Space Empires IV Game... of Doom! (Adamant Mod)

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-03 11:33am

I can actually buy that losing the 50 ships might be a positive thing. Maintenance on a bunch of obsolete ships can be a real bitch.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-03 11:53am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I can actually buy that losing the 50 ships might be a positive thing. Maintenance on a bunch of obsolete ships can be a real bitch.

Yeah I think buy that too. I just scrapped my last orbital shipyards--they were getting a pain in the ass to maintain. I have huge construction bonuses for my homeworlds, not to mention hardy industrialists and I think 130 or 125 percent on building so orbital shipyards don't make a lot of sense for me.

The more I play Adamant the more I like it. It's just got so much more depth than any other mod.

Brian

Post by **Dalton** » 2006-07-04 11:51pm

I am sorry to do this, but I'll be resigning from this game once I can find an alternate. I simply do not find this particular game at all fun. Who's interested in taking over?

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-07-05 12:38am

Dalton wrote:I am sorry to do this, but I'll be resigning from this game once I can find an alternate. I simply do not find this particular game at all fun. Who's interested in taking over?

Aww man, I'll be sorry to see you go. We just made contact as well!

I don't like the way the map is, I think it's pretty ugly. Is anyone else really frustrated? I know I'd be all for a game in which I can actually be my Zergies rather than pick up midway in. I'm just hoping the fun factor picks up later--right now I can't do much of anything. My turns take me like 10 seconds to do from the incredible lack of playable choices. Neph says once some more open fighting breaks out that it'll be more interesting. It better, or I'll be looking for a replacement too!

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-07-05 12:47am

Covenant wrote:
Dalton wrote:I am sorry to do this, but I'll be resigning from this game once I can find an alternate. I simply do not find this particular game at all fun. Who's interested in taking over?
Aww man, I'll be sorry to see you go. We just made contact as well! I don't like the way the map is, I think it's pretty ugly. Is anyone else really frustrated?

I am. The cluster map was not the best idea in hindsight and I've been painfully boxed in. I've been trying not to bitch; U235 and Gups didn't complain when they got crappy starting positions in the first Trek game, but I'll admit I wouldn't be horrified if we scraped this game and restarted with a different type of map.

Also, my Proximians are lame. I wish I'd plucked some group from sci-fi like almost everyone else did. I've got a couple of potentials in mind if and when we do another Adamant game.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-05 12:48am

Dalton wrote:I am sorry to do this, but I'll be resigning from this game once I can find an alternate. I simply do not find this particular game at all fun. Who's interested in taking over?

I'll be sad to see you go. I was waiting for a massive attack of 100 ships and even built a few expensive planetary shields heh heh.

Are you giving up because you keep simming against my ships and losing? Neph knows how to beat them you could ask her

.

I feel bad for you Dalton you started next to a crystalline empire in ST and had bad homeworlds, then you start next to a crystalline empire again. Damn.

It's good to leave if it isn't fun though, that's what I'd do. If I find a game not fun I wouldn't even find a replacement... I'd just let the AI run it heh heh

. PBW makes it easy, you just need to click withdraw no hassle heh heh.

Brian

Post by **Dalton** » 2006-07-05 12:55am

I'd be willing to scrap and restart myself...as it is now though I'm not a huge fan of this mod. Supply is a bitch and facing Brian playing yet another hyper-aggressive race of zealots is just no fun to me.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-07-05 12:59am

brianeyci wrote:
Dalton wrote:I am sorry to do this, but I'll be resigning from this game once I can find an alternate. I simply do not find this particular game at all fun. Who's interested in taking over?
I'll be sad to see you go. I was waiting for a massive attack of 100 ships and even built a few expensive planetary shields heh heh.

Are you giving up because you keep simming against my ships and losing? Neph knows how to beat them you could ask her .

I feel bad for you Dalton you started next to a crystalline empire in ST and had bad homeworlds, then you start next to a crystalline empire again. Damn.

It's good to leave if it isn't fun though, that's what I'd do. If I find a game not fun I wouldn't even find a replacement... I'd just let the AI run it heh heh . PBW makes it easy, you just need to click withdraw no hassle heh heh.

Brian

Speaking of hassles, do your turn!

