Space Empires IV Gold Game

[Dalton]

2. No mining space ridiculously. In some PBM games, you see star systems with thousands of mines in them... That's ebil.

Ah yes, that brings me back to the good old days of a game between me and Graeme Dice. Mining warp points is pretty damn evil methinks.

[brianeyci]

If it's no trouble to let me in, then I'd like to be the Romulans.

Pointed freaks are yours. No you aren't holding up the game, I just wrote a midterm yesterday myself, we're not going to start until the end of the week anyway. I don't even have the freaking game installed yet and haven't started looking for my cd lol.

Hrm. Who should I be... DS9/TNG Feddies, or Borg.. oh hell. Borg for me.

Resistance is futile.

Off the top of my head, I remember something that was flying around when the mod team was putting together this mod, but I'll keep my trap shut, because it will be more fun to watch this develop.

Cool. Are you in SE:IV community, maybe I know you. I was part of it for 3-4 months. Did you join the beta test lottery games (had to pay to enter I think).

For this game, I think we really ought to set some rules. For fairness to prevent min-maxing... I propose the following.

1. No exchanging colony tech. That's just wrong, giving a player 500000 RPs worth of stuff on turn 3.

I am not sure but ST Mod might incorporate some anti-colony trading technology.

2. No mining space ridiculously. In some PBM games, you see star systems with thousands of mines in them... That's ebil.

This is fixed in 1.91. You can only have 100 mines per sector. Once you get around minesweeping III and have enough minesweeping ships, mines become useless. Basically, mines are only useful early/middle game to defend against fleets that have less than 100 minesweeping capability.

I'm not sure how difficult mines are to research in this game, but I see no reason to ban them myself. I remember 5-6 cruiser class hulls with minesweeping III components maxed out can sweep 100 mines. If we get to battleships, two or three with minesweeping III or even one with minesweeping V can clear 100 mines. If you want I can ban them totally. Atrocities is an experienced player though, and this is a late version, I'm sure all these problems are addressed in the mod.

Weapon platforms too, suffer the same fate in being stationary. If you stock up on weapons platforms someone intelligent will just pull some maneuver warfare and go around your fortified planets.

Static defense always loses to offense, a mobile defense is more important, and defense means they can just expand in other parts of the galaxy while you sit and wait.

Ships, and lots of them, highly trained are the only way to defend and expand yourself middle to late game. Emphasis on the "trained" part, if you have a fully trained fleet against a fleet untrained, the trained fleet will win every time, +20% ship experience and +20% fleet experience is +40% to offense and defense meaning the untrained fleet is fucked unless his empire can pump out 40% more ships (sectors with moons are good for training bases because you can build more than one fleet facility and one ship training facility, only one fleet training facility and one ship training facility per planet work though). Combat technologies like ECM and Combat Sensors are crucial, as are shields, a high level weapon, armor, stealth armor, propulsion, everything else to do with fighting and bigger and tougher ships. Intelligence is important for the middle of the game. Warp points are good for defense, because you have the first shot. First shot usually means the other guy needs 2x more ships at equal technology level not to lose his entire fleet the first round. Good strategies are ramming for colony ships, optimal firing range for warships. Fighters in stock are only useful as a shock force during early/early middle game, because any competent player will have point defense cruisers and only one of them is enough to destroy thousands on thousands of fighters (the more conservative ones put one or two point defense guns on all their ship hulls to spread out the defense). So in the end, fighters, mines, everything goes out the window because they are ineffective against a prepared veteran player. Missiles are completely, utterly useless just like fighters because they are only useful in the early game and not even the middle game because again any veteran player gets point defense guns and if you've put 100's of thousands of research points into missiles you are far behind in other crucial technology areas and have lost the game. There's no way to "swarm" the enemy with missiles, because a missile takes far more kT to put on a ship than a point defense gun, there's enough room to put on a couple point defense guns and a few direct fire weapons and still be invulnerable to missiles. Even intelligence goes out the window because defensive intelligence gets something like a 2 : 1 or 3: 1 bonus (not sure anymore it's been a freaking year), so the only option is to have lots and lots of ships. Then it becomes a race to whoever can get warp point openers, a stage of the game where the deadlock is broken and even the most powerful players fall to maneuver warfare. All this is for stock though, I have no fucking idea what happens with ST. In stock there were several kinds of overall strategies like crystal armor (if you have 10 your ships are invulnerable and they need armor skipping weapons), phased polaron beams (researching physics II can be cheap compared to nullifying their research in shields, but phased shields with physics III soon tilt the balance in favor of shields), religious talisman (worked for bigger games, component that gives +100% chance to hit), and so on. I don't know the research tree for Star Trek either so all this is out the window.

