Space Empires Gold B5 Game (The Second)

Tobor · Post by **Tobor** » 2006-11-19 08:38pm

Well, since im the one who lost a 70 ship fleet of heavy baseships and super carriers not to mention ~3k fighters to EIGHT, let me reiterate that EIGHT weapon platforms with a single gun on them i think i of all people have the right to be miffed over a known bug that wasn't fixed along with the more inconvenient ones at the time. Then again, kojiro iirc asked for the ancient sensors to be fixed too.

As for the 'there's a solution but i'm not telling you how to get around my one trick (because i would put money on guppy having piled those onto every planet he has left) thats kind of lame. At least Brian brings solutions when he stumbles onto bug'sploits.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-19 08:42pm

The problem with another hot patch is that we're back to manual turns, which are a pain in the ass, especially since I'd be running them for two different games.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-19 08:42pm

No need to get melodramatic. Depending on how things go next turn I might end up losing 50+ ships to mines for no reason other than Nephtys gifted the wrong minesweeper. But we'll see.

Combat happens every 5 days and there's 30 days. I'm guessing that he only killed a few every combat?

I would bet my money the obvious solution is not anything to do with tactics, strategy, bug exploits or anything. You just need to think a bit. I mentioned my way because it's not very obvious, but there's the obvious way and that's probably what Brad has in mind. Think harder.

Brad has also lost 300 super dreadnaughts, baseships and heavy baseships to nothing more than light cruisers, battleships and dreadnaughts (the latter only a handful) so he's had his share of fuckups. Honestly after the first turn of sitting in orbit and getting pounded by Trogdor's weapons platforms, you could've pulled your ships back and sent in one ship with orders not to target planet. His weapons platforms just have 8 range and if wasn't for the mass of ships they'd start from far away (and this mod doesn't have good formations either, only goes up to 20 ships or so.)

Face it B5's unbalanced entirely. Nitpicking one or two awful situations doesn't make much sense. Only the RP holds everything together like butter for bread. The Shadows > Vorlons > Minbari > EA > Centauri > all other rabble just going by the range (if you are Narn you are seriously fucked, their most powerful gun's 4 range.) So forget a hotpatch I say.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-11-19 09:05pm

No, there are none on my world. You fuckers would just nuke the planet like you nuked my others, so the strategy wouldn't work anyway.

I don't feel any need to tell you how to bypass the 'trick' when it involves simple application of problem solving abilities. I'm not here to play the game for you. If you'd calm down you'd figure it for yourselves pretty quickly.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-19 09:24pm

Also I'd like to mention that nobody really knew that the weapons platforms were a bug until I mentioned it just a little while back. I didn't even know, until I checked out the Vorlons and realized they couldn't make weapons platforms that could shoot ships. If it was known the months ago when Tuxedo applied the hotpatch, I'm sure he would've agreed to fix it.

There were two major bugs fixed. The 24 move baseships, and the very expensive gravimetric engines. Fixing both those bugs hurt Tuxedo more than anything, and helped everybody else. Nothing else was fixed because it would change the entire balance of the game... for example jump gates opening to 500 LY or build times for everything one order of magnitude slower (600 turn atmospheric converters come on). An argument could be made that was a deliberate strategy of the Shadows, to build weapons platforms in urban areas and use civilians as human shields.

Art's been really good with administering the game, giving rollbacks all the time, and forcing him to manually process the turn I don't think is worth it for just a puny weapons platform. The problem is if he applies a hotpatch now, the PBW moderators take forever to update their end of things. Last time it was months. So it's not worth it especially 200 turns in. Manual execution is no trivial matter with thousands of ships... last time I tried with a few thousand it didn't finish processing. It takes half an hour now.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-21 08:56am

PBW site down, you can get it at www.pbw.cc if it isnt attached to your e-mails.

Forgot to change my strategy from column to wall and ended up starting right beside you letting you take out 7 carriers and 30 ships before I could even shoot. Oh well

.