And as for Adamant, it's a good mod! Supply is indeed a bitch, but I almost never have problems when I install a few solar panels on my ships. Those work pretty well if you ask me. That's a great use for a fleet support vessel--a buncha reactors and a giant pile of solar panels to help keep the fleet juiced. There's also the Advanced Power Management ability, which is affordably priced and quite handly. 25 percent less supply use means cheaper engines, cheaper guns, and enhanced effect from every solar panel you install. It also stops big extended blitzes--people can't make nothing but guns and engines and expect to hit more than one target. That's pretty cool.

And for Brian being a Zealot, at least you lucked out in our current Trek game.

Post by **Dalton** » 2006-07-05 01:03am

Yes. I look forward to exacting some sweet revenge.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-07-05 01:04am

The main appeal of this mod to me is that you can make up any nation or grab just about any nation/race from fiction and more or less create a decent version of them in Adamant. You couldn't have the Kryptonians, the Transformers, and nBSG humans in the B5 mod, but in Adamant it's no problem.

Brian's going to be zealous and superaggressive no matter what. You could give him, say, the Spathi from SC2, and he'd still be, well, himself. That doesn't bother me. I think these games would be much less fun without someone serving as antagonist and Brian fullfills the role quite well.

Supply is a bitch, but as the game goes on and tech advances, it ceases to be a problem. Solar sails can help scouts, though colony ships pretty much just have to wait for mainstream propulsion to advance.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-05 01:11am

My turns will be done by an hour at most, got to eat, groom, admire myself in the mirror, take my turn properly so I don't miss anything heh heh.

As for the supply problem Dalton. I like it, I like it a lot. It forces people to build huge tankers and you just can't rush halfway across the map without advanced technology. You actually need to "island hop" and it makes the game a lot more strategic I think. And there's solutions like Covenant mentioned. I got advanced power management, worth it a lot.

Yeah whatever game I play I'll always be expansionist lol. Although if I had known how powerful homeworlds were I might have gone technology like Nova... 200k research points holy shit. I might make a brain race next time.

<edit>Can't do my Adamant turn for awhile until things are worked out with Trogdor and Nova heh heh.</edit>

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-07-05 01:20am

brianeyci wrote:I might make a brain race next time.

I suggest the one from Futurama.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-07-05 01:58am

Hrm. When the next game ends, we could pick up my custom mod. I'll just to a teeny bit more tweaking to it. More or less, some re-costing...

I imagine with all of us, it'd be a pretty brutal rush of slaughter after 15 turns.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-05 02:01am

Yes. And definitely the next game has to have 10 homeworlds. I've wanted ten homeworlds ever since the first game and the masses have never agreed lol. But soon, soon, I've been waiting...

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-07-05 03:20am

Keep your wormholes and 10 homeworld wanking to Neph's mod. I'm redoing parts of adamant in hope of getting a new game of that going soon.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-07-05 03:23am

Personally, I have been kicking myself since turn five or so, 'cos:

I didn't take Ice planet!!!
I took Natural Flyers, thinking it was a generic combat bonus, not a fighter bonus.
I got stuck with Neph blocking me in.
Kojiro ignored my warning about taking the reverse Advanced Storage Techniques, rendering the Transformers a bit player.

Things I'm happy about:

My sweet shipset
Brainy race
Crystal weapons
Weapons of mass destruction
Zod!

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-07-05 06:37am

I kinda like being unimportant. That said for me Adamant is more a colonisation game than anything. I can't fight to save myself so hey, why try? I like that people have been respecting that though. Taking me out would be just cheesy and I offer the same to all. Where is the economic victory damn it!?

Out of curiosity what's so great about Ice Planet? I have it of course but I'm not seeing any great advantage other than fortune that no one else has it.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-07-05 08:25am

Nephtys wrote:Hrm. When the next game ends, we could pick up my custom mod. I'll just to a teeny bit more tweaking to it. More or less, some re-costing...

I imagine with all of us, it'd be a pretty brutal rush of slaughter after 15 turns.

Okay, been fiddling with the ships a bit. Yanked them all, and was working on fixing the poor, neglected Pirates and Nomads first. Pirates seem pretty playable at the moment, but the Nomads are just so insanely gimped in the beginning of the game that if they even make it past 10 turns it's only by the grace of God.

