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EMPEROR OF THE FADING SUNS FAQ
v4.0 3/1/97

By Tom Chick


CONTENTS
I. GENERAL
II. PRODUCTION
III. MOVEMENT
IV. COMBAT
V. DIPLOMACY
VI. THE CHURCH
VII. THE MERCHANT LEAGUE
VIII. BYZANTIUM II AND THE REGENCY
IX. MISCELLANEOUS
A. SPOTTING
B. PLAGUE
C. NOBLES
E. ET CETERA
X. HACKING
A. UNITS
B. PRODUCTION
C. STRUCTURES
E. FIXING THE GUNSHIP BUG
XI. BUGS
XII. WISH LIST


I. GENERAL

What is Emperor of the Fading Suns?

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a strategy game developed by Holistic
Design and distributed by Segasoft. It is set in a science fiction
universe based on the Fading Suns role-playing game. It can be
described as a blend of Renaissance Italy and Frank Herbert's Dune.


What is EFS, EotFS, and EOFS?

EFS has become the most commonly used acronym for Emperor of the
Fading Suns after an early period of turmoil, strife, and confusion.
To quote Steve Yancey (syancey@griffin.com) from the newsgroup: "This
game seems to have more problems than most as far as its identity in
subject lines: EOTFS, EOFS, EFS, Emperor/Empire [of the] Fading Suns,
etc. I decided to go with EFS since that's the acronym the game
itself goes by when it installs. There is precedent for including
"of" though -- MOO2 (not MO2), HOMM2 (not HMM2, but why not HOMAM2??,
or since we
have C&C, perhaps HOM&M2?)." Despite Steve's gallant attempt to cloud
the issue, everyone seems to have settled on EFS.


Who is Holistic Design?

These are the guys who brought us Battles of Destiny, Merchant Prince,
Hammer of the Gods, and Machiavelli the Prince.


What's with those ads for EFS anyway?

Who knows what's going on in the hearts and minds of marketing folk.
EFS has a, umm, unique advertising campaign in print magazines. If
you've ever quickly flipped past an ad with a picture of a kitten, a
puppy, or some baby ducks under a heartwarming word like "Friendship",
you've missed the ad for EFS. Congratulations.


What are the system requirements?

Emperor of the Fading Suns requires Windows 95, a 486/66, 35MB of hard
drive space, a Direct X compatible video card, and a CD-ROM drive.
The installation routine slaps Direct X 3.0 onto your system and
reboots your computer whether you like it or not.


Where can I get a demo?

http://www.segasoft.com/emperor/main.html


What's the latest version?

Version 1.1. Version 1.2 is currently in QA at Segasoft. Holistic
has assured us that v1.0 and v1.1 games will work with v1.2.


Are there any strategy guides available?

Online Gaming Review has a helpful article by
http://www.ogr.com/specials/guides/efs_guide.shtml


II. PRODUCTION

Where are all my Firebirds going?

There is an undocumented maintenance cost of 500Fb/year for each lab.


Why am I producing so many Singularities?

There's a bug that causes hyper production of some resources, most
commonly Singularities. Holistic says this will be fixed in version
1.2. In the meantime, many people feel this renders the game
virtually unplayable. There is some speculation that this bug may be
related to certain House traits.


How can I arrange cities to squeeze the maximum production out of my
planet?

Chris Smith (csmith@stoneboro.uucp.cirr.com) suggests zigging to the
left or right at the start and end of a five hex line separating
cities. Instead of merely counting out six hexes in one direction
(for instance, city-south-south-south-south-south-new city), jog the
line in another direction at the beginning and end (in the above
example, city, southeast-south-south-south-southeast-new city). Chris
says that if you do this consistently, it arranges your cities in
triangular grids with no wasted space. I'm not sure how this works
(apparently it's a function of how hexes are arranged), but just
thinking about it makes my brain hurt.