I could go for TNG Federation myself.

Number One, you have the conn.

Okay so far rule suggestions,

RP Rules
1. If you completely surrender your Empire to a player, you must stay on a subjugation treaty for the rest of the game and obey the other player's orders. This is so nobody actually gets eliminated and can play to the end. You can never break this treaty unless a foreign government takes over your homeplanet and gives you freedom (aka liberates you), or makes you their slaves as well. Obviously this doesn't apply to neutral races.

Game Mechanics
2. No exchanging colony technology. I can easily make this a rule by disabing technology trading/gifts, but it's easy to go around this by just trading a ship with another player and analyzing it. So if we do this honor system, I won't be able to check after the first round because I'll be playing (usually there's random spot checks by the game admin). So, no trading ships for colony technology. How far does this go though, no trading for weapons and shields technology, no trading technology at all, no gifts at all? Technology trading is really fucking gamey, I'm not interested in gamey strategy at all (my last game I had a fucking trading bonanza trading to six players all at once giving them technology coordinating research through e-mails so on). Then there's the whole fucking gamey thing of trading population to get more space to build.

Brian

[Alan Bolte]

My PBW name is Lord Q'Daan, and I'd like to play the Tholians.

[brianeyci]

My PBW name is Lord Q'Daan, and I'd like to play the Tholians.

You're in. Good looks like most of the players here are experienced players, it's a good mix of vets and newbies (I consider myself a newbie since I haven't played in over a year).

What should I put for the Empire Name? My preferred race?

You can call yourself whatever you want, Federation Third Fleet, etc, change the name of your leader, any thing that doesn't have to do with actual game mechanics in your empire profile. Although, I think when RPing starts calling yourself Picard's Penis won't work too well.

Looks like 8 players, hopefully we can get it started by Friday or worst next Monday. Obviously I can add more player slots in if more are interested.

Brian

[Trogdor]

For this game, I think we really ought to set some rules. For fairness to prevent min-maxing... I propose the following.

1. No exchanging colony tech. That's just wrong, giving a player 500000 RPs worth of stuff on turn 3.

I am not sure but ST Mod might incorporate some anti-colony trading technology.

I don't think it does, but I'm pretty sure all, or almost all, of the trek empires live on rock worlds, so trading colony tech between the game controlled players shouldn't be an issue. The neutral empires may be another matter, but personally I've always felt that if you could bully one of them into giving you their colony tech, then good for you. I'm not the one setting the rules, though.

[brianeyci]

I don't think it does, but I'm pretty sure all, or almost all, of the trek empires live on rock worlds, so trading colony tech between the game controlled players shouldn't be an issue. The neutral empires may be another matter, but personally I've always felt that if you could bully one of them into giving you their colony tech, then good for you. I'm not the one setting the rules, though.

Computer always agrees to a trade for colony technology if you offer the computer your colony technology.

Brian

[NecronLord]

Humm. I've got to get a password for the full version of this game some day.

[Trogdor]

Computer always agrees to a trade for colony technology if you offer the computer your colony technology.

Brian

Good point. So trading colony tech with the neutrals is against the rules, too?

[Dalton]

Computer always agrees to a trade for colony technology if you offer the computer your colony technology.

Brian

Good point. So trading colony tech with the neutrals is against the rules, too?

Well, it's always easier to just conquer the bastards, take their tech and use their people to colonize more worlds for the glory of the Klingon Empire!

[brianeyci]

Computer always agrees to a trade for colony technology if you offer the computer your colony technology.

Brian

Good point. So trading colony tech with the neutrals is against the rules, too?

I'm going to make technology trading impossible so you won't be able to trade technology with neutrals anyway. It doesn't make sense anyway, somebody giving you so much hard work in a single turn. A loophole people always use to exploit this is to "gift" ships and analyze them. I might make gifting impossible too, but then comes the issue of gifting planets and money and so on which I think should be allowed. It might just be an honor system with the "gifting" of ships being illegal for purposes of analysis, but let's say if you "gift" a fleet of ships to someone he just promises not to analyze and rip components out but just use the ships as they are. I gotta look at the game mechanics first, game mechanics is the best way of doing this.

If you capture a neutral's colony ship though I think that is fair.