Solution, to me, was to give them access to a mothership type thing capable of mining a planet or asteroid belt with the same ferocity as a small-to-moderate sized world and have it just cost an assload of money.

And by it, I meant /it/. I made the thing cost 20k/20k/20k and the components you put on it basically free--to stop anyone from exploiting it from doing anything other than what it's intended to do. That works great from the POV of balance and industry--you spend 10 turns on emergency, cranking this thing out... and then bam! You can start harvesting and you make up your lost time!

I made a custom mount for it called Nomad Worldship Mount and you can load the space colony modules as if they were colony bases. Without the mount, it's a 50mt item. With it, it's only 500, and you can fit up to 4. With 4 of them of the same type (such as 4 mineral space colony modules) you harvest at the same rate as a planet with 10 slots filled up as mineral mines. Oddly, the standard remote mineral miners are somewhat more space efficent, but the ONLY FOUR PER SHIP maximum really shoots it in the ass. Even at the end of the game that'd mean only one ship per sector with a max of 4 mining thingies, each churning out a measely 800 each? When a planet can support 20 miners and each of them puts out at 1000, you can see why I didn't think it was fair!

And planet-based facilities don't cost maintaince either. Which brings me to the only snag...

Whoever made the nomad recycler node has the brains of a drunken hampster. The damn thing is acting retarded, it barely reduces the maintaince cost at all. And it's somehow defaulting to charging me 100 percent of the ship's cost per turn as maintaince. Crazy!

So I'm going to reexamine the Recycler Nodule, and see if I can't actually get it to do what it's supposed to do (it hasn't seemed to have been doing it that well beforehand either).

If anyone knows offhand what the problem is, tell me!

I got the other ships basically set up. Just gotta finalize the warship shipsizes/names/roles. Here's what I'm thinking of. Read their descriptions before you go "I think this is this" and such.

==Lightest to Heaviest (warships only)==

Gunship
Corvette
Scout
Destroyer
Frigate
Cruiser
Strike Carrier
Battleship
Supercarrier

==In Order of Tech Tree (all shiptypes)==

Light Colony Ship: Your basic colony ship.

Scout: Boring ol' scout. Runs around and scans things.

Destroyer: Your first actual warship. Destroyers serve first as a fast-moving little raider vessel, and then eventually as your flak screeners. You can also mount a few actual guns and do some damage, but they get access to a destroyer mount that greatly increases their PD's potency, making them the best ship for fighter and missile stomping.

Gunship: Gunships and Corvettes are superheavy fighters, essentially. Too small to make jumps themselves, they're maintaince-free and act as escorts and system defense vessels. Instead of little dime-a-dozen vessels, Gunships are designed to mangle fighters and mob destroyers and frigates to death. They could also slice up a bigger ship, transports, etc.

Support Ship: These are utility vessels that act as an alternative to the annoying light transport classes. They can carry some mines, or sweepers, or maybe even a shipyard. I'll probably give them a maintaince bonus and a attack/defense penalty. Maybe a mount for shipyards to make them, like, 300kt's... just to make them a bit more desirable.

Frigate: These primarily act to kill destroyers and team up on bigger ships. They're good little warships, and are the first size to make any decent use out of guns. You should probably also be researching some sort of better weapon by the time you get them. Frigates were originally gonna be an 'advanced' ship but I decided that there needed to be something between destroyers and BB's. Neph suggested making a shipclass for those crazy gun-with-engine ships. I may make a mount for Frigs to turn them from like a normal adamant 'medium' capital ship to a glass cannon that turns a 20kt gun into a 200kt one. Might be fun.

Bulk Transport: These are good haulers. Who needs 100 types of transports anyway? Efficent, cheap, these are good. You usually want as much as you can carry, so here you go. I imagine people will still use utility vessels for a while too though, since not everything demands big cargo haulers. You get them now, foreshadowing bigger things to come...

Massive Colonizer: A bigga' colonizer. Huzzah. Put some bombs on it--these are apparently quite popular amongst folks. I suppose you could just cram tons of engines into it too, make it go real fast. Knock yourself out.

Battleship: You get these pretty early on, really. About midway through the tree. Why? So we can actually start fighting battles with real ships. Your fleet at this point will be pretty bare-bones, but for some people, the fancy ships are too confusing or annoying, and now you can stop. They get bigass cannon mounts, but frigates or gunships would chop these guys up pretty good if left alone. They're artillery.

