Will Skyfall

[quote]Kol x6 Dunov x4 Javelis x375[/quote] So, uh . . . what do you do when the massed fighters and bombers show up? :)

Agreed. I like the fact that ICO chat got a facelift, and that people in chat can now message people in-game; kudos to IC for that development. But with the loss of color-coding and default targets, the barrier to using the in-game chat for [i]in-game[/i] purposes--such as diplomacy--is higher now.

So, if I understand correctly, you can now buy an unbounded amount of metal+crystal @ 300, and sell an unbounded amount of metal+crystal to the market @ 100? And while crashes and booms and fluctuations change this, this behavior is generally the default? And if I understand correctly, this means that TEC players with lots of trade ports are going to be throwing credits at the market like candy for metal and crystal, whereas Vasari will be hard-pressed to get much money from their neut

[quote]Which brings us to the next point: population upgrade.Yes it takes a while to pay off. In the beginning there are very few options to increase your income however.Actually there are only two! The pop upgrade and expansion.Expansion is limited by the speed at which you can creep planets and the antimatter of your colony frigates though.[/quote] Agreed, and furthermore: on really small maps (Point Blank, Close Encounters, etc.) expansion is also limited by lack of expansion opportu

[quote]I'm sick and tired of explaining this to you guys, especially with all the experience I have maybe you should just trust the experienced players that ALL know this.[/quote] Innociv, please stop trying to shut down discussions on this forum with your brand of aggressive elitism. You are not the arbiter of truth and justice on the forums, and acting like such is only going to get your points ignored. (Yes, I know, I'm not the arbiter of truth and justice on the forums eit

Now that patch 1.03 is out, is it possible to connect to ICO when you're still running version 1.02? I've got a saved game with a couple friends that we want to finish tonight, but we don't want to patch to 1.03 or the save game will probably break.

[quote]You can buy 100 crystal and build a capital ship that has the ability to colonize.[/quote] Sure you could; and that's a perfectly viable plan. But if you want to build anything [i]but[/i] a colony capship for your first capship, or if you want to buy a different ability for it at level 1, it's colony frigate buying time. Also, a number of the competitive 1v1 players like having a colony frigate anyway if they're playing TEC or Advent so that they can capture neutral ext

If you buy 200 crystal at the start of the game, you can immediately queue up: * Your population upgrade. * Your capital ship factory. * A colony frigate. I believe that you end up using only 125 extra crystal (rather than 200), but that's not a denomination in which you can buy materials, so 200 it is. :) Note that you can queue up all of these things before your crystal extractor comes online; at this point in the game, you're making 0 crystal/sec, and getting the

Question #1: Are 1.02 saves incompatible with the new patch? Question #2: If so, is it possible to play on ICO with a group of friends, all of whom have 1.02, without patching to 1.03? We've got a saved game that needs finishing . . . :(

[quote]ok, so you don't like temporary price fixing....TEMPORARY! we all understand the issue, not sure why you had to restate it.[/quote] Just thought I'd summarize some of the arguments so far, since the thread seemed to be drifting off topic in the direction of whose build rocks and whose build sucks and who should learn to play, which I think is worthless. No aggression was intended. I understand I'm taking a weirdly extreme position against price fixing; but I feel that

[quote]Will, we don't mean the Market should be locked, we mean the PRICES should be locked for a brief time. That way no one is penalized for what they want to buy...within 30 seconds or so when the market starts fluctuating, everyone should already have what they want for their chosen start.[/quote] Actually, I'm against price-fixing in the early game. Why? Because the idea behind the market is that as more people want metal and crystal, the price of metal and crystal should go up;

[quote]press tab after pressing enter.[/quote] QFT. You can also use SHIFT+TAB to cycle backwards through the available chat targets (Allies, specific players, etc.) It works pretty much exactly the same as selecting and tabbing through components of a fleet in the Empire Tree; pretty clever, actually. . . . I believe it also remembers the last group you sent messages to, and picks that target by default when you press enter again.

