15-02-2001 14:00									#1
	Unity Crash Site question Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

In a recent game I started near the Unity Crash site on the huge map of planet (I started at the bottom of the freshwater sea). the gaians were my neighbors to the north along pholus ridge, but quite a ways off. My bases briskly expanded around the freshwater sea and that's when I saw the crash site.

I thought: cool! I've never collected the goodies from the crash site before! So I sent a rover to merrily sweep up the fusion core, the beacon with the other faction's comm links, and so on.

But when I got there: NOTHING!!!

What's going on? I had to send my rover a full NINE squares north from the crash site to find the first Gaian base, and they sure didn't have rovers yet. Since I haven't ever been the first to the crash site, I don't actually know what happens when you get there, so will someone kindly enlighten me as to the follwing:

1) is collecting the aforementioned goodies as simple as moving a unit onto the square that contains the item, such as the beacon or the core?

2) are all the items present in all the games, or is it random?

3) if it appears that the Gaians did beat me to it, is this characteristic of the AI? To beeline for the crashsite even though they supposedly don't know its there?

thanks

ALSO: off topic, can someone also let me in on what "double blind" and LOL mean? Yes, you can chuckle at my ignorance, but chuckle while you type the answer, O.K.?
[This message has been edited by karu-san (edited February 15, 2001).]

	15-02-2001 15:41									#3
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1)-4)Nothing to add
5) I thought it was Laughing Out Loud

	15-02-2001 17:32									#4
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Thanks for the replies!

	15-02-2001 17:54									#5
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In addition to what was said above, the Unity Crash Site will be empty if "pod popping" is turned off.

	15-02-2001 19:30									#6
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5) I think it must be Laughing out Loud, rather than Lots of Laughs or some other thing, cause of the superior ROTFLOL: Rolling on the Floor, Laughing out Loud.

	16-02-2001 02:03									#8
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Ragarding # 3: I believe it was Dilitium Dad that noticed if you set your units to 'exlplore' (in the pop up menu when you right-click on them) they tend to beeline towards landmarks and other factions. I believe that they 'explore' toward which ever is closer. So, in the instance you explained I would surmise that the Gaians got there before you and made off with the goods. The only way to know for certain would be to infiltrate their datalinks and look and see it they have the unity chopper. I think that would be a fair indication of whether or not they beat you to the punch.

Edit: I thought I should clarify that, if the AI decides to send its unit to 'explore' it would also head toward the nearest landmark/faction just as if you set your unit to do the same.
[This message has been edited by WhiteElephants (edited February 15, 2001).]

	16-02-2001 13:28									#9
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You probably played with random pods only at landing sites.
As the pods on the map are placed already this doesn't affect the unity pods, but when you only get pods at your landing site then the unity crash site won't have the goods.

When loading a map file no pods get randomized, as they are part of the map file. But "pods only at landing site" still determines whether or not the crash should contain any goods.

I think that this is a mistake, as this is one landmark that gets totally worthless with pods off. (It's not worth all that much even with pods on, but if it had had the goods even with pods off it would be more valuable.)

	16-02-2001 16:59									#10
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WOW!

Thanks everyone! From your comments I learned that there hadn't been anything there from the beginning because I did, in fact, have pod scattering "off". (Why isn't this included in the documentation?? ) This would explain why, when I anihilated those poor green sods to the north of me, that they did not have a Unity Chopper in any of their bases, and why I only gained a few measly energy credits for each base capture.