Space Empires Gold B5 Game (The Second)

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-10 11:22am

Okay, why did the Cooke system suddenly go dark for me? I've got two ships there (my ambassador ship and the Narn's) and I didn't get any word that either had been destroyed.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-09-10 11:26am

I believe Tobor took your ships over. Like two turns ago. I remember him mentioning he was going to do it.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-10 11:30am

Hm that's some bullshit there. The Centauri are still an independent government. If it isn't an accident I'm going to raise a big stink about it in the RP.

Now that I mention it killing billions of people and getting no galactic response is rather unbelievable too. In B5 colonies were in the millions. I can't see anybody sitting on their ass after billions of deaths. The game mechanics say you glass a world you kill a few billion, but does it have to be a few billion? It doesn't really make sense, unless news trickles out.

One thing definitely has to happen in any future B5 mod, SE:IV or SE:V is some kind of hardcoding for diplomacy. Somehow, players should be punished for being loners and rewarded for playing with soft power. I'm not entirely sure how to do it at all except to make trade go over 100% and maybe make special components that are only accessible if you trade technology.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-10 12:28pm

You've been barking up that tree for a while now, but I still don't see the benefit. Things should not be forced so that only people who play a particular way can possibly win.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-10 12:39pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:You've been barking up that tree for a while now, but I still don't see the benefit. Things should not be forced so that only people who play a particular way can possibly win.

Actually I dropped it for this game... you were right, changing it for this game 150 turns in is stupid. This is more me musing about the future.

But you watched B5 right? There's trade in SE:IV and that doesn't mean loners can't win. In normal PBW games you usually immediately ally with whoever you first come in contact with anyway. I'm just thinking in a universe like B5, there should be more than just a trade benefit you can cut off whenever you feel like sneak attacking. It's just like the trade mechanism, but more extreme. Maybe you only get +10% damage if you research the Dilgar/Brakiri weapon instead of the pure Brakiri weapon. Just like how you lose 20% trade revenue in SE:IV if you refuse to ally. And there would be weapon combos with every other race so it wouldn't force the EA to ally with the Shadows.

I've been thinking of your idea for a longer time actually... the ultimate balanced mod with ship hulls that make sense. I even coded the hulls. But I couldn't think of a way to make races between each other unique, and the more I thought about it the more it seemed like if I used a spreadsheet and made everything perfectly balanced, it would force players to always play a certain way. How do you respond to that?

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Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-10 02:08pm

Imbalance is what causes 1-dimensional strategies. If it's balanced so that there's more than one viable way to skin a cat, that's where you get the multitude of strategies. Different types of weapons and defenses that are each good at different stuff, but balanced so that no one way will dominate the others, is the way to go.

Personally, I'm not going to touch SEIV with modding unless SEV royally screws it up somehow. The whole turn-based combat system just sucks, what with the entire defending fleet getting to fire before the other guys can get in a single shot. Ridiculous.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-10 02:14pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Imbalance is what causes 1-dimensional strategies. If it's balanced so that there's more than one viable way to skin a cat, that's where you get the multitude of strategies. Different types of weapons and defenses that are each good at different stuff, but balanced so that no one way will dominate the others, is the way to go.

Personally, I'm not going to touch SEIV with modding unless SEV royally screws it up somehow. The whole turn-based combat system just sucks, what with the entire defending fleet getting to fire before the other guys can get in a single shot. Ridiculous.

Well the only problem with having everything balanced perfectly is it might end up being rock paper sissor. Which is not such a bad thing, but there should be certain strategies that are better than others depending on the flavor of the mod. Fighters should reek in Star Trek, kick ass in B5. Ships should be rare in B5 instead of spamming hundreds. I'm just saying that in a B5 mod there should be benefits to diplomacy and soft power. It's the only way the Ancients would work anyway with their broken shit.

For the ancients I am thinking like monster race planets... 10 cloak planets. And the ancient ships will be extremely powerful and cloakable, but beatable if they're outnumbered. But, they can go anywhere, and reinforce any ally. And the ancients should NOT be able to colonize anything. Then the ancients will always be in the shadows (no pun intended) and if they want more ships they need a lot of T&R alliances with people for more revenue.

The turn-based does kind of blow. One thing I'm looking forward to is the SE:III type research with allocating certain percentages to different systems. I am a little worried about the hardpoints, in that I might be forced to design my ships a certain way, but as long as there's enough hardpoints maybe it'll be better.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-09-10 02:23pm

If the hardpoints are managed like Starfury, which it seems likely, you won't need to worry too much. There's still a weight limit, Hardpoints just prevent you from say... putting one engine on a ship, a planetary napalm, and a trillion regenerative armors, so the enemy can never kill you or something.

