I caught a sealurk!

[Hospitalier]

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the excitement, but can you imagine my surprise a few minutes ago where my destroyer ship captured a sealurk?

I thought there was a bug involved that made this impossible and I've heard nothing about it being fixed. I'm playing the GOG version, no patch.

Or is this not new and I'm off my rocker?

PS: I think this is my first post. So should I make an intro thread or can I just say hi, how's it going? 

[Buster's Uncle]

Just say "Hi"; we're not uptight about protocol.

Welcome to the community.

[Geo]

Or is this not new and I'm off my rocker?

Hi as well.
Definitely not a new feature. Running a 30% Planet rating ups your chances of converting native life quite a bit.

[Yitzi]

There is no reason, AFAIK, that sealurks should not be capturable just like any other native life; it's just rare because sealurks themselves are so rare.

[JarlWolf]

Sealurk tamer- you do  proud.

[Geo]

Jarlwolf sighting!

[Hospitalier]

Sealurk tamer- you do  proud.

Oh my, me?  why thank you! So no bugs then, okay. Well I'll still keep this childish glee for my first time anyway.

I've been trying to tone down my game time. The late game phase just sucks up all my energy as there's too much going on for me to keep tabs on. Rapid tech advances, rising seas and worms everywhere.  Maybe I should stick to tech stagnation.

Question for you gents: How do you keep eco damage low on Thinker level? I was playing Deirdre and had all the techs, but even after building all the eco buildings and SPs I still had crazy eco ratings at some bases. And this was with +3 Planet rating or some such.

[Buster's Uncle]

Do you know about the Centauri Preserve exploit?

[Hospitalier]

Is that where you scrap the preserve and build it for a net loss in eco damage? I read about it and tried but I wasn't sure if it really worked. If your eco damage is around 50, how many times do you have to do it?

[Buster's Uncle]

Yitzi or someone will probably be able to tell you an exact formula - I just do it until it's enough.  I'd estimate about ten times, roughly.  Check our AC wiki
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Main_Page
for an ecodamage entry - ete has probably posted the formula there.

[Yitzi]

In the unpatched version, each time you do it increases your clean minerals at all your bases by 1.  However, I took a poll on the matter and the consensus was that this exploit (as well as related things, such as that if a centauri preserve is captured it counts for the previous owner, and that if you have one as a faction bonus it doesn't give the clean mineral decrease) is actually a bug, so in the patched versions (since, IIRC, 2.1) the bug has been fixed, and the bonus is based on how many eco facilities you own at the time.

As for how to keep ecodamage down...the only real way in an unmodded game is to keep your minerals low; a high PLANET score will reduce the rate at which ecodamage goes up once you pass the clean mineral limit, but it still goes up ridiculously high even at +2 or higher PLANET.

With modding (assuming you use my patch; any version will work, though many earlier versions have bugs), you can keep things more sensible; the easiest way is to increase the ecodamage divisor and possibly mineral divisor substantially, and then if you find that too easy when running Free Market, to reduce or eliminate the clean minerals.