Modding Space Empire IV Gold

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 12:58am

Yeah. I set my strategies to 'not target planet'. But apparently the Vorlon ships in my fleet were set to a different strategy that Kojiro probably set as the class default. That hurts.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-04-04 01:18am

Sorry about that. The Mega Lightning Cannons, my main weapons, can't target planets at all. I set the zealots to target planets because they were the only ones that could.

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-04-04 01:48am

My computer skills suck. THose images were a lot bigger in paintshop.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-04-04 01:49am

It's all good, it gets the point across. I was halfway through a post about how the Dilgar hadn't accepted our peace offering...they you go and do that.

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-04-04 01:49am

If you watch the replay your fighters are also blowing holes in the planet

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-04-04 02:15am

I do enjoy the idea of Gupy acting as a proxy for wild card NPC races though. I thnk it might add a bit of spice to the game and he has the background to pull it off nicely

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 12:48pm

What's WITH This mod? I ordered all my ships to 'hold all fire'. I set every strategy to 'not target planet' and moved my ships away even. Hell, my troops SECURED the planet, and it's for some reason, now gone.

*grumble*

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-04 12:51pm

Fleet strategy. Also your ships have got to be set to break formation to follow their individual strategies because the fleet strategies usually fail and fall back to SE:IV defaults.

Brian

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-04-04 12:52pm

See now this is good stuff to know.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 12:56pm

brianeyci wrote:Fleet strategy. Also your ships have got to be set to break formation to follow their individual strategies because the fleet strategies usually fail and fall back to SE:IV defaults.

Brian

You're kidding. I set my fleets to a 'no fire' strategy, and my ships are already set to break formation.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-04 01:04pm

Nephtys wrote:You're kidding. I set my fleets to a 'no fire' strategy, and my ships are already set to break formation.

If you post screens of your strategies maybe... I think there's a checkbox "do not use type priorities" or something.

Did your Minbari ships fire on the planet or only the Vorlon ships?

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 01:17pm

brianeyci wrote:
Nephtys wrote:You're kidding. I set my fleets to a 'no fire' strategy, and my ships are already set to break formation.
If you post screens of your strategies maybe... I think there's a checkbox "do not use type priorities" or something.

Did your Minbari ships fire on the planet or only the Vorlon ships?

Brian

Both the fighters and vorlons.

ICly of course, that'd never happen. But the strategies are bugging me.

As for strats, all strats are set to default settings except 'do not fire on planets' is checked.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 01:21pm

Oh please, Tobor. Game mechanics does not dictate RP. The initial attack was an accident to begin with, explained away quite nicely in what would fit. This is the same, as I deliberately ordered my ships to move away just in case it happened again, and set all my strategies to not fire.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-04-04 01:22pm

Tobor wrote:Rai'Jal was momentarily interupted as an aide aprehensively approached him.

Whispering he pressed the aide

"What is it?"

"..."

"WHAT. THe planet has been completely sacked.."

He turned to the assmbled council.

Tobor, Vir said this twice. Don't you read everybody's RPing?

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 01:24pm

Missed that. In the last hour, several posts were made. I just checked my turn and saw what happened. Yuck.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-04-04 01:29pm

Poor Vir. Nobody pays attention to him because the Centauri aren't a threat to anyone.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-04 01:30pm

Nephtys wrote:Both the fighters and vorlons.

ICly of course, that'd never happen. But the strategies are bugging me.

As for strats, all strats are set to default settings except 'do not fire on planets' is checked.

Ah fighters are a pain in the ass. They're set by default to "fighter attack" in some mods instead of optimal or point blank... that might explain it. You have to alter the strategy of the fighter under the unit screen specifically instead of the ship carrying the fighter or the fleet. But I'm sure you already knew that and did that and it just fucked up

.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 01:32pm

Trogdor wrote:Poor Vir. Nobody pays attention to him because the Centauri aren't a threat to anyone.

He's VIR. All he can do is that little wave for heads on stakes. ;P

Edit: Can't this be retconned? Since this is utterly ludicrous to use unreliable game mechanics for things that have to be actions.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-04 02:20pm

How far does the reconn go. What about the last turn, and what about when fleets start out point blank getting ambushed? And what about accidents. It opens up a whole can of worms.

