Well, then I don't know what to say.



I've given it my best shot... this is now officially above my pay-grade.

Draco18s wrote:
I did buy that, but immediately after doing so (the hero was in a blue system) I didn't notice any change. So it could have been that, only much later.

Had it happen against last night, but I had no fleet-heroes (I had two system heroes). What else would do that?

I did buy that, but immediately after doing so (the hero was in a blue system) I didn't notice any change. So it could have been that, only much later.

I didn't take a screenshot or make a save, but essentially what happened was that I could see the stars, I could see the influence range from them, but I could not see their system name, planets, colonization status, or population count (that usual galaxy-level info hovering over the star). Was very strange. Given the other rendering artifacts at the time (such as planets rendering as black voids) I'll chalk it up to a graphical error.

I've seen that once before, did you buy\award that "Master Hacker" tech to one of your Adventure heroes that allows them to essentially piggyback off the sensors of the enemy, if so I've seen that cause things like you describe (can't see the system but can see everything around them), it like if you can get into one system you sort of get the eyes and ears of the rest but not the systems themselves if otherwise undiscovered.



Master Hacker

Description "A student of surveillance and detection systems, the Hero allows their fleet to 'piggyback' on the detection systems of enemy systems they are orbiting."

OtherDesc -"The Player can benefit from other faction's detection radius, while in orbit of another faction's system"

KnightHawk wrote:
RATH is the home system of Empire 6 and so that explains the growth, and I can't say for sure but it looks like (via file) Electra was recently found and colonized perhaps somewhere between turns 32 and 37, if that's the case then Colonizing ELECTRA (perhaps with a small amount of growth from each side) may be the base of what exposed it, hell maybe it was even just parking a ship in range, hard to say for sure without being the one that played it.

Parking a ship in range should have no effect. Ships sensors do not cause a system to be explored (simple test: fly a scout ship at a system that is just slightly farther away than it can travel).



In a more curious note. Late on in a game I was finishing up last night, the rest of the orange empire became "explored"......sort of.



I didn't take a screenshot or make a save, but essentially what happened was that I could see the stars, I could see the influence range from them, but I could not see their system name, planets, colonization status, or population count (that usual galaxy-level info hovering over the star). Was very strange. Given the other rendering artifacts at the time (such as planets rendering as black voids) I'll chalk it up to a graphical error.

Ahhh, excellent, thank you. That answers the question!

What's an "Achievement", in-game?...Are "Achievements" simply global events, or something completely different?

So you could call them all global events, I refer to them as Achievements simply cause that's the section they are stored under in most cases in the save file. There are two classifications I would say though, those that are embedded in the game and those are generated at galaxy creation time and stuck into the current achievements element in your file(s). Some achievements\globalevents stick around and are added to an "old achievements" entry for your empire while the ones like the frontier_bonus or speed_bonus trigger and run their course and disappear (at least for now). The ones that stick around tend to be the ones that are hard coded that act like progress markers\variables:

Example of an "old achievement" entry:

The tutorial ones and one other I think get added to a fresh game (if you have tutorials off), the others get thrown in as you come across them, like "FirstLargeShipCreated", "FirstEncounterPirates", "First ColonizingPlanetClass5" etc. How each one of these is used and their resulting effects if any on other things I have not investigated much.

Good read, thanks for taking the time to explain, KnightHawk.



Two things:



1) I've noticed that Global Events often seem to not actually have any effect. This is purely a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if many/all of them aren't actually implemented yet (or, at least, not correctly). So, as you say, let's wait for the Beta.



2). If you know: What's an "Achievement", in-game? It's mentioned in the log file, and I've recently noticed a tab for it on the victory screen, but if I've actually ever encountered any while playing, I'm not aware of it. Are "Achievements" simply global events, or something completely different?

@Draco18s - I accept that the anwser was not what you were looking for, I also accept your apology for being a total dick about it.

I will attempt to convey every possible detail I know on that topic of the Frontier Bonus and related Frontier Malus.



A Frontier_Bonus is supposed to do the following per it's popup. (yes it should invoke a pop up (cube) though sometimes 1 turn late or I've even seen 1 turn early)



Popup:



(GlobalRandomEvent04Title) ENDLESS SIGNALS TECH DISCOVERED

(GlobalRandomEvent04Description) Using leftover Endless technology and partially animated Dust, signaling systems were augmented around your home planet. This improved detection range and extended broadcast range, thus also extending your cultural influence. The lead scientist fled, set up a company called SpinMaster, and has sold the tech to all factions.



+20 Systems Influence

+10 Systems sight



The malus is the reverse:

(GlobalRandomEvent05Title) DARK MATTER REACTS

(GlobalRandomEvent04Description) Experiments into the nature of dark matter and non-baryonic particles have had an unexpected side effect; local gravity fluctuations and atypical radiation indicate some sort of chain reaction among the particles that make up dark matter. Blame Reynuy, the scientist who started it all.

-20 Systems Influence

-10 Systems sight

----



Each supposedly last for 10 turns, and once triggered disappears from a save game file (even if it's not over yet).

These achievements like all (as far as I've seen) are set to a random turn count trigger at game creation time.

