Space Empires V PBW game?

[Alan Bolte]

I just noticed the lack of built-in attack bonus for PDBs too. It's making me wonder if I wouldn't be better off just using fighters (with a +30 BAB) for point-defense and skip that part of research.

[brianeyci]

I mean with frigates. Suppose you militarize completely. That is, make around 30-40 frigates armed with nukes and a respectable level of PD, maybe PD III-IV, and Combat Sensors III.

How many tier 0 fighters can defeat that? Why, a mere 50. I bet even 30 could do it, try it yourself.

Carriers could work early on if you invested 40k to start with in light carrier. It's good for someone with lots of reds... build lots of space yards on all your planets, and stock up on tier 0 fighters. Build one or two carriers, bring in a hundred fighters, and it's possible to beat someone early on. But even that's questionable. If the carrier dies, as it probably will, your fighters lose intersystem mobility. If you kami a carrier through a warp point, be prepared for a lot of hurt. Fighter bays launch every 5 seconds, and that five seconds is enough for defense fighters to annihilate the carrier, or a scout to unleash a missile volley.

The good thing about Balance Mod is tier 0 space yards. Waiting until level 10 for space yards was a pain in the ass.

[brianeyci]

As for skipping point defense, the problem is missiles. If you're fighting a plasma missile turd, you'll need high point defense and high sensors to beat it. Fighters can't hit missiles. Even early on capital ship missiles have to be shot down.

A balanced strategy is probaby focusing on sensors, point defense, hulls, and one kind of weapon.

Specialized strategies like going pure plasma missile or going pure fighter might allow you to skip certain research areas with no detrimental effect, but I doubt it.

[InnocentBystander]

Ugh, this is not a very good starting for me

[ColonialAdmiral]

OFFTOPIC:

Space Empires .net didn't put my shipset up. I think it's that atrocities newb trying to cut me out of the game. He's envious of my Zerg shipset from back in the day. Is there some trick to submitting a shipset, or other places I should submit it to? Especially one where I can get adoring fanboys?

I think you are joking but..
Atrocities has no authority to approve shipsets.
Thats what Fyron does...
Just give it a few days...

You can also try:
www.spaceempires5.com

[Kingside_Bishop]

Alright -- my turn is in, and I was the last. Sorry, but I caught a flight yesterday to California, and have only now had enough time to upload my turn.

My start position is definitely better... six reds, one green, all nicely packed, with plenty of room for expansion.

[Luke Starkiller]

Damn you Brian! I wanted to be the first one to submit.

[Hotfoot]

Just FYI, using vanilla SE5, I think I have found a potentially game-breaking strategy. Further tests are being concocted, but right now it appears that Medium Strike fighters are a nigh-unstoppable force. Componts are as follows.

Cockpit 1kt
Life Support 1kt
Armor 4kt
Engines 18kt
Afterburner 2kt
Ordnance Storage 2kt
Combat Sensors 1kt
ECM 1kt
Small DUCx10 30kt

Total cost at max level, ~2200 minerals
Total damage at max level per salvo, ~4,700

On small scale tests, the design is innocuous, with an equal cost of PD ships being able to tear apart the design with moderate ease. However, on larger scale tests, the fighters swarm effectively overwhelms a local point defense grid and even a squadron of tightly packed PD ships with the best PD weapons in the game are swiftly overwhelmed.

Carrier designs to carry this fighter must have at least one weapon so they will move towards combat, and be loaded with very little armor so that the primary focus of fighter bays is handled. No cargo holds. While having some extra in reserve, a proper fighter bay can hold a sufficiently large quantity of fighters by and large, and what's most important is getting the most fighters possible out in the initial waves. Once point defense starts to die horribly, everything else is mopped up easily.

Now, how this fares in Balance Mod, I'm not certain, but part of the problem is the following:
When PD fires, it will fire all the PD on a ship at the first target. If this is overkill, any shots beyond the one that causes the kill are wasted. This means that lightly armored designs will use up more point defense than they should. Scaling the point defense down to a more reasonable number per ship can work to combat this, but in doing so you are decentralizng you defense grid, and overlapping fields of fire are still very important. More ships = less overlap. Huge ships with a tremendous amount of PD fire can't work because they will overkill.

Also, in the standard game, PD is rather weak. At same level, any PD gun will take two shots to kill any seeker. PDCs are fair, beams have a nice range and are instant, but PD Blasters are king, with nearly double damage due to the short refire time. Flak cannons are effectively worthless, and bomblet launchers are almost as bad. Long range means less than nothing when by the time the fire reaches the target they are already on top of you.

