Modding Space Empire IV Gold

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 04:57pm

Obviously, I think the same way as you Tux, it was mostly an in-joke about the banning lol. Covenant and Nephtys are friends but they don't really trust each other that much you see. One considers the other evil incarnate, I'll leave you to guess.

I consider anything fair, including the dirtiest tricks. But that's just me, because I've played on PBW before and had said tricks used against me and I learned them so I learned to go with the flow or I'd never get fun from the game.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-21 04:57pm

As for the shields a lot less effective, well for 5 kT you can put on 12 shields, before you could put on 20 armor. So instead of two pulse... it takes one. Wow, big difference. Honestly, PD guns should be able to kill 3 fighters a turn. But like I said I don't care, ramming probably takes care of them and if it doesn't I don't want to gip people out of research points. Like you Nephtys lol.

Brian

Well, not quite. You're forgetting the fact that shields have 5 kT damage resistance just by virtue of being a 5 kT component. So it's 17 resistance for shields vs 20 for armor. However, there's the ramming issue, and there are also a lot of weapons that do 2x damage to shields, and none that do 2x damage to armor.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 04:59pm

All weapons that do 2x damage to shields can't hit fighters. It's only pulse and PD guns, and PD guns are shit so exactly the same thing will happen as last time. Compressed Energy and Pulse instead of Quantum and Pulse, and for pure ship killing Compressed Energy and Neutrino.

Too bad we didn't figure a way to make torpedoes competitive. Are the quantums right now quad damage? They might be worth it if they're quad damage, I might be wrong. But even then they're a frill.

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-04-21 05:00pm

Beg? She already explained the entire situation to me. It was this very circumstance--with her domination shattered by the late-arrival of a newly minted Romulan ship-killer design--that made me think the game might be fun to play. You seem to have a bizzare interpertation of our friendship. ;p

Yes, that ships wonky. Everyone has access to shield-and-armor skippers, but not at that refire rate. Clearly, it was an unfair enough advantage as to dumb down the ship design and turn it into a slaughterfest, which isn't the goal of the game or even condusive to the point of the game--which is for everyone to have fun.

And, if I had my way, I'd get rid of warp point attacks, chain attacks, and all minefields. For these, not because they're overpowered, but because I don't think they're any fun.

Frankly, I don't need or want your advice. And I want you to know I find this constant reference to this being my first game as some sign of weakness or incompetance offensive, as I also do your constant half-joking references to attacking me. This may not be your intent, but I do not know you yet, and you are doing this an awful lot. I'm not intimidated, I just think it's stupid. Bluff and posture in-game. Leave the trash talk there.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 05:07pm

Hm oh. Okay, I didn't mean for it to come out that way. Things don't go well over the internet, no body language or tone of voice, so it can sound harsher than it really is.

I actually think you could win. You have a huge territory, practically the entire north-west, and nobody to bother you except the Dominion. So sorry if I came out as too "friendly" I'll leave that for later.

Warp point attacks break the deadlock. Without warp point openers everybody would just mass defenses on warp points and it'd be trench warfare

. Minefields are good for catching small fleets or lone glassers... to be honest I think minefields are overrated, just three or four ships can sweep any minefield. But we used them last game and decimated Trogdor, so meh.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 05:17pm

Hmm if torpedoes could have shot fighters... they'd be awesome. And why not, they're a guided weapon.

Oh well.

Okay enough talk, down to the dirty, I vote yes for limiting 1 armor 1 shield on a fighter.

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-04-21 05:44pm

I'm just asking for some level of respect here. It should be assumed I'm someone of at least passing worth if Neph has been my buddy and Dalton felt alright giving me a SD.N account. I'm not angry or anything, not since you said you didn't mean to be seen that way, but I'm not sure what other way I was supposed to interpert it. Maybe if the jokes were about something other than my immediete, crushing demise. I have no intention of losing anytime soon!

