In DA I have upgraded a 2000Troop Transport to a 250M Colony ship and it does retain the 2000M. At first I thought it was a delay, not updating thing, but I was able to keep it for several turns and eventiually colonized a planet with the full 2B to start. So I guess it's been around a while, I had forgotten about it till your mention.

Oh My - Convert your advanced troop transport to a colony ship and *really* start moving population out!

"Daddy, how come the new neighbors has a hover tank in the driveway? I wanna have a hovertank! How come we don't have a hover tank!"

Jonnan

omg... whatta tricky diamond of a find.

Say-- i'm playin' on Immense and there's still some juicy purple starred PQ25+ hidden on a traveling path of my fully loaded invasion transport(s). Stop. Upgrade. Snatch it away from whomever COULD reach it first haven't i known the above "exploit".

Tks. , DethAdder!

But  - But - It's an Exploit Zyxpsilon! Say it aint so!

My god, what *have* I done!!!

{G} - Jonnan

Well, this is at least somewhat interesting, or maybe I've been the only person that hadn't been aware of the obvious.

I'm not even quite sure I consider this an exploit/cheat as it makes perfectly good 'sense' in real life - but if you have one colony pod on a vessel, and five troop Transports, you've got yourself a high efficiency colony ship carrying 2.75 billion colonists. I presume, but have not verified, that it also acts as slightly low efficiency troop transport.

I do believe I may start researching troop transports rather earlier in the game than I have ever have before now - even before miniaturization, this means you can make a colony ship with 1.25 billion colonists, and still have 10 units left over for life support.

Jonnan

'Exploit' and yet... it's something really weird when you realize that in the great void of space, a whole bunch of freshly added colonists appear all of a sudden and board the transport to simply replace invasion troops - indirectly, sort of. Just like, a communication from far away HQ came in to change mission plans & ordered the crew to modify the physical features or capacities of their ship!

Which is one more positive effect to my triple set of special ships in X-Worlds (Avenger, Barracuda & Retaliator)  purposely designed with 3 modules (colony, two transports) by default. Making them already 'switchable' from launch, somehow.

PS; Back to current topic... "Bugs & Issues" for 1.99rc

In two my games AI build ships, but didn't launch them. In one case it was Drengin (6 colony ships orbiting Drengia), only Kona colonized. The other it was Arcean (6 scout ships orbiting Arcea, no colony ships), only Hammer colonized. Level of their AI was inteligent. I quit both games.  

This has been noted before, and it seemed to be unique amongst just certain AIs.  But as I've done some testing, I've also only been noticing it on larger maps. 

For example, i've been playing an Immense Rare Habitables.  And the Drengin never colonized anything outside of Drengia.  And I couldn't figure out why, until I played a Tiny map against the Yor.

The Tiny Map was on Suicidal, and I was just testing some stuff out, so i sat on my HW system.  The Yor very quickly sent out colony ships but then...never once crossed my influence border.  There was a good 20 planets in my sphere of influence, but they never even made a move for them...well, that is until their influence started growing and then they started colonizing planets closest to their worlds, to minimize culture flipping

And on an Immense map, there are no more stars than in a Gigantic map (they are just space farther apart). The issue with this is that the AI lacks the ability to 'reach' out, especially if not playing All Abundant to spread out.  This is why so many see the Korath building Influence starbases early on. They're trying to get it where they can actually grow, but since the AI won't colonize in another sphere of influence, at least early on, they are essentially getting suffocated to death.

Recently downloaded the TA Beta and played several games (large, painful). Saw several problems ---

1) On the Diplomacy Screen, the old problem of truncated cash amounts (I.E. showiing 234 instead of 2345) is still present. I hoped that Ver 2.0 would have fixed this irksome quirk.

2) A more subtle problem. I captured a Krynn planet, yet the game still maintained the Krynn's freighter route from that planet (the game acted as if they still owned the planet insofar as the trade route was concerned). Every time I knocked out the freighter on that route, a new Krynn freighter would emerge from my planet the next turn. I don't know if this problem originated with the TA Beta or is a carry over from an earlier release (and which I never detected previously}.

Is anyone else having 'odd' diplomatic contacts.  Odd meaning, Dread Lords or Peacekeepers asking for help because they've been getting their collective backsides wiped by one of the AI's.  Had the Peacekeeper mega happen, I wasn't in a position to have them attack me, but the Korx attracted most of the Peacekeepers attention and, after 25 turns or so, they started initiating contact in the diplomacy screen with the 'We're being ground into dogmeat by the Korx, can you help us' line.  I even threw them a bone before I caught on.  I know this sort of thing existed in earlier versions, but thought it had been addressed and corrected/changed.

When you trade for the Trade techs, the game won't let you trade them to other players, aka, you already have Trade do to research and you can trade that tech to other races, now you trade the iconians for Advanced Trade and Master Trade.  Now even though the other races don't have this tech and it's not a race exclusive tech, it won't let me trade Advanced Trade and Master trade to other races.

at Seilore:  no, you just have Tech Brokering off- that is you can't trade techs that you didn't research yourself

No, I do not have disable tech brokering checked.  By not checking this box I assumed that I'd be able to broker techs?  Are you telling me that this check box is actually oposite where if you check it, it actually allows tech brokering?

Is this option supose to read enable tech brokering?

I have 1.99 and has anybody noticed that the initial colony ships have two colony modules and only carries 250 (million) colonists...?  

when I tried to remove the extra module to place more engines the space didn't clear(no extre room) 

I have since noticed that all the premade ships have more stuff than they have room for........this is mildly nnoying( I enjoy making small tweaks to the ship designs as I advance in technology)

@Steelwaters: This isn't unique to the TA 1.99; but it is unique to the Terrans.  The starting Terran Colony Ship in Dark Avatar also has the two colony modules, though only one is counted.  It is strictly for cosmetic purposes.  None of the other races have the phantom colony module.