Space Empires V PBEM game

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-04 05:24pm

One more question with the "bleeding", when it bleeds does it build a few ships and units each turn or does it shit them all out at once? So if you build five colony ships and it takes five turns, do they pop out one at a time or do five come on turn five?

I know there is fog of war too, but in my home system every sector seems green which means I can scan it. Is this just the nature of your homesystem, or is there a special building I can make on a planet that gives me sight of the whole solar system?

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-04 07:18pm

It builds a few at a time.

Your home system shouldn't be all green, and I honestly have no idea how you managed it. Did the AI dump all its research into sensors and then build a ship with them at every planet you own?

And the whole "even distribution" thing is as nonfunctional as it ever was. For one of my first one player games I put in one other empire in a large galaxy. You know where my single opponent started? Right next to me.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-11-04 08:45pm

I've started (and not finished) about 7 or 8 games, if you include the demo, usually medium, but one small map; never had another player start in my home system. Then again, this is the first game I've played where everyone gets multiple homeworlds; I usually play with just a single planet.

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

They don't start in your home system unless you say they can when you're setting up the game, but the SE games have an annoying habit of starting players in systems very close to one another. The Adamant mod game probably would've been much better if we weren't all clumped together.

By the way, has anyone else made a sphereworld? Shit, it's huge and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Death Star.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-11-04 09:58pm

Don't think I've ever played a game that far down the tech tree; I usually go high cost technologies and haven't finished a full large galaxy game yet. I often tire of games once the AI can no longer present a challenge.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-04 11:28pm

It takes a crazy amount of research points to get the ringworld and sphereworld. Stellar manipulation is an expensive tech, and you need to reach level 75 or something to get a sphereworld.

You're much more limited in where you can build ring and sphereworlds. Due to their huge size, they'll take out anything within six or eight sectors of the construction, for ringworlds and sphereworlds respectively, so if you have a colony nearby you can't build any stellar constructions.

Oddly enough, if you've kept up with researching shipyards, then the process of actually making one of these things is very quick compared to SEIV. With eleven ship yard ships, you can have a new sphereworld in six turns.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-04 11:36pm

Fuck, 6-8 squares? And it's three dimensional? Do you have a saved game I can look at?

I was wrong about my solar system being green, color blind today it is mostly gray bah.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-05 12:03am

Actually it's six sectors for both. I thought spherworlds took up 8 sectors while ringworlds take 6, but I remembered wrong. Even so, the things are massive, especially the sphereworld. The ringworld kinda hovers above the plane, and ships can fly under it, but the sphereworld just dominates a system.

I'll email you a save file that you can take a look. The address you used for the SEIV site okay?

Oh, and you get the ringworld making component at level 70 of stellar manipulation and the sphereworld at level 80.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-05 12:08am

Trogdor wrote:Actually it's six sectors for both. I thought spherworlds took up 8 sectors while ringworlds take 6, but I remembered wrong. Even so, the things are massive, especially the sphereworld. The ringworld kinda hovers above the plane, and ships can fly under it, but the sphereworld just dominates a sector.

I'll email you a save file that you can take a look. The address you used for the SEIV site okay?

Oh, and you get the ringworld making component at level 70 of stellar manipulation and the sphereworld at level 80.

Yeah that is fine. Or you can post a screenshot. For some reason I can't seem to get clear screens of SE:V with screenhunter.

Can you open a warp point on top of the same sector as a ringworld? Stuff it full of weapons platforms and cargo facilities

.

I wonder if our next game could start out with a sphereworld or ringworld as our homeworlds. All it'd take would be a little modification. Brad, for your Battletech mod can we start out with a sphereworld?

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-05 12:33am

You actually can open a warp point in a sector that's technically part of the ringworld. I don't know for sure if some unlucky enemy fleet that came through would automatically do combat with the ringworld, though I assume they would.

EDIT: And if we start out with sphereworlds that are fully developed with mines, farms, research centers, etc. you'd never have to colonize anything.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-05 12:54am

Ringworld... goddamn, puppeteers, Kzin, it'd be so cool!

I wonder if it's possible to "glass" a ringworld... if you say it's six squares and you glass one square of it is it one-sixth gone? Oh well.

One more gripe I'd like to make is I can't believe that the beta testers didn't catch how badly supply was handled (1k a turn give me a break).

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-05 01:39am

If you get the level one hundred resupply facilities it's 10k per turn. Everything is almost abrurdly quick and easy when you start getting techs maxed out, and absurdly long and difficult when you've got the very low techs. There's way too many tech levels in this game if you ask me.

I think you've got the wrong idea about the size of the ring and sphereworlds. They don't take up six sectors; they've got a radius of six sectors (well, seven actually, counting the one in the middle). Have you gotten my email?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-05 02:08pm

Even 10k is not enough, since warships routinely use 20k supplies each and unless you have an entire planet full of level 100 supply depots it will not be worth it. Who researches supplies anyway? Weapons shields practically anything more important. I noticed your game is up to turn 426

. We'll be lucky to get to turn 20 the way everybody's packed tight.

