Space Empires V PBW game?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2007-05-14 02:29pm

I don't have Homeworld anymore, or I'd get those ship design pics for you.

As for the same shipset thing, what I'm thinking is as long as people have different flags, it's okay to use the same shipset. Like there's two different Federation flags and some of the TNG and TMP ships overlap and I don't see a big problem. In battle the ships will look the same but who gives a fuck, the big deal is immediately identifying assets on the strategic screen.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2007-05-14 08:58pm

Yeah the separate flags really solves a lot of headaches where in SE IV two people choosing the same ship set would be a recipe for mass confusion.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-05-14 10:15pm

BTW, I got a question:

What would people like from a Hiigaran Battleship class? I could either use the destroyer or a Frigate class. I could, for example, bump the Ion Cannon Frigate up to Battleship size, and make the Torpedo Frigate into the new 'cruiser' class.

The issue is that the battleship looks a little odd in SEV, and seems to stick out amongst the others. There's a few confusing little choices, like how I made the Tanker vessel from the singleplayer missions into a Carrier (it DOES have a hangar bay on the top, and is flat) along with the Shipyard ship, but turned the Marine frigate into a transport (Cargo bays).

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2007-05-14 10:20pm

Covenant, I would kill for a Cataclysm set. The Soomtaw have proper carriers, motherships, dreadnaughts,

The strange part is unlike SE:IV you can't specify the graphics for the beam weapons or the bolts, that's intrinsic to the weapon now. So the weapons won't exactly match the shipset, oh well. Yellow phasers ftw.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2007-05-14 10:29pm

Looks like BM 1.07 might have run into some difficulties, so we'll just start tomorrow with patch 1.35 and BM v1.06 rather than wait. There's always some new patch or new version around the corner, after all.

Be sure to upload an .emp file to PBW before tomorrow, as well, or we won't be able to start. It doesn't matter what you upload. It could be a blank text document as long as its extension is .emp, but if someone hasn't done it then it will be impossible for me to start the game. Also, get your .emp files and ship sets to me before tomorrow as well. If I don't have anything from a player, then I'll just grab whatever's on PBW whether it's what you wanted or not.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-05-14 11:52pm

brianeyci wrote:Covenant, I would kill for a Cataclysm set. The Soomtaw have proper carriers, motherships, dreadnaughts,

The strange part is unlike SE:IV you can't specify the graphics for the beam weapons or the bolts, that's intrinsic to the weapon now. So the weapons won't exactly match the shipset, oh well. Yellow phasers ftw.

Well, I've got HW1 and HW2 cds next to me. Neph has a copy of Cataclysm but I doubt she'll rip the filez. I'll download the demo and see what I can get from the .big later. I want to make this Hiigaran shipset to prove what I can do, but I don't want them to all be this hard. A Somataww shipset could be relatively simple for me to do. I'd make the shipset for you or neph, rip the files off, and let you do the grunt work like sizing it up and adding engines. At least adding engines. I could just dumb all the files to .X and let you rename them and choose who you want as what size.

My real interest lies in a Kadeshi or Bentusi shipset. Using HW1 and HW2 and Cataclysm, I might be able to put together a Bentusi set. I dunno about the Kadeshi. They're incredibly awesome, but they don't exactly have the widest variety of units.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2007-05-14 11:57pm

Whatever you do, try to get the ship set you're going to use to me by tomorrow so we can start the game. As much as I'd like to give you time to polish, people lose interest quickly once a game gets delayed, so I'd like to stick to the kickoff date of tomorrow.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-05-15 01:38am

Don't worry, I finished. It's beautifully polished as well! Very nice, I'd say. I don't think people want me to overwrite the Norak though, so all I gotta do is rename the files!

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-05-15 03:09am

Done! I guess this makes me one of the Unbound as well.

Feel free to pick it up there. I'm totally playing with it this round, so none of you cheesemasters get any bright ideas! I've also submitted it to SpaceEmpires.net, but I wanted to give you all a link to it directly. Tell me if you find any bugs. I doubt you will!

It uses the extended shiptypes. So there's a model for Light, Medium and Heavy carriers and such. I left some out, I changed some, and I'm pretty happy. I made lots of custom icons, fancy little portraits, and the mini-ship icons are ultra cute. I also made a nice new flag icon set.