Now, as I said, I'm running more tests to see what can be done against this, but it is at the moment potentially game-breaking, because the technologies are rather easy to get, and the results are devestating. Moreover, since fighters can now fight in ground combat, and small DUCs do more damage in ground combat than in space, well, you get the idea.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Uploaded next turn as a replacement turn in order to square up PBW's turn number with the actual one. Due time is still Sunday at 9 PM PDT (better to go subtract 9 hours than add 15). This actually is the new turn, so don't resubmit your old .plr file or anything.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Just FYI, using vanilla SE5, I think I have found a potentially game-breaking strategy. Further tests are being concocted, but right now it appears that Medium Strike fighters are a nigh-unstoppable force. Componts are as follows.

Cockpit 1kt
Life Support 1kt
Armor 4kt
Engines 18kt
Afterburner 2kt
Ordnance Storage 2kt
Combat Sensors 1kt
ECM 1kt
Small DUCx10 30kt

Total cost at max level, ~2200 minerals
Total damage at max level per salvo, ~4,700

On small scale tests, the design is innocuous, with an equal cost of PD ships being able to tear apart the design with moderate ease. However, on larger scale tests, the fighters swarm effectively overwhelms a local point defense grid and even a squadron of tightly packed PD ships with the best PD weapons in the game are swiftly overwhelmed.

Carrier designs to carry this fighter must have at least one weapon so they will move towards combat, and be loaded with very little armor so that the primary focus of fighter bays is handled. No cargo holds. While having some extra in reserve, a proper fighter bay can hold a sufficiently large quantity of fighters by and large, and what's most important is getting the most fighters possible out in the initial waves. Once point defense starts to die horribly, everything else is mopped up easily.

Now, how this fares in Balance Mod, I'm not certain, but part of the problem is the following:
When PD fires, it will fire all the PD on a ship at the first target. If this is overkill, any shots beyond the one that causes the kill are wasted. This means that lightly armored designs will use up more point defense than they should. Scaling the point defense down to a more reasonable number per ship can work to combat this, but in doing so you are decentralizng you defense grid, and overlapping fields of fire are still very important. More ships = less overlap. Huge ships with a tremendous amount of PD fire can't work because they will overkill.

Also, in the standard game, PD is rather weak. At same level, any PD gun will take two shots to kill any seeker. PDCs are fair, beams have a nice range and are instant, but PD Blasters are king, with nearly double damage due to the short refire time. Flak cannons are effectively worthless, and bomblet launchers are almost as bad. Long range means less than nothing when by the time the fire reaches the target they are already on top of you.

Now, as I said, I'm running more tests to see what can be done against this, but it is at the moment potentially game-breaking, because the technologies are rather easy to get, and the results are devestating. Moreover, since fighters can now fight in ground combat, and small DUCs do more damage in ground combat than in space, well, you get the idea.

In Balance mod, they tone down the size of the fighters so you can't cram that many weapons onto them, and they also make all of the PD weapons more like PD blasters, with a high ROF. Balance Mod seems to be almost maddeningly well balanced, with no one strategy or vehicle type dominating the others.

EDIT: Actually that's not 100% true, because mines dominate all other strategies, though that's supposed to be fixed in the next version. In this game we have a gentleman's (and lady's) agreement not to use them offensively in combat.

[brianeyci]

Here's what they look like in BM.





As for the overkill, it's a more serious problem for fighters. Hundreds of fighters hitting the same target is a waste, which is why combined arms work.

What you do in stock is research Energy Pulse Weapons for Meson Blasters and Blaster Turrets. Then you have one of two choices.

1. A picket. That is large number of smaller ships to escort the larger ones and take "overkill" and absorb the brunt of the fighter swarm. Nephtys's idea, and a damn good one.



2. Large numbers of unmounted weapons.



Either way works and completely annihilates fighters with little losses. For stock I would suggest trying making a light cruiser or cruiser with many unmounted meson blasters and -- this is important -- a very high level of combat sensor. Beam weapons do not overkill, and when a ship has 12 2 second reload guns which one-shot fighters, well you get the picture. Once you figure that out you can experiment with mixed fleets. If you're using dreadnaughts, your screen would be battleships and heavy cruiser. If you're using light cruisers as your capitals your screen would be destroyer and frigate. Use the formation controls to spilt the different classes of ships into their own "task forces." What you find is the smaller faster ships engage the fighters first and take the brunt. The larger ships come in later and pick off the fighters at their leisure. If the enemy fighters are set to shoot largest, they rush past the smaller ships and get pasted. If they are not they engage the picket and your meatshields take most of the fighter damage. It's a win-win for ships lose-lose for fighters. Fighters are good early and mid-game, but late game it's game over unless you have ships.

