Modding Space Empire IV Gold

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-23 02:32am

Tobor wrote:Hi there. The SEIV site is down to me so i can't submit my turns right now. Will try again in a few hours or so.

-T

Same here.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-06-23 05:04am

brianeyci wrote:
Covenant wrote:Battlecruisers, the hated near-worthless hybrid of WWI, is nonetheless the only decent designation for the last ship, though I was just thinking we could call them escort carriers instead.
Why stick with wet navy names? After all the Omega's a destroyer and it's a capital ship in the EA. Even in modern times the frigate's completely useless and battleships were useless since string and wood Swordfish brought down the Bismarck's rudder.

Brian

Problem is, if you just call it some arbitrary name (Like calling the Omegas a 'destroyer') then you might as well call them just ridiculous things, since it has as much meaning. The value of a wet-navy name, or airforce names if you choose to call your capships 'fighters, fighter-bombers, space-superiority...' and such is that you have a quantifiable metric for determining what a ship does.

IE, no matter what you name it--Star Cruiser, Polaron Fleet Destroyer, Neutronium Juggernaut or whatever... a battleship is a battleship. It doesn't matter if it uses missiles, or guns, or pixies loaded onto catapults. It's about fleet role, not designation. The classes are named based on the judgements of a 3rd party observer. The idea was to make all classes useful throughout the game, to give them understandable names, and give enough wiggle room for lots of strategies. So I think it did really well at that.

If you want to be the EA and have retarded names that mean nothing, feel free to take a battleship hull and create a ship named "Omega Destroyer" if you want. Or just destroyer. But calling a battleship a destroyer no more makes it a destroyer than renaming my frigates to "supercarriers" makes them those either.

See what we were getting at? If I have the smallest shipsize named 'escort' the next named 'hunter/killer' the next named 'warstar' or whatever... that's flavor, but that's not an actual designation. Escorts missions don't require their own specific hull-type. Hunter/killer is a role the ship takes, not a tonnage. Warstar is a name, not a designation. Classes are named based on what role they fulfill. The lesser common big, heavy ships are battleship analogs, regardless of their actual composition, and their escorts will probably be destroyers just by default.

I think it's a mistake when they mistake the name of a ship with it's class. Why do I need Light Destroyers, Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers? Why don't I just make one destroyer class that suits me? And, really, why ever use a smaller one? In adamant to go faster. In most other games, to have it be cheaper? My response was "Well, if you want a smaller, cheaper ship, just don't fill it up." Leave 100kt empty. There's your light destroyer right there.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-06-23 08:47am

Hm I just realized the "Assidian" Empire that you download from PBW doesn't give the right Somtaaw shipsets. So you guys have been seeing something strange for my ships all along huh?

The proper shipset's here. It goes in seiv/adamant 15.00/.

Brian

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-06-23 01:56pm

Gwaaah! Nicer shipset. I think I'm still missing someone's.

I wanna be my zeeeeeeeeeeeeerg.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-06-24 12:31pm

Hm well played thirty or so turns with Neph and Neph's mod on real time client and I have to say for those of you who haven't tried it... well, there's only one way to try out. It's fun

. You pick up tech from planets, there's no research, and patented Nephtys humor all around. Perfect for a real time game.

I only wish there was some way to streamline real time play. The real time client's a little buggy. I wish I could look at the source code and try and make my own complete with a chat interface and a turn timer. Should be easy enough.

Brian

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-06-24 02:33pm

Does this mean you're now able to run your turns?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-06-24 07:24pm

GuppyShark wrote:Does this mean you're now able to run your turns?

Yes, have been for a short few days now

.

I'll take over raiders if you want. I bet Trog's been skimping on his 250k minerals per turn payments hasn't he heh heh.

Thanks for the help running the turns.

Brian

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-06-25 01:14am

brianeyci wrote:I'll take over raiders if you want. I bet Trog's been skimping on his 250k minerals per turn payments hasn't he heh he

I have not! Ask Gups. If Marxis tries to get extra payments out of Londo, I can assure you that the answer will be no.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-06-25 07:22am

If Earthforce would be so kind as to wait for a few turns to tick over, you'd see that the Shadow escort, its mission accomplished, is already leaving Cooke system.

The Minbari warship, of course, is still in-system.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-25 12:55pm

Man, those things have been sitting there for how many turns?

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-06-26 03:25am

About as many turns as they waited for the diplomatic escort Earth Alliance promised them before they entered Earth space.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-06-26 08:24am

At last, HP shipped my laptop on Friday and it's coming today... whee...

...and they changed my busted battery too hahaha!

I demand party emoticons!

.

So this isn't a total spam post... I think a hot patch's a great idea.

Brian

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-26 09:36am

brianeyci wrote:At last, HP shipped my laptop on Friday and it's coming today... whee...

...and they changed my busted battery too hahaha!

I demand party emoticons! .