See that? I put in the Chimera station and the Torpedo Frigate, which is the Cruiser now, on the icon thingie. I made it look standard like that by adjusting the contrast. All in all, I'd say it's fairly professional looking.

Oh yeah, I didn't mess with Firing Arcs or the layouts. I didn't consider those really important enough.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2007-05-15 03:53am

Tuxedo is demanding all the shipsets through his g-mail so I think better to give him the link through g-mail directly.

There's 13 players now, 13 different shipsets and empire files, and this thread in good sd.net tradition has reached 258 posts with thousands of fucking views and the game hasn't even started yet lol. I don't want to sift through five pages to pluck out the shipsets. The only way this will work is if we do what Tuxedo wants and give him the empire files and shipsets through g-mail, otherwise we risk getting outdated information from older posts or missing them completely.

darthkommandant · Post by **darthkommandant** » 2007-05-15 04:19am

My empire and shipsets are in. I cant wait to play. Out of curiosity what planet atmosphere combos are you using? Im using rock/ oxygen for my empire.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2007-05-15 05:34am

em...

Well. I got my shipset done. But there's no slot for me in the game to join! And my emp file was done too! I'll send em to Arthur, but here's my 1.0 of the Gallente Federation shipset.

Well. If it will upload. It's 27 megs...

Edit: Until then, well. I'll try to get it onto the website, but..
Here's V1. I'll see if it'll fit in email.

http://files.filefront.com//;7513901;;/

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2007-05-15 07:35am

Wow, got a shipset put together in time for the game? Nice work. I don't know if I'll ever actually finish the FS2 shipset I'm contemplating, I'm still figuring out which ships wouldn't be a complete bitch to convert.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2007-05-15 07:57am

darthkommandant wrote:My empire and shipsets are in. I cant wait to play. Out of curiosity what planet atmosphere combos are you using? Im using rock/ oxygen for my empire.

I expect that to be a very popular combination. There's definately something to be said for NOT being oxygen/rock, just because the competition isn't as fierce for the other types.

I'm rock/oxygen because I'm playing a human empire.

Luke Starkiller · Post by **Luke Starkiller** » 2007-05-15 08:22am

I went Ice/CO2 for exactly the reason that GuppyShark mentioned; diversity in planet/atmosphere means less competition for expansion early on.

ColonialAdmiral · Post by **ColonialAdmiral** » 2007-05-15 09:14am

I'll be email-ing my Empire this afternoon...
I still have to do it evan if I'm using stock empire parts right?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2007-05-15 09:29am

Nephtys wrote: Here's V1. I'll see if it'll fit in email.

Hahaha good point dumb me, shipsets might not fit through e-mail. Oh well. Tuxedo still wants the links in his e-mail I think.

Alan Bolte wrote:Wow, got a shipset put together in time for the game? Nice work. I don't know if I'll ever actually finish the FS2 shipset I'm contemplating, I'm still figuring out which ships wouldn't be a complete bitch to convert.

Bolte, you can use a custom shipset anyway, as long as it's a different name that's non-Stock. Then later update it mid-game when it's done.

For people who aren't done, I suggest they do the same. Rename and change stock names to whatever, then maybe halfway through they can change. Maybe even their name... like GuppyShark set.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2007-05-15 09:45am

Heh - if I were to do that, I'd be using the Phong shipset (which I am) but changing the ground unit to the Norak walker troop.

Actually, screw it, I'll just resend my empire file with the Norak shipset chosen.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2007-05-15 10:57am

I kicked myself and rejoined so I could change the number of players to let Nepthys join. Hopefully no one else will jump in before her and throw off our start time.

Here's the deal on the gmail: Some people uploaded their .emp files more than a week ago, and might want to do something different, or maybe they accidentally chose the wrong ship set. But once it's uploaded, you can't change it. Since I don't want to sift through the thread, e-mail is a good way to get all the files through one source. I downloaded Neph and Cov's ship sets, so that's taken care of. Anyone else with ship sets should either e-mail me the files or a link to them. If someone hasn't sent me an .emp file, I'll just grab the one from PBW, but I'd still prefer it in e-mail to reduce confusion and reduce the chance of someone going "Hey, that's not what I wanted!" at game start.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-05-15 12:51pm

I'm not sure what atmosphere to take either. The Hiigarans were humanoid, so they'd be able to breathe a rock/oxygen environment I assume--but we never do actually hear what they breathe. It could be CO2 for all I know. I'm also tempted to make them a Gas Giant species because of just how much time these people seem to spend in Nebulae and out in deep space. It would let me cohabitate a lot of systems with people in a friendly manner and take some of the stresses off housing issues.