EDIT : Made a mistake in that picket ship, there should be a combat sensor. It doesn't work without a combat sensor. The main idea is this: once combat sensors get good enough to overcome the 50% evade fighters naturally have, fighters are toast. Try it yourself, you need a high level of combat sensor though.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

That strategy would be wasteful against someone who doesn't use fighters, though, as picket ships with unmounted weapons would be toast against ships of the line.

[brianeyci]

Not necessarily. As long as the picket ships are not that much smaller than your ships of the line, they can act to take the "first shot" of enemy capitals. And picket ships are required to deal with plasma missiles or nukes. Your picket ships don't have to be frigates: if you're using battleship your pickets would be light cruiser and cruisers and they wouldn not be one-shotted by enemy capitals.

The problem with stock is heavier mounts have such a huge advantage, so unmounting weapons is kicking yourself in the ass. Not so much in Balance Mod. You can afford to have a mix of mounted and unmounted guns. As long as your capitals have 10+ directed energy weapons that can one-shot a fighter, you're safe against them.

EDIT: The picket could have capital ship missile I and be set to fire at maximum range as well. That way enemy capitals don't even touch them, and they'd only fight up close against fighters which have to close.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

APB at modest level with a mount can outrange CSM I by 10 LS, so that would only work early on.

[Hotfoot]

Here's what they look like in BM.

Much better, though with the targeting issues, it's still going to waste an inordinate number of shots.

As for the overkill, it's a more serious problem for fighters. Hundreds of fighters hitting the same target is a waste, which is why combined arms work.

You misunderstand how overkill works. It's much less of a problem for fighters, because whatever level you're at, you're not going to have it such that the guns on a fighter can ever overkill a capship. Once you get past the initial one trigger, and the formations meet, the fighters much more efficiently choose target than the capital ships can, because the per-unit targeting is better than the per-gun targetting, you see? I'm telling you that I've tested flat out if a dense formation of overlapping PD can handle an equal cost of carriers and fighters once you hit a larger scale, and the answer is definatively no in every single simulation I have run. Putting them into fleet formations makes it worse because the ships are invariably spread out MORE, further weakening the PD fire.

What you do in stock is research Energy Pulse Weapons for Meson Blasters and Blaster Turrets. Then you have one of two choices.

1. A picket. That is large number of smaller ships to escort the larger ones and take "overkill" and absorb the brunt of the fighter swarm. Nephtys's idea, and a damn good one.

As stated above, it's a nice idea, but it fails in practice. In order to beat the fighter swarm, you have to have disgustingly superior numbers for production.

2. Large numbers of unmounted weapons.

A nice idea, if you have a max level religious talismen, perhaps. However, it has the same problem when it comes to targetting, and an even greater problem in that it takes more mass, resources, and is less likely to hit any given fighter.

Either way works and completely annihilates fighters with little losses. For stock I would suggest trying making a light cruiser or cruiser with many unmounted meson blasters and -- this is important -- a very high level of combat sensor.

My tests are done at maximum tech level. Everything was highest level, as it should be for ALL tests and trials. Heck, even the capital ships in question had a massive defense boost.

Beam weapons do not overkill, and when a ship has 12 2 second reload guns which one-shot fighters, well you get the picture.

12 2-second reload guns...which have a roughly zero chance of hitting. Medium fighters have a baseline defense value of 70%. Add on the small ECM, and even with the best combat sensors, you're still talking about a very small number of actual hits, and not even a guaranteed kill. The fighter swarm completely overwhelms ships in a very short period of time, because they are so fast. With the targetting problems, you're still going to be firing all your cannons at just one fighter at a time. So when you work out the mineral costs and make your formation, you're still going to be overwhelmed because by the time you've killed 3-6 fighters from the initial wave, the remaining 100 are on top of you and murdering your front line before you can blink. It's the opposite problem from 4, where a huge weapon would one-shot a giant stack of fighters.

[brianeyci]

I am not worried about your kind of fighters Hotfoot. I'm worried about the kind of fighters that have antimatter torpedoes to shoot through emissive armor, and shields and all armor slots so they can take more than one capital ship hit.

Post your saved game and I'll try and make something to beat your fighters at an equal tech level with equal resources.

Meanwhile, if it really is unstoppable, the answer is Balance Mod. At max, Small fighters only have a 50% defense modifier, with 55% ECM that means 105%. Picket frigates will have a 75% combat sensor, along with 20% bonus with their flak cannons and bomblet missiles for 95% to hit. Fleets can also be trained which isn't represented in the combat simulator. Medium fighters only have a 40% defense modifier in Balance Mod, and 30% for Large Fighter.

