I am also one of Banyan's mentees. When I started playing Xcraft, the mentor (highly senior in the game) to whom I was automatically assigned was ineffective. It took a long time, sometimes weeks, to get (very terse) answers to very basic questions, and some questions went unanswered altogether. Not knowing what else to do, I complained on the forums about the lack of mentorship and ended up being banned for a month - but, some senior players saw my post and IM'd me to offer their help.
I designated one as my mentor, but almost immediately he had to stand down due to illness in the family. Next, I got in touch with Banyan (recommended to me by another player).
I could see immediately that he has the instincts of a teacher - he explains concepts in detail and is very patient, as well as responsive and always civil. He's helped me immensely in making a start in this game. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend him. From these experiences, I've seen that battle experience point value doesn't necessarily correlate to skillful mentoring. After all, my first mentor had close to 3x Banyan's battle experience, and yet Banyan is =far= superior in the quality of his mentoring.

Thank you, Tii, for a very informative and practical answer!

It happens that every time I've consulted the gravity trampoline catalogue page, I happened to have my grav tramps in expedition for the moment. Hence I had no idea that the table self-expands according to the number of grav tramps actually on-planet. Hah! The admins ought to add a comment to that effect at the top of the table. I'm surely not the only one that mistakenly thought that the table is static.

Great tip on the wolframalpha site, too! Even though, as you said, simply viewing the grav tramp table with all of one's grav tramps on-planet is the most efficient way to find limits for distance and flleet points, that website is bound to be useful for other things.

The catalogue has the following table showing limits on distance and fleet points for Gravity Trampolines...

Amount Distance Fleet points
1          10000    10625
2          18661    21250
3          26879    31875
4          34822    42500
5          42567    53125
6          50158    63750
7          57622    74375
8          64980    85000
9          72247    95625
10        79433    106250
11        86547    116875


Suppose I would like to send a fleet (of, say, 25000 points) a distance greater than the last row in the table (say, 100000).
Do the grav tramp rules forbid me from sending a fleet farther than that shown for 11 grav tramps (final row in the table)??
Is there a formula/equation that can show me the number of grav tramps needed for combinations of fleet size and distance (besides those shown by the catalogue)?

Toss accounts have a medal (cf 'Medals' tab of 'Quests' link) that is conferred once the player gets 'Branch of the Iron tree' by performing an expedition to the 'Dota Planet'. Until one gets 'Branch of the Iron tree', one cannot build one's own Investigator ships (and hence must buy them from the Bestiary).

I've never heard of the 'Dota Planet' before playing as a Toss, and I can find no mention of it in the (english) forums. Even my knowledgeable mentor is unsure about this tidbit. Players that I've messages are also in the dark.


Can anyone fill me in? Maybe even point me to in-game info or a forum posting that I may have somehow missed?

Also opposed to the warm-up change. Stating my reasons would be redundant; they are explained by posters whose votes/comments precede mine.

Ok, thanks. How does one get a list of (English speaking) alliances that accept new players?? Is there any downside? I wonder how many xcraft players are in an alliance now (10%? 50%? 90%? A guess?).

I've got about 3 weeks experience in this game and I'm =trying= to get background on it. My assigned mentor doesn't respond to messages (I've gotten one answer in several attempts, and nothing for weeks now). I've given up on her. Yet getting background info is not an easy task for English speakers.

As to the current issue...

In the middle of the night, a player attacked my home planet and knocked out my entire fleet. He messaged me afterward that he'd noticed my FAS seems to have not worked at all. I asked him where I should look for an actual game guide or other background info so that I can fix the problem; he replied that there's a wealth of background but it's in Russian.

How should I resolve? FAS showed as ON for my fleet, the fleet was at my home planet at the time of the attack, and I have a level 8 hangar. What am I missing?? My attacker's impression was that FAS wasn't working at all since my fleet evidently did not take refuge in the hangar.

Ironic, yes, that I get more guidance from a player that attacked and destroyed my fleet that I ever got from the mentor ;-)?

BTW, I'm perfectly happy to study on my own and self-educate if I could find sufficiently comprehensive online material. In English.

I've searched the forum for details of how to abandon a planet and I see the menu panel from which an abandonment can be done. But I'm unclear about details. What becomes of buildings and defenses? Is there a way to convert these (which may represent a large expenditure of resources) back to resources, or relocate the buildings/defenses to a second planet in the process of abandoning the first?

Thx, I did figure that out a few minutes after I posted by simply adding up the number of buildings times the level of each building. Sure enough, I'd topped out the number of fields. That's very counterintuitive, though. A brand new player like me would never have guessed that each upgrade consumes yet one more field.

I don't suppose there's any way to relocate a building from one planet to another?

If I research Pumping Tech 3x, will that give me a another field - or does the Pump Tech field boost only apply to newly colonized planets? If I destroy a 'cheap' building to free up a field, can I then upgrade a Terraformer building that I already have and gain several more fields (then rebuild the building I destroyed)?

I see a 'The planet does not have any available fields for construction' message when all I am doing is upgrading the level of an already existing Vespene refinery. I find that the same is true of other building upgrades. Upgrading an existing biulding shouldn't require an additional field since I'm not adding a new building. For that matter, I can move buildings around on the planet so there are still available fields. Also, I notice that the graphic representation of all buildings changed a few days ago so that they are now all much larger, hence 'crowding' the planet. Why am I seeing this message when upgrading an existing building?

Accelerators may be purchased with Hydarian crystals, then later applied to building construction. Can they be applied to anything else besides buildings? Why don't we have accelerators for research as well? Or ship construction?

After seeing in the popup help for the silo that it can fire either nuclear missiles or anti-ballistic missiles, I first got the silo to level 2 (permits 20 missiles), then built 20 anti-ballistic missiles in the shipyard. Yet I'm baffled over how to get those missiles to show up in the silo. I have a silo, I have missiles, yet the missiles aren't in the silo .

I myself only discovered xcraft two weeks ago. One of the first things I did after a couple of hours of play was Google for an xcraft user guide. The xcaft.guru website appeared in the Google search results (as well as some postings in this forum) - that's the first I'd ever heard of it but it was already expired by then of course. So I never actually saw the site back when it still existed. Hence I have no idea what language coverage it had.

Off subject...

What is that animal in your message signature? Is that an infant marmot??

Ah, figured it out. It's not a marmot. It's a sloth. Cute.

Roger that, thanks for the clarification, Tii.

I've created a level 2 missile silo (capacity for 20 missiles) and I've built 20 anti-ballistic missiles. Yet when I click on the missile silo, it reports 0/20 missiles (empty). What must I do to actually get my missiles loaded into the silo??

The 'Premium' page offers 'accelerators' for building construction. I tried buying 1, but I can't tell if the accelerator was applied. Is it applied to all planets I own? Is there a status that reports if an accelerator is in effect?

There are references in the forum to an 'xcraft.guru' site, yet the domain seems to have expired. What happened to that site??