SE V Demo OUT!

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-17 11:44pm

The Space Empires series is not for everyone, and have always needed mods to be even slightly balanced and to even remotely exploit their potential. They've also had a history of years upon years of patches before most things finally work right. Wait 6 months or so for the mods and the first patches to come out, then give it another chance. I can almost guarantee your opinion will be changed.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-09-17 11:49pm

Vehrec wrote:Me and my brother spend most of yesterday playing this on and off. He complained that he often got bad planets, and I didn't get to play that much. That said, Combat was our biggest peve. Space combat always degraded to ships running at each other, turning to fire broadsides, and then the losser running. My ships often maxed their movement, and could make a passible persuit, but he prioritized weapons and survivability, and often let ships slip his grasp. Utilizing both designs at once would have been ideal.
Ground combat. . . How do I hate thee. Why are my hover tanks incapable of routing the tiny milita of this planet? Not only nonsensical, but lacking in any kind of AI. Again. My vehicles would simply sit there despite repeated fire orders. This was not a singular occurance. And transport requirements seemed lacking. It should take more than one ship to land an invasion force.
So yeah, it was buggy and imbalanced. Didn't go searching for exploits or ways to cheat, but yeah.

\

So... rather like the previous SEs.

Everyone gets bad planets, but it's less noticible in the SEs than most other games (Moo, SotS). Speed is life in the other SEs, but now at least it's impossible to kite or warp camp.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-18 01:21am

Took awhile to find the AI... what the fuck's wrong with it, it's just sitting on top of its homeworld doing fuckall.

I used the "cheat" and got cruiser to start out... was a slaughter. One broadside from my cruiser took out a frigate in 2 seconds... does anybody know whether "sidestepping" actually does anything?

Just tried a round of ground combat. I had no problem annihilating the planetary militia on a homeworld with about 30 of these.

Armor 6 and DUC 6 troops. I don't think I lost a single one.

<edit>Actually I lost around 5 or six of them. Militia are tough fuckers. What's that building the militia go after right away? I had no problem ordering the militia to shoot... I just had to sit there and they walked up by themselves and my crawlers fired.</edit>

Some grips is I see an SE:V turn taking longer than an SE:IV turn. You can't research "perfectly" unless you play with the percentage bars. And there's no way to add "one turn" worth of units that I see. Also giving orders is basically either learn the shortcuts or take three or four clicks to do what used to take one. Changing the filters in sorting the planets takes three or four clicks now too instead of one click.

Also the combat replays are bugged. And I already found a cheat. If you want more move points, have your 0/12 move point battlecruiser join up with a 12/12 scout in a fleet, and the battlecruiser gets its moves regenerated.

But all those problems are small compared to the goodness of real-time combat. Huzzah!

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-18 09:19am

Quick poll. Who is surprised that Brian found the first SEV exploit?

Just razzin' you, man.

I haven't even hit the 100 turns yet, I find the slow pace of SEV Stock quite irritating. That and I want to focus on the ground combat (in preparation for my BattleTech mod) and my enemy isn't obliging me. Destroying colonies from orbit is just so... Dilgar.

Actually, what irritates me the most is that the Treasury screen doesn't appear to be giving me remotely accurate information. My current game is on 0 organics and 0 rads despite showing a healthy surplus of both in the income/expense screen.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-18 09:26am

GuppyShark wrote:Quick poll. Who is surprised that Brian found the first SEV exploit?

Just razzin' you, man. I haven't even hit the 100 turns yet, I find the slow pace of SEV Stock quite irritating. That and I want to focus on the ground combat (in preparation for my BattleTech mod) and my enemy isn't obliging me. Destroying colonies from orbit is just so... Dilgar.

Take a look at my turn count it's only up to 24. I can't stand the idea of playing AI... now that I've blown a few hours getting used to the UI, it's game over for me until SE:V comes out. And I think Tux found the first "cheat" if you count the technology point bug he mentioned.