You'll never have the free mass to use up all that possible space.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-10 05:40pm

brianeyci wrote:Well the only problem with having everything balanced perfectly is it might end up being rock paper sissor. Which is not such a bad thing, but there should be certain strategies that are better than others depending on the flavor of the mod. Fighters should reek in Star Trek, kick ass in B5. Ships should be rare in B5 instead of spamming hundreds. I'm just saying that in a B5 mod there should be benefits to diplomacy and soft power. It's the only way the Ancients would work anyway with their broken shit.

Different races might have different strengths and weaknesses, but it could still be varied in strategy. Different but viable ways to design ships, different but viable ways to design fighters, etc.

For the ancients I am thinking like monster race planets... 10 cloak planets. And the ancient ships will be extremely powerful and cloakable, but beatable if they're outnumbered. But, they can go anywhere, and reinforce any ally. And the ancients should NOT be able to colonize anything. Then the ancients will always be in the shadows (no pun intended) and if they want more ships they need a lot of T&R alliances with people for more revenue.

Yes, no colonizing any planets, no conquering planets, no accepting planets as gifts. So simultaneously more and less powerful than they are now.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-11 02:32am

Holy crap, a new turn already?

This will be... interesting.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-09-11 04:27am

Not that interesting, though I'd like to know where that Brakiri fleet thinks it's going. And yay for having so many hangers you can spit out twice as many fighters as you can carry!

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-11 10:15am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Yes, no colonizing any planets, no conquering planets, no accepting planets as gifts. So simultaneously more and less powerful than they are now.

No conquering is pretty easy, just make troops unavailable to ancients. For the gifting that's a little harder, but you could always include a readme file that says "play ancient turn on no gifting."

The only problem is one ancient race, if he goes crazy, could hit with impunity with 10 cloak planets. But I think it's easy enough to solve... make planetary bombardment impossible, until he gets death cloud or planet cracker. By then everybody's developed enough to stop it. There's still blockading, but easy enough to solve with say powerful weapons platforms.

By the way weapons platforms in this mod blow. I can't put anything on it except a shitty missile.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-09-11 10:48am

I think you need to decide if you want the Ancients to be accurate or balanced, because they can't be both. For that matter there's a huge difference between how the Vorlons and Shadows operate. The Vorlons control a vast empire, where as the Shadows (due to losing the last two wars) have a single planet left and their forces are scattered over the galaxy. Shadows should have stealth but not Vorlons. Everyone knows where the Vorlon homeworlds are (roughly) it's just no one can get in there.

I think another thing that SE:V will hopefully support is variable FTL capabilities. Hyperspace in B5 is really more of an accelerated form of travel, rather then the teleportation effect of SE:IV's wormholes. If you could somehow attach a move cost to each jump point based on the distance that would work pretty well.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-11 03:26pm

Well if the Vorlons don't have stealth, then fine, but definitely they should not have colonizers or troops.

The only reason I want 10 cloak planets is so a YR doesn't decide early on to nip an ancient in the bud. Maybe instead, the Vorlons could have very powerful weapons platforms. Basically the Vorlons and Shadows should be very powerful early on, average later, and not so relevant end game. It should basically be impossible to assault Ancient planets, but the tradeoff is you can't make/capture any more.

Balance is more important. Basically it should come down to the Vorlons and Shadows being like Pirates or Nomads, a kind of frill, but not competitive unless they get a coalition of YR.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-11 03:50pm

Gups...did you mean to go back on the warpath, because I thought Vir was being pretty damned cooperative.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-11 03:53pm

Trogdor wrote:Gups...did you mean to go back on the warpath, because I thought Vir was being pretty damned cooperative.

He uploaded the last two turns and they didn't churn. Did it happen a 3rd time?

There must be something wrong. I think he did a fresh install this time. For me I used to forget pressing end turn, and sometimes I forgot to copy the right .plr file to my USB pen and uploaded the wrong one. It is how Adamant died, Gups/Kojiro/Tobor's turns all not sticking.

EDIT : When I get home I'll try playing a Shadow turn (the only reason I know his password is we traded when I was off for a whole month) and see if it sticks (I also know the master password, everybody knows now it's kensiko101).

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-11 04:01pm

The old Corporate fleet that the Narns had has been ignoring my orders, I realized. I just didn't notice because it's only got one movement point.

The only thing is, in his last PM to me, Gups gave me an ultimatum, saying that if I didn't give into his demands the Dilgar fleet would move again. But the thing is, I didn't really say no, I just asked for clarification of what exactly he wanted so I have no clue whether this was deliberate or not.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-11 04:12pm

Trogdor wrote:The old Corporate fleet that the Narns had has been ignoring my orders, I realized. I just didn't notice because it's only got one movement point.

