Adamant Mod FAQ Help Doc

Categories:

Main
Combat Bonuses
Empire Setup
FAQ
Fighters
Propulsion
Quadrants
Roleplay Elements
Settings Changes
Space Yard Expansions
Troops

This document contains answers to frequently questions asked about Adamant Mod.

To go to a specific question, click on it in the following listing. You can click on the question headers to return to this list.

Question 1: The component, facility, and/or planet images aren't appearing!

Adamant Mod requires all 5 packs of the Image Mod to be installed.

Question 2: Why do I get a "scan line index out of range" error?

This happens when you do not have the Image Mod installed. Installing all 5 packs of it will solve this problem.

Question 3: How do I design my empire?

Check out the Empire Setup help file for detailed information.

Question 4: I added a shipset I want an AI empire to use, but I get errors on game load. What do I do?

You need to copy the AI files from a similar race into the new shipset folder. Do not directly copy the RaceName_AI_General.txt file, however. You will need to either copy the Racial Characteristics and Traits sections from a default Adamant Mod race, or carefully modify the file to use the cost structure in Adamant Mod. You probably want to leave everything about the racial characteristics unmodified, so as to maintain the "flavor" of the race in question.

Question 5: Does remote mining decrease a planet's or asteroid's value?

No. Normal facility production can easily produce many more resources (on larger planets). It makes no sense that remote mining decreases values while facility mining does not. If you wish for planetary decreases from resource production, you can play Finite Resources games.

Question 6: What are those funky irradiated planets, machine worlds, and ringed planets?

These are special planet types from FQM Deluxe. They add interesting variety to the game maps. They can not be recycled into new planets, as they are immune to tectonic bombs.

Question 7: What are all those funky strategies I can choose from any good for?

The strategies were imported from the Ultimate Strategies Mod. A detailed analysis of each strategy is beyond the scope of this document. You will just have to compare them to default strategy types and do some experimentation.

Question 8: I can't capture planets! My troops seem to be useless in ground combat. What did I do wrong?

Planets in Adamant Mod are much more difficult to capture than in stock SE4. You will need to use many more transports to capture populated worlds.

Question 9: I suspect that my enemy can see my minefields. Why is that?

Mines no longer have built in cloaking abilities. You must research cloaking technologies for them. You can research EM Screening, available with Physics 1, to get lower levels of mine cloaking devices. The normal Cloaking technology provides more advanced cloaking devices.

Question 10: What are these expansion projects for? Every time I try to build one, it says that only 1 Space Yard per planet is possible. What's wrong with them?

You must construct the Space Yard Expansion Project first, then upgrade it to a Space Yard Expansion. See the help file on Space Yard Expansions for more detailed information.

Vehicle Design Questions

Question 1: My ships won't move, what do I do?

One of the primary goals of Adamant Mod is to provide great flexibility in vehicle design. To that end, many systems have been implemented to provide tradeoffs in design decisions. One such system is the implementation of a quasi-Newtonian propulsion (QNP) system. In reality, the rate at which an object accelerates is proportional to its mass. The more massive an object is, the more force is required to accelerate it at the same rate. In other words, F = M * A. However, there is no acceleration in SE4, only speed. So, QNP simplifies the equation to F = M * V, where V stands for velocity, or speed. Thus, not true Newtonian propulsion. Essentially, this means that larger ships require more engines to move at the same speed. If ship A is twice the size of ship B, it generally requires twice as many engines to move at the same speed as ship B.

Additionally, Adamant Mod separates "engines" into two separate components, the engine and the reactor. The engine component provides movement points. The reactor provides supply storage. Generally, you will want to use at least as many reactors as engines as a baseline for a ship with a decent range. This system provides much greater flexibility in ship designs. In addition to being able to choose just how fast your ships move via QNP, you can also decide between movement rate per turn and overall range. You might often design a ship to move at 4 sectors per turn instead of 5, so that you can add more reactors to get a much farther range overall, all while using the same percentage of hull space.

Question 2: Why am I unable to design any colony ships?

Colony modules can only be used on Colony Ship hulls. This is accomplished by making the colony module components very massive (3000 kT) and adding a scale mount that can only be used on the Colony Ship and Large Colony Ship hulls. First, you must select one such hull as the size of your new ship design. Next, click on the "Weap Mounts" button in the top right corner of the screen. Select the Colony Mount option. Now, the Colony Modules are only 30 kT, so they can fit quite easily on your new Colony Ship.

Question 3: Why won't my colony modules / master computers / cloaking devices won't fit on any ships?

Colony modules are only allowable on Colony Ship hulls, via the Colony Mount. Refer to Question 2 for further information.

