I'm not even going to try to understand what you're trying to say...



I think you may be confusing drives with thrusters. Orbital thrusters don't need to *jump* anywhere, which doesn't mean they can't have positional thrusters. *Those* could be in hulls by default, without too much of a hand waving exercise.



The problem is there really isn't a plausible explanation for this (and most other, if not all, quirks). Yes, it doesn't really affect game play, but it's annoying, and makes you wonder. At least me, that is.

I gave cargo hulls a base speed of zero, and they did put an engine in their colony ships. However whether this is simply because it made sense for the ship to be as fast as possible given available components, or that the AI recognised that a ship with a speed of zero would be pretty useless, I can't say for sure.

As for engineless drones sitting in orbit, it's not inconceivable that ships could be manoeuvered by external forces i.e. a tractor beam. Once they're moving, they won't stop or change direction until another force causes them to.

It's quite simple really. Mind you, I'm not sure what CaptainYar explanation really is, but my understanding is:

In GC2 space, gravity is reversed. Thus objects (i.e. spaceships) weigh less than empty space. Therefore spaceships are always lighter and therefore higher up than empty space. Because these ships are relatively higher up than empty space, they can be said to be uphill.

The next problem is, even though the ship is at the top of the hill, it still can't move without engines. Now, ships are listed as not having engines, so we can't assume they have hyperdrives, heavens forbid. What we can do is treat this just like what would happen if your car stalls out.

So, here you have a ship stuck at the top of a hill without an engine. What we need to is have the crew get out and push the ship. Of course this isn't going to work right, because the ship isn't pointing in the right direction. So the crew has to push the front of the ship until it is pointed in the right direction, and then they start pushing. Once the ship has started moving the crew then has to run around to the side of the ship and jump in the open door before the ship starts moving too fast for them to catch up. (The captain always goes first in this little race because he is the one that has to drive the ship.) The ship will eventually lose speed due to friction, this takes about a turn, after which the crew has to repeat the process.

Now, this is a complicated process and I'm assuming you have questions. I'll explain some of the ones that occurred to me.

Q: If gravity is reversed, why is gravity on planets just like Earth?
A: Gravity still works correctly on planets, it is only in space that it forgets which way it was supposed to work.

Q: Why doesn't the Captain just stay in the ship?
A: Some of those ships are pretty heavy, the crew needs the extra help to push it (plus ship captains tend to be a little on the chubby side).

Q: Why don't they put doors in the back of the ship so the crew doesn't have to run around to the side?
A: It's a safety precaution, Alien OSHA standards forbid doors to be located next to engine ports or even potential engine ports because someone could open the door and get cooked by the engines' heat. Therefore all spaceship construction companies are mandated to place doors only on the sides of spaceships.

Q: What type of shoes does the crew wear when pushing the spaceship?
A: It really depends on the race, I hear that Humans use flip-flops.

Q: Why does it does the crew have to change the heading of the ship? Since they aren't using engines the ship is going to go whatever way they push it, so they should be able to just push on the opposite of whatever direction they want, and it should work... right?
A: Ah, but you forget, the captain has to see out of the front viewscreen to drive, so the ship has to be pointed in the same direction it is moving.

Q: In gravity is reversed in space, and spaceships are in space, shouldn't the crews be working upside down then?
A: Well, the technological races have figured this out and have installed anti-gravity devices to stop gravity and then reverse-gravity devices to make gravity in spaceships the same as gravity on planets. Quite civilized of them actually.

Low technology races are generally more pathetic and just have to work upside down. It is kinda how the Australians on planet Earth are walking around upside down even as we speak. The tragic part is that some of these races don't even realize that they are upside down. Current Galactic Etiquette requires that no one mentions it when they are around, it would be too embarrassing.

Q: This seems silly, haven't the races figure out they can place oars on the sides of the ships and just avoid all of this pushing nonsense?
A: Well, honestly they have, but as a whole the Galaxy has determined that putting oars on the side of spaceships seem really, really, dorky. So they don't do it.

If other questions arise, please feel free to ask. Also if I've misinterpreted CaptainYar's explanation, I'm dreadfully apologetic. I promise that I'll try to do better in the future.

My whole point to this was: why bother to put in a hyperdrive at all? It just takes up a lot of space. Does it allow you to travel that much faster?

Each engine adds on top of the ship's base speed, and on top of any bonus - for example, the bonus you get for researching Impulse Drive, Warp Drive, Hyperwarp Drive, and for patenting Gravity Accelerators. More engines is good, if you can afford it. Especially in the early game, engines make the difference between between beating your opponents in the colonty rush or not.

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer:

Note: This information taken from teleytea's previous post.

Base Speed for a ship without engines
Hyperdrive Technology: 1
Impulse Technology: 2
Hyperwarp Technology: 5

Basic Hyperdrive adds 1 unit of speed per engine.