For the ground combat, I see weapons platforms. I wonder if there's a way to make use of them in ground combat... like, to allow them ground cannons so they're like fortresses. Oh yeah for battletech, I do not want 500+ mechs on the battlefield... Tux is right about ground combat. One mech should actually represent a whole division of mechs, and at most I want maybe 20 in a really big planetary invasion (I would prefer far less, maybe 10). The troops should be 100 times bigger, forced to use cargo bays and transport hulls... what's the point of a transport class if you can slap a few cargo bay on a warship with enough troops to rout a militia.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-18 09:53am

That's another good thing about the BTech universe - from memory an entire Regiment is ~112 BattleMechs, and only key worlds are defended by forces of that size. Most actions would be done by company or battalion sized units (the largest common DropShip, the Overlord, only carries 40 BattleMechs).

I've done a lot of the design work on my mod already, and it will involve completely replacing the existing ship hulls.

I do want to try to keep them at 1-for-1. The SEV maps I've seen are nowhere near as huge as the Inner Sphere, so we shouldn't develop the economies to field thousands of 'Mechs.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-18 10:05am

For ground combat to actually work, you'd have to completely get rid of planetary bombardment. Either that, or somehow make planetary bombardment really expensive to research and worse than just building and dropping mechs.

I didn't check... do units have maintainence? The only shit is people stocking up hundreds of mechs in peacetime. Shouldn't be allowed to happen.

BT sounds good for a "rare" ship kind of game, where fleets are 10's instead of 100's. I also would like a war with maneuver warfare... from the little I know about BT it's always you either have mechs or you lose, so I think early game warp point openers or even warp point openers to start out with would be cool. Then you would hop around world to world taking colonies and trying to find and take the other guy's mechs, the mechs being the important thing instead of actually holding territory. If you have more mechs, you try and find the other guy's mechs and destroy them, but if you have less you run around island hopping until you stock up enough. Ground combat could get a little stale after awhile so I'm looking forward to all the array of flamethrowers, missiles, gauss guns, elementals, machine guns. To emphasize ground combat, space combat should be extremely simple and unimportant compared to building mechs.

Intelligence is another thing... it could be important, to know where the other guy's mechs are. Haven't had a chance to try it, but hopefully the SE:V intelligence is a lot better than SE:IV, and if not we can always mod it and make intel defense really expensive, more difficult to defend than attack with intel, as long as you don't put crazy intel projects like crew insurrection or food contamination.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-18 10:18am

My plan for the initial release is:

No research. The BattleTech (henceforth referred to as BT) universe is characterised by technological stasis for much of the active period.

No space combat. Fighters and armed DropShips will make balancing the mod a lot harder so for the initial release, they won't be there. And when they are, they won't be able to target planets until players get their hands on full blown WarShips with Naval PPCs etc.

"Level 1" technology. No ER PPCs, Arrow IVs, or Elementals. Only the basic 3025 Inner Sphere technology. Which is admittedly a pity because my favorite design of all time used TSM & DHS. But, you know, going for simplicity here.

Low Construction. BattleMechs will take a while to build. I definately don't want to see people rush building reactionary garrisons.

High Cargo space. Planets are big!

New flags for the major Inner Sphere powers. Units will take longer since I need to reacquant myself with 3D Studio.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-18 10:22am

I have noticed that it's very easy to glass planets (I believe this was also true in stock SE4). Several solutions to this:

1. Strong planetary shields (I don't think this fits the BT universe).

2. Inflate planet HP by several orders of magnitude. For mods other than BattleTech, also inflate bombardment weapons by several orders of magnitude. This would be my preferred solution.

3. Give Battlemechs a lot of HP and their weapons do a lot of damage.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-18 10:25am

Actually, I'd only inflate the HPs of breathable colonies. Domed colonies should be fragile...

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-18 10:35am

With the new combat system, reload times in seconds and ordinance, it's possible to really flesh out ground combat. Autocannons could be quick to reload and shoot but low damage and high range, gauss guns could be high damage high range but slow to reload and lasers could give the most damage for their weight but use up a lot of ordinance. Flamers could have really low range but have the most damage. In the end, as much as I hate to say it, it should be rock paper sissor. Missiles should beat out flamers, lasers should be the jack of all trades and autocannons should be the rush weapon, cheap but ineffective when battling laser armed mechs. Missiles should really bite but maybe have the most range.