<edit>If you capture a player's colony ship, that's fair too. If a player is stupid enough to have them sitting around. The computer always has a few sitting around doing nothing.</edit>

<edit 2>Oh yeah there is the "steal ship" or "ship insurrection" from intelligence. If you manage to sneak your elite spies onto an enemy vessel, disable their security system, kill or disable their crew, and haul your ass back to your own space, that's fair too lol, well maybe not fair for the guy who lost the ship but oh well.</edit>

My fucking desktop's CD drive is totalled and I have a thin and slim laptop with no CD drive. More specifically the primary IDE controller is totalled, I gotta convince my brother to let me borrow the computer and let me slave the DVD drive to the secondary that he's using.

Well, it's always easier to just conquer the bastards, take their tech and use their people to colonize more worlds for the glory of the Klingon Empire!

You'll need boarding parties, set to capture ship strategy for that, and somehow trick a lone AI colony ship to run into your boarding parties, then bring the ship back to a shipyard for analysis. You don't get their technology just by capturing one of their worlds, you need their ships.

Simulator is a good way of testing if your boarding ship works.

Brian

[Trogdor]

Well, it's always easier to just conquer the bastards, take their tech and use their people to colonize more worlds for the glory of the Klingon Empire!

Klingon barbarians, wouldn't know the value of subtly and manipulation if it bit you on the nose. My legions will shatter your unorganized hordes.

Now prays that I doesn't start anywhere near Dalton. I haven't played SEIV in a year or so.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Well, it's always easier to just conquer the bastards, take their tech and use their people to colonize more worlds for the glory of the Klingon Empire!

Klingon barbarians, wouldn't know the value of subtly and manipulation if it bit you on the nose. My legions will shatter your unorganized hordes.

Now prays that I doesn't start anywhere near Dalton. I haven't played SEIV in a year or so.

Somehow I doubt these Klingons'll be the one-note barbarians TNG is infamous for. Watch your homeworlds, Trog.

[brianeyci]

Somehow I doubt these Klingons'll be the one-note barbarians TNG is infamous for. Watch your homeworlds, Trog.

Aye, another good strategy is to have about 100 or so troops on every single planet in your empire to keep happiness up to perfect all the time. Usually these are police troops with no weapons so that they're really cheap, but adding in a gun or two, especially ground cannons, will give your empire a ready "militia" to draw on when you need ground troops fast and quickly. Units don't cost maintainence either which is the advantage. Units are really advantageous in the very early to early game where a satellite stack on a warp point can destroy an early fleet, and a hundred mines are difficult to sweep unless the opponent has five or six ships (a lot in the early game) to sweep them. Weapons platforms too with their large mount are pretty good early game. Stick a point defense gun, two direct fire weapons and a shield generator, and keep pumping out. In a few turns you'll have a ton of them. Only good for outposts though, because if you're building weapons platforms on your homeworlds, you've probably already lost.

The overall strategy is to build as many colony ships as possible on your homeworlds, and rather than colonize the planets in your home system early on, send out the colony ships as far as they can go without running out of fuel. You can worry about forming a perimeter later, in the beginning try and expand as far as possible to get as much influence as possible. Once you meet the enemy's front lines, plop down a colony and build weapons platforms in it. The second wave of colonizers will colonize the system behind it and use it as a staging ground for invasion. If the enemy tries attacking you and doesn't bypass your forward outpost, he'll have a few weapons platforms to contend with. If he does, you'll have a forward refuelling base.

Even if you see a green planet in your home system, it's not worth it to colonize it right away, at least in my experience. Take your first wave of colonizers and send them out as far as possible without running out of fuel, then your second wave to fill in all the systems bhind the front lines, and your third wave behind that, so on, so on.

<edit>Usually I do not build warships until I at least get the destroyer hull. Warships take up maintainence which is a killer, and smaller ships just aren't worth it except for the occasional scout. Stockpiling up 50 escorts is a really stupid idea. At the minimum, you need decent minesweeping capability (Mines II or mines III, usually you use dedicated minesweeping ships), a decent weapon, either armor/shields, ECM, combat sensors, point defense. Add this onto bridge, life support, engines, and a supply module (you need a supply module because of engine destroying weapons, if your engines get destroyed you can't fire because your supplies are stored in your engines!!), and you need at least a destroyer hull. To defend myself early on I usually form a large satellite stack on a warp point, and research mines. Of course this is all for stock, but in general it's a bad idea to have a shitload of warships sitting around doing nothing. Escorts and Frigates don't have enough tonnage to take on a planet with weapons platforms and win.</edit>

<edit>I made up a jpg to illustrate the strategy,



I can't over emphasize the importance of establishing yourself early game. In the beginning of the game, you're sending out your colonizers as far as possible to establish this "red" zone. If you see a green planet of yours, don't stop and colonize it! Keep going until your fuel is low, then plop down a colony. Doesn't really matter if it's a red planet or a moon, just as long as you have a forward base. If you see the enemy, try and plop down a colony as fast as you can before he attacks you. With a supply module you extend your range by 20%.

