EFS Bugs/Problems

EFS Bugs/Problems (draft), March 6, 2000, Richard Wein

Non-Functional Features

First of all, here's a list of features which don't work at all, or work so badly as to make them nearly useless. I don't necessarily ask for all these features to be fixed, since they are not essential to the game. However, I would like to see ALL of these features either fixed or removed from the game completely, as having non-functional features in the game only causes confusion and wastes people's time.

With the exception of the first 2 items, which are simple bugs, fixing these features will require some new algorithms. I hope that Holistic won't rush into programming the new algorithms, but give us players a chance to have our say first (as we're the ones who are familiar with playing the game).

Proscribed Technologies. Technologies that have been proscribed during the game get unproscribed when the game is saved and reloaded (if you exit and restart the program between saving and reloading).
The "Feint" option in combat has no effect. (It's the same as "Normal").
Sects and Clergy. This feature was never finished.
League Diplomacy.
(a) The League always agrees to peace, unless I have an Enemy in the League. So I can capture an Agora and then make peace immediately.
(b) As far as I can tell, the League will not accept any other terms, under any circumstances.
(c) The League never declares war on me or embargoes me for refusing to repay a loan, so I may as well borrow the maximum possible and never repay it.
Church Diplomacy.
(a) The Church always accepts peace offers, unless I have an Enemy in the Church, even if I possess proscribed technologies.
(b) Other than signing the Holy Writ, none of the terms I can offer the Church or threaten it with has any effect.
(c) Raising the tithe skim has no effect on the Church's attitude. So I always set this to the maximum possible.
Tax rate/city loyalty. As it stands, a sensible player always reduces his tax rate sufficiently to raise his city loyalty to 100%, and never changes it again (unless he is excommunicated). I would like to see a non-linear algorithm, which would make selecting the tax rate an interesting decision.
Unit pay/unit loyalty. Unit pay should be limited to 100%, i.e. you can never increase pay above the default level. Otherwise, it's much too easy to raise the loyalty of all your units to 100%, which makes routing and leadership irrelevant. Better still would be a complete review of the unit pay/loyalty algorithm.
Rebellions. Units and cities only rebel when their loyalty is below 25%, and no sensible player will ever allow loyalty to fall that low. (Exception: rebel units at the start of the game sometimes have 0% loyalty, and these automatically rebel when you capture them.) There should be a chance of rebellions at higher loyalty levels.
House Traits. Because these are so unbalanced, knowledgeable players simply select the few very useful ones (unless restricted by house rules) and ignore the rest. They should be modified so they all have roughly equal value.
Vau Diplomacy. Since there is no downside to selling maps to the Vau, a sensible player sells all his maps to the Vau every turn. This makes the feature simply a waste of players' time.
Plague. Due to the following serious problems with the plague, I now always play with the plague option switched off.
(a) Because the plague can be caused by famine, it's too easy to start a plague (especially with Universal Warehouse off) which will affect other players' units, long before Plague Bomb technology has been developed. I think that the plague should only be started by Plague Bombs and not by famine. Famine is serious enough on its own, without having to cause the plague too.
(b) There seems to be something peculiar about the way that the plague is spread by infected units. It only seems to happen in some circumstances. I think that the plague should never be spread by infected units, only by infected cities, otherwise it's too easy to use infected units as very cheap Plague Bombs.
(c) If a Plague Bomb survives a combat, it can be used again elsewhere! It will probably itself be infected by the plague, but, since units in space don't take damage from the plague (why not?), you can keep it in space until you want to use it again. If you're careful, you can reuse a Plague Bomb many times. (In Nova, we've reduced the rank of Plague Bombs to 0, which makes them much less likely to survive a combat.)
(d) Because we don't know the algorithm for calculating the probability of surviving the plague, it's impossible for a player to judge how many hospitals he should build and whether it's worth developing Cure For Necrosis. Please give us some more information.

Other Bugs/Problems

These items are vaguely in order of priority (highest priority first). Note that I haven't mentioned much about the AI. Since I only play multiplayer, I'm not very familiar with the AI problems.

