Modding Space Empire IV Gold

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-07-04 11:55pm

It's not about pissing people off. It's about driving conflict. Honestly, games like this are a lot more interesting when there is actually something on the line and people are engaged in open warfare. Otherwise its just space miner - the harvesting. And no one really wants to play that game, do they?

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-07-05 12:17am

I'm not saying that having bad guys is a bad thing, but you seem to be being evil for the sake of being evil. What the hell did you gain by spliting the galaxy in half?

When Brian does shit that's annoying it makes sense. He wants to conquer the aliens, so he sells weapons to them, hoping they'll bleed each other white and he can mop up everything that's left under the guise of humanitarian aid or some such. There's an understandable agenda there, but I can't see what possible agenda you could have.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-05 01:30am

Well in B5 chaos and conflict itself are motivations versus the Vorlons law and order. If Tobor just wants to be a pain in the ass and stir as much shit as possible, I don't care heh heh. Obviously since I'm helping him do it now.

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-07-05 01:44am

They're motivations for the Shadows, though. The Dilgar...well to be honest I don't know much about the Dilgar except that the EA apparently defeated them before the Earth-Minbari War.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-05 01:52am

Trogdor wrote:They're motivations for the Shadows, though. The Dilgar...well to be honest I don't know much about the Dilgar except that the EA apparently defeated them before the Earth-Minbari War.

I didn't remember either until I looked up just now to remind myself... Warmaster Jha'dur, the cat who made the anti-aging medicine to try and get the galaxy to kill each other off. The Dilgar who glassed whole worlds and use chemical weapons. Yes, very bad, I think Tobor is doing fine

.

And even if he wasn't I wouldn't care. If all of a sudden EA starts getting expansionist, the Minbari get aggressive and the Narns attack me I honestly wouldn't care. People do what they want, it's not like we have to follow the show, although it's a nice touch when it happens heh heh.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-07-05 01:52am

Trogdor wrote:They're motivations for the Shadows, though. The Dilgar...well to be honest I don't know much about the Dilgar except that the EA apparently defeated them before the Earth-Minbari War.

In B5Wars, the game this mod is based on (and announced Canon as it was read over by JMS), The Dilgar were driven to expand since their homeworld's star was going to go nova within the current generation's lifetime. In their madness, they just happened to become murdering brutes.

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-07-05 01:56pm

As far as chaos and conflict being staples in the Shadow philosophy. Both races recruited the young ones to enforce and drive those goals. You can see it at all points in the series. The Centauri and Dra'kh are both agents of chaos. Whereas the Minbari are disciples of order. The humans are somewhere in the middle because Clark is shadow based and Sheriden is in the Vorlon camp (until re realises whats happening). The Narn are pretty much reactionary throughout the series so they don't really count except that i would generally put them in the Vorlon camp due to their strong spiritual slant.

The Dilgar, having never been in the series don't have the constraints of choice. Although from the one episode (Deathwalker) that Jha'Dur graces, we can see that she, if not the whole race is pretty psycho. THere's a difference between expanding to keep your race alive and using Mass drivers to destroy worlds that are in the way. Since i'm playing them they are following my view for them which happens to fall in line with the Shadow ethos rather than the Vorlon one. Also i think i'm being true to Jha'Dur which in some cases just means chaos for it's own sake.

But then again, just because you aren't privy to my master plan does not mean that it doesn't exist.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-05 04:22pm

I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the hot patch idea. Max baseship speed is now 10 (I think), and max heavy baseship is 8. I'll upload the new turn file as soon as the PBW site is back up.

I didn't fix jump gates or increase planetary construction rate because it would dramatically change the way the game is played. After 120 turns, I don't think such a major shakeup would have been a positive thing.

I'm considering whether or not to lower antimatter and gravimetric engine costs, either to the same as fusion or perhaps a little lower. I'm thinking gravimetric should be slightly chaper than antimatter, which should be slightly cheaper than fusion. That way, there's an incentive to actually use the most advanced version, and not just go all fusion, perhaps with one gravimetric tacked on.

Download the hot patch here and unzip into your B5 mod Data directory. Until you do so, you will get an error when you try to open the new turn.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-07-05 06:57pm

"Huzzah to the shopkeep!" - Monty Burns

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-07-06 02:27am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the hot patch idea. Max baseship speed is now 10 (I think), and max heavy baseship is 8. I'll upload the new turn file as soon as the PBW site is back up.

Thank Jeff for that.

Kojiro's coming out soon with them.

I'm doing what now? Who's been looking in on my yards?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-06 02:46am

Kojiro wrote:
Kojiro's coming out soon with them.
I'm doing what now? Who's been looking in on my yards?

Damn my secret's out, now you know what I've been doing with all my free time. Brute forcing your password with a Websters manually 24/7 and finally finding it to be "twinkle123star" and now I know your exact plan.

