Final Frontier Question
- Thread starter Xellos-_^
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s.bernbaum
Mostly lurking
1. As in the regular BTS games where you usually can't use all the tiles, you won't be able to build on all the planets early on. As the game progresses and the population grows, you will use more of them. You have to decide which planets have the food, production, and commerce that you need for your current state and use them first. As in regular BTS, if your needs change later, you can switch to different planets.
2. If you mean are they cumulative among the planets in the same system - yes.
3. yes
2. If you mean are they cumulative among the planets in the same system - yes.
3. yes
God-Emperor
Deity
As s.bernbaum indicated, the answers are "yes".
Everything is cumulative. Assigning population to planets is much like working plots in regular BtS where if you work a plot that gives 1 production and a plot that gets 3 production and you get 4 production in that city. In FF having a point of population on a planet that gives 1 production and one on a planet that gives 3 production gets your 4 production in that star system. If in one city in BtS you build a barracks that gives +3xp to all land units and then build a stable that gives +2xp to mounted units then mounted units built in that city get both bonuses for a total of 5xp. Likewise in FF if you build two training compounds and three schools for zealots in the same star system then all units built there will get the combined total of 10xp since each of the 5 gives 2xp.
Additional info for item 1:
For quite a while you will be unable to assign population to, or build things on, anything other than the planets closest to the star. This is especially true of systems other than your starting system since the Capitol building gives you free culture (well, in FF it is called "influence" rather than "culture"). Like your cultural influence in BtS grows and eventually (well, pretty quickly) allows you to work more than just the plots immediately adjacent to the city, in FF there are three influence zones in a star system and you can initially use only the planets in the innermost zone. Get a moderate amount of influence and you can use the planets in the second zone, if there are any. Get a bunch more and you gain access to the third zone. To a large extent this is just a game mechanic designed to make it more interesting and give you another consideration when picking a system to settle since, despite the size of the graphics showing the orbiting planets on the map, the entire star system is actually in the one plot where the star is located and therefore the entire thing is really inside your borders from the start - the restriction on planet use is purely a game mechanic that has little to do with realism, but it does work well.
The amount of influence that this takes is specifically set to be more than it takes in regular BtS and it does match the first two border pops (it is actually controlled by this).
There are 8 possible planet orbits, although no star system has more than 7 planets, or fewer than 3. The innermost zone is the first 3 orbits, the middle zone is the next two, and the outer zone is the 3 outermost orbits. (I seem to recall that in unmodded FF the system preview you get when you double click on an unowned star system shows this wrong, as 3-3-2 instead of 3-2-3. It's been a long time since I played unmodded FF...) The code that creates the planets in the star systems insures that they all meet some minimum requirements, but they are pretty minimal so some star systems are pretty bad initially but improve once you get a border pop or two, and some are just plain bad (the equivalent of settling a half ice + half tundra city in regular BtS, more or less, as growth may be slow and the maximum useful population is low).
Everything is cumulative. Assigning population to planets is much like working plots in regular BtS where if you work a plot that gives 1 production and a plot that gets 3 production and you get 4 production in that city. In FF having a point of population on a planet that gives 1 production and one on a planet that gives 3 production gets your 4 production in that star system. If in one city in BtS you build a barracks that gives +3xp to all land units and then build a stable that gives +2xp to mounted units then mounted units built in that city get both bonuses for a total of 5xp. Likewise in FF if you build two training compounds and three schools for zealots in the same star system then all units built there will get the combined total of 10xp since each of the 5 gives 2xp.
Additional info for item 1:
For quite a while you will be unable to assign population to, or build things on, anything other than the planets closest to the star. This is especially true of systems other than your starting system since the Capitol building gives you free culture (well, in FF it is called "influence" rather than "culture"). Like your cultural influence in BtS grows and eventually (well, pretty quickly) allows you to work more than just the plots immediately adjacent to the city, in FF there are three influence zones in a star system and you can initially use only the planets in the innermost zone. Get a moderate amount of influence and you can use the planets in the second zone, if there are any. Get a bunch more and you gain access to the third zone. To a large extent this is just a game mechanic designed to make it more interesting and give you another consideration when picking a system to settle since, despite the size of the graphics showing the orbiting planets on the map, the entire star system is actually in the one plot where the star is located and therefore the entire thing is really inside your borders from the start - the restriction on planet use is purely a game mechanic that has little to do with realism, but it does work well.
The amount of influence that this takes is specifically set to be more than it takes in regular BtS and it does match the first two border pops (it is actually controlled by this).
There are 8 possible planet orbits, although no star system has more than 7 planets, or fewer than 3. The innermost zone is the first 3 orbits, the middle zone is the next two, and the outer zone is the 3 outermost orbits. (I seem to recall that in unmodded FF the system preview you get when you double click on an unowned star system shows this wrong, as 3-3-2 instead of 3-2-3. It's been a long time since I played unmodded FF...) The code that creates the planets in the star systems insures that they all meet some minimum requirements, but they are pretty minimal so some star systems are pretty bad initially but improve once you get a border pop or two, and some are just plain bad (the equivalent of settling a half ice + half tundra city in regular BtS, more or less, as growth may be slow and the maximum useful population is low).
