Two Questions

[NeFuRii]

Hello, I've decided to play some multiplayer game, and I've got some questions. Two so far:)
1) I played moo2 long long time ago, version 1.00 or something like that. I didnt like the death ray that sometimes I got after defeating the guardian.
The thing was, that with better techs (future techs?) weapons become lighter, therfore better as you can fit more of them on a ship/star base.
But they get better only when one researches in the research field they belong to.
Death ray doesnt belong to any, and it didnt get improved over time this way.
This produced small stupidity, as starbases (of all sorts) always preffered death rays if available as their weapon, and they always had a fixed number of them. While other weapons with future techs making them lighter would allow for having many more non special weapons on the same starbase, making it more powerful. So I even gave death rays to other empires to make their starbases WEAKER. I read the patch changelog more or less, but there are quite many things...and i didnt notice this being fixed. Can someone tell me if its working now in a smarter way or not?:)
2) Im wondering about sub vs aqua. I found one topic about that, but not very detailed. How much max pop does aqua gain compared to non aqua?
That is, what are the limits for all the terrain types?(i suppose there is already something on this on the forum..but heck..search on "planets size" returns nothing useful)

[Cabman]

Death rays dont miniaturize so your observations are right. But no worries, in MP games attacking Orion is banned, so you won't have ever Orion techs

About your other question:
viewtopic.php?t=40
here you have some guides. You'll find there answers for your question
...If you're very lazy, take a look at this http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2005 ... ation.html

[NeFuRii]

thanks for the answer
edit:
Two more questions
3) There was a limit as to how many ships can be produced. It was rather a technical issue, and I can't find any notice about it being fixed. (like, 255 ships in total for all empires). In 1.31 patch there is only :
"In an obscure rule change, there are now always some pre-allocated
ships for the humans in a single-player game. Before, the ship
slots were allocated round-robin among all players. In games with
very large number of ships, this meant that you might sometimes
only be able to build a few ships in a turn."
But does that mean this bug never even occured in multiplayer? or is it some kind of other bug that I quoted? Anyways. Can I build 500 ships and fight against other 500 ships? If yes, what happens if there is no space on the battle field?
4)Never played with initiative based combat. Sounds like a grea idea.
But in the readme from 1.31 there is :
"Tactical combat ship initiative is now an option on the Game/Settings
screen. When this option is enabled, ships in combat will move in
the order of their initiative rating. The initiative rating is equal
to the ship's total beam offense bonus divided by 10 plus the ship's
current combat speed [Offense/(10+speed)]. Thus, smaller ships should
move before bigger, slower ones."
So...Ships move in increasing or decreasing initiative order? If its decreasing (so rating of 10 moves first, before 5) then why the hell its divided by speed? That would mean, the faster the ship is, the longer it will take for his turn. Shouldnt be the opposite? And small ships, according to the quotation are quicker....so lower initiative is first then?
example :
if we have two ships with offense 100, one with speed 5, the other 10.
the slower gets rating 6,6. faster 5. So the slower acts first if it goes from the highest rating to the lowest. And going from the lowest rating to the highest seems strange.

[Cabman]

ad 1.The biggest fleets in mp games i ever seen were about 70 vs 70 ships, and it is very rare. Usually the game ends after severall up to 10+ ships in fleet.
ad.2

The initiative rating is equal
to the ship's total beam offense bonus divided by 10 plus the ship's
current combat speed [Offense/(10+speed)].

wrong, the proper formula is : Offense/10+speed and that makes difference

[NeFuRii]

thanks again.
i even suspected that the parenthesis was a mistake, but it was a copy & paste from the patch readme.
About fleets. I'm going to play with 2 other guys. We are all newbies, and I suspect we may play for a long time before even starting any wars So its likely that we'll get some huge fleets, that's why i'm still bothered by that.

[marhawkman]

Death rays dont miniaturize so your observations are right. But no worries, in MP games attacking Orion is banned, so you won't have ever Orion techs

Do you turn off Antarans too?

[Cabman]

In 99% games>yes

[marhawkman]

In 99% games>yes

Just asking since I LOVE stealing their ships. Heck I make a point of not taking Orion out until I get at least four techs. That way I'm guaranteed to get all 8. (not that I use all of them)