Also, I'm not paranoid. You're the only one I think is planning to attack me! That's hardly paranoia. Maybe I wouldn't even think that if you hadn't spent so much time trying to convince me you're not only capable, but eager to do so. Heh. It's paranoia when you think they're all out to get you, and they aren't. It's not paranoia when you think one guy is out to get you, because he keeps telling you and everyone else on the message board he is.

And as for my kneejerk response, if 20 of my ships get blown away by one vessel because of some mathmatical technicality, I may consider it bad game design, but hopefully we won't be having any situations that extreme. Most of the incredibly powerful ship designs have a relative equal in some other area, and the most incredibly overpowered ones have some other minor defects. I just hope when 5 of my Keldons pulverize 20 enemy vessels without a loss that people don't claim it's just beginner's luck.

I'd vote for 1 armor and between 1 and 3 shields. My concern is mostly that shuttles are immune to 99 percent of the weapons used, so a shuttle with 4 or more shields is basically going to be nothing but a giant pile of shielding that is next to impossible to hit.

I just checked my strategies, and it appears most vessels will ignore fighters until ships are dead anyway, so I'm not real sure what the function of an super-shielded fighter would be besides making it impossible to kill them.

Am I wrong? If there's a legitimate reason for 'em then let's hear it. At the moment, however, it seems silly. It's like painting some ships red and having those ships be impossible to kill because the AI needs to be broken into tiny pieces before it'll effectively engage normal ships and ships that are painted red. Just build ground guns, weapons bases, satellites, and defensive fleets. ;p Aren't those all -better- at killing a fleet anyway?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 05:53pm

Ah well. Different people different code of conduct. Trogdor and Dalton were Romulans and Klingons and trash talked each other all the time. I assumed since I was Bajoran and you were Cardassian... well. That's all there was to it. Nothing really. If it offended you, I apologize.

As for people saying it's beginners luck... nobody'll be a sore loser. Definitely not me, I've had my share of lost SE:IV games. Besides you should have seen Tuxedo... he accused me of luck, well not beginners luck but luck, after I shot my mouth off about how I won lol. And he was right, we were lucky, one star system exactly 300 LY away (maximum range for opener), we attacked exactly when they were weakest, we closed warp points exactly when it mattered. So you might really win by luck who knows

. If you don't want to take advantage of luck, your choice, but I'm taking every lucky penny and knocking on wood 'til this game's done.

The only legitimate reason is this. The game is what, 30 turns in? By now people have invested in either fighters or a fleet. Millions of research points can go in fighters. If someone has done this and built no ships, then they're fucked up the arse because they didn't research ship hulls and are gonna be behind the whole game. But if nobody's in that situation then I don't care if it's restricted. If somebody is... well it seems kind of unfair.

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-04-21 06:06pm

Ahh, I see. Bajoran/Cardassian friction eh? Well, in that case, it's all forgiven. This isn't an RP game so aside from my IC messages I occasionally send in-game, I never bothered figuring character-based racial tension into PM's and board-based conversations. You were the one who told me you're not RPing at all when I sent you my glorious introduction! If you want to harass Cardassians, by all means, I enjoy some RP'd spice. But I'm a dude at a computer, not some crazy Cardie.

If you had called me a spoonhead instead of incompetant, I wouldn't have gotten all huffy.

Who would abandon ship hulls for fighters though? That seems so totally backwards. Didn't you all know she nerfed fighters before this started? I have a feeling nobody did that. If anyone did, and they believe their fighters are worth their weight in ship hulls, then I guess I won't make too much of a deal out of it. I think it'll make the game annoying and slow, since passive defenses and luck are my two least favorite elements in any game. Ask Gul Tubain about Kotra if you want.

But this isn't exactly about what I find fun, especially when it comes to everyone else defenses. Heh.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 06:11pm

Well I don't know if anybody saw it. Tux saw it, others might have too. If nobody went that route, maybe banning is okay for now. But if somebody did go 100% fighter then... well, you tell him in the middle he can't do it because I don't want to. You're basically telling him he's behind 20 turns or he's lost.