Also, are there any other must-have technologies and such that are just horribly brokenly powerful? Not that I want to take them BECAUSE they're broken, but I don't want to get snagged by taking crappy racials and just sputtering out. I know we're banning Ancient. I wonder if that storage techniques tech is still ungodly potent.

And also, these cultural types are really bizzare. They just seem to be extremes of each other, and not really unique.

I'm also tempted to make them a Theocracy. There's sure a hell of a lot of religious stuff in these games afterall. It's like Exodus with spaceships and backwards. "Let my people IN!"

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2007-05-15 01:14pm

Storage techniques blows donkey nuts, because it's just 20% more cargo space on ships and not on planets anymore. There's no must have racial trait other than ancient race, which is why it's banned.

That being said, there's ways to max/min your empire. I'm sure everybody is taking the "Foolish" trait, it'd be foolish not to. Facility space is limited, and remote mining sucks, so I'd seriously consider all 3 resource boosts. The 10% research boost is nice, and I'm considering combining it with democracy or corporate.

I'm not sure whether Hardy Industrialists stacks with the other 10% boost for a cumulative 30% boost. It may be, like Adamant Mod, that one is for space and one for ground. These construction boosts may be crucial, I stress may be because I have no idea how high the turnover for ships is. If the supply is any indication, very high, and I'll be expecting to build shipyards on every dipshit corner of the galaxy.

The racials such as crystallurgy, temporal, organic and religious take a long time to develop, but that's entirely possible in a longer game.

I don't think you have anything to worry about Covenant. You've got Nephtys. Out of the people I know here in skill level I'd rank in order of Tuxedo, Trogdor, Nephtys (and by extension you), maybe all the PBW people, then me and the totally new people. Mostly because I know Tuxedo is a hardass and played a PBW game to finish, and Trogdor has played single player up to sphereworld, and Nephtys no doubt has hundreds of hours in simulations to figure out some crazy ass way to beat combined arms. But it'll be all about politics, no matter how good a player is at min/maxing, Balance Mod is balanced enough so if someone goes 2 v 1 I'm pretty sure the 1 will have a hard time fending it off.

Of course there are must have technologies. Ignore hull size and you are fucked. Ignore point defense and you are fucked. Don't research at least one weapon to a high potential and you are fucked. In stock there used to be a way around hull size too, research carrier and use carriers as your battleships, but that only worked because large and heavy mount gave such a huge bonus to damage in stock and fighters ruled. But you already know all this I'm sure

. If you are really worried check out the tech tree of Balance Mod, it's in a pdf file I linked earlier, it's all there.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2007-05-15 01:35pm

The one thing I'm not worried about is having to know anything

Also, I'm not gonna bother with a custom shipset, because while it seemed like a good idea at the start, I'm never gonna finish a FreeSpace shipset.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-05-15 01:52pm

Hah! I essentially won the Star Trek game, mock not my strategic and logistical awareness! Plus, she's not my lifeline, she's just a good friend. She planned my demise as well, I just had more ships than her that did too much too cheaply. I've got you as much as her in terms of strategic bouncing-off. I don't like the insinuation that without someone else I'd be utterly without an ability to play. I don't think I've done anything to merit that in the past, and I'm sure it wasn't what you meant to say, but that's not a fair statement.

Mostly I just want to know how balanced the balance mod is. Seems like it's rather well suituated, so I'm glad to hear it.

Question: The low tech setting--does that mean low cost techs, or we get the 'low' setting of research points to start the game with? I'm used to playing with 'none' so I don't know what the setting you specified is supposed to mean.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2007-05-15 02:04pm

I don't really remember anything about the old games at all, it was a lifetime ago

.

Means none. We'll start with nothing apparently, capital ship missile I. Tech costs are medium, not low I think. As far as I know Tuxedo said Technology Cost is Medium and Technology Level is None so I dunno where you are seeing Low research points.

The Federation is going to try and get as many allies as possible. And I have a secret weapon, a celebrity who will reveal himself in time. To bodly go where no man has gone before heh heh.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-05-15 04:04pm

I pm'd tux but didn't get a response yet, and the day grows long in the tooth--where do I email this empire file?