Tech trade question

[haphazard1]

I have been watching session 2 of Sulla's recent Alkari game (I am way behind on his vids), and a situation came up where he traded for both better armor and a better deflector tech and one of his planets was attacked on the following interturn. Oddly, his missile bases got the upgraded armor HP but did NOT get the improved deflector tech. It seems like this has be some kind of order of events issue, where different things are being applied at different times in the turn processing. He was spending on defense and built multiple bases that turn, so I think it should not be an upgrade spending issue.

Anyone know exactly how this works? I know we had some discussion during our RotP game about tech trades and when the new tech actually shows up. But there may be subtle differences in RotP and classic MoO.

[WingsofMemory]

I have been watching session 2 of Sulla's recent Alkari game (I am way behind on his vids), and a situation came up where he traded for both better armor and a better deflector tech and one of his planets was attacked on the following interturn. Oddly, his missile bases got the upgraded armor HP but did NOT get the improved deflector tech. It seems like this has be some kind of order of events issue, where different things are being applied at different times in the turn processing. He was spending on defense and built multiple bases that turn, so I think it should not be an upgrade spending issue.

Anyone know exactly how this works? I know we had some discussion during our RotP game about tech trades and when the new tech actually shows up. But there may be subtle differences in RotP and classic MoO.

Doesn't the planets deflector need to be rebuilt using the "defense" slider for it to be upgraded?

[haphazard1]

The traded tech was for a deflector, not a planetary shield. The planet had a planetary shield (V level), and then your current deflector tech will stack with that (I visualize it as the bases having their own shields under the planetary shield). You have to spend to build or upgrade a planetary shield, but the deflector tech (I believe) stacks automatically.

[RefSteel]

Ugh, yeah, I know this bug - or, arguably, these two.  It has nothing to do with the "UPGD" cost of missile bases, which is actually bugged in an entirely different (pair of?) way(s?) - and nothing directly to do with shields.  My understanding is, it works like this:

Missile bases are not fitted out on the basis of how much "UPGD" cost you've spent (which is just an extra payment you have to make before adding new bases, sort of like the bugged-to-be-purely-nominal one for Robotic Controls that I described elsewhere) nor are they updated as soon as new tech for them comes in.  Instead, during the inteturn, the game assigns your missile base equipment by going through your Computer, Construction, Force Fields, and Weapon techs (and maybe Prop for interdictors?) and picks the best stuff it finds, up to your current tech level.  So if you have ECM1 and BC2 and thus Computer Tech Level 6, it checks to see each jammer and computer you can get at each tech level up to 6, and assigns your bases the best you've actually got:  ECM1 at TL2 and BC2 at TL5.  Then it goes on to Construction and does the same thing, looking for armor.  Sounds like it should work, and mostly it does.  Except.

Suppose you haven't completed any Construction research yet, but pulled Duralloy from an Artifacts world.  Your Construction tech level is now 9 ([floor]80% of Duralloy's TL10 + 1 for your one tech in the field) so the game goes through all the tech levels up to 9, finds no armor for which you have the tech, and assigns your bases the default Titanium - because Duralloy is TL10, and the game doesn't realize that under certain circumstances, you can have a tech whose level is higher than your overall level in its field.

Meanwhile, you have teched Class 2 Shields, and just this turn, you also traded for Class 3s.  Now you run into the second problem, which might or might not be a bug on its own, but certainly is in combination with the bug above:  Although you can design ships with the new shields right away, your overall forcefield tech level doesn't update until well into the interturn.  This means you have to wait a turn to take advantage of your new shield miniaturization in your new ship designs, but it also means that when the game assigns your bases' equipment, it's still only checking Forcefield techs up to TL4!  Even though your FF tech level will be updated to 10 later in the interturn, the game doesn't know that yet, and just stops looking for shields you might have before it ever reaches the new ones.  So Sullla's bases got his new armor but not his new shields not because one was armor and the other a shield, but because he already had higher-level Construction tech, so the game knew to check for his lower-level traded armor, but his best Forcefield tech prior to trading was lower than the level of his new shields, so the game gave up looking for more-advanced shielding before it got to them.

Note this bug does happen more frequently with shields than with anything else, but only because the Forcefield tree is so thin in comparison with the others:  You're much less likely to have an overall tech level (significantly) above your best indiviual tech level in that field.  If you already have Hand Lasers, Fusion Bombs, and Ion Cannons and then trade for Scatter Pack V, your bases should get to fire Scatters, because your overall tech level was pushed up just high enough to count them without counting the new tech itself.  But even if you manage to pick up every single FF tech in order from lowest to highest, the first deflector shields that will "count" on the interturn after you trade for them would be Class 6.

[EDIT: Also note it does not apply to planetary shields, because they aren't missile base equipment; they're a separate defensive system for the world, built and tracked separately: If you build one, you get to use it right away.]

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the explanation, RefSteel!

That is a tricky bug, and I will have to remember the "tech level does not update immediately" thing as far as designing new ships with freshly traded techs. Which of course you are likely to do, because why else did you trade for the tech? Losing the miniaturization benefits in new designs could be a serious negative in cases of big tech level leaps.

And Sulla was right about it being a bug. I still think he would have been toast in that game, though. Those Meklar were running completely away from the rest of the galaxy.