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

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-03-05 03:08pm

I thought about it, and you could always arm your scouts. First turn it's possible to have a 5 move scout ship with a missile on it. The scout already has a 1k supply bonus, but the problem is its -55% to hit modifier with the basic bridge, spartan crew quarters and inherent -30% since its a scout. No problem, use a nuke, AFAIK missiles don't take to-hit penalties, and you have a scout that can move just over three star systems that can shoot down enemy colonizers. When the supplies are down to 500 or so, stop moving and it can be a sentry to plug a wormhole until your satellite and minelayers get in play.

It doesn't really work unless you have both propulsion expert traits though, since without it your scout moves 3 and that totally bites.

Three star systems kind of sucks though, but it can get better if you wait a couple turns for better engines. Especially with propulsion experts and transdimensional beings. Your engines are +1 move point, but that doesn't mean you only get +1 because of QNP. The scout's so small that adding an extra engine means adding an extra move point.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-03-05 03:20pm

You could also use a solar panel. With a decently efficient engine, that'll give you half movement after you run out of gas.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-03-05 03:21pm

Well I didn't take the movement point bonuses, so I guess I'll just have to wait until I get better engines and stick with mines and stuff for defense until then.

brianeyci wrote:One thing I noticed in this mod is supply is a real pain in the ass. At most you can move four or five star systems before your supplies run out, and then your ship will be lean as hell. And capturing colonies is difficult so island hopping from one colony to the next is going to be hard. And if you use bigger ships you'll need more engines that use up more supply, and you'll need more reactors. Building tanker ships might solve it, but I doubt it since the more engines = more supplies and if you rip out all the weapons and put reactors instead you'll have one fat sitting duck.

It should make wars interesting.

Heh, you're not kidding. Also, it takes a long time to build resupply depots, futher curtailing a player's ability to quickly expand or push into enemy territory. Cheaper resupply depots can be research, it takes a good number of research points and it never becomes a quick thing. However, the resupply tech area needs to be researched anyway to get better reactors.

I've found that most big undertakings in Adamant require a much greater investment of resources and time than in stock and the other mods I've played. From building a sphereworld to conquering your foes, hell, even sweeping a minefield, in Adamant, it's simply much harder.

Edit: IIRC, to get decent solar panels, you need to research solar harnessing, which will get you the solar sails that can make an unlimited range scout anyway.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-03-05 03:30pm

Hrm. I'll consider propulsion experts, but efficient supply usage isn't such a bad trait now.

At least mines are a lot less potent now. A mine 1 does 100 damage max, while a heavy frigate can usually stacks at least 1000 points of armor for minimal cost.

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

Nephtys wrote:You could also use a solar panel. With a decently efficient engine, that'll give you half movement after you run out of gas.

Hey cool! The 100 supply solar panel is basic tech. I run three engines x 20 supplies per movement x 4 movements per turn and that's 240 supplies a turn, minus 100, = 140, enough to travel a little over four systems worth! At four move points rather than five to make room for the solar collector, but that's more than worth it

. Pretty good for a second turn scout.

Trogdor wrote: Well I didn't take the movement point bonuses, so I guess I'll just have to wait until I get better engines and stick with mines and stuff for defense until then.

Me taking it was a big gamble. I don't have 120% research, don't have 110% attack and defense, don't even have 120% mining, had to sack it all to pay for 3k for the two extra move points. It'll depend on whether my territory is good and whether I can grab enough of it before my neighbours and consolidate it to make up for my worse base stats.

I've found that most big undertakings in Adamant require a much greater investment of resources and time than in stock and the other mods I've played. From building a sphereworld to conquering your foes, hell, even sweeping a minefield, in Adamant, it's simply much harder.

This is good. A war of extermination should be hard as hell. The homeworlds have tens of thousands of phased shielding points

.

Nephtys wrote:Hrm. I'll consider propulsion experts, but efficient supply usage isn't such a bad trait now.

Wow that only costs 750 and lowers your supply by 25%... what a winner. I might abandon deeply religious for that. I have a feeling this game will be brutal and short.

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-03-05 03:34pm

Not to mention that mines are not automatically invisible in this mod. You need to put a component on them to make them cloaked, which takes up space that could have otherwise gone to explosives.

On the flip side, though, minesweepers are also less effective. I think in one of my one player games I needed four minesweeper ships, with the biggest hulls I could build, to sweep 100 mines. So really large minefields may pose an even bigger problem in Adamant, while smaller ones will be easier to deal with or shrug off the damage from.

Edit: Oh hell, I don't even want to think about how hard conquering an enemy home planet would be. In my one player games I've been lazy and just employed WMDs against them, but if you've got the gravitation shield generator on the home world and protected by all those shields...

Edit 2: I more suspect that this game will be brutal and long.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-03-05 03:51pm

The 50k phased shield points... wow, I wonder if ANYTHING can get through that short of 50 ships with planetary napalms. And meanwhile, the planet has weapons platforms shooting at you blowing your ships up...

...you're right it'll probably be long and brutal. But I plan to be as aggressive as possible... even if it takes forever to take down a homeplanet, you don't really need to take one down, just blockade it. If you break into their homesystems and they don't have anything, fin. Although in this mod unlike any other mod you could possibly come back... launch a few orbital fighters or build a starbase (I can build a base with > 1k armor points and 10 nukes on it with first turn tech so later bases could be awesome).

I'll still probably get rid of religious... it's costing me nearly 2k, and with a bit of moving points around I can get +25% to orbital shipyards and that +25% less supply usage... gogogo multibeam frigates!

