Space Empires V PBEM game

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-17 07:09pm

Now that SE V is officially out and patched, I thought I'd see how much interest there is in an SDN PBEM game. So declare your interest!

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-10-17 07:15pm

Count me in. Totally new at it though, and my copy's buggy. How nice is the patch?

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-10-17 07:20pm

I need to track down a copy of SEV, first, which may take until the weekend. If you don't mind waiting for me, then you can count me in.

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2006-10-17 07:31pm

I've lurked in the SEIV threads for some time now, but didn't want to get back into SEIV with SEV just over the horizon. Now that it's out (and my copy is in the mail), I'm definitely up for a game.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-17 08:03pm

We'll probably start in a few days to let people get a chance to receive their copies and such. But I do want to see how many will be playing.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-10-17 09:25pm

I'm keen. Nobody knows how to play SEV yet, so now is my best chance!

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-19 01:10am

So five of us, including me? That's not bad, I suppose, but I hoped for one or two more. What about Brian?

In any case, how about we shoot for starting the process of creating empires on Saturday-ish and have the first ready on Monday?

Darn · Post by **Darn** » 2006-10-19 01:54am

I'm interested, too... Balance Mod, I think?

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-19 05:06am

I might be interested. I'll admit, I'm usually not too keen on playing so infrequently. However, I'm willing to give the one turn every couple days thing a try.

I'm a little concerned about one minor thing; the game can sometimes be a little crashy. I've got a save where one of my troop transports simply cannot attack this world, on that turn, without the game crashing.

Oh, and I assume the game settings will be open for discussion?

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-10-19 05:10am

Be sure to Patch Up! http://www.malfador.com/se5patch.html

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-19 12:25pm

Steam automagically updates it

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-19 01:32pm

Darn wrote:I'm interested, too... Balance Mod, I think?

I think people wanted to do a stock game to kick things off, but we can certainly put it to vote.

I'll cast my ballot for Balance Mod.

@IB: Settings will be open for discussion, yes. I'll make a proposed list and people can make suggestions. I'll also make a post with tips and tricks, although this is less relevant for the Balance mod, as we all have even less experience with that.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-19 04:57pm

I'll be honest, the game is fairly crashy as-is. I think we should stick with vanilla for the first game.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-20 08:41pm

OK, here are the proposed settings:

No mods
3 good homeworlds
Med sized mid-life galaxy
Med tech cost
High starting resources
No starting tech points
No racial points (when you see how broken the point values are, you'll understand)
No AI players
System exploration enabled
No events
No tech trading
"Destroy All Homeworlds" Victory condition (instead of needing to destroy every last colony of every other player, you just need the homeworlds)

In addition, "Ancient Race" should be a disallowed trait.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-20 08:52pm

Empire creation tips

The best societies are:

Industrialists
Mechanics
Merchants

They give maintenance reductions with no meaningful drawbacks, and industrialists also gives resource bonuses.

The best racial traits are:
Pretty much any of the -500 ones, since -5% amounts to basically jack shit for how many points you get. Especially good are farming -5, intelligence - 5, and ground combat - 5.

Most of the 1,000 pointers are good, with a couple exceptions mentioned below.

Racial traits to avoid:
Pretty much any of the 500 point ones. +5% in two things is jack shit compared to what you can get for 1,000 points.

Emotionless, lucky, and mechanoids have always sucked.

Advanced Storage Techniques has been nerfed into utter uselessness. It doesn't give more facility space any more, only increased cargo space, but "makes up for it" by extending that increased cargo space to ships. Whooptie shit!

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-20 09:04pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:In addition, "Ancient Race" should be a disallowed trait.

What? Aww! Thats a great waste of 1000 points! I mean.. you guys should take it.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-21 12:33am

In SE V, Ancient Race means you don't have to do any exploration at all. Since this takes several ships and many turns early on, it's a monstrous advantage. Should be a 2,000 pointer or so.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-21 01:17am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:In SE V, Ancient Race means you don't have to do any exploration at all. Since this takes several ships and many turns early on, it's a monstrous advantage. Should be a 2,000 pointer or so.

It also gets you to expand out, beyond your means

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-10-21 01:53am

Remember, surveying a system takes at least 4-6 turns, even with great sensors. Imagine insta survey of ALL systems. You'll know instantly what place to beeline to with the colony ships!

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-21 02:45am

Wait a tick, are we not using Racial points now..?

Quick question also - when you auto complete a weapon platform it includes some supply and ordiance units; but they aren't listed in the available components. Bug?

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2006-10-21 03:03am

InnocentBystander wrote:Wait a tick, are we not using Racial points now..?

I assume it's no racial points as in, no starting racial points, but you can still do tradeoffs in order to get racial traits. I could be wrong, however.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-10-21 03:13am

Aren't racial points the ones you use to get things like Hardy Industrialist, Bio tech tree, etc.?

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-21 10:47am

Yes. The reason to set it at zero is that there are so many "gimme" tradeoffs that an extra 2,000 on top of that would have every player with every meaningful bonus selected.

So it seems like we're agreed on the starting settings? Whether we are or not, go ahead and start sending me your empire files. We'll look to starting the first turn on Monday. We'll execute every 2 days, regardless of whether everyone has their turns in. I sometimes turn off the computer for the night as early as 9 PM PST, so get your turns in before then.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-21 01:34pm

For techs, the best weapons are Meson Blasters. Just ignore everything else (unless you're psychic, then TK projectors are slightly better). They start out at lower damage than the other weapons, but they gain the same amount per level, so the difference becomes negligable as levels increase, and they're only 20 kT. They also give point defense weapons with half the size and 4x the rate of fire. You'll need Physics to get it.

Armor and shields are both good, though shields are probably the better deal at higher lvls. I level them both and use a mixture.

Resources make a big difference at higher lvls (at max, they triple the production of your facilities), but until you have lots of research to throw around, don't bother. 3,000 to 3,100 minerals a turn for 20,000 research is not a great deal. Same for applied research.

Space yards are a good thing to research, especially since you can't build orbital bases until lvl 10. I tend to put about 10% into those.

Fighters can't match ships for cost efficiency, but are much better for maintenance efficiency, and function as super troops in ground combat.

Feel free to post any other tips you can think of.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-10-21 03:33pm

I suppose it would be easier to send me stuff if you knew where to send.

arthurtuxedo AT gmail.nospam.com

I'm sure I don't have to explain what to do to that to turn it into a working address.