Researcher Win Condition questions

1.) Are solar taps used up like outpost/colony ships?
2.) Solar taps don't seem to have speed attributes. Do they need to be built in the system you intend to tap?
3.) The researcher-only skill mentions "+1 star per rank" as part of it's description. What does this mean exactly?
4.) The other part of the win condition is "find the ascension device." What is this? Is it something you build, or is it something you're going to have to look throughout the whole universe and hope to come across? Or is that purely lore?

Could we get answers to these? As a fellow researcher, I am very interested.

You have to assume, for the sake of sanity, that they don't need to be built in the system you want to collapse. The thought of needing a colony with the resources to build one in 12 different systems is terrifying. The fact that the "ship" stats look like orbital stats is confusing, though.

I think they are almost certainly "used up" after a number of uses defined by your level of Graviton Physics. That would be the only way to justify the fact that it costs so little compared to the Planet Killer when the effects (in terms of win condition) are so similar. And if you accept that they have multiple uses, then they must be mobile, right?

It says right in the graviton physics description that the tap must be built at the star. How that is possible, I don't know. Maybe it means it must be built in the system, but it specifically says at the star.

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Originally Posted by Royce

It says right in the graviton physics description that the tap must be built at the star. How that is possible, I don't know. Maybe it means it must be built in the system, but it specifically says at the star.

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Ok, but in the description of the Solar Core Tap it says you have to "place the solar core tap in orbit of the star you wish to collapse," which would seem to imply you can move them there.

1) When a star is collapsed, supposedly having researched hyperspace physics will protect your ship from the ensuing blackhole. Elsewhere there is a thread that said this was not enough, that surviving a black hole relied on some hidden "skill points". As a researcher if I collapse a star with one rank in hyperspace physics, will my ships survive?

2) The solar cap description states that making the black hole destroys orbitals and ships in the system; does it destroy the planets? It seems like a tangent idea of the solar tap is to create a "safe haven" for everyone with the research to survive in there.

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Originally Posted by JetJaguar2000

Ok, but in the description of the Solar Core Tap it says you have to "place the solar core tap in orbit of the star you wish to collapse," which would seem to imply you can move them there.

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Maybe it's like a fighter, can't travel out of the system...

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Originally Posted by catswift

1) When a star is collapsed, supposedly having researched hyperspace physics will protect your ship from the ensuing blackhole. Elsewhere there is a thread that said this was not enough, that surviving a black hole relied on some hidden "skill points". As a researcher if I collapse a star with one rank in hyperspace physics, will my ships survive.

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Im pretty sure that only applies to the large alien anomaly, and that you can survive black holes with just hyperspace tech.

Hah, right, it's going to be hilarious when the first Researcher to build a Solar Core Tap tries to collapse his home system and ends up wiping out all his stuff.

The fighter idea sounds sadly plausible. We really do need some clarity on this, because if it does mean you need to build the tap in-system, this completely changes how a Researcher would play the early game (of course, pushing them to expand, expand, expand). In the game I'm playing as a Researcher, I'm fairly close to Graviton Physics, but have nowhere near 12 colonies, nor do I think I could come up with the difference I need at this stage of the game.

Okay good, I'm glad I'm not the only one confused. And the idea of collapsing your own home system's star, if you have hyperspace physics, and everything survives, doesn't sound like too bad of an idea. Imagine someone trying to jump a planet killer to your home system...

Bump! Lots of questions left unanswered.

Bump agains devs. Still need lots of answers here please

I'm curious about this as well... some clarification would be appreciated.

Any response to this?

I destroyed my star, and about 4 - 5 others, and still have 0% progress in the game.... Either i am doing it wrong, or it is broken.

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Originally Posted by Xexist

I destroyed my star, and about 4 - 5 others, and still have 0% progress in the game.... Either i am doing it wrong, or it is broken.

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Wouldn't surprise me that much if it was broken. It'd just bring it back inline with Trader and Warlord and leave 0 possible ways to win, since trader takes an impossible amount of resources traded, and warlord's planet killers require an equally ridiculous amount of resources to build.

Same problem here. I've destroyed about 8 stars and nothing. I don't really know what the +1 taps is either, though I've tried to collapse more than one at a time with the same solar core tap.

I responded in a different thread. Destroyed stars aren't being reported correctly, it's a bug.

This thread has long needed some answers and I will try to provide what I can after winning as a researcher on Belitlli.

Solar Core Taps are ships (not orbitals, despite the stats showing in game), and thus, they are mobile. They are slow, but not overly so. I did not clock them, but they seemed to move around the pace of my battleships (though again, I'm not entirely sure). In any event, I never felt like they took too long to move from system to system and they do not have to be built in the system that they are to be used.

Solar Core Taps must be placed in the orbit of the star (not an orbiting planet) before you have the option to turn on the core tap to create a black hole. If you have researched hyperspace physics your ships will be safe in the system with the new blackhole, but honestly everything happened so fast before the server came down that I did not really get to see how this all works. I wish I could tell you more here.

I believe the core taps can only turn a single sun into a blackhole until you research more levels of gravitron physics, in which case a single core tap can be used more than once.

I have no idea what the ascension device is, but I do not think it's part of the current game.

Two other things bug-related:

1. As Tsagoth has noted above, the black holes are not being properly recorded on your victory progress in game, but should be counting towards your victory behind the scenes. I recommend keeping track of your progress yourself and report any strange behavior as a bug.

2. This is one can be very frustrating, but if the server restarts aor goes down, then the progess on the solar core taps is lost, meaning that you will then need to restart any that did not run for the full 24 hours. I also noticed a problem that after 24 hours of running, they may not actually turn the sun into a blackhole, but this may have been a unique problem on Belitlli due to a number of server crashes while I was making blackholes. Another possible explanation is that I sometimes turned on cloaking before starting the core taps. This is for another thread, but cloaking may have some problems associated with it.

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Originally Posted by Jean Arnaud

I have no idea what the ascension device is, but I do not think it's part of the current game.

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Originally it was the Researcher win condition, but currently it does not appear in the game.