Supercarrier: You can put fighter bays on a transport, so this is just a dedicated fighter launch platform with a few other nice things like some inherent supply generation. I'm considering that. This guy carries a lot of fighters, but not much else. Still, if you want to ferry some fighters or gunships around, this is the thing you want.

Corvette: Corvettes are the frigates to the destroyer's gunship. Corvettes are fast, mean, and carry more potent weapons than a little gunship. Gunships will still pound-for-pound hurt them badly, but a Corvette is designed to operate more against bigger ships and scare them off just as they're starting to get cocky. I like to introduce a new ship, and then something to give it some trouble. Not a counter! Just make it so everything's heyday is short. Gives the feeling of your scientists countering threats, rather than just sending you the exact goddamn design... BUT BIGGER.

Fast Transport: You've had utility, and then you've had size. Now it's time for speed. Fast transports go fast. They're not the millenium falcon, but they're fedex overnight delivery. Good for catching up to fleets and outrunning enemy gank squads. Bulks haul more, but fast transports can evade capture in and outside of battle, allowing you to send some them alone for once. You can also run blockades that way, or carry a few fighters into battle in a rush. Or be a jerk and use them to mob a planet with ground troops at fast speed.

Cruiser: Cruisers are one of the most advanced ships you get. I'd move them up in the tech tree if I had somethign that really was better suited for the top. Cruisers are potent little fighters, fast, long-legged and pretty independant. Earlier in the game they'd have dominated every other class except battleships in terms of combat, and would have danced away from the BB's then. So that's why they're at the end. They are essentially like extra-super-duper Frigates. They're sharks in the water, and the best way to use them is to send them in behind enemy lines, away from supply bases, and cause some havok.

Strike Carrier: These adds more teeth to the Cruiser fleets. Capable of carrying deadly little fighters, gunships or corvettes into combat, these strike carriers can give you some standoff range hitting power. They can also carry a fair number of standard guns due to their abnormally low fighterbay requirements (probably 25 instead of 50) making them quite good at evading capture and slipping a bomber group into an undefended system.

Superlifter: Hate those bigass ringworld pieces? I do. This thing is just a giant transport that moves like 1 mile per hour and is 90 percent cargo space. But it lets you drag ringworld and world creation pieces around without needing to make starbases. It'll probably be like 5000kt in size and have like... -100 attack and -100 defense bonuses. But it's essentially a convenience, and by the end of the game you should also have things like hyperdrives. This can also carry the other big fancy steller manipulation devices, or a WMD. It can't fight for beans, but it can pop a star. Superlifters are, therefore, capable of being excellent siegebreakers. Armor them up, put on a hyperdrive, and have them help you assault a homeworld or two.

Anyway, that's what I've got so far. Comments are welcome. I'm not gonna make dedicated dreadnaught classes though, or worldeaters or whatever. If you want a dreadnaught, put all heavy guns on a battleship. If you want missile destroyers, put on missiles. :p Not everything needs it's own hull.

Oh, and if you have any experience playing the pirates and think they need something funky, tell me. The nomads needed some early game help so I fixed them up a nice solution. Pirates might need one too-but their completely invisible ships are pretty good as-is.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-05 09:52am

Nomads and Pirates were never meant to be competitive races. If you play with them you play with a handicap. Nomads obviously works, because people use nomads all the time and I've played a few games with Nomads and it reduces by 99 percent.

Anyway I think the only reason why so many mods go the standard escort - frigate - destroyer - cruiser - battlecruiser - battleship is everybody's used to it.

Personally the more I think of Tuxedo's destroyer/cruiser/battleship paradigm, the more I like it. I'll probaby copy it and use it for my mod idea I've been wanting to make for a long time. That is, some kind of mod that forces diplomacy because you need at least one other race to make warships.

How it works is each race can only produce one kind of resource, red, green or blue. Then in order to get resources of the other kind you have to ally and send "merchant" ships to the other guy's territory in order to scrap. It will force a convoy system because these merchant fleets will be vulnerable and slow. Good weapons need a combination of two resources, the best weapons need a combination of three resources to build. The game's played with gifting, trading and technology trading off.