I'm not sure how heatsinks will work though. Maybe for each kind of mech model you'll have to put in 10 or 20 heat sinks, but that's kind of stupid and just adds another layer of clicking for no reason (if you want heat sinks I should be able to put in as many or as little as I want). And for the speed... mech speeds should be tied to their chassis. No "engines", but instead reactors of some sort.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-18 10:39am

I'm going to mimick the existing weapon balance. I came up with the initial idea of using Supply points to represent Heat - basically reversed. If a 'Mech 'runs hot' it just runs out of power quickly and shuts down. I'll have to look into how viable that is now, especially since weapons like ACs and LRMs will need to draw from ordinance pools.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-18 10:47am

The biggest obstacle I see is there's no horizon and the map's so small. So unless the mechs move slow as shit, it's a lot easier to just blitz in close range and pummel them instead of hitting at range. It'll take a lot of balancing to make sure weapons are properly costed for their damage. Especially if you make LRM's more range than autocannon... how much is 1 range worth, 10 more minerals or 50 more minerals? Or maybe 100 more minerals? Or maybe -50 minerals, since fighting at range blows. Of course the easy way to make sure everything's balanced no matter what is to tie tech in with research, but if there's no research it'll be hard making sure there's no one "uber" mech design that beats all others no matter what.

Maybe it's possible to mount unit weapons. At least the mech design screen should be pretty damn cool... instead of a top down view I want a front, side and back view heh heh. If that's possible and they don't just blow up the ground combat bitmap.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-09-18 11:00am

The thing BattleTech has over say, B5 is that BattleTech already has costing mechanisms built in. If I can faithfully map the BattleTech paradigm over, then there won't be an uber design, you'll have to use combined arms.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-09-18 12:51pm

In BT, bombardment is not an issue. Just make most weapons not able to target the surface, or make each unit of pop and buildings able to sustain huge amounts of damage (but not weapons platforms). You need nukes to actually bomb a planetary target reliably, else out come the mechs.

You could also semi-simulate VTOLs or similar with superlight units with a high dodge rate, high speed and a few weapons.

Deathstalker · Post by **Deathstalker** » 2006-09-22 12:09pm

I sad to say that I am new to SE. I'm along time MOO2 player. That said, the demo of SEV is pretty slick. I can see myslef wasting much time when the gold version comes out. I have a couple of questions. First is when I try and build a facility on my homeworld it says there is no room. I thought building a cargo fac would help, but it doesn't seem to. Second is what is the best way to research, spread it out or concentrate on a few things?

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-22 01:15pm

Deathstalker wrote:I sad to say that I am new to SE. I'm along time MOO2 player. That said, the demo of SEV is pretty slick. I can see myslef wasting much time when the gold version comes out. I have a couple of questions. First is when I try and build a facility on my homeworld it says there is no room. I thought building a cargo fac would help, but it doesn't seem to. Second is what is the best way to research, spread it out or concentrate on a few things?

As for the first one, each planet can hold only so many buildings and home worlds come fully built upon. You'll need to scrap a building if you want to build a new one. Cargo facilities don't increase the number of buildings you can have on the planet, just the amount of stuff, like troops, fighters, and weapons platforms.

Your second question is kind of a new one to SEV, as research has been changed a little since SEIV. I'd avoid spreading it out too far. Just take two or three research projects at most, or else it'll all take forever.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-09-22 01:50pm

Deathstalker wrote:I sad to say that I am new to SE. I'm along time MOO2 player. That said, the demo of SEV is pretty slick. I can see myslef wasting much time when the gold version comes out. I have a couple of questions. First is when I try and build a facility on my homeworld it says there is no room. I thought building a cargo fac would help, but it doesn't seem to. Second is what is the best way to research, spread it out or concentrate on a few things?

