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Frequently Asked Questions |
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Here are some frequently asked questions about Solar Wars. Please review this information before posting a forum message or sending an email message or bug report. Gameplay:
Troubleshooting:
Q: How come I can take over a world without losing one ship? Is this suppose to be fair? A: If this is true, your game must be set for "Offensive Battle Mode". This means that the attacker gets to shoot from all of his ships before the defender gets to shoot once. Although this may not be fair, it does make taking over worlds easier and speeds up the game. For fairer battles, try the "Defensive Battle Mode" game setting. This allows for both the attacker and defender to shoot at the same time. Please note that more ships are required to take over a world with the defensive battle mode than the offensive battle mode game setting.
Q: How come I lose every time I send a fleet to take over a world? A: You can't just send a fleet to take over a world without knowing some information about the world, such as the number of ships it has, its production, its shield percentage, etc. You can find out information about a world by sending a scout to it. Make sure your scout information is relatively new before attacking a world. If you have the Information Crystal, you will always have up-to-date information for unowned worlds. New in Version 1.40 is the "Ships Needed To Take Over World" menu option. This will telll you, approximately, what would be the minimum number of ships required to take over a world. This should improve your odds of winning a battle so use it!
Q: How come the AI computer opponents can take over a world with so few ships? A: Good question. The AI computer opponents are VERY efficient. They take all the game variables into account (travel time, shields, battle mode, etc). The most important thing that they do is look at the class level of the world they are going to attack, and only send attacks from high class worlds. This is due to the fact that the higher the world class, the tougher their ships are - so Class 5 ships are much tougher than Class 1 ships, and thus can take over the world with less ships. New in Version 1.40 is the "Ships Needed To Take Over World" menu option. This gives you the same power as the AI computer opponents - to know, approximately, what would be the minimum number of ships required to take over a world. This can make you as efficient as them, so use it!
Q: Is it possible to recall or redirect a traveling fleet after I have sent it? A: Recall, yes...redirect, no. You can recall a traveling fleet that you just sent in the same turn only, by clicking on the fleet listing in the bottom right window. After a turn has past, you can not recall a fleet. As far as redirecting a traveling fleet, it does not fit into the current game design, so we have not implemented it, but we might in future releases.
Q: How is the game rating calculated and how do I improve my rating? A: The game rating is calculated by the following: total production X total class / (number of turns + 1). To maximize your rating, you should take over as many worlds as possible (strongest ones first) in the fewest turns possible.
Q: Are there any cheat codes in Solar Wars? A: Sorry, but not at this time. There are, however, exploits that can be used to sneak under opponent radar and attack them when they are least expecting it. I won't get into how to do this, but be aware that the better players can do this, so look out!
Q: I just installed the game and I can't see any text on the game setup screen. What is happening? A: The installation program installs two new fonts on your system and sometimes these fonts are not recognized right away. If you experience this problem, simply rebooting your computer should resolve the problem.
Q: Does playing over the Internet work? I hosted a game and no one connected to me. A: Yes it does work, although more people need to host games to make it work better. As far as people connecting to you, it could have been a slow night, or there is a possibility of a problem. If you are running a firewall, you have to disable it or make sure that port 330 is open for TCP connections. If you are on a LAN network and have an IP address starting with "192.168." or "10.0.", the only people that will be able to connect to you are other people directly on your LAN; people on the Internet will not be able to connect to you.
Q: When I run the game, I get a "Run-time Error 429, ActiveX Can't Create Object". How do I fix this? A: Although I am still trying to understand this error, it seems that this error has to do with registering Visual Basic controls on your computer. The zip file for Solar Wars includes every file you should need to run the game, but sometimes there are different versions of the file or they are not available for use for one reason or another. You may have to register each DLL/OCX file by hand until it works. This can be done with the Regsvr32.exe file, which is a small executable provided with Win95 and NT systems which calls DLLRegisterServer on a specified file. To use it, just click Start-Run, type regsvr32 and then drag the file you want to register from Explorer onto the Start-Run box. There are three files that have to be registered: mswinsck.ocx, msinet.ocx, and comdlg32.ocx. You can find these files by searching for them on your hard drive. Click OK to do the registration. If it succeeds, there will be a message box saying registration succeeded, otherwise the message box will tell you it failed with some uninterruptible COM error code. If it fails, you have a bad VB runtime or a corrupt file, or you have got the file name wrong.
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