====== wTVd0's Frequently Asked Anacreon Questions ====== ===== Gameplay ===== ==== Why do my fleets and infantry keep shrinking? ==== You lose a small percentage of all units and most resources every watch- but so does everybody else. This is called "[[anacreon:game#attrition]]". The only thing you can do is always be building more! [[anacreon:game:units#Starcruisers]] and [[anacreon:game:units#starfrigates]] have relatively low attrition. Hexacarbide doesn't undergo attrition. Very small fleets may not lose a unit every turn, but they will still eventually vanish. Attrition isn't affected by whether a unit is stationed on a world or is part of a fleet. ==== How do I move fleets to planets beyond 250 LY of my capital? ==== New players typically start with only [[anacreon:game:units#jumpships]], which can only navigate to planets within 250 LY of a friendly [[anacreon:game:movement#jump_beacon|jump beacon]] world (the capital has a jump beacon). [[anacreon:game:units#Starships]] and [[anacreon:game:units#ramjets]], built on designated yards planets, do not require beacons to navigate; if jumpships are in a fleet with either of these ship types, the fleet will move at the slower ships' speed and will not require a beacon. Planets with the [[anacreon:game:designation#jumpship_yards|jumpship yards]] designation get a beacon, so designating one near the edge of your existing beacon coverage will expand the area within which your jumpship fleets can operate ==== Why can't I designate a new sector capital? ==== [[anacreon:game:designation#sector_capital|Sector capitals]] must be more than 250 [[anacreon:lexicon#LY]] from any of your existing capitals. Jumpfleets can't go further than 250 LY away from a [[anacreon:game:movement#jump_beacon|jump beacon]] world, so you can't start a new capital using jumpfleets if your only jump beacon is on your capital. Designate a world near the edge of your capital's range as a [[anacreon:game:designation#jumpship_yards|jumpship yards]]; this will expand the area in which your jumpfleets can operate. You could instead attach some transports and infantry to a gunship fleet and send it off to conquer a distant world, since gunships don't require beacons to move and jumpships can travel beyond beacon range if they are in a fleet with starships or ramjets. Sector capitals have jump beacons under the default [[anacreon:game:doctrine#fire_movement|Fire & Movement]] doctrine, but not other doctrines. ==== I captured a world near my new sector capital. Why can't I give it any orders or change the designation? ==== It takes 24 [[anacreon:game:time#cycle|cycles]] after a sector capital is designated before it actually begins to project influence in a 250 [[anacreon:lexicon#LY]] radius. Planets outside the influence zone of a capital can't be given orders (you can deploy or remove fleets and infantry, and planets TL 5 or higher can be designated as a sector capital, but that's it.) You can track the progress from the overview tab; you'll see a little clock that shows you how long until the capital will start operating. Sector capitals do start building special units immediately after they get designated. ==== Why did my capital stop producing ships? ==== If you **built [[anacreon:game:structures#technology_programs|tech programs]] to increase your capital to [[anacreon:game:tech_level|TL]] 9 or higher**, most or all of the ship classes that your capital can build will require the [[anacreon:game:resources#chronimium]] resource. You don't have chronimium [[anacreon:game:deposits]] on your starting capital world, but you also can't build low-tech ships if the capital's TL is high. [[anacreon:game:trade|Import]] chronimium from a world that you have designated as a [[anacreon:game:designation#chronimium_processor|chronimium processor]]. A world must be TL 7 or higher to refine chronimium. Alternately, destroy the quantum or post-industrial structure on your capital. If you **didn't increase your capital's TL**, it might be because you changed your empire's [[anacreon:game:doctrine]]. [[anacreon:game:doctrine#strength_&_honor|Strength & Honor]] doesn't build transports on the capital; [[anacreon:game:doctrine#law_&_order|Law & Order]] only builds special infantry; [[anacreon:game:doctrine#trade_&_enterprise|Trade & Enterprise]] only builds basic infantry. Change your doctrine back to [[anacreon:game:doctrine#fire_&_movement|Fire & Movement]] and don't even think about the other doctrines until you have a couple dozen worlds. ==== I designated a world as a yards/academy, but it's only building explorers/gunships/infantry! ==== Most units require one or more types of components. Components are manufactured resources with names like "light jumpdrive" or "armored vehicle". Your capital can build ship components at the Fleet HQ structure, but yards and infantry academies cannot and must have a trade route that is importing from an appropriate component autofac planet (or from a trade hub that is importing from a component autofac). A jumpship yards won't build anything except explorers unless it has a trade route, even if you drop a million jumpdrives onto the yards using transports. See the [[anacreon:eras:era3:units|unit tables]] for information about what resources and components each unit requires. With a few