No, the current workaround is build a ship with a lot of supply components, transfer them off and scrap the ship and probably will be like that until it's patched. Resupply depots should make 10k to start with and go up to 100k, or even make infinite. A whole planet should easily have enough consumables and rocket fuel to fill a gas tank. Plus it's a pain in the ass, not fun like in Adamant where you can build forward supply depots.

E-mail received, and here is the sphereworld.

Cool looking shit.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-05 02:24pm

brianeyci wrote:Even 10k is not enough, since warships routinely use 20k supplies each and unless you have an entire planet full of level 100 supply depots it will not be worth it. Who researches supplies anyway?

I'm pulling in over seven million research points a turn in that game. I can research everything I want.

Seriously, though, where are you getting it that warships routinely use 20k supplies per turn? My Kunming class dreadnaughts use a few hundred expending all their movement. Of course combat would drain the reserves, but even in SEIV an offensive campaign would usually require super tankers and defensive battles aren't routine (or at least shouldn't be).

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-05 02:34pm

Trogdor wrote:
brianeyci wrote:Even 10k is not enough, since warships routinely use 20k supplies each and unless you have an entire planet full of level 100 supply depots it will not be worth it. Who researches supplies anyway?
I'm pulling in over seven million research points a turn in that game. I can research everything I want.

Seriously, though, where are you getting it that warships routinely use 20k supplies per turn? My Kunming class dreadnaughts use a few hundred expending all their movement. Of course combat would drain the reserves, but even in SEIV an offensive campaign would usually require super tankers and defensive battles aren't routine (or at least shouldn't be).

Not every turn, but your dreadnaughts have a total of 26k supplies. Once it's up they're disposable or you have to sit in orbit with your fleet for tens of turns, maybe a hundred to resupply them all. Ships in SE:V are essentially disposable while in SE:IV one turn in orbit of a resupply depot refuels them. The workaround isn't supply tankers, but building supply ships that you transfer supplies off of and later scrap.

Fighters also use up supplies every time they're launched apparently.

Also I notice your sphereworld and ringworld systems dont' have any planets at all. So if you have colonies in the solar system, you can't make it, and sphereworlds and ringworlds destroy everything else in the solar system? That's cool.

Your Kumigs aren't using massive mount

.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-05 02:43pm

Making ringworlds and spherworlds don't destroy everything within a system, just whatever is within the area they're going to occupy. The systems I've built them in so far are ones that either started out as nebulae systems or had people I didn't like in them, which led me to pop the star and then start over. But given how huge the ring and sphereworlds are, systems where you can build one without destroying planets are few and far between. And they make shitty WMDs compared to the various components you can pop a star with.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-06 06:54pm

Turn 6

Executes on Friday, November 7th at 9:00 PM PST. Sorry for the lateness. I executed it on time, but forgot to tell you guys about it

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-06 07:32pm

Tuxedo you need to stop being lazy and type out the date.

You mean Wednesday, November 8th

.

Darn · Post by **Darn** » 2006-11-06 07:44pm

Yeah, I mean where do you even pull those dates? Friday the seventh? At least you got the month right

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-06 09:48pm

I edited the previous post instead of retyping the URL, so that's why. Maybe I'll just remove the day, as I'll probably continue to forget to change it.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-06 10:09pm

No worries we were just messing with you (at least I was) I knew you were doing that.

Is anybody bothering to make resource mining facilities? Homeworlds make so much already and without base space yards I'm making every non-breather planet a space yard, and research + intel for the breathers.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-11-06 10:25pm

brianeyci wrote:No worries we were just messing with you (at least I was) I knew you were doing that.

Is anybody bothering to make resource mining facilities? Homeworlds make so much already and without base space yards I'm making every non-breather planet a space yard, and research + intel for the breathers.

Yes, mostly out of habit. Shit worlds with <150m max pops and 1 or 2 slots don't need shipyards, they do as troop/weapon platform building sites just fine

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-06 10:32pm

Cool, but why use good planets for space yards instead of making mining/research/intel? I would think those shit planets are perfect for yards, or am I missing something?

Level 10 yards is far away and there's a lot more shit planets than good ones...

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-11-07 12:34am

brianeyci wrote:Cool, but why use good planets for space yards instead of making mining/research/intel? I would think those shit planets are perfect for yards, or am I missing something?

Level 10 yards is far away and there's a lot more shit planets than good ones...

Higher population = higher build time, a spaceyard only takes up 1 slot, so I can have a huge breathable world with 24 research or mining, or whatever, and then 1 shipyard. That planet has a huge population capacity, so it'll produce stuff fast; to not have a shipyard there would be wasteful.

Darn · Post by **Darn** » 2006-11-07 01:43am

So, the regular patch is out. I guess someone who does not have the steam version ought to check out if the savegames work?