When you "End Turn" in a PBEM game, you're prompted to select a save file. If you accidentally select a file you already have, you are prompted to overwrite it. If you say no, or if you just 'cancel' at the savefile dialog, the game sends you back to the main menu, destroying the turn you just played.
Unit loyalty modifiers. (These are only important if you fix the fundamental problems with Sects and House Traits.) Loyalty modifiers are not always correctly added or removed:
(a) Units don't lose the Charismatic Leadership bonus when leaving a planet where you have a Noble in the palace, or gain it when moving to such a planet.
(b) Units don't lose the CL bonus when the palace is destroyed out from under a Noble (by whatever means). So you can get double CL bonus by razing your palace, building a new one, and moving a Noble into the new one.
(c) Changing the sect of a Church causes a permanent reduction in the loyalty of units of other sects. This means that, by repeatedly changing sect, you can reduce the loyalty of these units to zero! The loyalty modifier should be only temporary. As long as a unit is on a planet with a Church of the same sect, it should receive a +5 modifier; while on a planet with a Church of a different sect, it should receive -5; and while on a planet with no Church, it should receive no modifier.

Problems of this sort arise because the program attempts to modify each unit's loyalty as soon as any change of status occurs. It would be safer to only calculate their loyalty at the end of each turn, as currently happens when you change unit pay. The formula (assuming no change in the unit pay algorithm) would then be simply:

Unit loyalty = base loyalty + (pay rate % - 100) + any applicable modifiers

Note that this formula makes no reference to the unit's previous loyalty. Instead, loyalty is calculated from scratch each turn. Base loyalty is normally 75% (but can be set to a different value in the Map Editor).
When I make an attack, all units in the stack have a chance of gaining experience, not just the ones that attack. For example, when my cruiser makes a bombardment attack, all other units in the stack (spaceships and ground units) can gain experience too. This is a sneaky way to get units promoted without any risk. Only units which are actually targeted in a combat should have a chance of promotion. Better still, make the chance of promotion equal to the amount of damage taken, so a unit which takes 13 points of damage has a 13% chance of promotion. This way units will only gain experience by getting involved in a real battle -- a stack of Assault Legions won't get promoted for beating up a single Militia Legion!
There are several problems with promising ministries or votes through the diplomacy screen:
(a)You can promise the same Ministry to more than one player. If you're elected, the last player to be promised the Ministry is the one who will receive it.
(b) Once you've promised a ministry to someone (human or computer), it *stays* promised, no matter how many elections occur in the meantime. The promise is only cancelled if you win an election and later lose one, or you promise the ministry to a different house.
(c) A player (human or computer) can promise 2 or 3 Ministries to the same House. If the player is then elected Regent, that House gets all the promised Ministries.
(d) Possibly related to the above, a computer Regent may allocate 2 Ministries to the same player.
(e) You can promise your votes to 2 or more players in the same turn. Of these players, the one who moves latest in the turn sequence is the one who will actually receive your votes.
(f) I have no way to find out what promises I've made or received. Some sort of display of outstanding promises would be very useful.
(g) I can promise my votes to someone and then remove my Noble from Byzantium so he can't vote. This would be reasonable if you adopted my suggestion (see under "Orbiting Nobles" below), as I would then be prevented from voting in the next election too.
Research.
(a) If, during my turn, I assign a Lab to researching the same tech that another Lab is already researching, I often (but not always) lose all the research that I've already done on the latter technology.
(a) If I do enough research to exactly complete a technology (with no excess research points), then I don't get the technology until the following turn.
(b) If I switch a Lab to researching Nothing, the Research Screen for that Lab will thereafter say "You have X research points available". However, this is untrue. (It is true in other circumstances.)
(c) If I switch a Lab to researching Nothing and later switch it to researching something, I get the message: "Warning: you are changing the only lab researching this technology. All research on the old technology will be lost".
Orbiting Nobles. Except when a player has declared himself Emperor, a Noble can stay safely in orbit about Byzantium, and vote from there, without having to land on the surface and run the risk of being attacked by assassins. I think a Noble should not qualify you to vote unless he has been on the surface of Byzantium continuously since the previous election. (This could be considered a statute of the Imperial constitution.)
If you declare yourself Emperor in an election year, that election counts as one of the two elections you need to win after declaring yourself Emperor. Assuming you win that election and the one the following turn, you immediately win the game.
AI Diplomacy. AI players always seem to accept peace treaties. [By the way, I've noticed that "per_tech_receieved" is misspelled in efs.ini. This may be causing something not to work in AI diplomacy.]
While at war with the League, I can still buy resources within the production display.
I can disband units from within the Group Finder display, and this sometimes causes the progam to crash.
Routing problems:
(a) Once a unit is damaged in combat, it has a chance of routing at the end of each remaining phase. So ground units have a chance of routing even in the space combat phases! Overall, this means that units rout too easily. I think a unit should only make a rout check at the time it's damaged.
(b) The loyalty of units only needs to be raised to 90% (not 100%) for them to have no chance of routing. This is not necessarily a problem, but it is confusing.
(c) A unit has the same chance of routing regardless of how much damage it has taken. This gives an advantage to weak units, which can rout a much stronger unit by inflicting just 1 point of damage. My suggestion is the rout check should involve two saving rolls: one against the unit's loyalty and one against the amount of damage just taken, with the unit only routing if it fails both rolls.
Returned resources. I can move resources from one city to another by starting to build a unit in a city and then cancelling the build. The resources used to build the unit are returned to me, but are placed in the building city, regardless of where they originally came from. I can see that it's not practical to record where the resources originally came from. So I suggest that, cancelling a build should be like disbanding a unit - you only get pack a proportion of the resources you spent (you also get back any required input unit that was consumed).
Contracts.
(a) When I ask a player for money in a contract, the maximum amount I can ask for is *my* current treasury total. It's possible for me to ask him for much more money than he possesses, and, if he accepts, I still receive the full amount that I asked for! (And his total doesn't go negative.) In principal, the maximum should be *his* current treasury total. But there's another problem: his treasury total may be reduced by the time he accepts the contract, e.g. from maintaining his labs or paying money to another player.
