Space Empires V PBEM game

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-26 12:36am

I'm not a part of this game, but using fighterbays to launch fighters is awesome against planets, as once they appear to 'enter' the planet model defence guns can't seem to hit them anymore and they very quickly destroy everything on the planet.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-26 12:43am

Stark : Tux is talking about dropping fighters as part of a ground invasion. And your idea, fighters going into the planet model, is pretty funny, makes fighters even more broken than they already are. If units didn't take maintainence (they did in previous Space Empires) fighters would be utterly broken.

I am not exactly sure, but I imagine it means having fighters loaded in a cargo bay (not a fighter bay) and having troops loaded in the same ship. Set to capture planet. When the cargo ship drops its troops, the fighters are dropped along with it.

If your dropship has fighter bays, likely it'll launch its fighters before closing to the planet, and something like Stark says will happen, with the fighters entering the planet model or just sitting around and not being part of the ground invasion.

There is one weakness about fighters... fighter bays take the initial 6 or so seconds, going all the way down to 5 if you've got maxed out fighter bays, to launch fighters. And the last time I checked, when a carrier went through a warp point, it waited five seconds then launched its fighters. Meanwhile, the defender if he's smart already has his fighters deployed and clustered around the warp point, firing for six seconds, an eternity as Kirk puts it. Looks like warp point defenses are back in, SE:IV Star Trek mod style with hundreds of fighters on warp points being the norm. At least, I'm going to make hundreds of fighters, and we'll see how well they fare against PD guns.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-26 01:29am

I just tried it. You load a non-fighterbay-equipped transport with fighters and it will drop them with the troops. On high tech level they got creamed, but they'll probably beat troops badly at more realistic tech levels.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-26 01:35am

Are you sure it's not the other way around, the fighters zip around the map quickly and have naturally more armor slots. Or is it because the troops can use ground cannon?

I like the tier 0 troops, I see no reason to research better troops when I can make more shit ones, and research fighters instead that own in space. I'm up to level 4 fighters now (ha, who said level 7 was far away).

Maybe they nerfed it.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-26 11:47am

It was 20 troops and 10 fighters vs. 60 troops and 2 fighters. The side with 60 troops won handily. But that's on high tech level, which can't be used to predict anything in a real game. The main thing is that Lvl 100 weapons can one-shot anything, so the fighters' greater armor, shields, and number of weapons meant nothing. That wouldn't be the case in a real game.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-11-26 04:17pm

brianeyci wrote:Are you sure it's not the other way around, the fighters zip around the map quickly and have naturally more armor slots. Or is it because the troops can use ground cannon?

I like the tier 0 troops, I see no reason to research better troops when I can make more shit ones, and research fighters instead that own in space. I'm up to level 4 fighters now (ha, who said level 7 was far away).

Maybe they nerfed it.

Thats some pretty expensive research. I suspect you had to sacrifice in other, rather important areas to get there?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-26 04:28pm

InnocentBystander wrote:Thats some pretty expensive research. I suspect you had to sacrifice in other, rather important areas to get there?

You didn't use the trick? When you make a new race, you can go to the technology points and bring the basic levels down to zero. Then you get a free 100,000k technology points to spend on whatever you want, and when you start the game you still have the basic tech.

What? You didn't know that? I already have meson blaster level 20, armor 30 and on my way to massive mount--

hahaha, not. Worked in the demo though.

I have zero levels in normal hull construction. Nothing in sensors, nothing in engines. Only armor, weapons, fighters, one level in mines. I'm banking everything on my massive meson blastered carriers, and my heavy fighters. Once I get them I should reign supreme in space, as long as PD cannons don't own them. Soon I'm going to dump all my research and get level 4 medium hull, and have 1250 kT carrier, good enough for my bigass guns.

Also, I looked at the damage model. Apparently it does matter if you put a component in the outer hull or in the inner hull. When designing my carriers I put all the fighter bays on the outer hull, and everything else in the inner hull, so the 50% fighter bays actually acts as a shitty armor.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-27 05:29pm

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. Turn is getting executed tonight, so get your turns in before 9 PM PST!

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-11-27 07:29pm

Turn in. All will bow before me!

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-27 07:56pm

Cool. Just need one more (or for it to be 9 o' clock).

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-28 12:06am

Turn 14

Executes on Wednesday, November 29th at 9:00 PM PST.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-11-28 04:31am

Question. Lets say I've got a ship in some hex, and a fleet in some nearby hex. How would I go about adding this ship to the fleet, send the fleet to attack a planet, and make sure the attack ships don't entirely destroy the planet in the process, but rather just escort the troop transport?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-28 10:07am

Uh, alter all strategies to do not target planet?

I am not sure how to deal with lots of weapons platforms other than a lot of armor on troop transports. This was a big problem in SE:IV too, and no real fix. If it was SE:IV I'd say set the fleet to capture planet and set the ship to capture planet too, and set all ships to capture planet. Then the ships will break off from firing at the planet once its weapons platforms are gone and the troop ship would move in. I think I managed to pull this off in the demo.

