Recently purchased ESD. Nice game. Have found what appear to me to be two problems with the overall functioning of the engine (though this may be as planned or something I am not understanding).



1. When I invade a star system with troops, the battle report will say, for example, 29 population originally, 4 remaining. Okay, no problem. However, when I inspect the system, and in all future turns, there are still 29 population. Is this correct? Also, just an aside on invasions, if you wait out the system (invade without troops) do all infrastructure and population remain intact?



2. Played a game with the Harmony in it. My understanding is that the Harmony are supposed to remove all dust from their systems, (system name coloration changes to indicate this process). Okay, fine. However, when we invade these systems and capture them, they appear to still produce "dust," etc..., and otherwise act like any other system. Is this correct?



Thanks to all for your assistance,



Larry

LarryR wrote:
Recently purchased ESD. Nice game. Have found what appear to me to be two problems with the overall functioning of the engine (though this may be as planned or something I am not understanding).



1. When I invade a star system with troops, the battle report will say, for example, 29 population originally, 4 remaining. Okay, no problem. However, when I inspect the system, and in all future turns, there are still 29 population. Is this correct? Also, just an aside on invasions, if you wait out the system (invade without troops) do all infrastructure and population remain intact?



2. Played a game with the Harmony in it. My understanding is that the Harmony are supposed to remove all dust from their systems, (system name coloration changes to indicate this process). Okay, fine. However, when we invade these systems and capture them, they appear to still produce "dust," etc..., and otherwise act like any other system. Is this correct?



Thanks to all for your assistance,



Larry

1A. I've noticed this, and I don't know.

1B. Yes, all infrastructure and population remain intact. However, they will be "on strike" and it will take quite a few turns for their approval to rise. So, the system's production will be severely handicapped for a while.



2. It takes a while for Harmony to first get the tech and then to implement "de-dusting" on a system. So, the sooner you can conquer their systems the better (i.e., conquer them while they still produce dust if you can). Once a system is de-dusted, the name will be displayed differently on the map. Also, de-dusting is permanent. Dust doesn't come back if you conquer a de-dusted system.



By the way, you also want to conquer Craver systems early because they deplete planets. Individual planets (not systems) will show up half-blue, half-dark as they become depleted. (Note: You have to be zoomed in close enough to get the planets to display.)

That's just it - if the system name changes coloration, or so I understand, the de-dusting is supposed to be complete. When I capture such a system, dust is produced (at least as far as I can tell) just like always.



Seems to me, if these observations are correct, that these are two huge fundamental holes in this game system.



LR

Hello LarryR,



Regarding the invasion, the population gain could be related to your troops as the survivors land on the system, replacing the dead population and increasing the default ownership.



For the Harmony, Dust is produced on Planets, but the system output is locked to zero, and the produced Dust converted into Food and Science (50/50)



If it isn't working, could you provide a save? It will help us to find the bug and fix it.



Thanks!

Hello Meedoc,



I appreciate the response and wanted to let you know that when I examined the game further the dusting/Harmony does indeed seem to be working correctly. While the planets seemed to show dust, the systems as a whole were negative dust producers (I"m assuming this reflects the importation of dust to meet the entire requirements of that particular system).



On the troops issue: I'm still seeing bizarre behavior. Just tested with an invasion. Max population of system is 20; invading with 35 troops (or there abouts). Battle results screen says we lost 3 troops and only 3 population remaining. I check the system and manually count the troops remaining in the fleet. System has 17 population, and fleets contain 35 troops. Something seems off somewhere. another thing that seems off - after initially constructing these fleets, I have not had to "repair" them to replace troop losses as in other games I've played. Maybe something is corrupt. Do I just need to attach a saved file to a post here in the forum? I'll gladly do so.



Thanks,



LR