(b) If I ask a player for a planet map that he doesn't possess, he can accept, and I receive the map!
(c) From the "Give me a technology" screen and the "I'll give you a technology", I can partially deduce what technologies another player possesses
The best solution to all these problems would be to allow me to ask a player for whatever I want (any amount of money, any technology, etc), regardless of whether he has it, but if he doesn't have what I'm asking for, he is forced to reject the offer. I think it would also be good if a player could only accept an offered technology if he already has the necessary prerequisite technologies. (At the moment, I can give a player any technology I have, regardless of whether he has the prerequisites.)
Ripping off ministries. There's a devious way for players to transfer control of ministry cities, resources and spaceships to house control. Two ministers acting in collusion, can allow each other to capture these items from each other. I suggest that it should not be possible to capture ministry property. It should be destroyed instead. In the case of cities, an alternative would be to simply have them garrisoned by immobile units (such as Guards in Nova) at the start of the game. Since ministry units can't be disbanded, it would then be impossible to leave such a city undefended. Spaceships are the main problem: I leave my ministry spaceships on the ground where my ally can capture them; he captures them and then leaves half of them on the ground for me to capture in return.
The Church may threaten to attack my labs, but it won't do so if I surround my labs with other cities or units. It seems the Church feels that attacking anywhere other than the lab itself would be too provocative. What wimps! They should go ahead and attack, regardless of the consequences. If necessary, they should even attack through another player's units to reach my lab, otherwise I could get a cooperative ally to surround my labs with his units.
The Inquisitors do not attack labs on Holy Terra. So building labs on Holy Terra is a sneaky way to avoid the Inquisition!
Cargo pods. You can't unload combat units from a naval transport into a hex containing just an enemy cargo pod or other non-combat unit.
When a unit has used all its movement points, the display immediately moves to the next unit in the unit queue. For example, I land a transport on a planet, using its last mp. Before I have a chance to unload it, the display moves to another planet, and I have to return to the first planet manually. This sort of thing happens a lot, and easily outweighs the convenience of having the next unit automatically selected for me. In fact, I rarely work through the unit queue - I prefer to select and move units in the order that suits me. And if I do want to proceed to the next unit in the queue, I can press the Next button. I suggest you get rid of this feature, or else make it a user-selectable option.
Shore bombardment. Prior to the 1.4 patch, battleships could bombard any coastal hex. Now they can only bombard cities. This should be reversed.
Invulnerable transports. A land hex containing a Freighter, Bulk Hauler or Space Carrier with a unit on board cannot be attacked (except by Ranged Space Bombardment). This bug could be exploited to make a hex immune to attack.
I can use ranged space bombardment against an unspotted hex, to find out whether there are enemy units there. If I attempt to bombard an empty hex, the game gives me an error message, but it doesn't cost the spaceship a movement point. So I could bombard every hex of a planet, to see which ones are occupied. Attempting to bombard an empty hex should cost a movement point.
Stealth ships. I can check to see whether there is an enemy stealth ship in orbit about a planet, by attacking the orbit box. This makes stealth ships rather useless. I should not be able to attack an orbit box that contains no spotted ships. (In standard EFS, stealth ships can be seen easily anyway, but we've fixed that in Nova.)
The lack of a voting summary is very annoying. Even if the election is by secret ballot, we should still know how many votes each player received.
Once I start researching a technology, I can strike any prerequiste techs. This can be quite useful if the prerequisite tech is proscribed but the new tech isn't. However, now I can't see the new tech in the research display, even though I'm still researching it. I suggest that either:
(a) the tech that you're currently researching should remain in the display even if you no longer have the prerequisite techs; or
(b) if you strike a prerequiste of the tech you're currently researching, the lab should be reset to researching nothing, and the research points already spent on the new tech should be lost.
The latter is probably simpler.
Landing spaceships requires far too many clicks.
(a) First I get asked whether I want to "Attack", "Land" or "Cancel". This dialogue box should only be displayed if the ships involved all have ranged space fire. Otherwise, it's a waste of time, because the "Attack" option is not available, and, if I want to cancel, I can do that afterwards by pressing Escape or clicking on the jumpgate icon.
(b) I then get a dialogue box which tells me to select a hex. Again this is unnecessary and should be deleted. (This applies to both attacking and landing.)
(c) Even if all the ships are ATLs, I get a dialogue box warning me that they may take damage. This is also unnecessary.
Every turn, the game asks me what I want to build in each city which has just completed a build. This may be a very long list of cities. And it takes me three mouse-clicks or key presses just to confirm that I want to build the same thing again, or to build nothing. Grrrrr...
(a) Simple solution. Display a single dialogue box, offering the choice of "Build same again", "Build nothing" and "Production screen". If the player wants to build something different or check out his options, he selects "Production screen". Otherwise, he only needs a single click.