Your homeworld is already pretty much fully developed, as it's you know, your ancestrial home. For Research.. hmm. SEV seems to be more incremental in terms of research than previous SEIV. I'd suggest at most, 3 or 4 projects. Try not to get projects that'll take more than 5 or 6 turns to complete, unless it's a REALLY useful tech, like the ability to colonize different planet types.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-22 02:35pm

I tend to take the opposite tack with SEV, putting everything I want on the queue so I can more or less "set and forget". After all, it's not going to matter much whether you research 10 things in 10 turns vs. 2 things in 2 turns each. When I want to rush a tech, I kick everything else to 0%.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-09-22 03:12pm

The only issue with BTech is that dropships can't be properly modeled. They can't jump, else what's the point of feeble Jumpships carrying them, and they can't be fighters, because fighters don't carry cargo.

I really can't see a 2.5 million tonne McKenna flying into atmos and landing a batallion of mechs.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-09-22 03:47pm

Second is what is the best way to research, spread it out or concentrate on a few things?

Depends how you make your ships. If you build in "waves" then it doesn't much matter if you get ten techs in ten turns if you're planning on starting a new wave of battlecruiser in eleven.

If however, you want to micromanage, and you build ships whenever, then having one tech every single turn so you get the most up to date technology is the most efficient. So if it takes 34% to finish in one turn, kick it up to 34% and use the rest for another tech area. If you hold down shift while you click, you can quickly go up to 0.2 years to complete, then lower it until you reach 0.1. Then use the points for another tech area.

It depends on playing style basically. I can't really say which one is better.

Researching the right stuff will obviously play a key role. I am guessing winners in theoretical areas are the same as SE:IV... construction for fighters and mines, military science, and maybe phased polaron beams (they still have those?) going up to astrophysics 2. But I'm not too familiar with the tech tree. I am also guessing armor is better than shields early game, since I'm guessing you need to go up to Shields IV or V to get as good as armor.

I would focus on direct fire weapons and point defense, and learn the tech tree so I don't waste points on theoretical areas. For example I would know how to get null space weapons, phased polaron beams, anti-proton beams, rather than putting a whole lot of points into DUC. I would also transition to larger hulls as quickly as possible.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-09-22 05:58pm

I think Tux mentioned that he rushed the phased polaron beams and found out that they weakened them in SEV, so you might want to stick with DUC in the demo.

Sharpshooter · Post by **Sharpshooter** » 2006-09-22 06:03pm

Hmm. Looks like Emissive Armor and the like finally got some potential, provided that these level maxes are there for the sake of the demo being a demo and not something reflected in the real game.

I've started looking through the data files for modding possabilities. You think there'll be any chance, maybe in a post-release update or something along that lines, to set up equations where you can have two or more tech levels? I had an idea for a mod during the summer (that I actually was working on, truth be told, and had a few of the supposed things SEV had like infinantly-upgradable componants) where you'd have to balance out research between two or more areas in order to increase a componant's strength, like how researching lasers would only improve the general efficiency at which they used energy while something like power plants were the ones to increase actual strength (and would cause a hige-ass jump in power when you went from one medium to another more powerful one, like hydrogen fusion to M/AM annihilation) or researching armor for construction methods while chemestry would yield different materials like Titanium, Duranium, Neutronium-embedded, and all that jazz. You know, take a bit of the focus off WHAT componants you were using and more on HOW WELL your componants were developed.

Also, some more random thoughts as I'm reading through some of these files:

Shields still don't regenerate in combat by themselves? I can see the point of the shield regenerator if you want to up the rate at an added cost in resources and supplies, but it seems a bit silly to have them completily unreperable. It's a GENERATOR, not a CAPACITOR or PROJECTOR. Jeez.

"Bomblet Missile"? That's SO getting the axe in my mod.

Plasma Missiles have anti-matter cores?

Gamma Pulse Missiles cause normal damage, but Shield Depleters use Gamma Radiation beams to burn out shields and nothing else?

Ooh, there are warheads that can now do specific damage to ships! This creates WONDERFUL possabilities for mines with enough modding (Radiation warheads to kill the crew of the ships that hits it and make them prime for boarding, anyone?).

