How do I make a defense fleet come out?

I made Polaris planet but I'm having trouble making a defense fleet come out when I demand tribute. Does anyone know how to do this?

Yes, It is documented in the bible (though admittedly somewhat confusingly).

The simple version, without the use of this waves nonsense, is to set the DefenseDude to the ID of the dude you want to act as a defender, then set DefCount too something below 1000 (100~200 seems to be a normal number).

If you want waves, its a little more confusing. Heres the number you want to put in:

TotalShips*10 + ShipsPerWave + 1000

So If you want 8 ships to come out in four waves of two, you would get:

8*10 + 2 + 1000 = 1082.

Im not entirely sure why its so complicated, nor why its explained so counter intuitively in the bible, but it isnt really that hard to work with if you use equations above.

(Incidentally, im not working on a computer that has nova downloaded, does anyone know if the fleets in nova use waves or not? They have 6 ships out at a time, but ships are replaced one at a time. I would assume waves mean that once you destroy the entire fleet, a new set of 6 ships would pop out all at once.)

Also, there's a bug in Nova where, if a spob doesn't exist when a pilot is created, its defense fleet will be set to contain 0 ships. So, if you create a new planet, but use an existing pilot, it will have no defense fleet until you capture and release it.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Aug 29 2005, 12:47 PM, said:

(Incidentally, im not working on a computer that has nova downloaded, does anyone know if the fleets in nova use waves or not?View Post

It appears that they use waves.

Edwards

Ah, right. I forgot about that. Its hard to call it a bug since thats really not what its meant for. But yeah, thats more likely the problem.