Blue Circles and Sentience

[LunaJupi]

Some n00by questions...

Sometimes when I go to a planet, there's a random blue circle on it (sometimes a few). Looks like the same circle that appears when placing a Colony Incedi-Pack. I was thinking it may have been a marker indicating that a colony was there, but got destroyed. But it always seems to be in the same place on every planet. What is it?

Also...
What's the point of abducting sentient beings? Is there anything you can do with them? I abducted some Tribal Sentient creatures and put them on another planet, but they just got eaten by the animals. When I place them near one of my colonies, they automatically move inside and join my creatures, though I haven't noticed if they're there permanently or not. 

[J. M. Pescado]

Sometimes when I go to a planet, there's a random blue circle on it (sometimes a few). Looks like the same circle that appears when placing a Colony Incedi-Pack. I was thinking it may have been a marker indicating that a colony was there, but got destroyed. But it always seems to be in the same place on every planet. What is it?

This is a bug. For some reason the game will somehow manage to remember where a blue circle was to be drawn, and it will persist across save/restarts. There is no apparent way to get rid of it, but other than looking really ugly, it doesn't appear to do anything.

What's the point of abducting sentient beings? Is there anything you can do with them? I abducted some Tribal Sentient creatures and put them on another planet, but they just got eaten by the animals. When I place them near one of my colonies, they automatically move inside and join my creatures, though I haven't noticed if they're there permanently or not.

Sometimes they're wanted as part of a quest, but otherwise it serves no purpose.

[SpaceDoll]

If we're establishing a noob question thread, how about this one:  On the map of my home planet, the geysers are all grey like when they are unclaimed.  From space, the planet label thing says something like 4/23 for spice.  Does this mean only 4 of my geysers are producing?  Are my geysers unclaimed?

[Dopp]

Spice collection in the Space stage doesn't work in the same way as in Civ stage. Instead of establishing mining rigs over geysers that automatically produce spice, cities build vehicles to harvest the spice directly without having to 'claim' the geysers (they go to the geysers and fill up balloons with spice). You don't need to worry about it at all, everything is automated. Turning that spice into money, however, is not automatic. The planet display shows you how much spice has been collected and the maximum storage capacity of the planet (it should be 5 for every city/colony on the planet, I don't know how you got 23). So 4/23 means the planet can hold 23 units of spice maximum and currently has 4 units in storage. Since your ship is the ONLY ship in your entire interstellar empire, it is up to you to take that spice and trade it to other empires/colonies for money. Stupid system.

[SpaceDoll]

I pretty much pulled 23 out of my ass, thanks.  I haven't played since yesterday, and that's about how long my memory lasts, I guess.  Thanks for the clarification, Dopp; that's one less thing I have to worry about while I'm out there getting my ass kicked.

[Zazazu]

Just make sure your homeworld has factories in the cities. Twice now I've noticed that my homeworld wasn't producing from the first moment and checked to find that my cities had absolutely no buildings.

[Dopp]

Don't homeworlds have very low harvesting rates to force you to colonize other planets? All the spice is supposed to have been mined out during the civilization stage or something. Interesting thing is that nobody else's homeworld has this problem.

[jsalemi]

Yea, the homeworld cities can lose buildings to a particularly aggressive attack.  Then again, the HW only produces red spice (as far as I've seen), which isn't worth much when you get to the point that you're far enough away from the HW that you can't get back in time to stop a determined attack.  You'll never lose the HW, though it could go down to 3 cities.

The HW is always the first place I put an uberturret when I can; my purple and pink spice planets are the second.  That way I can wander further afield and not worry about losing them.  BTW, if you have the cash, you can put more than one uberturret on any planets near aggressive neighbors who are always attacking.  One keeps the attack from being successful, but two or more wipe them out before they have time to establish an orbit.

[Faizah]

Wait, more than one? How? I thought the uber turrets were one per planet?

[Zazazu]

Yea, the homeworld cities can lose buildings to a particularly aggressive attack.  Then again, the HW only produces red spice (as far as I've seen), which isn't worth much when you get to the point that you're far enough away from the HW that you can't get back in time to stop a determined attack.  You'll never lose the HW, though it could go down to 3 cities.

All of your colonies can. That's not really the issue. The issue is that from the moment I enter space, sometimes my homeworlds have no buildings in the cities. This is before I've left the planet and obviously before I've been attacked. It's very odd. Granted, I don't rely on my homeworld for income.

The HW is always the first place I put an uberturret when I can; my purple and pink spice planets are the second.  That way I can wander further afield and not worry about losing them.

I ignore the homeworld as far as turreting goes. I put an uberturret on my first colony as they always seem to be the ones to get hit (and usually that's a pink or blue as I search around). If I happen to go to war with an empire and was able to snag a T2, I'll uberturret it so it isn't taken while I'm taking the T3. Otherwise, I don't care.

By the time I start having pirate attacks, I don't care about red spice. With my aggressive races, I don't even actively trade. I get loads of spice when I conquer, and I sell to my own colonies if I happen to notice they are paying well. And, of course, to the nicey-nice merchants that I let live for future allies once they've grown huge.