You managed to kill every named... Concordiat, Deathshadow, Enterprise all bought it.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-21 05:12pm

I took a closer look at this turn's ground combat between the Dilgar and the Centauri (I have almost everybody's password loaned to me now

). It looks like the Dilgar didn't bring enough troops to even dent Centauri Prime's Imperial defenses. The reason why the Dilgar lost 70+ ships wasn't because of 8 weapons platforms, but because they made a gambit to blockade the planet and wait for their troops, which ended up not being nearly enough anyway. So I'm sorry, it's not because of a bug that you don't own Centauri Prime right now Tobor, although without the bug you'd still have your fleet, you still wouldn't have free Centauri lapdances.

I took a closer look at the Shadow weapons platforms too. They've got two guns, not one, and they only do 257 damage at most. That's nowhere near broken. Now that we've found out Shadow's skip armor does nothing except skip shields, and the Vorlons have their 35 kT fighter, the Shadows having a weapons platform that can shoot ships is not so bad. In other words it does not look broken at all. Sorry Tobor, it looks like bad decisions on your part, namely hovering ships on top of Centauri Prime for 5 or 6 turns led you to lose your fleet, and not bringing enough troops to start out with to capture the planet. They only killed a handful of ships every combat. It's not like you lost 70 ships all at once, or that they're unstoppable.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-22 10:30pm

After looking at the combat replay again and talking to Trogdor and reading the RP, it looks like there was another bug with your troop transports Tobor. One of them advanced without the warships in a second battle, and didn't land its troops at all. So it looks like you brought enough troops, just in the wrong kind of ship.

Tuxedo has the right idea with troops and troop transports, if you really can't figure it out yourself you could ask him and he'd help you for sure, because you learn a lot of the gimmicks from stock. Tux captured a planet full of thousands of Shadow troops armed with 100 damage weapons. But Brad is right, it's a straightforward problem and not really to do with the bug, although the bug makes it worse. Half the fun's in figuring it out yourself anyway.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-11-24 04:50pm

Can we set the B5 to 'last upload only' for the next 3 days? Thanksgiving and all being away...

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-24 04:55pm

No, we can't, I want to play my turns every single day and bizzare social rituals are of no consequence. I guess I'll just have to sell all 850 planet killers to the Centauri or the Shadows instead. Too bad.

I don't mind, good to have a break.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-26 01:26am

Might want to extend the turn deadline Arthur. I have a feeling when Nephtys said Thanksgiving she meant until Monday, though it's up to you and her empire's on automatic and it's not crucial (Yes, I have enough money to make 850 planet killer all on my own thank you, it's the retrofits that will bleed me dry and they're shitting out next turn heh heh.)

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-26 01:30am

It's on ALPU.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-27 05:13pm

Back on fully auto turns.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-27 05:33pm

Bow down bitches!

now just got to put some weapons and armor on those two thousand five hundred hulks and I'm all set...

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-29 05:16pm

Damn, left the turn until five minutes before it was due. Couldn't get the 600+ retrofits done. A lot of people missed.

Can we move the execution time ahead ten hours, this is a bad time, thanks.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-29 05:52pm

Okay, but if it's a bad time then just do it at a good time the previous day. It's not like someone's forcing you to wait until the last day.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-29 06:09pm

Well it looks like the battle between the Centauri and the Dilgar bugged, which is really awful. The Dilgar started point blank beside the Centauri, and the Centauri slaughtered most of the Dilgar before they fired a shot.

In the RP it is probably the Dilgar converging on the planet, and the Centauri warships jumping out of hyperspace just in the nick of time to save it. But it's still stupid.

Take comfort in the fact Trogdor had 40 and you had around 20, so you would've lost anyway, but it's still terrible this happens at all. EA is going for thousands of warships exactly because of this problem... it doesn't matter if it bugs up as long as there's so many ships it spams the whole map. Well either we can whine about the bugs or play, I say play since there's nothing to be done about them.