You could just accuse them of lying like Marxis does, or tell lies yourself like Marxis. Or say it was only the Vorlon ships that shot up the planet that went crazy

.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 02:24pm

I'm saying this turn with the next bombardment. That's absolutely insane either way to be IC, or even an accident. Could call it the toxic fumes from the extinction-level event taking people out before they could be rescued in number, or the requirement of a new colony ship to clean up the air.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-04 02:31pm

Obviously you're using Microsoft and there's a virus, and you need to order your ships to shoot each other or self destruct before they kill more innocent people!

.

Ah who knows, whatever happens I'm having fun watching you kill one another

.

<edit>Besides, all you need to do is change your password in the game (not in PBW) and you'll be the only one to view those battles... and then you can say anything you want without the pesky Dilgar posting screenshots as evidence

</edit>

Brian

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-04-04 09:39pm

except that both sides of the conflict get the replays.

As to game mechanics not dictating rp. I call shenanigans. RP should follow game state not the other way around. Because after all the game is driving this not the RP, otherwise as kojiro is fond of saying we may as well just write a script.

Your explanation was completely incompatible with the state of play, especially since i'd scrapped all the space stations orbitting that planet. As such the onus was on you to either come up with something plausible like rogue vorlon ships or just take it on the chin that your boys fucked up.

I feel i can say this of course because every planet i've intended to capture this game ended up captured and not a glassy stain.

Edit:

Hey it may even be possible that you just weren't expecting the ground combat to get so drawn out by the 4 thousand troopers i had there and consequently when the combat revertd to space time your ships just kept blasting. Trying to weed out the defensive troops from the civilian populace and the overzealous vorlon ships just didn't care.
I mean that is in keeping with their charactor, it mirrors the reality of game play and gets the Minbari off the hook.

Or

Rather than space stations you might try saying that excessive dog fighting from all the fighters involved caused massive damage to the civilian populace. Your fighters target planets so this is also plausible and there was a bunch of defensive fighters as well. Maybe not 4 billion plausible but a start.

I just feel the satelite explanation was weak because firstly they were none and secondly its ridiculous to think that they would be so close to the planet as to get caught in that kind of gravity well. Lastly of course if there were two hundred of the things the amount of damage might be plausible but i only ever had ten on that planet. The other thirty were scrapped the turn i captured it because they were so awful.

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-04-04 09:42pm

Trogdor wrote:
Tobor wrote:Rai'Jal was momentarily interupted as an aide aprehensively approached him.

Whispering he pressed the aide

"What is it?"

"..."

"WHAT. THe planet has been completely sacked.."

He turned to the assmbled council.
Tobor, Vir said this twice. Don't you read everybody's RPing?

I do read it all trogs but in this case our posts both went live in the same minute. THe next post i made was meant to be slightly back dated such that the sequence of events is like rai'jal said his bit. Vir says his bit and at that point both aides rush in, then rai'jal revises his bit. Perhaps i should have made that clearer.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-04-04 09:45pm

No big. I guess the RP thread was moving faster than I had realized.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-04 09:57pm

Tobor wrote:except that both sides of the conflict get the replays.

As to game mechanics not dictating rp. I call shenanigans. RP should follow game state not the other way around. Because after all the game is driving this not the RP, otherwise as kojiro is fond of saying we may as well just write a script.

Your explanation was completely incompatible with the state of play, especially since i'd scrapped all the space stations orbitting that planet. As such the onus was on you to either come up with something plausible like rogue vorlon ships or just take it on the chin that your boys fucked up.

I feel i can say this of course because every planet i've intended to capture this game ended up captured and not a glassy stain.

Your weapons also can't target surface targets. Weapons that can, tend to screw up and fire.

Anyway, you don't just 'scrap' dozens of orbital assets. these are huge stations, and the material doesn't vanish. They remain in space, and that's my reasoning. Since hell, I took the care to assign orders to NOT fire. I refitted my fleet and removed my bombs so I would NOT drop them. Troops even landed...

It doesn't even make sense to say it's anything but a game bug.