So this isn't a total spam post... I think a hot patch's a great idea.

Brian

Oh feh, you just want to be able to open up warp points to everyone's back door.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-06-26 09:54am

Uraniun235 wrote:Oh feh, you just want to be able to open up warp points to everyone's back door.

You just want everybody to be one big happy family.

If you didn't blow up my marines I would've taken M5 by now. I still might heh heh.

Brian

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-27 01:22am

brianeyci wrote:You just want everybody to be one big happy family.

Public opinion polls favor peace.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-06-29 11:39am

Sorry for last night's delay... I just needed some sleep before doing a thousand clicks lol.

Damn I'm in third place. The Minbari with 700 ships, Tuxedo with 500. Well time to fix that heh heh.

Seriously though thanks for running my turns everybody, Gups and Covenant especially since they had to go through a whole shitload of tedium with the retrofitting.

Brian

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-06-29 09:18pm

If anyone is interested, i'm going through the process of re-doing the B-5 mod to make it better (well in my mind anyway). What this boils down to is essentially altering some of the data files to make the patch as a whole stronger and more consistent with the B-5 universe.

So far i've fixed most of the ship bugs like the BS movement and changed the size of the stellar manipulator barge to 8k so it can house jump gates and swapped it with the PK on the tech tree.

I also plan on filling out the rest of the ancient tech stuff and all of the dead end technology. As well as fixing the weapon trees for all of the races that either got none or didn't have their trees complete.

If anyone is interested in helping out with this endevour, please let me know.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-06-29 09:37pm

Neph and I might be interested--we were gonna do something similar before and for all I know she's still got some of the files or whatnot. I don't want to volunteer her, especially not if this is a HUGE mod rewrite. A lot of people said it might even be better to modify the STmod game files to accomidate B5. Wouldn't it be possible just to make a general mod, and fit the B5 races into that, rather than an entirely specialized mod? My new Vree shipset kicks major ass, and I wanna show it off.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-06-29 09:49pm

The problem with collaboration, of course, is that each person has a very different vision of what makes a good B5 mod, as the disagreements between myself, Brian, Nephtys, and Covenant have showcased. Of course, some people are more willing to compromise than others. I personally would not be willing to work on a mod that I didn't have full creative control on, but I'm ornery that way.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-06-30 12:38am

Honestly making a full fleged mod's hard work. Unless you're a kid or work/study part-time, I can't imagine having enough time to take say a couple weeks off and making a decent mod especially if you want to pay attention to the research, tech tree and balancing. And doing it ripshod with a zillion people--probably why this B5 mod's half-assed. Tuxedo's right.

Nephtys's arcade style mod's incredible, we should talk about that lol. Maybe get some real time games going on. I propose the creation of the SD.net SE:IV ladder.

Basically for people who haven't tried Nephtys' mod... you pick up technology from worlds. Every world you settle you get new technology, and there's no research. A game's decided in 50 turns. If you use the real time client and take three minutes a turn that's three hours a whole game. It's brutal, fast, fun and funny.

The ladder could be simple. Every few weeks it starts over.

Code: Select all

                         Final
                           |
                   --------|-------
                   |               |
                  QF1             QF2

KISS, so it's simple to keep track of, but if we get more than four players interested we could always add more steps to the pyramid.

I think it should be short and sweet and Neph's mod's ideal for it. Later maybe we can use different mods, maybe stock, or ST, or B5, or Adamant, any other mod anybody makes.

Brian

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-06-30 08:39pm

Isn't this an exciting turn? Covenant's turn file seems corrupted so I'm talking to him on what we can do. The turn gives me a 'divide by zero' error when it processes at 56 percent, right where player #5's turn comes in. If I remove his, it runs properly.

We're gonna see what's up.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-06-30 09:03pm

Kojiro, are you receiving my attempts to gift the Vorlon baseship to you?

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-07-01 01:47am

Nephtys wrote:Isn't this an exciting turn? Covenant's turn file seems corrupted so I'm talking to him on what we can do. The turn gives me a 'divide by zero' error when it processes at 56 percent, right where player #5's turn comes in. If I remove his, it runs properly.

We're gonna see what's up.

Yes. Apparently my entire turn was corrupted beyond comprehension because a trio of ships moved to an open sector of space. O rly? Heh.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-07-01 01:50am

Uraniun235 wrote:Kojiro, are you receiving my attempts to gift the Vorlon baseship to you?

I recieved the first one this turn. Diplomacy has been kinda sketchy at times I must say. Have you been recieving my requests for it?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-07-01 02:03am

Kojiro wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:Kojiro, are you receiving my attempts to gift the Vorlon baseship to you?
I recieved the first one this turn. Diplomacy has been kinda sketchy at times I must say. Have you been recieving my requests for it?

If you don't do diplomacy the last thing in your turn, and when I say last I mean very last as in you type your message hit send and hit close and hit end turn, messages can be lost in transit. Bleh.

Brian