As for aggressive neighbors, I have none. If they don't like me on sight, they die. My spice! MINE!

[jsalemi]

Wait, more than one? How? I thought the uber turrets were one per planet?

No, Spice containers are one per planet, but there's no limit on the uber turrets that I've seen.

As for aggressive neighbors, I have none. If they don't like me on sight, they die. My spice! MINE!

My first space race is Warrior, and that's pretty much their philosophy from the get-go.   But I'm also playing a Trader race, and it's taken a while to get the ship strong enough to take on the closest Spodean race that decided they didn't like me.  The other one in the immediate neighborhood of my home world isn't close enough to invade without going through an ally's space, so they don't bother me.  Only one uber turret mops up any pirates pretty quickly, so I ignore any of those warnings now, unless I'm nearby and want (need) the gold reward for burning them out of the sky.

[Zazazu]

Gifting and missions isn't working to get them to neutral? Granted, I've been focusing on my two killers so that I can set up my pincher attack on the Grox, but I didn't find it too hard to play pacifist earlier. I think I may have had Gracious Greeter even on my hard pacifist run, though. Hrm. My 20 save-games, they confuse me at times.

[jsalemi]

Unfortunately they went to war with one of my allies, which made them angrier, and I didn't have the sporebucks at the time to sufficiently bribe them.  But they're the only race I've wiped out in my Trader game, just because they really pissed me off.
 

[Faizah]

Wait, more than one? How? I thought the uber turrets were one per planet?

No, Spice containers are one per planet, but there's no limit on the uber turrets that I've seen.

I had to fire up the game to double check, and I'm not seeing this in my game.

I get this instead:

[jsalemi]

Hmm, the game where I put more than on I was playing on Easy (it was my first game) -- maybe that's the difference?

[Faizah]

Nope, pretty sure I've been playing on Easy this whole time. (I am weak and such, apparently... I just wanted the Sandbox game I'd heard Spore was going to be.)

[J. M. Pescado]

The HW is always the first place I put an uberturret when I can; my purple and pink spice planets are the second.  That way I can wander further afield and not worry about losing them.  BTW, if you have the cash, you can put more than one uberturret on any planets near aggressive neighbors who are always attacking.  One keeps the attack from being successful, but two or more wipe them out before they have time to establish an orbit.

Are you serious? I thought it specifically said 1 uber turret per planet, and the option is usually grayed out. Did you install some sort of hack which changed this, or is there an exploit that enabled this? Because if it were POSSIBLE, I'd be installing 99 per planet, turning the place into an instant deathtrap.

[jsalemi]

I have no hacks in my Spore, and I'm pretty sure I put 2 on one planet.  I'll go back in and check later this evening when I play. 

[Zazazu]

Are you patched? I'm not, and on Easy and Hard (I don't do normal) I can only place one uberturret.

[jsalemi]

I am patched, and I'm a meathead -- I must be misremembering or had a one-time glitch that I put 2 on one planet.  If I did, I can't find it, and I can't put more than one uber turret on any of my planets now.

[Dopp]

Uberturrets are nice, but like the powerful defense ships on enemy planets they don't really do their job properly because the enemy targets the cities and all the buildings have really low HP, especially the supposedly heavily-armored turrets (500 HP vs 800 HP for a house? Even the primitive civilization turrets on other planets have 800 HP!), and die in one shot, plus the buildings only auto-repair while you are personally on the planet. One or two bombs from an enemy bomber can destroy half a city. Unless the uberturret can intercept and destroy the enemy before they come within range of the colonies OR unless the colonies can replace destroyed buildings automatically, every enemy attack always sees me replacing destroyed buildings (especially those useless turrets). The uberturret always seems to be patrolling on the opposite side of the planet from the invaders when I arrive and it also rather unhelpfully always decides to attack the group I'm attacking at the moment, with the result that two or three flights always get through. I wants a 'tougher turrets', 'auto-rebuild' and 'colony forcefield' mod.

[SpaceDoll]

Ditto on the auto-rebuild thing.  What, they go into hibernation when I'm off-world?  Stupid colonists.

[GayJohnScarritt]

   I've seen one other thread posted at another site about the double-Uber exploit.  I haven't tried it myself (i'm STILL working on avoiding game crashes).

http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?t=612983&highlight=uber

Quote:
You should do this from medium to high altitude for best results. Fire an Uber Turret at the planet's surface and then, RIGHT as it begins deploying, minimize (This is seriously crucial. If you minimize too soon, it won't deploy and you won't get it, if you minimize too late, you won't get it. You must minimize as SOON as you see the turret begin to unfold). Wait for about the time it takes for the Uber Turret to construct and begin flying about, then bring the game back up. Once the Uber Turret is finished recharging, it should glow as if you don't have one yet. Deploy the second one (DO NOT leave the planet before you do this) and you will have 2 Uber Turrets flying around on the planet.
End Quote:
 
   Further on down, the OP suggests that the Spice Storage Module must NOT be placed before trying this exploit.