exceptions, ship components are the same [[anacreon:game:tech_level|TL]] as the ships they are used to build. Keep an eye on yards as they increase in tech - they automatically dedicate a percentage of their labor to new unit types as they become available, even if you don't want to build new types. Manually adjust your manufacturing mix to get the units you want; do not let the game pick for you. If a planet's primary structure can't get the components and resources that it needs, the labor allocated to building units will default to the simplest unit class that it can build (usually a gunship, explorer, or basic infantry). If you can't get the resources that you need for even that, all the labor is wasted! Yards can always build gunships or explorers as long as they have they have [[anacreon:game:deposits]] of the necessary raw materials - these units do not require components. Basic infantry do not require resources to build, so academies and citadels can always build these units. All other units require components that are built at dedicated component autofac planets. Unlike yards, autofacs can still build low-TL components even at TL 10. This is true for every kind of autofac. Jumpship autofacs' light jumpdrives are also used by citadels to build jumpmissiles; starship autofacs' heavy missile launchers are also used to build battlestation planetary defense units on planets that have completed a battlestation program. Keep these additional component uses in mind when locating your autofac worlds, citadels, etc. Also unlike yards, autofacs will automatically adjust their component production to meet demand. ==== I built all the defense structures to defend my planet, why aren't any of the defenses being built very fast? ==== When a planet's [[anacreon:game#labor]] is divided between multiple structures, the total labor available to all structures decreases. You can see this by manually changing the labor assigned to a defensive structure from 5% to 10% and reducing the labor assigned to a different defensive structure from 5% to 0%. After a few minutes, more than twice as many defensive units will be getting built at the structure with 10% labor, and the absolute amount of [[anacreon:lexicon#WUs]] being used by the structure will be more than twice as much as it was using when you were building two types of defenses. A planet's labor pool is not a fixed quantity; the fewer things your planet is doing, the more labor will be available in total. This is why it makes sense to import resources from [[anacreon:game:designation|designated]] resource planets rather than have every world extract its own resources. It usually doesn't make sense to build small amounts of multiple kinds of defenses. Instead, focus on only building one or two complementary typess- or don't build any, and rely entirely on [[anacreon:game:units#ships]] for defense. All defenses except GDMs use [[anacreon:game:resources#hexacarbide]], and advanced defenses (armored satellites, plasma towers, battlestations) use [[anacreon:game:resources#chronimium]] too. If your planet doesn't have deposits of these or a trade route to a designated resource planet, you will only be able build GDMs for defense. You can assign labor to other defenses but they won't get built; the labor will all be wasted. If your world isn't importing raw materials, it will have to dedicate labor to extracting them, which will once again have a disproportionately negative impact on your planet's primary industry. ==== I imported tech from a foundation and the planet's tech level went too high! ==== By default, worlds try to go up to the same level as the [[anacreon:game:designation#foundation]]. It's not a good idea to raise a world's [[anacreon:game:tech_level|tech level]] too fast, so click on the trade route once you've established it and change it to the desired tech level. ==== I'm supplying tech from a foundation but my worlds' TLs aren't increasing / my worlds actually lost TLs! ==== Check the primary structure on your [[anacreon:game:designation#foundation]] to make sure it's producing enough tech levels to supply all the planets. If it isn't, free up labor by either reducing defense structure allocations, building habitat structures, or importing more resources. If there is still not enough labor on the foundation, you need to wait for its [[anacreon:game#efficiency]], [[anacreon:game:planets#planetary_population|population]], or tech level to increase. Foundations aren't normally able to uplift the imperial capital. They can't uplift above the capital's TL, even if they are [[anacreon:game:tech_level#fated_tl|naturally of higher TL]]. You'll usually have the opposite problem; your foundations will produce a bunch of extra TLs that aren't needed by surrounding worlds. Allocate labor to defenses until you're only generating a small surplus of tech. Remember: if an enemy captures your foundation, all the worlds it supports will slowly revert to their original TLs, the TL of the highest project on them, or TL 5: whatever is highest. Autonomous-designated worlds revert to their fated TL even if it's lower than TL5. ==== I conquered a planet, why did it go into civil war so quickly? ==== Try bringing a couple thousand units of trillum with you when you conquer a world, or don't redesignate