Modding Space Empire IV Gold

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-04-12 11:23pm

Neutrals can't trade with each other. They never encounter each other unless a player gives them the comm channels. Even then, I've never seen a neutral trade planets.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-04-12 11:41pm

Muhoohahahahahahah!

The Shadows are responsible for that planet being in Hurr hands. Shortly after I took it as a forward base of operations, an immense (for the time) Vorlon fleet arrived and started obliterating the populace.

To save them, I realised I would have to give the planet away to someone who wasn't at war with the Vorlons.

The obvious thing would have been to give it back to the Grome, but I thought it would be much more interesting to have two Neutrals occupying the same system. So I gave it to my buddy Shubnak's Hurr.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-04-13 04:34am

brianeyci wrote:Well first it's hard to tell whether the bug's really a bug. Maybe they wanted baseships to be that fast to escort planet killers, who knows. It's a stretch but that's the problem when you get into author's intent, anybody can claim anything.

Don't be retarded. Check the shipsets and numbers of all three (ancient, nomad and standard) and look at the speed limit curve. If you can do that and tell me you still think it's anything but a bug then you're being retarded.

That speed is twice the otherwise restricted speed. If the other ships in the set were all faster you might have a case but they're not. They follow the same pattern with a massive speed spike at the bugged class then back down to be in line with the others.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-04-13 05:57am

I just ran the numbers myself.

The progression is based on mass.

Code: Select all

Hull                      Mass       Engines/Move Derived Engine Thrust
Battleship                 800kT     16           (E/M=M/50)  (E= 50)
Dreadnought               1000kT     20           (E/M=M/50)  (E= 50)
Super Dreadnought         1250kT     25           (E/M=M/50)  (E= 50)
Baseship                  1500kT     10           (E/M=M/150) (E=150)
Heavy Baseship            2000kT     20           (E/M=M/100) (E=100)
Planet Killer             5000kT     50           (E/M=M/100) (E=100)
Stellar Manipulator Barge 4000kT     80           (E/M=M/50)  (E= 50)

Note that in the space of 250kT, the engine thrust triples, drops down to double, and then eventually reverts to normal.

It looks to me like someone thought "Noone will use the large ships, they're too slow" and just took an axe to the Normal ship sizes, without bothering to do the same to the other ship trees.

For comparison, the Ancients and Nomads have E=50 for all, except the Planet Killers which are E=100.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-13 09:33am

Well whoever thought "noone will use the larger ships they're too slow" wasn't thinking. Because of the way they did the mounts, you'd be crazy not to use a bigger ship. A bigger ship by default uses less of its percentage on control components and things like ECM, combat sensors. Having more engines is supposed to balance that out a little but it rarely does. Throw in the mounts and it's a no brainer to use bigger ships, not to mention advanced armor (with bigger ships you can put in more alternates and soak more damage, I'm up to 170 soak on my heavy baseship but if I go up to planetkiller I can get around 600-700 soak making myself immune to most YR weapons).

The only exception being cost and the smaller ships. Light cruiser is a good swarm ship since you get large mount with light cruiser. The next is battlecruiser since you get large mount. After that super dreadnaught since you get massive mount, and supers don't get a -30% penalty. Beyond that I think it might be good to go all the way up to planet killer if you're not worried about speed, since you can put in a lot of alternate armor for really cheap, or baseship if you are.

<edit>I took a closer look and since I can't get up to 14 move points with my planet killer, I don't think I'll be making them after all. It's too bad starbases don't go to 10k kT, since they should be bigger than planet killers.</edit>

<edit>I looked really close and it looks like if you don't mind a little loss in mobility, heavy baseship is the sweet spot. I can get around 14 move points with a heavy baseship and 170 damage soak. I could get 24 move points with a baseship and maybe around 80 damage soak. With planet killer I can get 7 move points and 600 damage soak. If you want a permanently static defense you could go planet killer, or if you're not worried about half speed.</edit>

So if baseships move 24, heavy baseships move around 14, and planet killers move 7, I don't see a problem with that. There's a jump from super dreadnaught to baseship, but that could be intentional.