The Advent Colony capship (the Progenitor Mothership) is an amazing vessel. Not only is its Colonize ability arguably the most powerful of the races' colony capships (20%/40%/60% planet upgrade cost reduction?!), but its other two abilities (Malice and Shield Regeneration) are ridiculously powerful. I haven't tried this yet; but I hear that a Progenitor Mothership can take out the militia at a Terran or Desert world [i]by itself[/i] with level 1 Shield Regeneration. More so th

[quote]That's actually a really good question, Dante - what effects would moving your capital to an asteroid have? Does it matter what kind of planet your capital is on (other than ease of destroying it)?[/quote] [quote]The capital gives a tax bonus, but I forget if it's percentage based or just straight added in.[/quote] I believe the capital gets a tax bonus based on the type of planet it is (or possibly based on its population cap) . . . I've seen Terran worlds get a 4.0 cr

Culture can also influence whether or not it's a good idea to move your capital. Moving the capital changes the [i]max[/i] alllegiance value for each colony, leaving the [i]actual[/i] values to slowly shift to the new equillibrium. If you've flooded your empire with culture, however, you get to cheat a little: the allegiance values that are [i]lower[/i] than their new caps rise quickly (.05% / s), whereas the allegiance values of your old core-worlds float downward more slowly (.02% /

[quote]See, random would be even worse, and even stupider. Then it'd be "who's lucky enough to catch it when it opens first?" instead of "who loads and presses ctrl+f6 twice first?"Yeah, nice there.[/quote] I disagree. The current system, at the moment, seems to reward whoever has the fastest machine / has pre-loaded the game. It also rewards blindly throwing yourself at the market without checking to see if the price for crystals is something you'd actually be willing to [i]pay[/i].

Does Malice trigger when a ship takes damage from the Vengeance ability? In other words, if a fleet of ships is attacking a target protected by Vengeance, and the fleet is currently affected by Malice, does a part of each ship's Vengeance damage get applied [i]again[/i] as Malice damage to the entire fleet? I could see this getting really ugly, really fast, considering that [i]your[/i] fleet is also shooting the affected ships, and their damage would [i]also[/i] be boosted b

[quote]How does this help the problem of long end games online?[/quote] Well, one problem it should fix is the "opponents disconnect" issue, since the patch notes also say: [quote] -AI will now take over for dropped players.[/quote] . . . so if your opponent disconnects when you destroy his fleet, the AI will take over; and if the AI feels the same way about its chance of winning that your opponent did, it'll turn right around and surrender. At least, we c

Hey, HuntingX; what's your opinion on the Animosity/Vengeance combo for a small 1v1? Do these games of yours last long enough for a second capship to become a viable option for either player?

[quote]This is unlikely (but not impossible if you're ninja enough) if I jump a ship in ahead of time and find out where your capital ships are at, then jump the disciples toward the one that does this and drain it before it closes in to phase out the Progenitor or Revelation.[/quote] Does the Disciple's Steal Antimatter ability work on capital ships? I tried to deliberately target a capship with the ability once, and was told that I needed to target a frigate or cruiser instead. I mi

[quote]Thanks Hiriako I had totally forgotten about the distance from home world thing. For some reason I had it in my head that Broadcasting towers countered that.[/quote] Broadcasting towers [i]help[/i] against the "distance from home world" thing, but they don't counter it. When your planet is under the affect of friendly culture--like when you have a broadcast tower near it--you can boost its allegiance by up to 10% (which is about as much allegiance as one jump away from the homew

[quote]But saying things like "Damage mitigation increases when a ship is focus fired upon" will lead to much confusion and result in many ridiculous tactics and suggestions.[/quote] Agreed; and like you said, shield mitigation isn't affected [i]at all[/i] by the number of ships attacking the target.

[quote]1000 point of damage will always increase Shield Mitigation by the same amount (which varies from ship to ship). It doesn't matter if that 1000 point of damage was dealt by a single ship or a whole armada. It doesn't matter if that 1000 point of damage was dealt in a second or an hour. It doesn't matter if that 1000 point of damage was dealt by ships doing 0.25 DPS or Death Stars(tm). 1000 point of damage will always increase shield mitigation by the same amount. [/quo

[quote]Unless you try to intercept the one that is sent to attack the enemy. That would be the only thing I can think of.[/quote] Hey, the beautiful thing about this approach is that, when you're done, your enemy will [i]still[/i] most likely have the highest bounty on his head, because the pirates wound up attacking your ships instead.

[quote]If they were sporadically exploring and discovering metal, then you would expect to see periodic spikes of "discovery" amounts. Their summary curves all resembled a steep upward line from the start, then around mid-game slightly leveling off to a more slowly rising, but still rising, and continuing to the end. There was no stepped activity as one might expect.[/quote] I'm pretty sure that the end-game graphs don't properly represent values changing over time when the value chan