(b) More advanced solution. For each of his cities, the player can select any of the following: "Keep building the same" (in which case he gets no messages from that city unless he has insufficient resources to build another), "Build one only" (in which case he gets no message), or "Ask me" (in which case he gets a dialogue box each time the city finishes a build).
Ranged space bombardment can't be used against empty cities, or ones containing only non-combat units.
When a player accepts my offer, I get the message "I accept your offer" on my next turn. But by then, I've usually forgotten what the offer was. I really need a more detailed message. Perhaps this could be in the form of another look at the contract screen.
All the rebel units on randomly-generated planets are immobile. It would be nice to have some mobile rebel units there, such as Partisans.
It would be very helpful if the City Info display showed the location of the selected city on the planet map (at the moment it only shows the location of the active stack), and even more helpful if there was a "Go to City" button, like the "Go" button in the Group Finder screen.
When a naval transport is located in a city hex, any ground units that move into the city are automatically loaded onto the transport, without any warning. This has become much more of a problem since the 1.4 patch, which allowed naval units to enter coastal cities.
Proscribed technologies cannot be traded. I can't see any good reason for this.
If my lab is captured or destroyed while I'm researching a proscribed tech, I don't lose the research points I've already spent on the tech. So the only way I can stop the Church from persecuting me is to complete the tech and then strike it. If the last lab researching a particular tech is captured or destroyed, the research points already spent on it should be lost. (This may have been fixed in version 1.4; I'm not sure.)
Giving money. If I send a contract to a player, offering 2000 Fb, and then later in my turn I change the amount to 3000 Fb, then I lose 5000 Fb but he only receives 3000.
If you buy resources from an Agora and you have a Naval Transport in an adjacent ocean hex, the cargo pod is placed in that hex. Unfortunately, it is not placed on board the transport. You can load it onto the transport if you wish, but, if you choose not to (or forget), it will be left floating in the hex on its own. Such a cargo pod is then immune to attack (except by hover units in Nova).
The computer-controlled powers (including Church and League) sometimes attempt to attack naval units with ranged space bombardment, even though this has no effect. I suspect that the immunity of naval units to ranged space bombardment is a bug, since the target.dat file appears to allow such attacks. I would like to see this bug fixed, as I feel that naval units should be bombardable.
The computer-controlled powers sometimes attempt to attack on Byzantium when there is no Emperor, even though this as no effect.
The program treats resource deposit markers as cities for some purposes:
(a) air units can refuel in these hexes;
(b) you can unload a ground unit in an ocean hex containing one of these markers, and then use this ground unit to attack an adjacent land hex;
(c) you can disband a naval unit in an ocean hex containing one of these markers;
(d) Engineers can sometimes raze resource markers;
(e) resource markers can be destroyed by space bombardment.
A stack containing units of two different movement types may be unable to move even one hex in some terrain. In this case, you need to move the two types of unit separately (which means they can't attack together).
Passenger units in space can spot enemy passenger units, even if they can't spot the transport. So the enemy passenger seem to be floating in space without a ship!
Incorrect values are displayed while I go through the build list at the start of the turn. When I'm dealing with the first city on each of the the second and subsequent planets, the warehouse bar (with Universal Warehouse Off) still shows the resources available on the previous planet. Also, the planet name shown is always the name of the first planet on the list, when it should be the current one.
An air unit won't run out of fuel while it's on a naval carrier or while being transported by a naval or space transport, but it may not get refuelled either.
Harvesting cities close to the edge of the map have a higher resource production than they should. This encourages players to build their cities along the very northern and southern edges of the map, which seems silly. If this effect was put in deliberately to compensate for the fact that units near the map edge have fewer hexes within their 2-hex radius, I would suggest that this compensation is unnecessary and should be removed.
The message "You have moved all of your units. Do you wish to end your turn now?" often comes up when I still have units left to move. One situation in which this occurs is when I've unloaded a unit from a space transport. The message will come up before I've been prompted to move that unit, even though I haven't yet moved it this turn.
Space units cannot land in a delta hex, unless it contains a road or city.
A ground unit cannot move from a coastal hex to an adjacent off-shore city, but it can move from an off-shore city to an adjacent coastal hex, and can attack from a coastal hex to an adjacent off-shore city.
There is a row of hexes at the bottom of each planet map which does not appear on the Planet Display. However, you can see it on the complete Planet Map (the one you see when you right-click on the Corner Map), and you can move units into these hexes by using the cursor keys on your keyboard. You can even build cities there.
Resource symbols (Fertile, Exotica, etc) on random planets do not add to production until the game had been saved and reloaded once.
After buying resources within the production display, my Fb total isn't updated until I leave the planet display.
There are some bugs with spotting in space. Units can sometimes be seen when they shouldn't be. And I sometimes can't see enemy units when I start in orbit with them, but, if I land and take off again, I can then see them.
I sometimes can't get out of the Byzantium II screen. This happens after the following sequence of events:

I'm elected Regent and I assign the Ministries, but I leave one Ministry unassigned (because only two players have Nobles on Byzantium);
a third player moves a Noble to Byzantium;
later in the same term of office, I select the Byzantium II display again. The program won't let me leave this display without assigning the third office, but it won't let me assign offices because I've already assigned them during my current term of office!

Computer players are often given the wrong name for their portrait, so they can have a male portrait with a female name!
I can only offer one contract to each player per turn. That's reasonable, but the trouble is that, if I send two contracts to the same player, I get no warning that the first one will be lost.
Damage taken by a unit during a battle does not affect the unit's health until the end of the battle. So it continues fighting at full strength for the remainder of the battle.
Disbanding Nobles. Some units, such as Nobles and Scepters, should not be disbandable, and they appear not to be. However, there is a devious way to disband them, and, under some circumstances, it can be advantageous to do so. Here's how to do it:
- Select some other unit in the stack
- Click on Disband
- Click on No
- Select a Noble or Scepter (by right-clicking on it)
- Press the Enter key. This brings up the Disband dialogue box again.
- Click on Yes.
Nobles, Officers and Dervishes have the same assassination ability as Spies, Assassins and Doppelgangers. I've partially worked around this problem in Nova, but it would be better to have it fixed properly.
The defensive bonus for being in a city is applied to the attacker as well as the defender, so the defender gains no advantage.
The turn after I declare myself Emperor, players moving earlier than me in the sequence (e.g. Li Halan and the Hazat if I am Decados) are asked to vote *before* seeing the message telling them that I've declared myself Emperor. This is confusing.
When I move a unit into a hex containing a peaceful Vau unit, I'm not asked if I want to attack; combat takes place automatically.
Problems with the Map Editor:
(a) Changing the sect of a church within the Map Editor doesn't work properly. Units built on that planet will still be Orthodox until the sect is changed in the game.
(b) With custom galaxies, players aren't prompted to select a tech to research in their initial lab, and AI players don't start researching until they've built a new lab (I think).
(c) Create Random is only pseudo-random, producing the same sequence of planets each time, and it often crashes.
Send Message.
(a) If I use all 5 text lines, then part or all of the 5th line may be lost. (This is because the displayed text lines are shorter than the typed lines, and each typed line can occupy 2 displayed lines, but only 8 lines of text can be displayed.)
(b) If I forget to select a destination House for my message, I'm not given any warning. My message just disappears into the cosmic ether without any trace!
Mixed stacks strike again! A mixed stack can be created if there is an an enemy unit located right on the edge of the map, and you attack it from the side directly opposite the map edge and rout it. Instead of retreating off the edge of the map, the enemy unit stays where it is. But if the unit is located in a city, you still capture the city. You now have a friendly city containing an enemy unit! If you attack again immediately, you'll capture the enemy unit, so there'll be no problem. But, if you fail to capture it, the enemy unit will thereafter be unable to move and will be immune to attack as long as it stays in your city. Furthermore, if the city produces any resources, you will then have a friendly cargo pod stacked with an enemy unit.
The scroll bar in the City Info screen doesn't work very well.
When a ship with Ranged Space attack lands within range of a PTS unit and is fired on, the ship gets to fire back, even if the PTS unit is protected by a Shield!
One player (Glenn Ironhat) has reported finding an Alien Ruin in an ocean hex.
Ocean hexes on Barren planets are a bit odd:
(a) Human players cannot build roads and cities there (other than Wells and Shields), but AI players can.
(b) Ground units can move there, but spaceships cannot land there.
(c) You can build naval units on the coast of a barren ocean, but they won't be able to move!
Minor problems with traits:
(a) According to the manual and the traits screen, Despotism should reduce your research points by 10%. In fact, it reduces your food production by 10%.
(b) When the Advisor sends you messages about the benefits you've received for Noble Scholars and Enlightened Nobility, he gets the numbers wrong.
(c) The Advisor doesn't send you any messages about the resources you've lost due to Despotism.
The health of units is often shown incorrectly during combat.
The Load Saved Game dialogue box only displays files which have the Archive attribute set. If you backup your files using a program that clears this attribute, you will be unable to load the files afterwards. You can reset the Archive attribute using the Properties option in the Windows Explorer file context menu.
A maximum of two stacks of PTS units will fire at one target.
In the Group Finder screen, the planet name doesn't change as I cycle through the units on different planets.
When I have an alliance with a player, I should be able to see his budget info. But Tithe Skim and Unit Pay are always shown as 0.
When you are given resources after entering a Ruin (Alien or otherwise), the number of resources shown in the warehouse bar is not updated until you leave the Planet Display and then return to it.
You can't build a city in a delta hex, unless you build a road there first.
You can go to war with yourself by using your House spaceships to attack your Ministry spaceships (or vice versa).
Loan repayments.
(a) I can make a loan repayment even if I have insufficient money. (My treasury goes negative.)
(b) Even if I choose not to make the loan repayment, I still cannot end the turn if I don't have sufficient money to cover the repayment.
I recommend making the following changes to the standard galaxy:
(a) At the moment, naval warships are never built and the special capability of submarines (to attack on Byzantium before an Emperor has been declared) is never used. Solution: place each house's Byzantium fort on a different continent, and give each house a factory there for building ships.
(b) The Imperial Eye forts (on the house home worlds) are much too easy to capture, and, if you attack them in the first 10 turns, you don't even have to declare war on anyone. Solution: place the forts on one-hex islands. It will be possible to capture them, but difficult. You could also give the Eye a few naval warships on each home world, to create the chance of a naval war there.
(c) AI scepters are much too easy to capture. Solution: disperse all scepters (House, Church and League) so that they're each in a different hex, and considerably increase the defense of those hexes. Nova's Guard units may be useful for this purpose.
(d) The League and Church have many spaceships on the ground that can be easily captured in a sneak attack. Solution: remove these ships, or greatly increase the ground forces defending them.