Some things I notice for you Covenant. Bigass cannon mount. Mounts kick ass in SE:IV. They make more damage for less space. You could alter the mount to be less efficient and do more damage but that's tricky and you'd need to balance that out with a lot of ships. What I suggest is you make a separate line of weapons for each ship class because you're trying to make each ship class take a certain kind of role. Also to be honest your ship classes scare me lol. There's too many and I don't know how you are going to implement your ideas except with separate lines of weapons for each ship class. And the more complication, the more beta testing to make sure there isn't anything broken. You'd have to test for resource cost, research cost, sim against each ship class to make sure they actually do what they want you to do. Also you'd need separate engines for each class of ship. Your mod looks like a lot of work.

One thing I've wanted to do for a long time too. Mod generator. That's right, I want to write a Java or C program that makes a mod from scratch with a user friendly GUI goodness. Shouldn't be too hard to do. I want to have slider bars where I can alter the research to hull size bell curves and pick whether I want QNP or not, and of course a randomize function that'll generate a random totally unique mod. Balance will be achieved by research costs and mineral costs that'll be easy to calculate as a percentage... if the mod generates a weapon that does a shitload of weapons with a huge mount, it'll be proportionally more expensive heh heh. Should be a nice little project to end the summer with if I ever get around to it.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-05 12:07pm

Hey Nova and Trogdor, the Kiith are waiting for more negotiations for the planets in Cucez, etc. Reminding you in case you skimmed the messages. If there's no reply the Kiith will go to war--they can't allow a forward resupply base to be built in their territory sorry. But I'd much rather do diplomacy and trade planets. I have tons of planets in Zahadin I'd be willing to give away to avoid you guys having planets in my space too.

If you guys are afraid I'm trying to gank you and trade methane breathers for oxygen breathers or other gamey tactics, you we could do a gentleman's agreement not to do that cheesy little exploit. Or you could just abandon those planets. When my computer got busted and I couldn't play my turns I couldn't protect my borders and honestly would never have let colonizers set up in my space. Now that they're there, that's fine, but they need to be gone. I'd much rather buy them than glass them, equal trade (or I'll give you a little more because I don't want war) but they can't stay.

If you want them to stay I have to glass them. Sorry

. One system away from my home system with a resupply depot is too close for comfort.

Okay I am looking at the turns now. The planets that have to go are...

Trogdor
Chocu I
Arrowglass II Forerunner Class Colonizer

Nova
Chocu V
Chocu VII
Chocu II
Cucez VII
Cucez V
Dodo I
Dodo II

I am willing to give away lots of planets in trade and make the deal sweeter for your side to avoid war. All the planets in Zahadin are up for trade, all the planets in Vremecrua, all the planets in Semenov, all the planets in Famtlii.

Part of the reason all those colonizers got through is I'm allowing the Malakari to colonize my space only and the Stellar Imperium Collective has the same shipset as the Malakari. Can the two of you please work out who gets to use that shipset and one of you pick another one and let us download that instead. It's annoying and hard to tell the difference between ships. I usually take my turns in 15 minutes so I don't want to be clicking every single ship everywhere, I want to be able to tell by looking at the kind of ship. Covenant made Booyah's Pirates into his Zerg in two minutes so it's easy, just need to pick another shipset and he could probably do it fast (last time it took me three hours I did it the stupid way lol). I need to be able to tell at a glance who's ships are where.

For RP notes. The Kiith Somtaaw's borders are not open for colonization in the systems I listed in the RP. Zahadin excepted, since I'm feeling generous. There is no actual negotiation between governments IC, just independents setting up mining operations for the Somtaaw and the Somtaaw ignoring or glassing settlements they don't like and word of mouth from merchants about what sectors to avoid because of the Somtaaw blockade. The only race who has translated my language enough to directly communicate with me fluently (and who has regular diplomatic contact) is the Malakari. The trade and research alliance is just the free market at work, vast fleets of independents rather than an actual treaty. If you don't feel comfortable with this interpretation that we can just break the treaty because the Somtaaw aren't forging relations with anybody right now.

Brian

P.S. Tuxedo just corrected me on the shipset problem, that you guys tried and couldn't change it and if you changed it the way Covenant did it'd just change it for both. Oh well. I wonder if it's possible to open up the SE:IV file with a hex editor and look for "Pandorian", I'll try now lol.