In the yellow zone your second wave of colonizers will come. These will be the shipyards, refuelling points, and so on to assault the enemy from. Meanwhile you can build up your research if you're not preparing to invade, and defend warp points in the red zone with satellite layers on warp points. Satellites really are only good for warp point defense anyway. Fighters too (it seems ST Mod has tier 1 fightercraft in shuttles) might be good for this. Units don't take up maintainence, and less maintainence means more resources to research and mineral production. Stockpile a large amount of resources, build mineral housing facilities and so on, because during a war you'll need the extra resources when the enemy starts capturing your worlds.

When you finally do start making warships with destroyer hull, rally point them to a single location and have them trained and in one large fleet. Many smaller fleets are stupid, and if you're smart you've made treaties so you only have one front or a couple fronts to attack. Once your fleets are trained +20% ship experience and +20% fleet experience, you're ready to hit the road.

The further out you form your perimeter, the more territory you're denying to your opponent, and the larger your empire will be when you finally start consolidating all the worlds behind your front lines and pumping out warships.

Note "rushing" really doesn't work against this strategy, because you have a huge buffer zone. You'll see their "rush" coming a mile away and hopefully have satellites on warp points guarding entrances into your home systems. If worst comes to worst you can use weapons platforms. And I haven't even mentioned mines yet, which are a staple of this super-aggro strategy. You can even emergency build warships as a last resort. Ships on a warp point have a 2 : 1 advantage assuming similar technology level. All these factors go against the "rusher". I don't know how this works in ST Mod though. If there are tier 1 troops, rushing may very well be a viable strategy.

</edit>

<edit>Intelligence is difficult to gather because of warp points, but if you want to cause some havoc build small escorts and frigates (just not a lot of them) and use them to harass worlds in the opponent's "red zone" before they have a chance to establish a weapons platform. Usually, these are missile boats, one missile, as many engines as possible using the "fire at maximum range" strategy. In the stock game it takes awhile to research point defense, so the enemy may have no defense against a single ship with a missile that stays outside range of the weapon platform's large mounts. I think ST Mod has tier 1 point defense guns too, so this tactic might be done.

If you want to attack and not just sit back for a long time though, to throw your enemy off balance, this is the way to do it. Don't stock up on a fleet of 50 escorts, use maybe 10 escorts, maybe spread them out, attack from multiple locations, isolate colony ships, send a few harassing messages in game, and hopefully he gets angry and starts wasting a lot of money on building escorts for defense while you're researching crucial technology to make real warships. Even frigates are not large enough, although a few frigates might be good for the harasser, a fleet of 50 frigates is kind of stupid except in games where research takes a long time or where the galaxy is really small. Mines, satellites and weapons platforms will stop anything up to and including destroyer cold, so destroyer is the minimum. Sometimes in very large games I wait until light cruiser to make warships.</edit>

Brian

[Alan Bolte]

Man, this mod takes some getting used to. I'm gonna have to play around with this propulsion stuff for a while. No complaints, though. It's quite interesting.

[brianeyci]

Man, this mod takes some getting used to. I'm gonna have to play around with this propulsion stuff for a while. No complaints, though. It's quite interesting.

The readme lists how the propulsion works.

---------------------
Warp Scale:
---------------------

Warp Core I + 2 Warp Nacelle I = Movement of 2
Warp Core II + 2 Warp Nacelle II = Movement of 3
Warp Core III + 2 Warp Nacelle II = Movement of 4
Warp Core IV + 2 Warp Nacelle III = Movement of 5
Warp Core V + 2 Warp Nacelle III = Movement of 6
Warp Core VI + 2 Warp Nacelle III = Movement of 6
Warp Core VII + 2 Warp Nacelle IV = Movement of 8
Warp Core VIII + 2 Warp Nacelle IV = Movement of 8
Warp Core IX + 2 Warp Nacelle IV = Movement of 9
Warp Core X + 2 Warp Nacelle V = Movement of 10

TransWarp Core I + 2 Warp Nacelle V = Movement of 11
TransWarp Core II + 2 Warp Nacelle V = Movement of 12
TransWarp Core III + 2 Warp Nacelle V = Movement of 13

NOTE: It is recommended that you also add at least 2 Impulse Engines to each design. Impulse engines give you combat movements.

Colony ships need 4 warp nacelles too.

Brian

[Dalton]

OK, something about this is seriously retarded, The Warp Core is 500kT more massive than the colony ship. You'd need to research ship construction a few more times just to be able to build a ship that can...I dunno, move?