They are applied to all empires, except pirates, if generated (and they always seem too be generated) and are set at the same turn count.

They look like the following in your file under the element:

[CODE]



[/CODE]

The EmpireIndex property indicates which player it's applying to, here it's the human player which is seemingly always 0 in single player, and the pirates are always 1 btw. The BeginAtTurn count property obviously is the turn the event triggers at and the Duration property of course is how long the event in question should last.



I say "supposedly last" above because in some limited testing neither visibly work as expected, nor in cursory compares does anything appear to persist to the game's save file in anyway indicating those bonuses or malus are in effect, meaning as of .30.5 they appear to do absolutely nothing on the surface (but perhaps they do but only in other situations and only in a manner that does not readily persist). The test rigs I used to claim that are attached, they will give you a bonuses\malus three times, at turns 7 and 8 and 10 lasting 5 turns each, so they should be gone after 15, all I basically did was hit turn to just to see if my influence or sight would grow or shrink. If anyone can see a difference help a brother out and point it out, and don't be thrown off by the normal growth in the home system around turn 6.



TestFrontier_EndTurn2_TestRigs2.zip



/End Frontier_Bonus\Malus dump



Someone else asked about Influence vs. Sight which was already addressed but as far as I've noticed:

Influence is the playercolor shaded area, effectively your boundaries if you will around your colony or outpost.

Sight is the area you can see beyond that - the lifted fog-of-war is how I'd describe it, or in this cause maybe fog-of-darkmatter fits better.





Now as to >>Draco18's issue << with the seemingly odd appearance of the enemy system I now doubt it was from the frontier bonus for two reasons. The primary being that the upload actually shows the problem after it popped up not before (which btw I didn't notice at first cause I was staring at xml instead and relating it to the 'one or two turns later 'comment in the upload post), if the Frontier_Bonus event had triggered it does not get saved to the file afterward, so this rules it out short of the existence of multiple series of those achievements being generated, and being generated so close together in turn triggers, extremely unlikely in my opinion. The second relates back to the fact that as mentioned above the frontier_bonus and malus events don't actually seem to work (at least on the surface), something I had suspected was wonky for awhile but hadn't had the chance to investigate more prior to tonight.



I can think of an case where even if it was working a problem could occur in the Visibility and Exploration bits for a system getting set but not unset correctly due to lack of persistence of the bonus or malus if one saved before it was over but I'll save till it actually shows itself, maybe in the beta!



As to what does cause this if Draco18s or someone else has a snapshot file of a "before" it popped up that would be more helpful to run compares against. Failing that though I think Gwalahad's theory in the original post was the best anwser, which was the cause of RATH (in the upload provided vs. the screen shot originally a different file it seems) showed simply because it's borders intersected clearly into ELECTRA's borders. RATH is the home system of Empire 6 and so that explains the growth, and I can't say for sure but it looks like (via file) Electra was recently found and colonized perhaps somewhere between turns 32 and 37, if that's the case then Colonizing ELECTRA (perhaps with a small amount of growth from each side) may be the base of what exposed it, hell maybe it was even just parking a ship in range, hard to say for sure without being the one that played it.



As to the screen shot version of the problem, not the upload, the "influence collision" if you will, may explain HATH as there is a clear collision with FARVER, it would not immediately explain MUZIS, however I can't see below MUZIS in the screenshot to identify if their is a collision below it, but while not visually apparent I would say HAMEL is close enough where it might account for it.



My final 2 cents if anyone has even read this far is lets wait for the beta to see if a) Draco18s and others similar experiences still happen and b) if the Frontier bonus\malus stuff actually starts working.

KnightHawk wrote:
I'm not a mind-reader Draco18s, I didn't know you wanted more detail, in fact I thought your question was pretty self explanatory, and you didn't ask "how does one get it" in your original question, though that was already indicated by my prior fyi comment. It's not like there aren't an amount of cough* odd questions that show up in the forums, and it's not like you followed it up asking for more specific detail or bothered to pm'd me about it if the thread was closed. If you had I would have shared more detail or perhaps taken some more time and taken a detailed look at what was really going on from one turn to the next in the game file you posted. Instead you chose this tactless route, so I'll leave you to figure things out.

I'm sorry for being a dick, but your answer was in fact useless.

I agree there is a mystery here. I think none of "us" (players) know the answer. We don't know exactly what the frontier achievement is/does, or how it is different from the normal sensor range you get. More constructively, can anybody figure out a way, to figure this out?

So helpful. Who'd have guessed that a frontier bonus would extend your frontier.

I'm not a mind-reader Draco18s, I didn't know you wanted more detail, in fact I thought your question was pretty self explanatory, and you didn't ask "how does one get it" in your original question, though that was already indicated by my prior fyi comment. It's not like there aren't an amount of cough* odd questions that show up in the forums, and it's not like you followed it up asking for more specific detail or bothered to pm'd me about it if the thread was closed. If you had I would have shared more detail or perhaps taken some more time and taken a detailed look at what was really going on from one turn to the next in the game file you posted. Instead you chose this tactless route, so I'll leave you to figure things out.

So I asked the question once already, and recieved this technically correct, but unhelpful answer.

