Azunai_

in GC3 (also in the previuos game of the series, GC2) population and troops are basically the same thing. you put your citizens in thos troop ships, land them on alien planets and if your dudes win, they are the new population of your newly conquered planet (some of the original inhabitatns usually survive, too) it can be a good idea to have some troop transports in preparation and collect some people from planets that reach their current maximum population limit. also, since

the layout of that planet is a bit inefficient, but the farms aren't that bad actually. would have been smarter to put the farms next to the hospital to actually get some more growth. but overall that layout is already much better than what they did 2 patches ago ;)

theres a button in the lower left of the research screen that toggles the "advisor" screen and the tech tree ;) EDIT: lower left, not lower right ;)

they don't need to make it harder to get. if they want to address the issue, they can simply change the maintenance costs. maintenance in GC2 was a lot higher, so you'd usually run a lot more wealth oriented planets. spamming only research colonies with the occasional manufacturing planet in between gets a bit boring. wouldn't hurt if you'd actually need a proper economy to fund all those planets full of scientists.

the 3 main problems with the auto spawn fighters are the hull size, the price and the automatic upgrades. you can't possibly fit the same amount of weapons/defenses you get on the fighters in the 50/70 hull space taken up by the carrier module, so the module is not just MUCH cheaper but also provides a lot more defense and firepower compared to a "battlehip" of the same size that uses actual weapons and defenses rather than fighters/drones. the auto upgrades are just as bad. resea

i don't think there is a display of the research points for techs. at least i haven't seen one yet. but it looks like excess research points aren't lost - the "overkill" is stored and applied to the next technology you choose, so you i guess it doesn't really matter all that much that the exact point costs is hidden.

don't really know what factors affect the trade route output. i *think* distance matters, but not really sure if the population or wealth output of the planet has any effect. wouldn't hurt if we had some map filter/overlay that shows the potential trade yield of each planet. as it is now, i usually send my trade ships from my trade capital to alien planets that are far away. also, the default trade ship design is horrible. it's full of life support systems and no eng

reagrding the home planet of cargo ships: in my experience, the easiest way to handle those is to add the planet you want to designate as their home planet to the sponsor list of the shipyard where you build them. the game will ask you which of the planets in the sponsor list should be the home planet. the planet doesn't actually have to contribute any manufacturing points to the shipyard and the distance of the shipyard doesn't matter. this way you can build the cargo ships o

i like to put one next to the hyperion shrinker. before it was changed to "one per colony" you could game that system a bit and surround the shrinker with 5 antimatter plants and an elerium shield. i guess a similar case could be made for galactic wonders that give a faction wide bonus. don't really know if any of them scale with adjacencies the way the shrinker does, though. aside from that special application, it seems completely useless ;)

i wouldn't consider a peaceful influence victory on an insane map. the victory condition is to have a pretty large % of the map in your zone of influence (some 85% or something, might be more or less depending on map size or number of starting factions). so you'll probably have to fill out lots of empty space with culture bases and put up dozens of bases around rival planets to choke their influence by waiting for a long long time. sounds like an exercise in frustration. works better

when you have that tile selected, there are 2 icons that accurately descibe the effect. there's green arrow pointing upward and next to it the game displays some bonus - like "+3 manufacturing". that bonus applies to structures built on that tile (but only if they are of the appropriate category - ie. a tile with +3 manufacturing improves factories, power plants or other buildings that are in the manufactuing category) the other icon (4 small orange arrows/triangles pointing outwa

hmm interesting read - thanks for the numbers joeball123 & Christian_Akacro. so going from beginner to normal to gifted to genius looks more like a natural progression for a player who is getting used to the game and improves their strategies over time, but "godlike" is a re

your logic is flawed. the Solar plant breaks even at 3 adjacency, not 4. and it doesn't cost "a bit less" - it costs less then one third of a mega factory. and you can build it in one turn, whereas a mega factory takes at least 3 turns to build+upgrade. so even if you use it with only 2 adjacencies, it takes A LONG time for the slightly better output of a mega factory to make up for the extra production and turns you have to invest it. a 5% mfg on an average planet running at 20 base manu

