Modding Space Empire IV Gold

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 07:18am

Hm.

Maybe make a copy of your folder with the original... er, original modded files. Then make alterations, maybe download the .plr and .gam files and try and execute it in the new mod.

If it works. Not sure, but if it would work, obviously we can't take anything out, only put stuff in.

I don't remember everybody going in on the three shield rule so I'm working on the assumption there's no rule and piling on the pulse... some people might not check the thread.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-05-04 09:40am

If we can hot-patch the B5 mod, we probably shouldn't go overboard, but just fix the niggly bits. By that I mean the jump gates and the Baseship / Heavy Baseship movement.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 09:45am

Actually hot patch 100% works. We did it before (and U235 complained about it heh

).

At least I think it works, who knows until we try.

My suggestion is to try not taking anything out or alter anything already there, but put in a brand new 4000 kT component that costs 100k mins/100k rads/100k orgs that makes a jump gate out to 500 LY that doesn't need any tech requirements. Then we won't get into any kind of ancients/normal races/blah tech tree fuckups.

Then if that works try changing the baseship movement.

Actually maybe it should cost more than 100k/100k/100k since 500 LY basically means you could open right into someone's home system. I wouldn't mind it costing 500k/500k/500k for huge maintainence (only 90k maintainence for 75% maintainence reduction). Actually I wouldn't mind it costing 2mil/2mil/2mil, since a jump gate should be a massive investment in resources and maintainence is reduced by up to 80% with certain components. If you think two million's too much, it's not really, I could save up that much over ten or twenty turns. And the maintainence should be killer, since when the component's destroyed you can repair it and open another jump gate to the middle of someone's territory, a massive strategic advantage.

Brian

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-05-04 09:48am

I have to admit to being a bit leery about a 500 LY jump gate, though. It would dramatically change the gameplay. Perhaps if we limited it to 100-200?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 09:54am

200 LY is still a lot. With 200 LY I could attack everybody but you and the Shadows

. And everybody could attack everybody else except for you and the Shadows... we're all bunched up tight here, the Narns right beside the Centauri right beside me right beside EA right beside the Minbari and pretty close to the Vorlons.

Whatever we do we should make a jump gate creating ship cost so much so someone would have a lot less military if they had one. Two million, since even with two million and an 80% maintainence reduction someone has to pay 100k/100k/100k maintainence a turn, and that's peanuts to EA, Centauri, even the Narn who were giving me 250k a turn awhile ago.

Even more than two million, five million would force it to be a team thing, only two or three governments together could maintain or make a jump gate that cost 5 million. The key to building it would be retrofitting, making a series of retrofit components that're 4000 kT that move up in 1.5 times the cost each time so you'll retrofit them in.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 09:57am

If you start out with a base component of 3000/3000/3000 cost it takes around 20 retrofit components to move up to 5 million cost so it's not that much.

The components could be 0 kT in space so you wouldn't have to worry about ripping a component out.

Brian

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 01:54pm

Shit the warp point closer/opener's dead... this little war's getting expensive.

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-05-04 01:57pm

You've already got a big enough debt that the game is scrapping stuff on you? Ouch.

Dalton, he's desperate to sell! You get can a bunch of ships from him for peanuts!

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 01:58pm

No. Uraniun killed it.

I'm staying afloat with a razor thin margin with resource conversion. And I have tons of mins/rads stocked up, so I don't have to scrap for awhile if I don't want to. Long enough to get mineral miners out.

Look at the starfuries, pretty.

Imagine a hundred ships all launching fighters one at a time... or two hundred. Blockade the whole map

.

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-05-04 02:03pm

Ah, I see. Perhaps if you hadn't opened a warp point and then bragged about how easy it would be to get to Sol in the RP thread it wouldn't have been such a tempting target.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 02:06pm

It gets worse than that I'm afraid. I was hoping to close off warp points secretly and force the EA to break trade with the Minbari, but I didn't have enough reactors on my ship so had to turn it around for retrofitting. And I could have had the ship in position to cut off the Minbari one turn earlier if I didn't open that warp point for no reason.

Wasted maybe five or six turns, by the time I got there Uraniun figured out or noticed.

Brian[/code]

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

Brain, how much does maintance cost for those eighty ships?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 04:09pm

44k times .25 times .25 is around 220 thousand minerals a turn.

The thing is, my ships are unique. They'll always cost 2.5k maintainence for a 2000 kT ship, around 40% cheaper than anything anybody else can make with military ship.

So it looks like in total you're looking at around 500k minerals a turn for fifty turns. Kind of expensive, but Marxis might go down.

Actually I changed my mind. 500k minerals a turn isn't that much at all, even right now with resource conversions I could make it if I didn't have so many damn empty hulls.

Brian

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-05-04 11:17pm

brianeyci wrote:Wasted maybe five or six turns, by the time I got there Uraniun figured out or noticed.

