem to survive some serious damage. I would also like some clarification of your #1 question as that is driving me mad as well.

That stands to reason given that Armor is just mass that takes the hits prior to everything else, along this line is why I was getting quite interested as I also believe that the repair bots are automated so should repair this armor without any other aspects functioning as long as there is power.

Bingling:
1: There is no way to influence where an automated construction ship will go. The AI can be quite eager to get a certain kind of mine, and won't care if it is on the other side of the galaxy and impossible to defend, and also impossible to send a freighter to.

Aeson:
The only suggestion that I can give you is to limit the range of the construction ships. I don't think they like building things in places if they cannot get there, build the station, and then return to a refueling point without running out of gas, but I'm not sure about that.

That is not ideal, but I guess with a game like this where you can customise the kitchen sink asking to customise the plug as well is one step too far. I will stick with limited fuel cells and plenty of energy collectors on the construction ships.

Aeson
Components are built in the order in which the first component of each type was added to the design, and in addition to what CyclopsSlayer said above, systems which require power (e.g. weapons) will begin to function as soon as both a reactor and an energy collector have been completed (though it's unlikely that a large warship's weapons will be fully operational off of just an energy collector or two and an unfueled reactor). If you have a design and you want to change the order in which components are added to it, perhaps because you have brand-new Deucalios Shields that you wanted to replace your Corvidian Shields with, you'll need to strip off all the components that you want to move around in the build order (including any components that you just want to shift down in the build order), and then add them back to the design in the order you want them built.

With that said, the only thing I'd change about your list is that I'd move the habitation and life support modules further down the build order and move the reactors up. I personally like having armor, fighter bays, shield generators, energy collectors, reactors at the top of my build order (though the particular order can vary), followed by the various defensive components (damage control, countermeasures, ion defense), and then the rest, with engines, hyperdrives, fuel storage, and other components that do nothing until the ship launches towards the bottom. If you're not putting Long-Range Scanners on your bases and instead are relying on ships for that bonus, you might want to put those further up the list, as well, since I think they'll become operational once completed, or at the least once they, a reactor, and an energy collector are completed.

great, this is gold. As a side not I have been playing around with my mining bases and star ports early and mid game having limited fuel cells and plenty of energy collectors with the idea that they can fend for themselves long term without a fuel resupply and also it reduces the empire fuel usage at the expense of initial construction. Not decided if this is a viable trade off just yet but I have noticed a reasonable reduction in the fuels demand during periods or war or increased pirate friction.

Aeson, reference your input on the intelligence character, that is gold I have not even considered the inspiring presence factor and have been trying to plug away at missions only, early game this is a sound idea. I already abide by the saying "never get wed to your plan" so pretty sure I can extend that to the characters as well.

Thanks again for the input team, this has been good. I will go and have a look at some of the other mods for the components questions and will wait and see what comes back re the max pop question.

Regards.

[NZFade]

Also one last question, can you make the ticking message box any bigger? so it gets say 5 or 6 lines not just the 4? and can you make it wider?

[Aeson]

Also one last question, can you make the ticking message box any bigger? so it gets say 5 or 6 lines not just the 4? and can you make it wider?

I don't believe so, but you can open up an event log which contains most or all of the messages that show up in the scroll list by clicking on the envelope button to the right of the scroll list.

Aeson, reference your input on the intelligence character, that is gold I have not even considered the inspiring presence factor and have been trying to plug away at missions only, early game this is a sound idea. I already abide by the saying "never get wed to your plan" so pretty sure I can extend that to the characters as well.

Fair warning: Inspiring Presence, while safe, is very slow. Plus, agents are the only characters that do not by default reside on colonies, ships, or stations, so you'll have to figure out how to move them around. I think you can do it with the 'transfer character here' option in the cntrl-right click menu for a selected object, but I tend to expend my agents rather than sending them off to be inspired.

Ack that, but is there a way to identify those planets that have reached max pop apart from individual checks?

No, but you can sort the colony list by planet quality or planetary population to at least narrow down which planets need to be checked. Personally, I just tax those worlds over 10 billion population and try to keep the happiness to at least 15. Makes it easy to check quickly, because if happiness is less than 15 the smiley face turns grey and you know you need to adjust the tax rate down; I always check the colony's happiness before raising taxes to get some idea of how much more I can tax the planet, so not knowing instantly that a colony is happy enough to support heavier taxes isn't much of a problem.

[NZFade]

Well for what it is worth my observations from my current game are these:

Fighters do indeed start building very quickly, this is gold, thanks for the tip on that Solastar and it would appear shields do not start charging in my designs until they the base if fully finished after watching it more closely. So Aeson, I think your suggestion of Armor further up the list is a must. To the point it will prob be Comd, energy collectors, fighter bays, armor for the start of them, have not got any conclusive on the repair bots yet, have not managed to steal that tech yet.
I use the build a small starport first then retrofit it to a large one, given this the build order might pay real dividends in this respect by adding additional, armor, shields and weapons prior to other items.

Ref the advice on the intelligence characters from you Aeson, that has worked well, lots of time in the early warp part of the game stealing Territory then galaxy and then ops, and moving to the next civ, going back to the ops map option once I have done everyone for another round. I cannot be sure but given the lack of skill improvement unless there are large changes in the galaxy maps it gives little to no espionage skill improvement. I noticed huge improvements from stealing the Zenox's fast recharge shields, took me 4 missions to get them but I raised 8% just on that tech alone (two lots of 4% increase).

Regards.