Just checked not possible. Oh well.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-07-05 01:23pm

My thoughts on starting a new Adamant game. On the one hand, I'm doing pretty well. On the other, the game's kinda going nowhere. Nothing exciting is happening. I also gather that a lot of people aren't happy with the starting choices they made. Plus it would fix the problem of two people having the same shipset.

So if people want to start a new game, I can get behind that. If we vote to keep going, that's also fine.

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

Obviously more people would have to want to restart than want to continue.

I feel like continuing. But my race pretty much blows heh heh. The only way I could possibly win is if Nephtys never figures out how to beat crystalline armor, which she will. But not all the fun's in winning.

So I vote to continue. I like my race. Not my shipset, but I'll fix that later. But I'll do whatever.

If we are restarting though, I'll volunteer to administer the game. 48 hour turns, not 72 because ten turns a month is too little. And the next game could possibly spell out the rules a little better. I'll have a "rules sheet" so everybody can refer to it for thorny questions like technology trading, surrender, whatever so there's no confusion. Too much posting trying to figure out what is legit and what isn't.

Plus. Ten homeworlds. Five homeworlds are just as invincible as ten homeworlds and ten just makes the game go a little faster lol. And a lot more room--the galaxy was way too small this time I think.

But I like this game so far. So I don't really want to start over.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-07-05 02:11pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:My thoughts on starting a new Adamant game. On the one hand, I'm doing pretty well. On the other, the game's kinda going nowhere. Nothing exciting is happening. I also gather that a lot of people aren't happy with the starting choices they made. Plus it would fix the problem of two people having the same shipset.

So if people want to start a new game, I can get behind that. If we vote to keep going, that's also fine.

I'm of course, enjoying myself, but I don't know how much the rest of you are. I'm fully willing for us to have one with a faster start...
despite my desires to crush Brian hard beneath my boot.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-07-05 03:33pm

Sorry about my lack of a response. I've been busy lately. Check your inbox.

brianeyci wrote:Arrowglass II Forerunner Class Colonizer

The Arrowgrass II is a scout, not a colony ship, and it's an unarmed scout at that.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-07-05 03:45pm

I can't believe Brian was the only one to respond!

Now I gotta talk to HIM. Curse you all. As for the level of fun--only you and Brian are fighting, Neph. I think the rest of us are broke as all hell. How about we all leave and you guys can fight it out with out Empires? ;p

brianeyci wrote:Nomads and Pirates were never meant to be competitive races. If you play with them you play with a handicap. Nomads obviously works, because people use nomads all the time and I've played a few games with Nomads and it reduces by 99 percent.

A handicap!? Sorry, I still want to play to win! Besides, it costs MORE racial points to be a nomad. Someone messed with the recyclers in this mod though, if you look at it. They're different. There's a default recycler and it's a lot different than the one we all get to use. Plus, like I said, I tried it. I put it on the ship. A 20k ship still had a 17k maintaince fee. Ouch! So something is up. I'll look it over.

So, anyway, they already have a handicap. But Nomads start with a few homeworlds and no ability to make more worlds, or even start setting up harvesting operation for a turn or two. And then you need to make small transports with a single harvester thingie to go collect resources, and even then your max resources will be massively smaller! Sure, they have a maintaince reducer, but did you know a research base is too small for a recycler node? So each of those cost me about 400 a turn. Fair? Yeah right.

Anyway I think the only reason why so many mods go the standard escort - frigate - destroyer - cruiser - battlecruiser - battleship is everybody's used to it.

I agree. It's not a real smart progression if you ask me. We don't want frigates when there are destroyers up there. We don't want destroyers when we can have cruisers. By spacing them differently and giving them all unique bonuses, you encourage them all to be useful. And I dole them out in terms of 'escalation' rather than size. So you get the most basic things first, all the way up to the most finicky. So at any time you can stop researching and have a navy, but you'll always have an okay reason to continue. I like that part. Someone who gets all the shipclasses has a finesse advantage, not a massive wtfpwn advantage. A dumb race can build ships big, but advanced races get sexier special ships and outplay them.

