Noob Questions

1. You need to research resource gathering, mining, radioactives, and farming. The level needed for remote resource gathering differs I imagine depending on if it's stock or a mod. I tend to play mods and they tend to give you resource components at lvl 2 of each tech. Build a base or place a satellite containg a resource gathering component on an asteroid. Remember to give it some supplies. The rersources gathered will automatically be stored for you. Well it depends on how much storage you have.

2. I suggest you start another game with the same settings. Save your current one if you like. With the new game type ` (the button just left of 1, above TAB) this will open the cheat console. Type alltech, then press ` again. You will recieve all techs. You can then read the help menu to see everything you can get. I use this to see what I can do in future for a game, or test designs. Problem being it gives you the maximum so your designs are limited to super ships, not "how much space will the first level take up?" then I have to run a normal game with plenty of research and grind my way up.

3. Eventually you can research warp point manipulation. Using this tech you can create warp points, and close them. It requires a big ship and a lot of building.

4. Well the further you research a tech the smaller the components get, or it uses less supplies (differs by mod). So if for some reason you are happy with what you have but would like them smaller, research further. For example the devull mod. You might have a engine that takes up 14Kt. the next type of engine is faster sure, but it takes up 20kt each. When you can have a maximum of 6, that's 36kt extra taken up. Is it worth it for faster ships?

5. I'm not sure. Might they be emigrating (don't recall reading it depletes a planet compeletely). Are the conditions so bad it's actually killing off people? (also don't know about that happening, though of course if the conditions are terrible no one will want to stay there).

Try importing other races to see if that helps (especially one that can un-dome the world).

You will need to designate the target system so yes you need to see it. It also has to be within range (which I believe increases at higher tech levels).

You don't need to see a system to open a warp point there as long as it is within range.

All warp point openers have a range limit that goes up as you get higher level openers.

Once I developed Warp openers in a game for the first time I discovered it was a bit different to back in se4. In se4 you clicked on a system on the map within range. In Se5 I discovered I got a list of every system in the game, with the distance to it listed. You have no idea however exactly where the systems are unless you've found it, just a distance. I had to triangulate using 2 warp point openers and figure out positioning. It generally worked although I did once accidentally open a warp point in the wrong direction. The thing is that when you're selecting a system to open a wp to you can see what sort of system it is and details of it, even though I'd never seen it otherwise. So I would find systems that looked like they were in enemy territory, were normal systems that could be colonised (ie not asteroid fields or storms), and were listed as having space ports. I then opened a warp point, went through.....and blew up the star and all my enemy's planets. It got so people were threatening to boycott trade with me if I didn't stop.

ps. I guess I should point out it was a test game for a mod and the conscensus was that stellar manipulation was too easy.

If you found stellar manipulation to be too easy then you are doing something wrong. In a normal unmodded game it takes so much time and effort to get to the higher levels where the good stuff is. By the time you get up to that level the game should be over unless everyone is a pacifist. Also, if you are researching that while everyone else is focusing on offensive and defensive items then you'll be toast. How did you get SM to be too easy?

Well it was a Mod game as I said, devnull 1.71. I played the Krenim and had Temporal technology. Stellar manipulation was set too low I guess. It was something like warp point openers at lvl2, and WP openers with a range of 30ly, and Stellar weapons shortly after that. It was a high tech game so I started with all 3 colony techs (and nothing else I guess). Sure my potential enemies would have had better weapons, except I developed so rapidly the fact they didn't start a war the second we met meant it didn't matter. Basically I got extremely lucky. Yes I wouldn't have stood a chance from the start but I grew so fast I quickly removed that problem. The first thing I discover when the game started was that having all 3 techs lets me build universal colony ships which cost little more than a ship limited to one planet type. Let me change subject for a minute. I had temporal tech, ok? the mod had 3 types of space yard. Small, mdm (normal), and large. The large ones build twice as fast but are twice the size ( Devnull doesn't use a system of up to 25 facilites. It would be a limit of 250,000 KT, with uber sapce yards being 100,000K), and along with that I had temporal space yard components that make them faster (40K), something like up to 40% faster. I tend to take the traits that increase production. Result, my homeworld builds 25K a turn from the start, and colony ships (with universal colony tech) cost 2K, so here I was able to build something like 10 colony ships a turn, which can colonise anything. I don't need to look for good planets, I just built 10 colony ships a round, sent them into space and colonised entire systems at once. When I first encountered someone (around about 2401.5) I had 100 colonies. Soon after I developed warp openers and when hostilities were imminent I developed stellar torpedoes. Remember that stuff I just said about large spaceyard+ enhancer+trait = massive production, by this stage my main production bases could make 40K a turn. I was building warp point manipulators, one every 2 turns. Stellar weapon equipped ships take longer...1 turn longer. It's called exponential growth, if youre preapred to use a huge breathable planet merely for the prupose to churn out ships (and I haven't mentioned orbital space yards, also with temporal additions) When the war started (around about turn 40 or 50) my enemy couldn't invade my main systems because they all had 10 wp each. You don't need system shields then.

So how did I get SM so easily? The game couldn't have been more modded on purpose just to get that result. I firmly believe Devnull just failed to realise what was going to happen. The conscensus I mentioned was for this mod game. With the mod at the time it was just too easy. The first thing to change in the next version was a revamp of the stellar manipulation system. Did I mention as we were all testing that we had See All Scores on. By about turn 10 there were questions about why I grew so fast, you can believe me. It's like when you create a card game, test it, release it to the public and then within a week people realised that that wimpy card you wouldn't use happens to be instant win if used with another card.

In the next test game someone else took temporal. They also had twice as many planets as 2nd place when we quit by about turn 20. I by the way was in 2nd palce, and I didn't have temporal. Then again I never met anyone before we finished so I was just colonising everything I found. I gave up on temporal since it was fun the first time and it's supposed to have been fixed but I wanetd to try other stuff. Just becasue I ruthlessly exploited it doesn't mean I want to do it everytime. Plus you'd think being supreme overlord with the power to remove entire races from time at a whim would be attractive. It's not when you try it and dicover there's no challenge. In fact I stopped using Stellar weapons because it was no fun. I wanted to try my hand at real fleet battles, damn it . Having 500 colonies sounds good, until you are faced with actually having to manage them all

It was fun, and my enemy also had temporal (although clearly not universal colony tech at first) so it equalled out by the end. Probably looks a bit like a train wreck to everyone else

DevNull sounds a little unbalanced. In an old PBW (no mods) I had over 300 worlds, which was fun to manage, but I was still too busy to go too far in Stellar Manipulation (about level two or three I think).

Well in its defence as I said theose problems were dealt with, as far as I know. I think the point of devnull was for a more sci-fi feel. Stock is stock, and BM is a balanced version of that. Devnull is if you want grand fleets, many colonies, and fun battles. It seems to have turned into a sort of default ST mod. You could play ST with BM but it wouldn't look like it was built for it. In the current game I am the Tholians, with the Ferengi and Dominion as neighbours. As well Shadows, A race that looks like Romulans, and I've met what appears to be Cardassians.

An all Star Trek game (with historic alliances) sounds like fun.