Warp point opens mysteriously between CS and EA space
Mysterious CS ship sighted en route to EA/Minbari border
CS getting uppity lately

WHAT A CHALLENGING PUZZLE

As for killing it, you must have run it into one of the capital worlds, as I don't recall siccing an entire carrier group on you. In fact, I was hoping one of my Yorktown border patrol ships would have been able to get to it first and capture it.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-04 11:23pm

Uraniun235 wrote:
brianeyci wrote:Wasted maybe five or six turns, by the time I got there Uraniun figured out or noticed.

Warp point opens mysteriously between CS and EA space

Mysterious CS ship sighted en route to EA/Minbari border

CS getting uppity lately
WHAT A CHALLENGING PUZZLE

As for killing it, you must have run it into one of the capital worlds, as I don't recall siccing an entire carrier group on you. In fact, I was hoping one of my Yorktown border patrol ships would have been able to get to it first and capture it.

Well I'm not underestimating you again after that little blockading trick. If I attack I'll be using move on each and every single sector to make sure I plow through whatever you have lol.

I ran it into your carrier group in a warp point. I was running through warp points... the damn thing had 28 move points so it should've been in my territory by now but must've run into one of your groups going through a jump gate or blockading it.

Brian

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-05-05 01:04am

It seems the computer has screwed my Adamant turn again. I thought maybe I didn't submit but looking at the log I did. If we could roll back that'd be great otherwise I'm screwed.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-05 01:12am

Was it a massive research project that was scrapped?

Argh, didn't everybody set their empires to "do not make changes in a simultaneous game" under empire options? Oh well.

Doesn't matter to me I haven't done my turn yet

.

Brian

Daltonator · Post by **Daltonator** » 2006-05-05 12:21pm

brianeyci wrote:Marxis smiled as he watched the Centauri Ambassador reading the message from Mollari through the spy cameras he'd installed in their quarters.

LAAAAAAME.

That is cheesy RP. This God's-eye view stuff doesn't mean your character gets to know everything.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-05 12:31pm

Haha well cheesy or not I planned it from the beginning. Remember those orbital habitats I installed and gifted to everyone? They're bugged to shit.

Anyway no harm, Mollari told the Ambassador to tell me anyway and I wouldn't have done it for anything confidential that I wouldn't have found out anyway. This was right before.

Londo shook his head. "I don't dare risk it. I'll call up the ambassador and order him to take the deal."

I wouldn't do it say if your Ambassador was talking to another Ambassador.

It kind of sucks since it sounds like I installed spy cameras in Mollari's quarters, but that wasn't the intent, supposed to be spy cameras in only the Ambassador's quarters (his quarters being on the orbital space station I gifted them). Oh well, bad grammar.

Anyway point taken I won't do it again unless I get permission first

.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-05-06 06:47am

Okay. I got hideously bored yesterday, and cooked up about 75 percent of a working, fully playable mod. The ship basic items are basically done. I just need to alter the prices, fuel use, ground facilities and research system.

But take a look

http://seiv.pbw.cc/Download/filelib/135 ... d+v.01.zip

I modeled it after a game I've grown fond of, and has cute humor. Ship balance is nice, and the stronger weapons will be balanced by maint penalties and rather cruel costs, such as the Particle Vortex Cannon (eat electric death, Alien Scum!)

IF anyone wants to look at this and comment, it'd be grand.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-06 06:12pm

Well I see one small problem right away. Point-Defense guns are 20 kT and do 20 damage when seekers have 80 kT damage resistance and are 50 kT.

There's a PD gun that does 80 damage but I'm not sure how much you need to research it since I just started a max tech game. But even with an 80 damage gun, it's not gonna work unless the 80 damage gun's smaller than 50 kT so you can put more PD guns than missiles and have room for direct fire weapons.

And B5 crashed for some reason.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-05-06 06:21pm

brianeyci wrote:Well I see one small problem right away. Point-Defense guns are 20 kT and do 20 damage when seekers have 80 kT damage resistance and are 50 kT.

There's a PD gun that does 80 damage but I'm not sure how much you need to research it since I just started a max tech game. But even with an 80 damage gun, it's not gonna work unless the 80 damage gun's smaller than 50 kT so you can put more PD guns than missiles and have room for direct fire weapons.

And B5 crashed for some reason.

Brian

Got that already in mind. I'm planning to make a mount that turns some of the normal weapons into PD settings.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-05-07 03:27am

Nephtys wrote:Got that already in mind. I'm planning to make a mount that turns some of the normal weapons into PD settings.

A great idea.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-05-07 10:38am

Not sure what's wrong with the B5 game, but it won't manually execute, either. Perhaps if everyone resubmitted turns?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-05-07 11:27am

How large is the saved game file. You'll have to execute it offline if it gets over a certain size I think... what, when you execute does it freeze in the middle?

Brian