At least the Founders aren't going fighters, at least I don't think he is. So you have nothing to worry about for now, at least until Kira gets there

.

I see a couple possibilities. The Vulcans have barely any warships, actually I don't think they have any warships at all. The Son'a I haven't seen so maybe they've decided to go all colonization and use fighters. And of course Nephtys has 2k units and could be going fighters. So people might be fucked if there's a ban/limit on shields. But who knows.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-21 06:24pm

Not doing fighters, like I said. It's because they have no force projection. With the Federation, I didn't need force projection because the Federation are nice guys who don't invade pre-emptively and I had a nice little territory staked out with plenty of good planets, so I didn't really need to grab land.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 06:28pm

Yeah one thing about this galaxy is there isn't a lot of good planets... dense paradise really made it a long game but I doubt it'll go that long this time... everybody should be at everybody's throats in twenty or thirty turns, and stalemate could happen with the fighters but I doubt it.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-21 06:37pm

The thing about fighters is that you can't build them quickly (2 or 3 per planet per turn). The strategy only works with shitloads of planets and dozens of turns with no invasion. Also, there's a pretty big resource hit when every single planet that would have been idle is instead building fighters, enough to maintain a larger fleet, for sure. Also, it takes a lot of carriers to move around large numbers of them, so if you have thousands of fighters, you're only going to have a few hundred at a given warp point, unless you're willing to sacrifice yet more attack ships to have all those carriers. Then again, there's an advantage there in that when they blow through your border, they have to fight hundreds of fighters all over again for every system of yours they enter. Masses of fighters is a good strategy, but it's a specialized strategy for specialized circumstances. 20 or 50 fighters won't do shit, so it's really all or nothing on fighters. I'm going with nothing this game.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 06:44pm

Yeah, and to be honest the fighter strategy really hurt you since when Nephtys blew through you had nothing to attack with, and when Trogdor was losing you had nothing to attack with--well you had some, but I assume you were consolidating, preparing, moving your ships around into Tholian space to attack the east and weren't in a position to attack. When instead if you had gone ships you would have at least as powerful a fleet as I had when I counter attacked Trogdor for the second time, 200+ ships like I had. Well, the economy bust hurt you guys a lot so I don't know whether you could have maintained 200 ships but that's old news let's not get into that.

0 force projection = teh lose even on that map, so on this map you'll be a goner for sure if you go fighters.

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-04-21 06:50pm

I have over 2k units myself, who says I'm not gonna have to retrofit a few? ;p

I certainly didn't seek out any sort of impenetrable wall of fighters though. But I'd happily let whoever is making them continue to make them IF they are less ridiculous than last time. If all they require is some specialized tactics then that's hardly an exploit, that's just good gameplay. If they cause what you guys described as an immovable force that takes an insane armada to defeat it, then what it's doing is making defense MORE favorable than offense, and when you do that you remove any advantage to doing anything other than walling in, teching up, and bursting out when you're at the top.

And that's hardly very fun! The power of a passive defense to repel an enemy should never exceed the power of an active offense to circumvent it. I don't care if your ships are invincible if they can't catch me, hurt me, or stop me from invading planets. But when you're allowed to put giant impenetrable fields of stuff around things and use that as a means to pull a Chenjesu sneak attack out of your hat, then all that does is penalize everyone else for actually playing the game.

This is why people who just sit and bulk up without ever helping their neighbors or getting involved tend to make games turn out poorly. Starcraft is an example. Let one Terran alone while the Zerg and the Protoss battle it out heroically and later, when he has 12 battlecruisers and is ready to move, he'll sweep in and crush someone when they're weakest. However, if you remove the security of a passive defense then that buildup could be interrupted by a quick blitzkreig to mess with him.

