Xentax

There's a bug - apparently only 'found' weapons count for this purpose, not manufactured items. At least, I consider this a bug. There's a workaround (which is also a bug IMHO); take your .50-cal out on a mission, drop it on the ground, and pick it up again. Should count as a 'found' weapon at mission's end. Maybe they thought the tree was setup such that you wouldn't be able to make a .50-cal before you'd find one, but either way, that's the (current) story. Hope that helps As I've said elsewhere, I'd really have done the ammo thing differently. You should have a research item for each caliber (fairly short) - after which, you can manufacture that ammo type, whether you can produce weapons that take the caliber or not. It's fairly self-evident that one can learn to make bullets without knowing how to make any guns that shoot them. Next, you should be able to research an ammo TYPE (AP/Flechette/explosive) once you have found some ammo of that type. This should take a little longer, but once done you should be able to manufacture ammo of that type in ANY caliber which you already know how to manufacture. I realize this is harder to implement - what if I know how to make 5.56, 9mm, 7.62, and AP, but only then do I find a .50? The game would have to know to unlock .50 and .50AP when I've finished the .50 research, but not thereafter. Maybe there should be short research items for every combination of caliber and type. Lots of items, but make them fairly short... -X

On gaining territory from 'friendly' factions: If they don't need your help, but you don't want to conquer them, just wait - keep retrying periodically until they have a 'help us' mission. Apparently, you can retry immediately, which probably needs to be fixed. I make myself wait a day or two, or do a couple other missions between, etc. You can also guarantee getting it in a single mission by accepting to help, then aborting the mission - they lose the territory, then you can conquer it from whoever won the mission (cultists, mutants, reticulans). But, I think this is an exploit; you should either lose pretty significant faction for losing the mission, they should have a chance of still keeping their territory, or both. I haven't felt the need to attack any provinces, because I'd rather have my faction standing be as high as possible - access to better recruits, and if you do run low on a resource, you'll get a LOT from them in the process of resetting your standing to neutral. I got ~8000 low-tech from humans, and ~4000 hi-tech from Cyborgs, and this was somewhere in the middle range of positive (humans were offering 1 level 5 and several level 4 recruits; cyborgs were offering level 4 recruits). Given that I had < 1000 of each previously, that's a pretty good deal compared to conquering their territories by force. But hey, this is why it's called a strategy game - either approach, or somewhere in between - is viable.

I haven't tried it yet (only JUST got college floorplans researched late in my last play session), but here's the trick: 1. Build a library 2. Build a college 3. Build a 2nd college 4. Destroy the library Each college supports the other. You can use lesser buildings if you need less knowledge level than 2 colleges, but remember knowledge also helps resist cultists and improves mining, so if you need more than 1 college worth, it's probably worth each building being a college (in the long run). I'm planning to max colleges on one of my psionic territories (lucky for me, I have *three* pretty early on), and in at least one cyborg territory (that's actually the one with my lowest incoming rate). I don't know what other facilities need > 2 knowledge (which is what a single school provides). So, if I understand it right, you can get 1-2 knowledge with one base slot, and 4 * number of slots when slots is 2 or more (because you can make them all colleges with the strategy above).

I don't know why they didn't think of my idea - now that everything takes resources to make, why not add a 'salvage' button that returns X% of the construction cost (e.g. 50%, 25%...whatever's reasonable but doesn't encourage 'farming' as opposed to normal resource gathering)? If you can't make something, they could still assign a construction cost in mostly alien tech, so you could salvage even reticulan weapons, etc. Whatcha think?