The way I see it we're lucky Tuxedo isn't using heavy baseship. With enough advanced armors he could sacrifice a little mobility and make a monster. 200 damage soak, 11k hit points and 10k damage every 3 turns.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-13 02:34pm

If you look at the progression, heavy baseship is also bugged, just not as heavily. The engines per move progression from SD, BS, HBS, PK goes 25, 10, 20, 50. For the Ancient versions it goes 25, 30, 40, 50, a much more reasonable progression, and probably what the author intended for all ships. So refusing to use baseships and using heavy baseships instead doesn't necessarily follow, since you're still getting double the movement that you should.

Anyway, it is what it is, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it now, short of banning those ship sizes, something that's not very feasible at this point.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-13 03:00pm

Ancients already have weapons that do 1k damage with 1 turn reload.

And this isn't a competitive game. If it was I'd be so much more for banning or just trashing the game for all its problems, as Dalton said "half-assed mod ever", but I don't really give a shit about game mechanics anymore.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-13 03:29pm

The big advantage to the Ancient weapons, in my mind, is the range. They have ranges of 16-19, and unlike torpedoes in the ST mod, they can actually hit at that range. That's why it may actually be good that the younger races can field faster ships. Otherwise they'd get eaten alive at max range.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-13 03:33pm

Range is important and would be important in a normal game.

But I expect in this game where everybody can close off warp points and make only one point of entry into their territory, damage is more important. The EA, Minbari, Vorlons, Shadows and you Tux can close off enough warp points so there's only one way in and no way to bypass it. Normal strategy says to power through a warp point you need 2x the number of ships.

So I expect whoever can mass a thousand ships with high damage weapons will be set for good. I don't see a problem with that since this is an RP game, but if this was a competitive game the 50 light year jump gate limit would be really troubling.

<edit>I think the Dilgar have already done this, there's only one way into their worlds. Tobor, you might want to force those Vorlon vessels out of your territory. If you let Kojiro share a warp point with you, you won't get the first shot when somebody comes through to attack you

.</edit>

Brian

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-04-13 11:42pm

Anyway, it is what it is, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it now, short of banning those ship sizes, something that's not very feasible at this point.

A simple agreement not to continue to exploit a know bug is all I'm asking for. Use the ship size by all means just limit it's movement to 12. It's not like you have to make them that speed. Does that seem so hard or unfair?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-13 11:56pm

What about heavy baseships? I can make them go 14. And smaller ships... I can make them go 37.

I don't think we need an agreement. Speed is not that big of an advantage, it doesn't matter if you get there fast and you can't do enough damage.

All you'd end up doing is making Tux slap on another 10 gravitic cutters

.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-14 12:09am

Set it back to fully automatic turns and changed the turn timer back to 72 hours. With 3 games at once, 48 hour turns was a bit too much, I think. Besides, it violated the whole "1 turn per day" idea.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-14 12:18am

I'm seriously considering going AWOL for the next three weeks for my examinations. No April's Fool's joke. I find it hard to concentrate on more than a few things at once, and usually around exam time I just toss my computer in a corner.

I'll let everybody know what I decide by Monday.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-14 12:37am

I would certainly be in favor of going on hiatus for a few weeks if need be. I have a lot on the plate myself.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-04-14 12:41am

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Set it back to fully automatic turns and changed the turn timer back to 72 hours. With 3 games at once, 48 hour turns was a bit too much, I think. Besides, it violated the whole "1 turn per day" idea.

One turn per day per game, with an additional day for insurance. We all chose whether or not we thought we could handle additional games.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-14 12:43am

Okay this is fine. As for a few weeks off--I don't think it's fair to everybody else, so I'll play my turns on time and ready. Probably. Depends on what I think on the weekend.

I'll just have to be quick about them... but that's no problem I can take turns in 5 minutes

.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-14 08:12pm

GuppyShark wrote:
Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Set it back to fully automatic turns and changed the turn timer back to 72 hours. With 3 games at once, 48 hour turns was a bit too much, I think. Besides, it violated the whole "1 turn per day" idea.
One turn per day per game, with an additional day for insurance. We all chose whether or not we thought we could handle additional games.