The only thing is, in his last PM to me, Gups gave me an ultimatum, saying that if I didn't give into his demands the Dilgar fleet would move again. But the thing is, I didn't really say no, I just asked for clarification of what exactly he wanted so I have no clue whether this was deliberate or not.

Gups had Internet problems.

Was a homeworld glassed? Because of automatic turns it's no big deal going back, but there's no point going back unless we pin down the problem (misunderstanding or bug submitting). I'll look at it when I get home.

You still have some of my Arleigh Burkes and Spruances? And the Iowas? Ah my babies

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Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-11 04:20pm

brianeyci wrote:Gups had Internet problems.

Was a homeworld glassed? Because of automatic turns it's no big deal going back, but there's no point going back unless we pin down the problem (misunderstanding or bug submitting). I'll look at it when I get home.

You still have some of my Arleigh Burkes and Spruances? And the Iowas? Ah my babies .

My homeworld in Yonog has a bit over 500M people and a shipyard left. And the Narn's old Corporate fleet has been reduced to ten ships, I think and they'll all be heading to the scrap heap pretty soon, I'm afraid.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-11 04:41pm

Trogdor wrote:My homeworld in Yonog has a bit over 500M people and a shipyard left. And the Narn's old Corporate fleet has been reduced to ten ships, I think and they'll all be heading to the scrap heap pretty soon, I'm afraid.

Yes, you will be wanting my fleet of BB(x) instead. The League's getting them, all 224 battleships

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So 3.5 billion people died? Damn. I don't know why you didn't call for help earlier to squash the Dilgar. I'm sure EA at least would've come in with pictures of Hiroshima, Dilgar style.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-11 07:09pm

Things turned from bad to worse very suddenly. I especially had very little warning that the Dilgar had a Vorlon carrier.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-11 07:49pm

You thought Vir was being cooperative? It started to seem that his orders were "stall for time" instead of "negotiate a peace"

This turn churned perfectly for me. What happened is that I uploaded the Dilgar turn I wanted to take place if Vir didn't agree to the Dilgar demands. He didn't agree, and the turn churned...

I was expecting Vir to have a little more time (another day), but c'est la guerre.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-11 10:53pm

You've got to be fucking kidding me. Why would I stall for time when you were taking a day and a half to reply to my every message? Your exact words were "Give us Mollari. Give us the Narn," and Vir said yes and asked if you were being all hardassed about the territorial issues, too. And you know what? If you'd bothered to reply and say that you were, I would've agreed to those, too.

For Christ sake it's supposed to be a fucking ceasefire. Give me one damn reason why I shouldn't turn my Expeditionary Force back around to Vreetan now and beg for help from anyone who'll listen to be sure that if I don't take you down with me they'll finish the job?!

I mean, I understand you would've undone the orders if you'd had time, but why the hell would you leave them like that anyway unless you were sure I'd say no.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-11 11:49pm

Trogdor wrote:You've got to be fucking kidding me. Why would I stall for time when you were taking a day and a half to reply to my every message? Your exact words were "Give us Mollari. Give us the Narn," and Vir said yes and asked if you were being all hardassed about the territorial issues, too. And you know what? If you'd bothered to reply and say that you were, I would've agreed to those, too.

Not quite - he said we'd already agreed about Mollari. He didn't agree to stop sheltering the Narn, only that he couldn't stop the Dilgar keeping control of the Narn they'd already conquered. When the whole issue was the Narn state with which whom the Dilgar Empire had never ended their war.

Also, I didn't say you were stalling for time, I said Vir seemed to be. Speed of PMs didn't factor into it.

Trogdor wrote:For Christ sake it's supposed to be a fucking ceasefire. Give me one damn reason why I shouldn't turn my Expeditionary Force back around to Vreetan now and beg for help from anyone who'll listen to be sure that if I don't take you down with me they'll finish the job?!

You want your Centauri population back. That's still on the table, by the way, if you haven't knocked it over yet.

The Dilgar haven't broken any damned ceasefire, they never got a treaty established. Rai'Jal delivered a clear message - hand over Mollari and the Narn or the fleets will attack.

Trogdor wrote:I mean, I understand you would've undone the orders if you'd had time, but why the hell would you leave them like that anyway unless you were sure I'd say no.

Vir has said no to every demand except Mollari. Call it an educated guess.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-12 12:11am

Great, now I feel bad because I've made someone upset.

This misunderstanding is the result of IC communication in a timespan that did not allow us to RP out the full negotiation. If Trogdor agrees to abide by the Dilgar terms, as spelt out here:

Surrender of Londo Mollari to the Dilgar.
Handover of all former Narn worlds
Withdrawal of Expeditionary Force from Vreetan

receiving in exchange:

Centauri Population currently under Dilgar occupation
The Trade Alliance he requested last turn
Territory already agreed to
Withdrawal of Dilgar fleets from Centauri space

then I will request a rollback of the previous turn.