I'm just concerned that we'll all be having fun until someone who hasn't been involved for 50 turns (and had never been attacked due to an insurmountable defense) shows up with 1000 ships that have never been in combat and ruins it for the rest of us. I like to encourage a level of instability, much like you do, we just do it different ways.

I prefer managable strategy, since then it makes boldness, rather than luck or deception, the key ingredient. I'd rather have people battling each other for a sector they both need to control than to have wormhole openers punch a route open into the back-end of someone's space. Where's the glory? Where's the honor? Where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!

I'm not big into regicide. I feel the Romans totally wimped out when they ganked Carthage instead of fighting Hannibal himself. It was a desperation move, and they know it, those wussies. While I won't be obtuse and say we shouldn't use wormhole devices, I can't say I find them really very much fun. I don't like openers OR closers. They do add strategy, sure, but they also make it so difficult to formulate any rational defense plan. Thus, I tend to believe they depend more on luck than skill, and I hate luck.

I would, however, feel they're okay if the wormhole that was opened was unstable for like 3 turns, so that people could scramble defenses rather than it instantly tearing open and ships pour out. But that's just my personal opinion, has nothing to do with this game. I feel that the randomness of terrain and placement is all the element of luck I really require, since it's a single variable that you can plan around and try to use to your advantage. As I told Neph before, I believe, the battle of Thermpolie would have been a lot less interesting if the Spartans had been bypassed with an road creation device.

That or, here's an idea... we could make the mod (our mod) start it off so that one of the standard things you build in a sector is a gravity shield, and they're cheap and easy to make. But we also make wormhole openers and closers common. So if people want to lower their shield to strike out, they can, but then it opens them up to someone else dropping THEIR shield to attack them. This would allow people who want to play around with space to do so by violating their double-blind system...

...aahh, we could also make it so every sector is unconnected to wormholes! So you'd need to build your own gate network to go anywhere. Interesting...

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 06:57pm

No good. Smart players will be able to build a gravity shield and keep it in queue, and as soon as they open a wormhole they unqueue the gravity shield. Stellar manipulation happens before anything so the wormhole will open, the ships will go through, the next turn the guy closes the wormhole, and the gravity shield is completed at the same time. The timing might even favor the #1 player (you see the guy's picture at the front, whoever joined the game first you see the most on the politics screen lol).

As for Starcraft. That is only for maximum resource games, since there's no way in hell you build 12 battlecruisers with the starting mineral patch, there's just not enough vespene gas. That's what Tuxedo is saying, in this map there aren't enough good planets to turtle up and you have to be aggressive and expand or you'll get nowhere. If someone turtles up to one or two systems, he'll be in for a shock when others come in with 3x the ships and guns and pulverize him.

Oh can't retrofit units.

Ramming should kill them. I'll do sims later.

<edit>As for instantly pouring ships out... I hear you, it's possible to go through the warp point the same turn it's created with a trick so they don't have a chance to block it. Oh well, I don't know what to do about it.</edit>

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-04-21 07:26pm

Doesn't matter too much--this game is being played by these rules, and they're all pretty fair. We all understand how shields and holes and closers work, and I assume that most people won't be using them for some time to come. There's still too much at risk from our neighbors one or two systems away to seriously consider the tactical value of leaping all of our ships to a far away land.

Neph had a good idea for the mod a ways back, make all the shipclasses rated as 'fighters' and carried via jumpships, but have the same KT loads as they do now. So to transfer anything to a new system you'd need to have it ferried via a big ship. That might be interesting for a low tech race's option, but I see it as over-encouraging the "Huge Ultra Mega Fleet" mentality.

Big heroic fleets are super-awesome, but they should be opposed by other big heroic fleets. I'd like it if everyone was more or less equal in terms of counteroffensive potential and the real holes in their armor opened up because of feints and making people redeploy their forces, ala Normandy.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 10:12pm

Warp point closers and openers are pretty brutal, and without them we would have lost last game. We basically won last game because of tricks.