Hmm. I realize that there're naturally going to be a few odd numbers here and there with the equation system, but I hope they smooth some of them out. I'm pretty anal about that my construction yards'll be doing 11800 kT worth of work in the end. Now, if they start at level ZERO, which is sort of like the prototype/foundation stage, and get rid of the -1 or whatever the equation has, THEN we get some nice, round, pleasing numbers.

Dammit, I REALLY wish they'd do away with this small/medium/large crap with stuff like freighters, satellites, and stuff like that. This is the ONE thing that keeps me from actually plunging into figuring out how a Macross-themed shipset could work.

Hmm. I wonder if there's a way to fuck with speeds and the like so that overmap speed doesn't equal combat speed. Another one of my mod ideas was that in the endgame you could have FTL drives capable of cruising as many as 250 sectors a turn while conventional engines gave you your (reasonable) combat speed, which'd be awesome because you could start building stations in orbit around planets and then shipping them off to where you need 'em and not have to deal with the crappiness of space-borne building facilities. (EDIT: Not to mention give you the sense that yeah, your race IS the most powerful thing in existance and could kick the Culture's ass six ways to sunday).

I wonder if there's a possability for some kind of system where you can pool construction points in a single sector so as to have them all focusing on a single queue at the same time. Sphereworlds, late-game colonization, and building planets back up from the ashes would actually be, you know, feasable if you could have a merry band of construction ships flying aboutshitting out facilities left and right. Have it with diminishing returns, of course, to reflect the problems of logistics, coordination, and all that jazz, but just something.

Did anyone find the "home planet name" thing to work? I tried it out a few times, but I didn't spot a difference.

And is there any place on the StrategyFirst boards where there's an official sort of suggestion/bug report thing going on? I poked about a bit, but couldn't find anything.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-09-22 07:14pm

brianeyci wrote:
Second is what is the best way to research, spread it out or concentrate on a few things?
Depends how you make your ships. If you build in "waves" then it doesn't much matter if you get ten techs in ten turns if you're planning on starting a new wave of battlecruiser in eleven.

If however, you want to micromanage, and you build ships whenever, then having one tech every single turn so you get the most up to date technology is the most efficient. So if it takes 34% to finish in one turn, kick it up to 34% and use the rest for another tech area. If you hold down shift while you click, you can quickly go up to 0.2 years to complete, then lower it until you reach 0.1. Then use the points for another tech area.

That's a big pain in the ass, and I still say the gains are dubious.

It depends on playing style basically. I can't really say which one is better.

Researching the right stuff will obviously play a key role. I am guessing winners in theoretical areas are the same as SE:IV... construction for fighters and mines, military science, and maybe phased polaron beams (they still have those?) going up to astrophysics 2. But I'm not too familiar with the tech tree. I am also guessing armor is better than shields early game, since I'm guessing you need to go up to Shields IV or V to get as good as armor.

Military science is a lot less important now that they've moved point defense to a base tech. PPD's are not as good as they were in SE4. They're OK, but a lot more expensive than APB's or DUC's for similar damage and they cost more to research. The armor / shield situation is the reverse of SE4. Shields are better at first, but armor eventually overtakes. The thing is that you can only have so much armor, since there are a limited number of armor slots.

I would focus on direct fire weapons and point defense, and learn the tech tree so I don't waste points on theoretical areas. For example I would know how to get null space weapons, phased polaron beams, anti-proton beams, rather than putting a whole lot of points into DUC. I would also transition to larger hulls as quickly as possible.

As it stands, missiles seem to be beating DUC + PDC, although that's secodhand info that I haven't personally reproduced myself.

Sharpshooter wrote:Hmm. Looks like Emissive Armor and the like finally got some potential, provided that these level maxes are there for the sake of the demo being a demo and not something reflected in the real game.