EDIT : Also this stupid bug happened with the EA too with 30 ships starting point blank to Dilgar bases and biting it, including seven carriers. So sometimes the bug works for you. If it even is a bug. I was under the impression ships generally started far away from one another at the edge of the map, rather than right beside each other ready to take potshots.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-29 11:38pm

Trogdor wrote:I have no idea if this kind of thing is actually possible in B5

Jumping out of hyperspace right beside an enemy fleet and opening fire? Sure it is. Around two minutes you see a Minbari armada do it, and a short while later three Vorchans. One time in B5 a Vorchan jumps right behind a Narn heavy cruiser and takes it out before the heavy cruiser has a chance to fire a single shot. Generally only the Minbari and Centauri of the YR can make such precise jumps though. The Minbari can even open hyperspace vortexes right on top of ships and blow them up.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-11-30 12:08pm

In those instances, the ships getting ambushed were already in normal space, however. I had my ships beat the Dilgar to the planet, then wait in hyperspace with systems powered down and the Dilgar returned to normal space. I had no idea whether ships in hyperspace could detect one another in the show, though they can't in this mod. But I guess it's okay, so I'll leave it as is.

Kojiro · Post by **Kojiro** » 2006-11-30 09:28pm

Ships in hyperspace can detect each other, just at extremely shortened ranges. The Vorlons are (or were at least the first) hyperspace masters (they built the jump gate network) and their sensors (and those of the Whitestars have greatly enhanced hyperspace ability (not to mention the making of hyperspace 'pockets'. It is unkown if the Shadows share this ability as their battle crab took it's sweet time detecting it was being tracked. Presumably if it had wanted to remain hidden (which we know it did) it would simply have avoided the starfury all together. As it neither avoided the starfury nor instantly detected it we can presume their sensors are not quite up to the same levels. This is one reason I'd like the ancient sensors fixed (also so my hyperspace bases aren't completely useless). Ships in normal space are blind to what's going on in hyperspace (even the Shadows never see attacks coming from there) and the reverse is true, though communications (and thus sensor data) does seem to be able to be transmitted into hyperspace allowing aggressive jump in attacks. Of course the mod completely disallows that, but the mod also treats all hyperspace trips as the same distance. There is much work to be done.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-12-01 02:24am

There's a lot more potential for B5 in SE:V. All the stupid bugs we had to deal with in SE:IV are gone, and the big point of B5, diplomacy, is completely customizable. For example, you could say yes to trade, but no to minefield codes, or no to blowing up planets or yes to something else. There's also ammunition, ordinance, units can take maintainence, real-time combat (no more warp point camping). I could go on and on. To me a B5 game should focus on diplomacy more than anything, and intel. Although balancing intel is probably tricky, intel's either overpowered or useless, but it should still be important in a B5 game. Instead in this game everybody just stocks up loads of counter-intel (I've filled up half my bars, the trick is to add in a fresh intel project with 0.1 years left).

Any new B5 mod would be better built from the ground up. And focused on balance rather than accuracy. Vorlons and Shadows should be playable, but only as gimmick races like Pirates or Nomads. A standard game should take 50 - 100 turns, not 1000 turns (it takes 600 for atmospheric converters to kick in and U235 built them all over his empire LOL

). And be in SE:V rather than IV. Can't stress that enough.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-12-01 05:37am

brianeyci wrote:(it takes 600 for atmospheric converters to kick in and U235 built them all over his empire LOL ).

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-12-05 05:17pm

Turn execution failed. And I think I know why too... there's one more planet in Q27 with no weapons troops belonging to the Centauri, and if the Vorlons went after it this turn it would've been division by zero again.

All troops must have weapons, so says Caesar.

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-12-05 05:29pm

Shit, you're right. I have no idea how that happened. I guess I must've made those unarmed troops by mistake. Sorry all.

Tux, if you can make the turn stop trying to process I'll redo my turn and get rid of those guys post haste.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-12-05 05:37pm

He doesn't have to make the turn stop processing, it failed

. It's stopped on its own.

Now do it fast, I want to see the next turn before I have to go back to my readings lol.