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-03-05 03:58pm

brianeyci wrote:The 50k phased shield points... wow, I wonder if ANYTHING can get through that short of 50 ships with planetary napalms. And meanwhile, the planet has weapons platforms shooting at you blowing your ships up...

I got lazy in one of my one player games, set it not to create any other empires besides neutrals. As a result my empire's filthy rich. When I have time I'll screw around with attacking neutrals' home worlds, see if there's any practical way of conquering or glassing a home world without a massive armada or a WMD. I don't really expect to find anything, though.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-03-05 04:03pm

Oh about neutrals and computer empires. I don't think we should have neutrals at all or computer empires. What was annoying in the ST game was the neutrals cutting off my expansion. If someone's going to cut of my expansion, it'd better be a human and skirmishes with human players rather than neutrals.

Maybe "smart bombs" would work, destroying the homeworld facilities, if smart bomb damage skips shields.

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-03-05 04:10pm

I totally agree with no AI empires. Neutrals I don't really care about either way. AI empires in Adamant tend to be incredibly stupid and barely expand when set on easy, but are extremely aggresive when on medium or hard in my experience. There's simply no happy medium; truly Adamant was created with multiplayer games in mind only.

I'll give smart bombs a try, but I'm not on spring break until next week, so my time to experiment will be limited till then. I'll have some results long, long before any of us are pondering an invasion of an enemy home world, though.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-03-05 04:13pm

Well if they're going to fight to the death, might as well kill them all.

Radiation bombs should work too. As long as the world doesn't have planetary shields (only homeworlds should have that anyway) you can bring in a small fleet of 20 ships with radiation bombs, exterminate the planet and next turn drop troops and transfer your own population onto it.

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-03-05 04:21pm

The problem with the plague bomb is that plagues happen relatively often in Adamant to normal and magical races and they'd have a much easier time of dealing with it as a result. When I played as a magical race, I must've had one med ship for every three or four systems I had. Maybe more. When I played as a normal race, I had some medical facility or another in practically every system to stop outbreaks as soon as they started. You could probably catch an organic race less prepared, but they have tech to combat plagues that they could get working pretty quickly as well.

Radiation bombs should work, though, just not on home planets.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-03-05 09:53pm

Oh yeah, I withdrew and rejoined so I could put my Traits in my cultural description.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-03-05 09:59pm

Captain Booyah needs to submit his empire. We've been waitin'!

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-03-05 11:38pm

Rejoined, it was a really hard choice to ditch religious but in the end Kiith Somtaaw are secular anyway (at least, my Somtaaw are). And the 25% supply bonus goes along nicely with my overall strategy of landrush, and the +25% to orbital shipyards is just icing on the cake.

We'll see if I can make up for my lower research and production, I hope so.

Brian

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-03-05 11:45pm

Nephtys wrote:Captain Booyah needs to submit his empire. We've been waitin'!

And Kojiro needs to finish his shipset.

A fact I wouldn't have to remind everyone of if Kojiro had just JOINED THE FUCKING GAME like I told him to.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-03-05 11:54pm

Game joined. I guess I'll spend what time I have this afternoon finishing it off.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-03-06 12:47am

Well, PaintShop just decided to crash and wipe a whole load of my work. About 12 more ships to do now. Should be done soon.

Post by **Dalton** » 2006-03-06 01:52am

Are warp points supposed to look like B5 jump gates?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-03-06 02:18am

Dalton wrote:Are warp points supposed to look like B5 jump gates?

They all use the same imagemod pack, so it's just coincidence... warp points look randomly...

Brian

Post by **Dalton** » 2006-03-06 02:39am

brianeyci wrote:
Dalton wrote:Are warp points supposed to look like B5 jump gates?
They all use the same imagemod pack, so it's just coincidence... warp points look randomly...

Oh, OK.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-03-06 07:12am

You know how I said Kojiro is making his own shipset?

I thought he was taking images off the net, sizing them appropriately, and compiling them.

Oh, no.

He's way too Kojiro for that.

He's creating them. By hand. In a pixel editor.

CaptBooyah · Post by **CaptBooyah** » 2006-03-06 09:16am

Looking forward to playing with everyone in my first game.. Dont mind the nub who will undoubtably build countless ships with no movement

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-03-06 09:20am

I strongly suggest you play a few dozen turns to get your feet wet before playing, and read up on the Min/Max guide link I posted earlier before creating your race. Especially look up the component files in component.txt and map out a basic tech research tree.

Playing is fun, but playing and winning is funner. Lol. And turns are every two or three days, so there's plenty of time to get good.

In the original space empires thread in the first few pages there's info that can help beginners.

Brian

CaptBooyah · Post by **CaptBooyah** » 2006-03-06 09:30am

brianeyci wrote:I strongly suggest you play a few dozen turns to get your feet wet before playing, and read up on the Min/Max guide link I posted earlier before creating your race. Especially look up the component files in component.txt and map out a basic tech research tree.

Playing is fun, but playing and winning is funner. Lol. And turns are every two or three days, so there's plenty of time to get good.

In the original space empires thread in the first few pages there's info that can help beginners.

Brian

Played a few dozen of the original.. then switched to adamant only to be confronted by "oi put shitloads of engines on your ships or they dont go far.." =]

I read the minmax guide and think I made a pretty stable empire based around mineral/ship production with a lot of space combat buffs.

I didnt sign up to win.. I signed up to be a big pain in the ass to at someone for at least a dozen turns before I go down in a blaze of glory. =D

Just watch out if you run into a vessel called the 'Arcadia'.. it wont be a straight forward battle