How it works is each race can only produce one kind of resource, red, green or blue. Then in order to get resources of the other kind you have to ally and send "merchant" ships to the other guy's territory in order to scrap. It will force a convoy system because these merchant fleets will be vulnerable and slow. Good weapons need a combination of two resources, the best weapons need a combination of three resources to build. The game's played with gifting, trading and technology trading off.

I thought about it, but the problem is that then you can't do shit for the first set of turns, and what if your allies already ran into a Green race? Well, now you're not offering anything they need, and this group of three dudes is just gonna beat the shit out of you since you can't make anything due to lack of resources.

Some things I notice for you Covenant. Bigass cannon mount. Mounts kick ass in SE:IV. They make more damage for less space. You could alter the mount to be less efficient and do more damage but that's tricky and you'd need to balance that out with a lot of ships. What I suggest is you make a separate line of weapons for each ship class because you're trying to make each ship class take a certain kind of role.

Not necessary to do all that. Balance is a big deal to me, and I'm not dumb, I know how they work. Also, really, bigass cannon mounts aren't that good in the long run. They usually double the size while giving a 50 or 75 percent damage bump. That's way worse, for raw damage, than lots of smaller cannons. It helps for shields, but shields eventually go by the wayside anyway, once you get some phasic weapons or such. Plus, even as my zergies using lots of tiny guns, I simmed real well against shield ships. Adamant's combat is pretty balanced, by and large. The big cannon mounts would probably just be similar to a starbase mount with a nastier reload penalty. Battleships are artillery, not chainguns. I want them to fire a volley of fire and then get mobbed by smaller ships if unescorted. So, for their cost, smaller ships will do more damage and be 'smarter', but a big ship can still whomp them. It's the Dreadnaught versus Baseship idea. BB's can kill dreads, but Dreads are more cost effective. Besides, you NEED battleships to kill bigger targets more easily. You just don't want small ships getting too close to them. I'll probably give battleships a passive defensive bonus so long range shots have a better chance of plinking.

Also to be honest your ship classes scare me lol. There's too many and I don't know how you are going to implement your ideas except with separate lines of weapons for each ship class. And the more complication, the more beta testing to make sure there isn't anything broken. You'd have to test for resource cost, research cost, sim against each ship class to make sure they actually do what they want you to do. Also you'd need separate engines for each class of ship. Your mod looks like a lot of work.

Surely you jest! Too many? We have, like, seven or eight combat classes. That's hardly too much when you look at normal adamant with 16 levels of ship research, 12 warships, 5 carriers, 4 transports, etc... THAT is too many ships. The organic ships advance by 40kt a level. 40kt!? That's for shit.

Plus, if you want an effective fleet, you only need destoyers and BB's. Frigates are fun but they aren't direly necessicary--they're just better at stopping a horde of small capital craft from coming up and chainsawing your BB's.

Having cruisers is fine, but not that necesscary. Strike carriers and Supercarriers are both fighter-ferries that are optimized for big launches, which make them better than transports, but you yourself don't like fighters, Brian, so you can just forget those if you want. I can't and won't force you to use EVERY ship. I can't MAKE you use destroyers later. I just want to make them an option. BB's can carry PD's. Destroyers just carrier sexier ones. If it's more convenient to have an all-battleship fleet then that's perfectly okay. My shipclasses are designed to allow people to choose a difficulty level that suits them.

Also, mind you, these are each one ship. One ship, not a family of ships. There aren't 6 types of supercarriers. There's one. There's not 3 kinds of battleship hulls. There's one. So I'm not sure how you think there's a lot of ships... in STMod there's like 10 different main combat vessels. I'm offering you, like, 4.

And I don't need seperate weapons or seperate engines, you dorkus. I'm using Adamant's Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion. Each ship class operates on approximately the same level of engine efficency--1 propulsion needed for every 50 kilotons. So a 5000 kiloton superlifter requires 100 propulsion points to move, while a 100 kiloton scout requires 2. Why would each hull need it's own engine? That makes no sense.

And similarly, why their own guns? I want destroyers to have uber PD's. So I'll give ONLY DESTROYERS a range extender and accuracy booster mount that works on PDs. Problem solved. You can put normal guns on instead, but you can't use the fancymount. No need to rewrite the entire mod. I did most of the work last night while talking to Neph.

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So it's really not hard. I'm mostly done. Anyone else have some useful input?