EDIT: n/m, figured out that you have to have a propulsion mount.

Edit2: WTF? Warp core + 2 warp nacelles + 2 impulse engines give my ship a total movement of...0. Huh?!

Edit3: Again, never mind. Hopefully I fucking figured this crazy shit out.

[brianeyci]

Edit2: WTF? Warp core + 2 warp nacelles + 2 impulse engines give my ship a total movement of...0. Huh?!

I guess nobody reads readmes anymore lol.

2. USE 4 Warp Nacelles on Colony Ship! - If you read the abilities for each ship hull they will tell you if you need more warp nacelles.

Sorry for the confusion . Still you should be able to tell by just looking at the requirements, "this hull needs 4 more warp nacelles".

Brian

[Nephtys]

The ST Mod is quite different from stock in the way propulsion is handled. It makes higher tech levels in propulsion actually worth it. Same with shields and all weapon types, thank Valen.

Not quite as alien as stuff like B5 of course. That's a whole new game practically. But hrm. Fighters are available a lot earlier in ST SEIV, so they may actually be a concern. Point defense guns are a lot less efficient unless you use dedicated ships full of them, and hull size upgrades come far slower, while internals are quicker. Gotta get used to it, I suppose.

Either way, I'll totally assimilate your butts. Then assign you really awkward designations like 'e of x0A'.

[Dalton]

Edit2: WTF? Warp core + 2 warp nacelles + 2 impulse engines give my ship a total movement of...0. Huh?!

I guess nobody reads readmes anymore lol.

Yeah yeah, kiss my ass

Sorry for the confusion . Still you should be able to tell by just looking at the requirements, "this hull needs 4 more warp nacelles".

I'm used to vanilla SEIV, where simply having engines make ship go.

"Geordi, why isn't my ship moving?"

Either way, I'll totally assimilate your butts. Then assign you really awkward designations like 'e of x0A'.

Foolish petaQ. You will fall before the might of my glorious warriors.

[brianeyci]

Either way, I'll totally assimilate your butts. Then assign you really awkward designations like 'e of x0A'.

Assimilate this . All my warships will have a self-destruct device anyway.

"Geordi, why isn't my ship moving?"

She canna take much more of this Captain!

Anyway I found something in the readme (yeah time to eat my own words lol).

Advanced Trait
PBW Advanced Research

I added the PBW Advanced Research Trait to the mod in order to speed up PBW games. That this trait is free, and I strongly suggest that it be stipulated in any PBW*, EBEM**, or PBIM*** games that this Advanced Trait be used by all or not at all. To use it when others do not is considered cheating therefore all game hosts must consider this as a mandatory rule.

Looks like maybe all have to change their empire. Don't yet though, we'll figure it all out when all 8 join up.

Brian

[Alan Bolte]

The PBW trait is activated by default.

[Hotfoot]

Assimilate this . All my warships will have a self-destruct device anyway.

Ugh, that's always something I hated about SE4. Put in a cool boarding/defense system, and then render it completely fucking worthless with a tech that you get before you'd even get boarding tech, at like a fraction of the cost.

That, plus quantum reactors are two technologies I absolutely hate.

[brianeyci]

Ugh, that's always something I hated about SE4. Put in a cool boarding/defense system, and then render it completely fucking worthless with a tech that you get before you'd even get boarding tech, at like a fraction of the cost.

That, plus quantum reactors are two technologies I absolutely hate.

When my shields are failing my captains pull out a deadman's trigger out of their command chair and if they sense the bridge being taken over they blow it .

I never used quantum reactors, never really got that far in the game even though I played about 20 medium lengthed ones, mostly I used large hulls with tons of supply components (tankers).

Brian

[Hotfoot]

When my shields are failing my captains pull out a deadman's trigger out of their command chair and if they sense the bridge being taken over they blow it

Still lame, in my opinion. A 10kt device utterly negating several 20kt devices. Same problem is why missiles are broken in the stock game (one 20kt device negating several 50kt devices).

I never used quantum reactors, never really got that far in the game even though I played about 20 medium lengthed ones, mostly I used large hulls with tons of supply components (tankers).

And, presumably, solar collectors. Which is as it should be. Maintaining a supply line is part of the fun of the game, in my opinion.

[Nephtys]

Self Destruct device has a problem. I've played computers and people who built super huge dreadnaughts with self destruct devices. The counter? A single destroyer, with one boarding squad and several shield depleters. It runs up to the target, drains their shields, sends over a boarding crew...

The ship, despite still having full armor, weapons, mobility.. then blows up. To stop six people who couldn't capture the thing anyway.