A region of space suddenly becomes explored. (extending your known frontier)

My deepest thanks go out to KnightHawk for adequately explaining WTF a "frontier bonus" is and how one goes about getting it.



Let's examine his answer:



"A region of space suddenly becomes explored." No, really? Wow. Already knew that. Also, that's the effect of receiving it, not the it itself.



"(extending your known frontier)" Wow. So helpful. Who'd have guessed that a frontier bonus would extend your frontier. Again, the effect of receiving it, not the it itself.



So what IS a Frontier Bonus? What causes it?



Hey KnightHawk! Where am I?

"In front a computer!"

Thanks!

Except that Frontier Radius as an event does not throw a popup window (like all other global events).



As later on in the same game I had another system poof into explored when I moved a ship into another system (exploring that one, which was owned by another empire, but was under the influence of a third empire).

Okay, so, my best guess after re-reading everything and trying to make heads or tails of it:



Frontier = the extent of your influence radius.

KnightHawk wrote:
Just FYI - That would be the achievement frontier bonus being gifted to you (and the other empires) at turn 39 per the uploaded file.

The key here is "(and the other empires)".



See:

gwalahad wrote:
well sopphones were orange not horatio, and it was there from the moment i laoded that save.

but anyway i have a theory.

their influence area of RATH touches your planet ELEKTRA. so my theory is that that happening results in you exploring the plenet that diffused said influence area. would take considerable time and luck to reproduce to test this theory though.

that said it has feature rather than bug written all over it if this is the case.

guess this is where a dev input would be handy

Evil4Zerggin wrote:
Like you and gwalahad, I suspect that if their influence radius touches your system, the system that generated the influence is revealed, and that the reason this happens is because influence blocks movement if you are not at war/open borders, so they wanted to make it visible why your movement is blocked. In fact, I once was unable to reach one of my own colonies due to another empire's influence.



Are you able to travel to Farver (assuming you are not at war/open borders with them, in which case you would be able to do so no matter what)?

So, basically, a global event extended all influence radii. Because of Hadar's proximity to Farver and the fact it already had a significant influence radius, this influence "bump" made it touch Farver.



In another faction's influence radius touching one of your systems, the source (Hadar) become "explored" for you, due to the importance of influence radii and how they work.



So, to recap (though it's still just a guess...)--



Q: How on earth did HADAR get revealed? It just showed up one turn, inexplicably.

A: Its influence radius grew, therefore touching your system of Farver. This made it get flagged as "explored" for you.



Q: So what IS a Frontier Bonus? What causes it?

A: "Frontier" is basically just influence radius. I'm not sure what caused the bonus exactly, but it was apparently an "achievement" (whatever that is; maybe just how global events are called in the code?) which caused a global event which, in turn, caused all influence radii across the map to expand.

Nosferatiel wrote:
The outer limit of the influence radius seems to be your frontier.

Because the frontier is your sight radius, unless you've got bonuses on your sight radius or a ship with a larger sight radius in the system.

That doesn't make any sense at all.



Why would the AI's frontier cause me to see their system? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

ElegantCaveman wrote:
I thought that was influence...



Are they the same thing? Is influence something else entirely?



And so if your frontier is the colored circle around planets, why did the AI's planet suddenly get revealed to him suddenly? Was it because it grew to touch Farver?

The outer limit of the influence radius seems to be your frontier.

Because the frontier is your sight radius, unless you've got bonuses on your sight radius or a ship with a larger sight radius in the system.

I thought that was influence...



Are they the same thing? Is influence something else entirely?



And so if your frontier is the colored circle around planets, why did the AI's planet suddenly get revealed to him suddenly? Was it because it grew to touch Farver?

The frontier is the colored circle around your planet.

Draco18s wrote:


Full size



How on earth did HADAR get revealed? It just showed up one turn, inexplicably.

Taking up your old example. There are two circles. One is orange colored: This is the frontier. Then there's a whitish border. This is your sight range. Your sight range is always greater or equal than your frontier.

There are different buildings and abilities that give bonuses to the frontier (and therefore also to the sight range) or only to the sight range.



Does this answer your question?

Not a bad idea... I've been annoyed by these ninja links. Maybe I'll start underlining them. And color them blue myself.



Oh my... such work.



On topic: I have no idea, sorry! At first I was thinking influence, but then when I read the original thread (I did notice the original link, for what it's worth), I realized it's something else. My best guess would be along the lines of the event revealing part of the map, possibly systems which are adjacent to your empire? (since it mentions frontiers...)

davea wrote:
Perhaps my post is helpful to other readers, who miss the slight color difference

Maybe the forum admins should change the color, then we wouldn't have this issue.

Perhaps my post is helpful to other readers, who miss the slight color difference

davea wrote:
Back reference:

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?3246-0.30.5-A-few-odd-ones-System-revealed-via-unknown-means

Another technically correct, but unhelpful post. I linked that thread in my original post. If you can't see it Davea, maybe you should tweak the forum settings so that links don't appear in a slightly different gray than the body text.

Back reference:

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?3246-0.30.5-A-few-odd-ones-System-revealed-via-unknown-means