Better to have one cargo bay on a hybrid warship and stock it full of troops and set it to capture planet, rather than a dedicated transport.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-28 08:39pm

The PBW site now supports SE5. Happy happy, joy joy! Happy happy, joy joy!

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-28 08:56pm

Game is up on the PBW site. Make an account if you don't have one and join the game, which is called "SDN SE5 break-in game". This next turn will probably have to be run manually, but hopefully everyone will have joined on PBW by the turn after and I won't have to manually run them anymore. Once everyone has joined and uploaded an empire, it will create a brand new game, which we will ignore. Don't download the first turn file and don't be alarmed if it's unfamiliar. I will upload the correct one.

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

PBW down again. Must be a rush of loser--er gamers getting on it.

Now you have other people to play if you want an SE:V turn a day... but still, one turn every two days is plenty for me.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-28 11:19pm

Question, can I somehow start the game, upload the current turn, and then let the rest of the players join as their empires? I imagine it would involve changing the max players to 2 and then back to 8 after starting it.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-29 07:59pm

No I don't think so. You could pester the admins to add player slots after the fact, but that could take awhile so I don't think it's a good idea. Anyway PBW won't make the game for you if I'm right, you'll still need to download the empires and manually create the game (how can PBW make the game for us, it doesn't know what we want).

In the admin options there's an assign player option. You could add everybody who already has a PBW account, and nag the ones who don't. I don't see why you should manually process if you don't have to.

First contact, at last. The treaty options are wonderful, I can finally let money and brains in without giving someone the keys to my empire.

Oh yeah, bad news. You have to kick me and Trogdor... unless Trogdor's player two (I'm player three). Everybody's going to have to join in the same order as they're listed in the game. Probably better for everybody to join first, so you know everybody's PBW handle, then you can kick everybody out and assign all the players in the proper order.

Darn · Post by **Darn** » 2006-11-29 09:40pm

So, I guess no pbw yet? I have an account there, though (Uglybrush) so I'll join when Time Is Right.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-11-29 10:58pm

brianeyci wrote:Uh, alter all strategies to do not target planet?

Uhm, I don't know what you're talking about, my list of strats include:
Optimal Fire
Don't Get Hurt
Cap Ship
Cap Planet
Fighter Atk
Kamikaze
Max Gun Rng
Short Gun Rng
Point Blank
Drone Attack

None of them say do not target planet...

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-29 11:39pm

brianeyci wrote:No I don't think so. You could pester the admins to add player slots after the fact, but that could take awhile so I don't think it's a good idea. Anyway PBW won't make the game for you if I'm right, you'll still need to download the empires and manually create the game (how can PBW make the game for us, it doesn't know what we want).

In the admin options there's an assign player option. You could add everybody who already has a PBW account, and nag the ones who don't. I don't see why you should manually process if you don't have to.

First contact, at last. The treaty options are wonderful, I can finally let money and brains in without giving someone the keys to my empire.

Oh yeah, bad news. You have to kick me and Trogdor... unless Trogdor's player two (I'm player three). Everybody's going to have to join in the same order as they're listed in the game. Probably better for everybody to join first, so you know everybody's PBW handle, then you can kick everybody out and assign all the players in the proper order.

Okay then, I'm confused. I've never actually started a game on PBW, just taken them over mid-stream. I'm clear on the need to assign the players, but how do I actually upload the game file and start it up? I don't see the button anywhere. And can we skip the whole uploading of .emp files somehow, since the game's already started?

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-29 11:40pm

Darn wrote:So, I guess no pbw yet? I have an account there, though (Uglybrush) so I'll join when Time Is Right.

I'll assign you. Everyone who's not signed up should do so now. Everyone who's not in the B5 game should post their usernames as soon as possible.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-29 11:44pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Okay then, I'm confused. I've never actually started a game on PBW, just taken them over mid-stream. I'm clear on the need to assign the players, but how do I actually upload the game file and start it up? I don't see the button anywhere. And can we skip the whole uploading of .emp files somehow, since the game's already started?

Oh. Well once the players are assigned, the name turns to green good to go. You download all the empire files from the server, and you upload the first turn once you've created it. Except instead, you'll just upload our game instead of the first turn. The option to upload the first turn happens once the game's filled and every single person's uploaded their empire file. So yes, everybody has to upload a dummy empire file but you won't have to use it. And it's critical everybody joins in the same order they are in the game. Probably better if you manage that somehow, you know exactly who is player 1, who is player 2, so on, and can kick and assign them in the right order.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-11-29 11:46pm

InnocentBystander wrote:Uhm, I don't know what you're talking about, my list of strats include:
Optimal Fire
Don't Get Hurt
Cap Ship
Cap Planet
Fighter Atk
Kamikaze
Max Gun Rng
Short Gun Rng
Point Blank
Drone Attack

None of them say do not target planet...

You have complete and total control on exactly what those strategies do and you can even add your new kickass "Kickass" strategy. It's under empire options somewhere. I'd post a screenshot right now but my steam's acting up again.

EDIT : Here it is. I would really try using the defaults and getting them to work before messing with these though.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-30 12:05am

It's not working. When I try to assign players, it just brings up a download box for "GameAdmin" with no extension.