3 Questions about game mechanics

from Sins Forums

Here are my three questions:

1) Is there any benefit to having more of any particular research facility (like Military Lab) than you need to research a particular item? For example, if you have 8 labs and want to research two items that only require 4, can they be researched at the same time, or will they still go one at a time by at twice the speed?

2) Is there a way to quickly see the total number of research facilities (like Military Labs and Civics Lab) in your entire empire? Sometimes if I've built a lot of labs on different planets, I can lose track of exactly how many I have and be unsure if I should build more.

3) When ever I zoom in or out and my mouse happened to be over or near a unit, the camera automatically locks onto that unit and starts following it around. This is especially troubling when I'm looking around a planet and all of a sudden my camera shoots off following some ship that just left for another planet. Is there a way to turn this off?

6,012 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
1) The only benefit of having more labs than is required is that if your planet(s) get taken over by the opponent, you will still have enough labs to research what you haven't already or to use one of the super weapons. Having more labs does not affect the time it takes to research a technology.

2) Check out the icons on the left side of the HUD beside each planet. There are distinctive icons for military labs (circular structure with an 'X') and civic labs (circulat structure with an '/'). This is how I check the number of them and is the fastest way that I know of.

3) Check the options screen. There is an option to stop auto-tracking. You can also manually do it each time by tapping one of the arrow buttons on your keyboard to stop the tracking.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
1) The only benefit of having more labs than is required is that if your planet(s) get taken over by the opponent, you will still have enough labs to research what you haven't already or to use one of the super weapons. Having more labs does not affect the time it takes to research a technology.

2) Check out the icons on the left side of the HUD beside each planet. There are distinctive icons for military labs (circular structure with an 'X') and civic labs (circulat structure with an '/'). This is how I check the number of them and is the fastest way that I know of.

3) Check the options screen. There is an option to stop auto-tracking. You can also manually do it each time by tapping one of the arrow buttons on your keyboard to stop the tracking.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
*EDIT: Sorry about the above posts. This forum's pretty bad...
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
On 3,

there is also a button on the game screen that let's you quickly toggle it on and off. I first hated that feature too, but have learned to like it.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
On (2) - as long as you have seven or less, you can tell how many you have by going to the research screens and seeing how far the background color has progressed to the right. For example, if you have four military labs, half the military research screen background will be coloured. This doesn't, of course, work for more than eight (because the screen stops at that number), and it doesn't show builds that are in progress (because you might not complete them).

-- Retro
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
On (2) - as long as you have seven or less, you can tell how many you have by going to the research screens and seeing how far the background color has progressed to the right. For example, if you have four military labs, half the military research screen background will be coloured. This doesn't, of course, work for more than eight (because the screen stops at that number), and it doesn't show builds that are in progress (because you might not complete them).-- Retro
End of quote


Yeah, that's how I do it.

I'd like some kind of sleek interface adjustment though, perhaps just a small counter that lists the numbers of Civic/Military stations you have, and which, when you click the numbers, will cycle through them for you.

Hey, that's a pretty damn good idea!
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
That's how it was in the beta, with a counter for the labs, no idea why they took it away...
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for all the info. I did honestly look around for a camera tracking feature, but I guess I missed it. And thanks big time for the tip about the background color on the research screens. I don't think I would have ever noticed that.