III. MOVEMENT

What is the formula to calculate movement costs from the figures in
the TERRCOST.DAT file?

Each hex has up to four layers. For example, you could have mountains
on top of trees on top of grass. To figure out the movement cost for
a unit into a particular type of terrain, you take the movement type
of the unit, the terrain type, and the type of planet. Reference
these numbers in the TERRCOST.DAT table. Do this for each layer in
the hex, then multiply each of the layers together to get the actual
movement cost. For instance, a militia unit on a jungle world
entering a mountain + trees + grass hex would have the following
movement cost:

(Mountain = 1.5) * (trees = 1.5) * (grass = 2.0) = 4.5

Since movement cost is an integer value, it is rounded down to 4.


Does the damage incurred by a Transport landing outside a city vary
with the terrain type on which it lands?

No.


Do aircraft have to land?

Yes. They must end every other turn in a city or on a spaceship.


How do I divide up cargo pods?

Drag the pod into an empty unit window and you'll have to option to
divide the resource between two separate pods.


Where is the hot spot to load units onto transports?

Think of the icon of the unit you are loading as a cursor. The hot
spot on the cursor is the upper left hand corner. If you click when
the hot spot is anywhere in the transport's icon, you should hit it.


Is the movement of units carried into orbit and back down supposed to
be lost? If movement points are a function of time passing, then the
paradigm is broken if you can ferry units across the planet on Landers
and then have them use their movement points as well.

No. Limitations of the game engine and all that...


On a related note, is the movement of carried units in a jump supposed
to be lost? Bulk Haulers loaded with Fighters are inordinately
powerful: you can jump into a system and the Fighters still have their
movement available to attack any unsuspecting ships.

Holistic replied, "Sounds good to us. We like attacking each other
that way."


Is cargo supposed to be able to be transferable in space?

Yes, you're supposed to be able to transfer cargo in space. However,
this leads to some "Pony Express" tricks whereby a chain of transports
can carry a unit all the way across the galaxy in a single turn.
Also, if you have a waiting Lander, you can warp into a system,
transfer cargo onto the Lander, drop planetside, and attack in the
same turn.

Henri H. Arsenault (arseno@phy.ulaval.ca) takes advantage of this as a
convenient way to get around damaging your city-restricted Transports,
while landing eight units in one turn with a Bulk Hauler and two
Assault Transports: "You need to have eight units in space ships in
orbit around the planet. Let us say that you have the two landers
already loaded in space. You land and unload the two landers, leaving
four units near the city. You go into orbit to pick up four more
units by transferring them to the landers from other ships in orbit
that would be damaged if they landed themselves. Then you land the
four new units for a total of eight. Then you attack the city with
the eight units."


Is there any way to keep cargo from filling up crucial orbital slots
and restricting fleet size?

No. In response to a request that they change this, Holistic wrote:
"This is virtually impossible to code since certain cargo could be
unloaded in space. This would then produce an overstacked situation
we couldn't handle very well. Sorry. The stacking in space thing is
not an ideal thing for many reasons, but it was important to us. EFS
is supposed to stress ground combat to a greater degree. If you could
move around a few hundred bombardment ships like in many previous
space conquest games, then the ground units would be fairly useless."


IV. COMBAT

What is rank?

Each unit has a rank that determines how close it stands to the battle
front, so to speak. When an attack is made against a stack, the
attacker is more likely to target units with the lowest ranks. Each
unit's rank number is in the unit.dat file. These are listed below in
alphabetical order.

SPACE UNITS
Armored Bulk Hauler 9
Armored Freighter 9
Assault Lander 8
Blow Ship 2
Bulk Hauler 9
Cadiz Dreadnought 6
Carrier 7
Carrier MkII 7
Cyber Fighter 1
Deathmate 0
Destroyer 4
Destroyer 2
Freighter 9
Frigate 3
Grappler 1
Martyr Torp Bmbr 2
Meson Starbase 5