as a general rule, don't build so many farms. try one farm, skip the growth building, skip the 2nd farm. with lower pop, you can also skip the approval building. so you have something like 3-4 factories, 1 farm and the remaining tiles filled up with research. same deal for wealth planets, but you'll probably only need 1 of those to fund the first 20 colonies 50 starbases and a few fleets. add a few more if you grow larger or like to have a huge military. you can always add som

if you have a full circle (i.e. 6 adjacent tiles), each point of adjacency bonus the building in the center *provides* is worth 30%. if you put the manufacturing capital or a fusion plant (+3 adjacency) on a tile surrounded by 6 manufacturing buildings, that's a 90% manufactuing bonus. so a fusion plant in that setup is effectively worth 140% of manufacturing boonus (50% (base) +90% from the adjacencies it provides). an industriial sector (top tier factory) in that tile is 75% base + 30%

[quote who="Nodor" reply="5" id="3557220"] I am so confused. I thought the following (which is apparently incorrect): The adjacency bonus was/is +1 to the base number. The base buildings could only apply their percentage to their "base" number. The 1 per colony buildings applied their percentages to all of the buildings on the planet. The 1 per colony building also applied their +x adjacency bonus

you're right about the thulium archive, that's fairly weak. i disagree with everything else you wrote, though. solar plants are hardly useless. they are at the same tech level as the mega factory. a solar plant adjacent to 3 manufacturing buildings is on par with a mega factory and much cheaper to build (45 points vs. 30+45+67 points over 3 turns). fusion plants are really good. with only one adjacent mfg building they are already bet

you can set the sliders for each planet individually. (there's a "govern" button on the planet screen and i think also when you have selected the planet from the galaxy map) if that's too much micromanagement for you, you can put one of the "projects" like "economic stimulus" in the queue once you have no more room to build more stuff. those projects will use up all the social manufacturing of the planet and convert it into a bonus of some sort (economic gives you a bit of ext

[quote who="redviper37" reply="13" id="3556263"] ... I have a correlary question to that... Let's say the Altarians have harmony crystals on one of their planets. They trade it with the Terrans for technology, for 50 turns. 20 turns later, I invade this particular planet of the Altarian dominion. Do I get the harmony crystals right now or only in 30 turns? I almost never pay attention to that... [/quote] &nbs

i still haven't figured out how the defenses work exactly, but i'm fairly sure they absorb more damage than the number suggests. i guess the "attrition" ratio is some function of attack value vs. defense value, but didn't test it excessively. in short, yes they are usually worth it. you can sort of "game" the system by assigning the "escort" role to ships with lots of defense (almost all tactical roles attack "escorts" first) and making capital or support ships with more w

i unlocked one of those traits in a game (one that adds a size 10 planet) and the planet spawned a bit outside of one of my colonized systems. it was technically outside of the system, but got the name "Vega IV" since "Vega" was the closest star. i guess the position is somewhat random, but somewhere near one of your colonies on a tile that you already know. or something along that line.

the alignment system is mostly based on the coloization choices you pick, so in a role playing sense i guess the civs that pick the benevolent option are actually the good guys. those choices sort of reflect how you treat native life and your own ciolonists. i think that also makes sense in a real world comparison. you can't act "benevolent" in the face of some ruthless rival power - they'd just perceive it as weakness and attack you. the colony events are a different matter. when you

[quote quoting="post"] 2. There's a specialisation technology that has you choose between "15% more manufacturing capacity" and "reduces manufacturing costs by 15%". What is the difference? Don't they both just make everything take 15% less time to build? [/quote] i guess the other stuff was answered already, but i think the answer to this one was a bit misleading. reduced manufacturing cost means that buildings of that ty

the fighters and drones are automatcally designed using some template that is hidden in the shipyard screen. you can "upgrade" an existing small ship to the current assault fighter design, though (not worth it - just wanted to point that out, so you cantake a look in a test game what stuff they usually have) i think the default loadout is one of each weapon type, one of each defense type and a thruster engine. if there is extra room left, more weapons will be added. don't know a a

the "dense" trait is probably not a bad pick for such a strategy. i think dense alone is enough to put a colony module on a tiny hull. may also require the cheap "transport specialization" tech that reduces size of colnies, troop pods, carrier bays etc. since you're playing with the colonizer trait that gives you a free "rush" building on each colony, you might as well put the colony at 100% research during that turn and get a few points of research for free - so it shouldn't be hard