Or it could've been that you bragged that you would wait 50 turns for planetkillers and nobody could do anything about it earlier

. One or the other. 50 turns is nearly up.

Brian

P.S. For a second I thought Mollari was gonna renege on his debt payments lol. So what the fuck did Vir do anyway, get the Minbari to make a deal to crush the Dilgar if they got uppity?

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-07-06 03:05am

The PK fleet is a little further away, though it is coming. I hit a snag with production that hurt me rather badly. My homeworld decided to halve it's production and go from 24/24 to 24/4 when I moved some population off it. It of course won't let me put it back on but that's life.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-06 10:20am

I'm pretty sure all the major players are several turns into PK fleet construction. I doubt anyone has a huge headstart on that.

As to an earlier point made...

brianeyci wrote:
Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I don't know what change was made for this mod, but weapons seem to pretty much always hit at any range.
You'll be in for a rude awakening. I shouldn't even say that much lol.

No, I won't. I know exactly what you're talking about. Don't think I didn't notice it. The rest of you will find out soon enough.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-07-06 10:25am

Suppose removing the weapon mounts is out of the question now that everyone is using them, eh? That's the reason the weapon techs are so redundant, because they took an existing full range of weapon sizes and then let people apply mounts to them on top of the implicit ones.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-06 10:32am

Removing the mounts would cause somewhat of a problem, though. The shield-armors would make ships literally invincible to most races' weapons. They should have set it up as a damage negation instead of a leaky shield setup, but they didn't, so it's hard to change the weapons without changing the armors, too. I suppose we could fix it (I would actually support that), but I'm not sure whether everyone would go along with the idea. It would definitely make combat more Adamant-like, lasting a lot longer.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-07-06 10:37am

I meant it would break everyone's fleets. That would be a more immediate impact.

We'd definately have to nerf the armour hardcore without mounts, it's true. I don't want to see B5 mod degenerate into a STMod style combat system where you have to come up with BS ways to skip around shielding because you can't just put bigger guns on a ship, you have to put a dozen little guns and shield depleters on or what have you.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-06 10:46am

Yes, it would also break the fleets. Hot patching is good for small changes, not so much for big ones. By the way, can I get a consensus on whether to reduce the cost of antimatter and gravimetric engines?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-06 10:57am

GuppyShark wrote:I meant it would break everyone's fleets. That would be a more immediate impact.

We'd definately have to nerf the armour hardcore without mounts, it's true. I don't want to see B5 mod degenerate into a STMod style combat system where you have to come up with BS ways to skip around shielding because you can't just put bigger guns on a ship, you have to put a dozen little guns and shield depleters on or what have you.

Well you can put bigger guns like I told you. Quantum torpedoes

.

I vote yes for grav engines. And there's no point waiting four days for everybody to vote yes because everybody's thinking what I'm thinking so let's do it

.

I vote no to changing the advanced armors. Taking out the damage negation would make battles last shorter, not longer, and taking out the mounts removes the advantage of building large ships. Too drastic I think.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-06 12:30pm

I won't wait for everyone if I can get the idea that most want it. That means a few more "yes" votes than just you, unfortunately

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-06 12:32pm

Just to clarify, I'll have to run the turns manually from now on, right?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-06 12:38pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Just to clarify, I'll have to run the turns manually from now on, right?

You could try requesting a PBW admin to "install" your patched mod. Then the patch becomes public though. I think it's important to mention the exact version number and exact mod, and even link to the mod and its download location, so they know exactly what mod to apply your patch to...

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-06 12:58pm

Well, I suppose it should be public, yes? It's a legitimate patch to a legitimate bug, is it not?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-06 12:59pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Well, I suppose it should be public, yes? It's a legitimate patch to a legitimate bug, is it not?

Yeah why not heh heh. Just a small detail I wanted to mention in case you cared.

Nephtys could never get the ST Mod autoexecution working though.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-06 01:22pm

I posted the request on the PBW forum. I also realized that it would not do to ask them to apply the patch, and then ask them to do the same thing again in a few days if/when we fix the engine costs. So I decided to fix them now. The new components.txt file is included in the zip file at the same URL. Do not get it yet, but you will need it after the current turn is processed. UltraEfficient Antimatter and Gravimetric engine costs have been set equal to UltraEfficient Fusion cost. Others have not been altered because it would have been a pain in the ass to do them all, and there's no reason to use anything other than UltraEfficient. Gravimetric engine costs were ridiculously high, so this should make a big difference in their viability, and should dramatically reduce building and maintenance costs for those who were already using them.

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-07-06 01:45pm

If Neph is going to continually let the turns time out can we at least put the timer down to 36, or 48 hours please. I'm a bit miffed at having to wait for the full three days. Especially now that things are more interesting again.

No to engines cost reduction. For those of you jumping to conclusions, this isn't just to be difficult.