it immediately. Populations require consumer goods: organic food, durable goods for planets at or above TL4, and luxuries for planets at or above TL 7. Independent worlds don't stockpile many consumer goods; when you conquer a world, total efficiency drops and structures operate at reduced capacity for a couple of watches. Structures operating at reduced capacity will have small white % numbers below and to the left of the larger labor allocation percentages on their boxes. If you immediately redesignate a captured world, efficiency and operating capacities will drop even more. If the planet's consumer goods autofac structure can't produce enough goods for a few turns, people will experience shortages of durable goods and luxuries; millions will die if there's an organic food shortage. You can import consumer goods through trade routes, but it will take a couple of minutes after assignment before a trade route works at full capacity. Consumer goods shortages hurt social order every turn they occur; bigger shortages have worse effects. TL may also drop to compensate - the population on lower-tech worlds require fewer consumer goods per person. Efficiency takes a hit when people die. Shortages are most likely on worlds with trace trillum deposits, since the world has to allocate a lot more of the available labor to mining trillum needed to run the consumer goods autofac. ==== I can't stop people from dying from life support shortages on a planet and I can't import them from another world! ==== You're probably experiencing a trillum shortage; your world isn't producing or importing enough trillum to run both the consumer goods autofac and the habitat structure that produces the needed life support goods. Life support good (air filters, life support supplies, radiation shielding and radiation meds) mostly require trillum and can't be exchanged with trade routes. Import trillum with a trade route; if this isn't possible, drop some off with transports as a stopgap. Stop building defenses- they all consume trillum. (The planet will try to do this on its own, but sometimes won't pull enough labor away from the structures). This can also happen at times when recently-conquered worlds are increasing in TL and/or population; they seem to produce barely enough survival goods to get by and even slight population increases put them over the edge. You can also use transports to move goods from stockpiles on worlds of the same type to the world experiencing the shortfall; don't take too many! ==== Why isn't my Citadel building any jumpmissiles? ==== [[anacreon:game:designation:Citadel]]s use light jumpdrives to build [[anacreon:game:units#jumpmissiles]]. You need a trade route importing from a jumpship components autofac or from a trade hub that is importing from a jumpship components autofac. The citadel must be TL7 or higher to build jumpmissiles. ==== Exotroops are 40 times stronger than regular infantry and 10 times stronger than armored infantry! Why would I ever want to build anything BUT exotroops? ==== One infantry autofac can supply all the armored vehicles needed for one infantry academy building armored infantry. If the same academy is assigned to build nothing but exotroops, you'll need three or four infantry autofac planets in order to supply enough exoarmor (and you'll also need chronimium.) Unless your empire is enormous, you'd probably prefer to not need to dedicate this many planets to infantry production. Exotroops are a little weaker than their stats make them appear because other infantry types are less willing to surrender against them. This prolongs fights involving exotroops and results in fewer enemy units captured. I think this is because a small force of exotroops inflicts fewer casualties per individual combat round than a larger force of infantry of the same strength (however, the exotroops also take fewer casualties since they're so well armored). Groups of more than 150 or so exotroops seem to be nearly immune to basic infantry and always beat them without taking any losses in my tests. Exotroops do have lower attrition than other infantry; they are nice to have if you can afford to build them. ==== I set up a trade route, but nothing is being exchanged! ==== Trade routes only import resources produced by the primary (designation-defined) structure on a planet. Trillum extractors only export trillum, starship component autofacs only export starship components, etc. Yards, citadels, sector capitals and academies don't export anything (exception: under the Trade & Industry doctrine, your capital and sector capitals will turn into trade hubs). If you redesignated a world and have a huge stockpile of resources just sitting on it, you can use transports to move them to a world that can use them. Planets that have a large stockpile of a resource will draw from the stockpile before importing. If your trade route is from a supplying planet and to a hub, you may be experiencing a bug. Trade hubs sometimes won't import or export trillum properly if they're being supplied by only one extractor. Connecting a second trillum extractor resolves the problem. This may also happen with luxury goods and jumpship components. ==== I captured a world but it has a really low TL that isn't increasing. ==== All worlds in your empire