The original idea was one turn per day period, not per game. Obviously we've been doing more than that but now that we're getting past the preliminary turns in the Adamant and NST games, it was getting to be too much at 48 hrs for 3 games.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-15 12:27am

Give me a few minutes to run my B5 Adamant and ST turns, have to shut off a hundred shipyards from emergency build.

Brian

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-04-17 01:27am

Well it was fun. Mostly.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-17 01:53am

That's because his weapon's on a massive mount

. His weapons are cheaper, but yours still do more damage and on an alpha strike I'd take more damage over cheaper.

You could put these on massive mounts,

It's a little more expensive and less range but nearly twice the damage of his.

Let's not forget the whopper.

Really expensive but IMO worth it because it does so much damage... especially on a planet killer or heavy baseship.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-17 02:10am

It's also twice the mass.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-17 02:15am

Nephtys wrote:It's also twice the mass.

Oh, well, if we want to talk mass...

Yeah Tux can put two for Kojiro's one but one extra weapon means more chances to miss that damage and he doesn't have ancient tricks like scanner jammers. Plus he doesn't have a 3k damage gun

.

Tux is hardly "broken" anymore than Minbari. I would say ancient are clearly superior to Tux, he's only got his gravitic cutters while ancients have scanner jammers to take advantage of their range, superior homeworld facilities and planet cracker lol.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-17 02:42am

Behold.

Half the cost of Tux's weapon, and slightly larger and extra range.

The ancient's biggest advantage is their sensors and ECM. Fight at maximum combat range, this vessel can clearly defeat any other YR ship even the Brakiri. So I'm not worried

.

Let's not forget the Ancients' 75% bonus to maintainence. Only raiders have that and I take a -5% to hit for it and I get nothing except particle cannon VIII

.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-17 03:02am

The 24 move points Guppyshark already calculated not to be a bug. The younger races all have 24 baseship 14 heavy baseship 7 planet killer. So all three ship classes were axed, not just the baseship, and all YR have it. Just the ancients don't have it. So it's not broken.

The Minbari gun is very powerful in a gate defense. No harm showing.

390x10 = 3900 damage, wowzers. And for that cost, who can not want it! You could field six or seven of these for every heavy baseship! Four reload doesn't matter in a warp point defense.

Earthforce has a similar design with its Railgun X.

3096 damage.

Now Tuxedo's ships do not have the +30% to ECM, they do not have a -75% maintainence, and they cost 2x more than your medium lightning cannons. Not only that but I think baseships have a -20% to hit so you're guaranteed to hit him at extreme range while he has to close to point blank.

<edit>Ah, you deleted the post this was supposed to reply to Kojiro. I'm not deleting mine though, no point deleting what I spent time typing. But I hope I made my point that Brakiri aren't broken and Tux just took advantage of his race's strengths... if you ask Nephtys and how she used her Neutron Lasers, Vorlons can do that with their extreme range weapons and take advantage of that too

. Gravatic cutters are powerful but I honestly think you weapons offer more variety and are more powerful. Light discharge gun can be used like this,

2.8k damage, but if you have 1000 of them on a warp point it'd be a good defense

. And if you don't like these you can go up to heavy baseships.
</edit>

<edit 2>
I made the Brakiri's version of the cheap swarm ship. And it's worse, only slightly over 2k damage, costs 9k. So your small ships are better, your big ships are better, nothing more to be said. He's faster, but if he's faster and weaker doesn't make that big a deal since all YR are faster with their baseships and heavy baseships (my heavies go up to 14 now).

Plus you had an extreme advantage in the beginning of the game with your research and mining facilities but let's not get into that

.
</edit 2>

Brian

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-04-17 04:30am

You're missing the important point Brian. That I should be able to beat him when I get first strike is immaterial. Anyone should be able to do that.

The 24 move gives him first strike every time on comparable ships with comparable weapons. My winning engagements are them limited to specific ships (ships that would get annihilated doing anything but) defending jump points or massive numerical superiority. As I said, both of which should be wins for me anyway.

If you really think the 24 move isn't a bug then there's nothing more to be said. Look at the entire list. Look at the top speeds for size. Then tell me that it's not a bug.