I've started looking through the data files for modding possabilities. You think there'll be any chance, maybe in a post-release update or something along that lines, to set up equations where you can have two or more tech levels? I had an idea for a mod during the summer (that I actually was working on, truth be told, and had a few of the supposed things SEV had like infinantly-upgradable componants) where you'd have to balance out research between two or more areas in order to increase a componant's strength, like how researching lasers would only improve the general efficiency at which they used energy while something like power plants were the ones to increase actual strength (and would cause a hige-ass jump in power when you went from one medium to another more powerful one, like hydrogen fusion to M/AM annihilation) or researching armor for construction methods while chemestry would yield different materials like Titanium, Duranium, Neutronium-embedded, and all that jazz. You know, take a bit of the focus off WHAT componants you were using and more on HOW WELL your componants were developed.

Several mods already do that in SE4 (they call it grid based research), but I don't personally like it. It's more realistic, but you have to look through the data files in order to find out what the hell your research is even going toward. Otherwise, you're stumbling around blind. The B5 mod is the worst offender in this regard.

Also, some more random thoughts as I'm reading through some of these files:

Shields still don't regenerate in combat by themselves? I can see the point of the shield regenerator if you want to up the rate at an added cost in resources and supplies, but it seems a bit silly to have them completily unreperable. It's a GENERATOR, not a CAPACITOR or PROJECTOR. Jeez.

"Bomblet Missile"? That's SO getting the axe in my mod.

Plasma Missiles have anti-matter cores?

Gamma Pulse Missiles cause normal damage, but Shield Depleters use Gamma Radiation beams to burn out shields and nothing else?

Ooh, there are warheads that can now do specific damage to ships! This creates WONDERFUL possabilities for mines with enough modding (Radiation warheads to kill the crew of the ships that hits it and make them prime for boarding, anyone?).

Hmm. I realize that there're naturally going to be a few odd numbers here and there with the equation system, but I hope they smooth some of them out. I'm pretty anal about that my construction yards'll be doing 11800 kT worth of work in the end. Now, if they start at level ZERO, which is sort of like the prototype/foundation stage, and get rid of the -1 or whatever the equation has, THEN we get some nice, round, pleasing numbers.

There won't be any numerical difference between starting the y-intercept (for lack of a better word) at level 1 and using the %Level - 1% operator and starting it at lvl 0 and using %Level%, although I think the second method requires less work for the modder.

Dammit, I REALLY wish they'd do away with this small/medium/large crap with stuff like freighters, satellites, and stuff like that. This is the ONE thing that keeps me from actually plunging into figuring out how a Macross-themed shipset could work.

You can easily include fewer vehicle types in your mod if you want to.

Hmm. I wonder if there's a way to fuck with speeds and the like so that overmap speed doesn't equal combat speed. Another one of my mod ideas was that in the endgame you could have FTL drives capable of cruising as many as 250 sectors a turn while conventional engines gave you your (reasonable) combat speed, which'd be awesome because you could start building stations in orbit around planets and then shipping them off to where you need 'em and not have to deal with the crappiness of space-borne building facilities. (EDIT: Not to mention give you the sense that yeah, your race IS the most powerful thing in existance and could kick the Culture's ass six ways to sunday).

Rule #1 of modding: Get creative, but don't try to take a mod in a completely different direction than the game its based on. Nine gets you ten it won't work. In this case, you run into the fact that there's no way to separate strategic and combat moves. The only way to do this is to include a self-repairing, high-movement emergency propulsion component. It works, but it's a huge pain in the ass to have to activate it for every single ship on every single turn.

I wonder if there's a possability for some kind of system where you can pool construction points in a single sector so as to have them all focusing on a single queue at the same time. Sphereworlds, late-game colonization, and building planets back up from the ashes would actually be, you know, feasable if you could have a merry band of construction ships flying aboutshitting out facilities left and right. Have it with diminishing returns, of course, to reflect the problems of logistics, coordination, and all that jazz, but just something.

Did anyone find the "home planet name" thing to work? I tried it out a few times, but I didn't spot a difference.

And is there any place on the StrategyFirst boards where there's an official sort of suggestion/bug report thing going on? I poked about a bit, but couldn't find anything.

The boards you want are the Shrapnel Games forums located here

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-09-22 07:28pm

Lets seeeee, mac version, mac version, ummmmm, oh wait...