That means at the begining of the game, adding 1 hyperdrive increases speed by 100%, i.e. you move twice as fast. As technology increases the size of the engine and the speed each engine allows increase as well.

When is the extra speed worthwhile is a more complicated question, and one that is situational. The short answer is that you want enough speed to do what needs to be done, and no more.

All very amusing, but you do understand that gravity being reversed wouldn't mean anything close to this, right?



If there was actually a referencial so that you could determine what higher up meant...
Anyways, if gravity would be reversed, then planets would be lighter than ships, so a ship moving into orbit would actually be moving uphill, correct? Good enough question?



Irrelevant, since the ship will always be on top of the hill. Even if you displace it, it'll immediately be on top of the hill again, since it'll always be lighter than surrounding space.
So I guess everything else is also irrelevant.



Again, a bad exemplification of gravity effects.



Yep, you better. Some parts are funny, but too far fetched.

Someone is taking these posts even more seriously than the game.

Thank you for the in-depth explanation Ptarth. I was in reality just trying to be silly. but you gave my answer some credibility. Throw in Newton's law of universal gravitation and we got a winner. NASA shall hear of THIS!!!

to answer the actual posted question, extra speed can be very important, it not only gets things done faster but can mean the difference between winning or losing a war. getting your ships where they need to be faster than your opponent is very important. Keep in mind that a fleet will travel only as fast as its slowest ship. And even on a small map i'll add engines to the basic colony ship.

You just look up, and that is the direction of 'up'. Unless you're a non-technological race, in which case you have to look down to determine the direction of 'up'. It all makes perfect sense to me.


Even though the advanced races tried to prevent it, they were in no time on the intergalacticnet, for anyone to download.

Is that like the Korx version of Napster? I guess that would explain why the Snathi were looking at engine drawings on their video ipods.

If that's for me, not really. I don't take that kind of crap seriously I do get baffled by some "original" ideas though.



Congratulations! You were really successful at that. Though I have my reservations about that.



You mean you just look above your head, since "up" doesn't really exist in space, right?



I guess no race really needs to research anything then, since eventually everything will be on the intergalacticnet for download, correct?

Eventually - question is ; are you prepared to wait   

Speed 50+ is the only way to travel   

So here is a question.

Why do the stupid Terrans get to define what a parsec is and what it isn't?

I would think that it would be standardized with all races and beings in the galaxy but I must digress, this is a game after all.

Terrans are superior, silly. Did you not see how fast we researched things? DAMNIT? FAST!

I read in a book once, where a ship used bad news as a means of travel. It worked on the principal that bad news travels fast, and only bad news was faster than the speed of light. It was the same story that had the Resturant at the End of the Universe. So it must be true. no need for engines then. THATS how this game works.

Or maybe we just get a free +1 speeed oit board engine just for being good customers to the ship builders. I think each bank we build should give us a toaster, and toasters should impove moral. Even on a hostile PQ4 worls toast can just make your day. MMMMmmmm toast.

terrans are dumb, we don't like them. But we do like their bumpy female types. I think terrans are the upside down ones.!

Wow... how far this thread has digressed. WTF was the original topic? Something about a ship without an engine could still move one space right? Whew, I think I might need to go and smoke something after this one.

i thought we were talking about toast.

tooooooast.

In any case - look at the back of any ship you build. There's an engine on them thar hulls!

Terrans invented hyperdrive and so get to tell all those dirty smelly inferior aliens how to make their maps. Hey, it's a better excuse than most sci-fi stories get.

Ah this may be true, but read into the story a little bit more. Most of the major players in the game were space faring long before the humans invented the wheel. Which means they charted space for themselves first. The only reason the lame Terrans even invented hyperdrive was because the Torians had sent them the schematics to build a stargate. If that would not have happened the Terrans would still be sending their stupid white shuttle into orbit with the pathetic drop tanks.

Actually, it was the Arceans, probably as an attempt to get the terrans to build the very means by which the Arceans would invade them.

That is correct. You see, I could go on and on and say I meant to say Torian just to get some people to read the story, and try to save a little face. However, the fact of the matter is I was wrong!

I think I said the Torians because I hate them so much. They always give me the biggest problems in any game I play.

So, the Arceans gave the technology the worthless Terrans needed in order to invent hyperdrive.

End of lesson
Class dismissed

What? The Torians always act like pussies in any game I play. And the Arceans always become my allies.

Anyway, in every ship model, you can see the engine in it. Every model comes with a built in engine, and that is how they can move.

Must be because I love playing the Yor.

OK, try this. In order to counteract the enormous acceleration effects of the engines, all hulls are built with gravity compensators. A 23rd century Terran scientist modified the existing compensators and developed the first Hyperdrive. Since this equipment is in all hulls, all hulls have an integral hyperdrive capability which can be increased by adding extra engines and equipment.

But I like the idea of oars. A ship full of Torians chanting "Ramming Speed! Ramming Speed!"