Various components have been altered to scale in size with the size of the vehicle hull. Cloaking Devices and Master Computers are two primary examples. Generally, such components now require a certain percentage of hull space, rather than a static size for any size of hull. To use them, you should first click on the "Weap Mounts" button in the top right corner of the screen. Next, select the "Scale Mount." Now, scaleable components will have a mount marker on them in the components list, indicating that they will take far less space than normal. For some hulls, there will be no "Scale Mount." One example is the Juggernaut for Physical Races. On such ships, you should simply use the component without any mount. The components were designed to be used without a mount on the largest ship sizes.

Question 4: Why won't weapons fit on any fighters or troops?

Most weapons require a scale mount to be used on fighters or troops. Such a mount reduces their size and abilities proportionally.

Question 5: Why do fighters not move outside of combat?

The first fighters available, Orbital Fighters, are not designed for deep space missions. They do not possess the capability to travel in deep space (out of the sector in which they are launched). So, they only have combat movement points, and no strategic movement points. Later fighter hulls will be able to mount engines and gain strategic movement points.

Question 6: Why do my Infantry require engines? I do not see any engines available.

Infantry use specialized "cockpits," such as Riot Gear. These components provide bonuses and penalties that apply to Infantry sized troops, but not to larger troops. This was accomplished by making Riot Gear type components count as engines and adding an engine requirement to Infantry, but not to larger troops.

Question 7: Why am I getting an error saying I can not put any engines on my troops? I did not add any engines.

Question 8: Why won't clawed appendage equipped ships and fighters attack enemies?

Clawed Appendage weapons have very specific targeting capabilities. Ship mounted clawed appendages can only target ships and bases. Swarmer (Fighter) mounted clawed appendages can only target other fighters.

Question 9: How do I use the Research Outpost?

Research Lab components allow you to design bases capable of performing research in deep space (or in orbit of a planet). They can only be used on Research Outpost hulls. To design one, you must use the Research Outpost mount to reduce the size of the Research Lab component to 100 kT. To use the mount, first select the Research Outpost hull size. Next, click on the "Weap Mounts" button in the top right corner of the screen. Select the Research Outpost mount in the list. Now, the Research Lab components will be only 100 kT, so you can add one to your Research Outpost design.

Question 10: Why are some of the component images for organic, magic and energy races not very organic, magic or energy looking?

The mod is still in beta, meaning it has not yet reached an "official release" version. It is still under development. Not all of the artwork is completed, so many filler graphics had to be used.

Question 11: I'm playing a nomadic race and I can't afford to maintain my ships, what do I do?

Nomadic ships and bases require the addition of the Ultra Recycler Node component to bring maintenance to very low values.

Question 12: My ship has a Master Computer/Stealth Armor/Stealth Shields and is cloaked, but can still be seen by the enemy without tachyon scanners. What is wrong?

There are 5 different types of cloaking and 5 different types of cloak-detection scanning abilities. They are EM Active, EM Passive, Gravitic, Temporal and Psychic. If any vehicle or planet in the system can detect any of your cloaking levels, your ship will be visible.

Ships have default level 1 EM Scanning and level 1 EM Passive scanning abilities. A ship that lacks any cloaking devices with these abilities will be detectable. Just a Master Computer will not be sufficient to cloak your ship. Similarly, if you have Stealth Armor, you only receive EM Passive cloaking. The built in level 1 EM Active scanning ability of any ship, unit, planet, etc. will suffice to detect your ship. The same thing happens if you have only Stealth Shields and no Stealth Armor. You need both Stealth Armor and Stealth Shields to hide your ship.

Question 13: Why does adding another engine to my ship design cause its movement to drop to 0?

SE4 has a hard-coded limit for the number of standard movement points (the basic engine ability) that a vehicle can have. No vehicle can have more than 255 standard movement points. If you add more engines, the value resets to 0. Ion Engines provide 3 standard movement points. If you add 85 to a ship design, this nets 255 standard movement points. Due to the engines per move values, no ship is going to move quite that fast, of course. If you add one more Ion Engine, the standard movement point total becomes 258, which SE4 instead treats as 2 (256 becomes 0). This behavior creates a few artificial speed limits on larger ship hulls, which can be thought of as the point where relativity comes into play in the SE4 technobabble universe.

Research and Technology Questions

Question 1: What is the organic/magic/energy/machine equivalent of tech XXX?

While some technologies have direct equivalents across paradigms, many do not. Trying to list all of them would be senseless. You will just have to explore the wonders of the tech tree for yourself.

Question 2: Most of these techs are useless - researching them doesn't give anything!

Numerous advanced technologies require multiple theoretical tech areas. Sometimes, you might not see any immediate benefit from researching a theoretical tech area if you do not have the other requirements for the technologies that it makes available.