I bet Trogdor's going for them right now with his 2x research points over me. Oh well, it doesn't matter too much to me

.

I like closers and openers because once you get them, the game's over. It breaks deadlocks. If you don't have them, there's no way to really break through the first shot advantage of warp points with equal numbers. It's like the coming of the tank after trench warfare--encourages maneuver warfare all over again.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 10:36pm

Anyway it looks like you're outta luck Covenant for the shield banning, looks like nobody really cares enough about the shield stacking issue. Who knows maybe nobody's using it.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-21 11:01pm

I'm totally fine for say... a 3 shield limit? It'd prevent mass death of fighters from pulse guns (since those chew through the anyway) while still making them vulnerable.

Anyway. I'll churn the turn now.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 11:04pm

To be honest if we're gonna do it better not do it half-assed. Three shields is still gonna make PD guns useless since my maximum racial is 24 damage and 3 x 12 is 36.

If we're going to limit, one per customer. Or else PD guns are useless anyway, and the whole point of limit was to make PD guns useful.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-04-21 11:09pm

Wouldn't pulse still be better, since although a PD Gun can take out a fighter, pulse can take out 3? Either way. Eh.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-21 11:11pm

Yeah but at least PD guns won't be totally useless, it'll be a tradeoff between first shot or killing 3x as many instead of killing half of one or killing 3x as many. I'd still use PD guns--just to power through warp points.

Plus pulse has that nasty -10% to hit. When stacked with PD bonus that's like -50% to hit. It'll matter, since I doubt anybody's getting CS V and Sensor Array III this game and fighters get a huge bonus.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-22 12:42am

I tried ramming and it's total shit, mostly because the attacker takes a lot more damage. I can kill only 10 fighters with a ram and my ship gets obliterated. I'm not going to waste a 10k+ ship to kill 10 fighters that cost 300 bucks each.

So I vote for shield ban, 1 shield on fighters, and grandfather clause for people who already have 1+ shield fighters.

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-04-22 06:42am

Hehe, how quickly you come around to my side once you see the truth!

Yeah, what you said it basically what I expected. Ramming is a last-ditch option and although I still consider you rather clever for thinking of it, it's sure not a GOOD solution. Given how impossible it is to hit anything small in this mod, it's probably best we attempt to bring some sort of reasonable limits into play. Otherwise, I fear it'll damage the fun value, and that's much more critical than someone's right to have a gigantic fighter armada.

The problem as I see it is that the weapons usable against fighters are so few and far between that they're almost nonsensically pointless to put on a ship. Mini-torps are pretty awful--short range, low reload... they're so bad, and they're 20kt's!! Same with PD's, which are still GOD AWFUL in every way.

If you want some REAL screening weapons you gotta look at the default ones. Lasers with the Laser mount and the standard SEIV energy pellet gun both target fighters, and the pellet gun get's a +10% to hit with a damage of about 40 every turn. That's a twenty-percent bonus over Pulse guns, making them nearly as good as PD's in terms of accuracy, but with a much better firepower rating and a better ROF than Minitorps. The real use of PD's is to knock down seekers, which are nearly never used in this mod, so pulses work for a high-damage fighter killer and those 'Phase Energy Cannon' weapons work pretty well for a high-accuracy moderate-damage alternative.

Note, this isn't to encourage people to make super-fighters full of shields, just because there's a counter. I still don't know if they have any actual combat merit, or if they're just a strategy to exploit the game's mechanics into making it impossible for someone to attack you. Brian, try building a screening ship designed especially for killing fighters using only a vast array of those 'Phased Energy' guns. The normal ones we all get, the non-racial ones. 40 damage at PB, range of 4 max. Not the BEST option for cutting through shields, but tell me if you like the improved accuracy coupled with the fairly impressive damage (for anti-fighter, that is!)