Thanks, Annatar! Can you clear up a few things?

1) If you find one every 15 planets, on the average, and there are 9 artifacts, then "insanely large" is 135 (9x15), if I'm following you right? (Related: by 15%, you must mean 15% of planets, not 15% of the time you Explore Planet, eh.)

2) Exploration bonusses always show up with the first Explore Planet, right?

3) When you say "Some maps force artifacts to certain planets", you must be talking about how planetary systems with e.g. gas giants can't have artifacts, eh? And also some of the exploration-based findings are related to the planet type, such as Glaciers on Ice planets?

4) In one game, I found 4 Artifacts (not planet bonusses) on the first Explore of a set of planets. One the second Explore, I only found 1 more. Any idea if they're more likely to show up on the first Explore, or was that a fluke?

5) Is there a file with the rules for generating these bonusses?

Thanks if you can help!! - Mike

1) Yes, by 15% I mean 15% of the planets, not 15% of the time you Explore And yes, it would be something like that. Like Sp3ktr3 pointed out, sometimes you end up with just 8 even on Random Huge-sized maps

2) I don't think so. I've looked through the files that I thought would be relevant (gameplay.constants, GalaxyScenarioDef, and the planet/artifact files) and there's nothing jumping out as saying "this is how it works". My educated guess is that each stage of the upgrade is basically a chance to find.. so sometimes you find it on the first try, sometimes on the second. I've had both, and I've had variations of finding a bonus on the first hit, then an artifact and the reverse of an artifact first and then a bonus.

3) No, that's populated properly by default, as far as I know. What I mean is that some maps set artifacts on specific planet - when you make a map, you can make an artifact always appear on a specific planet, ignoring the random chance. There are only a few maps that do this, to my knowledge.

4) Like 2), I'm not sure. I'm guessing it's random-ish.

5) Not quite sure what you mean, but there are several relevant files. Firstly, each map file actually has this:

planetArtifactDensity .15
planetBonusDensity .40

Each artifact and planet bonus has an .entity file that basically sets what it does. Each planet has an .entity file where you can set the number of Exploration upgrade stages and costs. There's nothing that I could readily find that points out the chance of finding an artifact on the first vs a second explore stage, though. In the case of planet bonuses, each planet type entity file also specifies which bonuses the planet may be randomly assigned.

Erp, you need the text versions from the incomplete mod pack in the Downloads section

I want to know why every game, almost every AI gets an artifact on their second planet, and I never find any on about thirty.

About thirty minutes in, it's a list of 'An artifact has been discovered!' and what do I have? A Roider outpost. Wheeee...

U235, now that you mention it, I see that in my Aerolian game ... a number of Artifacts are located just next to start-position planets. (Starting planets are real clear on this big map.) I'm only playing vs. 1 AI and yep, he has an arty one away from his home - but I don't. Maybe if I get some time I'll review my other Aerolian games. It does give the appearance of stacking the odds, in my current game.

Solar Ice - Artifacts, not planet bonuses? With the exact same description on both planets, and it's also on the research screen? (Maybe you can tell Sp3ktr3 your secret for finding Artifacts, hehe.) No idea if they stack ... do you have a savegame versus before finding the second one; is it an arty where you can compare numbers?

you can get artifacts near your home plant, like the AI you were referring too, but it happen rarely. Plus, everyone should know that AI like to be cheap something. oo, and one more thing, Pirate base do have artifacts, and i found this out when i colonize my 2nd pirate base (it not the trade raid bonuses.)

Landsraad, thanks for the info. I had not seen anything but Plundered Booty at pirate bases, so I was wondering if they were forbidden to have anything else. You saw something else? Cool.

Keil, that's very odd. I know from multiple reloads during testing, that bonuses and artifacts are normally fixed. So you're saying it looks like it's "reset" if one loses the colony?

Hmm, well, PlanetPirateBase.entity has these lines:

requiredPlanetBonusesCount 1
bonus "PlanetBonusPirateTreasure"
possibleRandomPlanetBonusesCount 0

And there is no list of possible bonuses, as for other planets. Are you guys SURE you saw something besides Plundered Booty? (On a stock map, right? Mod maps can do anything the designer wanted.)

Another question: Has anyone ever seen more than 2 planet bonuses on a planet? (Does not include artifacts, which are something different.) I haven't seen more than 2.

Final question: It's known that there are no planet bonuses for player homeworlds (more precisely, start worlds). In my limited experience, this also true of all possible start positions, not just the ones that were actually used... I've played it several times with only one opponent, so I could quickly conquer the map and test planet bonuses. I've never seen a bonus on a starting *position* planet. Has anyone else? These may not be clear on all maps, but if you know some maps well, you can tell.

Check out the latest update to the wiki Planets page. Comments welcomed![/code]

Yes, you can get duplicates - I've had them many times in huge random maps.

No, the duplicates don't stack. You only get the one artifact.

As for the "15% of planets or 15% chance from searching a given planet", these exactly are the same, when taken over an entire map. If 15% of planets have artifacts, you have a 15% chance of finding one in a random planet. And vice versa.

For my money, artifacts and planetary bonuses simply aren't worth the expense to search for. I'd be interested in seeing the odds table when it's done, NoSpamMan, but I imagine you will need a large number of planets, and need to plan to keep them for a long time, before the exploration upgrade becomes profitable.

Excellent table there, noSpamMan. Good work - thanks