The key to beating fighters is one-shotting them. If that can't be done reliably in stock then we can only conclude one thing: I would've won . I had the entire eastern half of the galaxy to myself, fighters five researched and medium fighter shitting out exactly the kind of fighter Hotfoot is describing (except with meson blasters, better!) and all you guys were busy squabbling over worthless worlds when I had like 10 greens and twenty carriers on their way. Hahahahaha.

[brianeyci]

As for maximum tech level tests, I did them too, but it's lazy. Research costs are not taken into account, and stock is not balanced at all so the technology progression is not linear. To go fighters in the last SE:V game I had to completely neglect hulls.

With maximum tech level balance mod tests I get the following results: destruction of all fighters using picket ships, and destruction of all fighters using beam weapons. I pit around 100 picket ships versus hundreds of fighters of equal mineral cost. For the capitals, I simmed 100 dreadnaughts versus thousands of fighters. The results were both the same. If that isn't how it works in stock, well then all I have to say is stock blows donkey nuts. There is only one correct strategy in stock, that is go Meson Blasters and apparently Fighters.

EDIT : Just tried the best I could with stock and couldn't beat that design Hotfoot. All I have to say is: Balance Mod. Try the same shit with that, if you can make an uber fighter that can beat everything then you're awesome. Right now you're just telling everybody what they already know, that fighters rule in stock.

[Kingside_Bishop]

If you want to test out techs at other levels than max, try selecting "High" for technology points for new players, rather than "All." Then, when you buy techs during empire setup, keep track of how many points the various builds are using, and make them use the same amount. For example, in testing CSMs againt APBs, spend, say, 200,000 into each -- much of which will go into Physics for the APBs. You can even do this for multiple components... like, Hull Size + CSM vs. Fighters + PD.

That'll give you a good idea of power to research costs for the various components. When you've done this, scrap the practice game, and start over, only with more (or less) points invested -- that way, you can even track the power curve over time.

At any rate, that's what I do in testing my designs, running them against the most commonly encountered design types (early fighters, missile boats, etc.).

I am not worried about your kind of fighters Hotfoot. I'm worried about the kind of fighters that have antimatter torpedoes to shoot through emissive armor, and shields and all armor slots so they can take more than one capital ship hit.

I'm more worried about early game bombers... you know, tier 0 fighters with rocket pods... *shudders* I, personally, think rocket pods are overpowered. They pack a capital ship punch, with only a five ton investment in space. Sure, they take eight seconds to reload, but when you've got a few dozen fighters, who cares?

[Hotfoot]

As for maximum tech level tests, I did them too, but it's lazy. Research costs are not taken into account, and stock is not balanced at all so the technology progression is not linear. To go fighters in the last SE:V game I had to completely neglect hulls.

When you look at data from the tech files, you can do the math on what it takes to get there.

EDIT : Just tried the best I could with stock and couldn't beat that design Hotfoot. All I have to say is: Balance Mod. Try the same shit with that, if you can make an uber fighter that can beat everything then you're awesome. Right now you're just telling everybody what they already know, that fighters rule in stock.

Told you.

As far as Balance Mod, I'll check it out, but seriously, the idea of FEWER tech levels is an anethma to me. I'm already formulating a few ideas for a balance mod of my own...

[brianeyci]

The problem with many tech levels is it's not optimized for online play. Let's say the average game takes 6 months. That's 90 turns. Probably far less, maybe 50 - 70 turns.

Now if you have 100 tech levels, or worse, infinite tech levels, what is the point. You could gain multiple tech levels per turn, like 5 levels in combat sensor, but why not just gain one level in combat sensor.

Not to mention a lot of other games are far shorter. Like King of the Hill games (competitive SE:IV ladder, I assume one's up for SE:V now), one or two months. If a game's going to last 30 turns at most, there's no point having a billion tech levels nobody ever gets to or even uses, and if you scale research points down so you actually do use them and get say 10 combat sensor levels in one turn, there's no point to adding so much complexity for no reason.

I really think the SE series is not ideal as a single player game. The ideal mod should aim for 3 months of 48 hour turns to finish, six months on the outside if you have a massive game like we're playing right now. If it takes 200 turns to get to the good stuff, forget it.

[Covenant]

I really think the SE series is not ideal as a single player game. The ideal mod should aim for 3 months of 48 hour turns to finish, six months on the outside if you have a massive game like we're playing right now. If it takes 200 turns to get to the good stuff, forget it.

I'd like to start playing with more 'start with RP's' setups, so we can customize the tech we start out with. Takes less time! I'm sure we're all kinda tired of seeing nuclear missiles and fusion rockets. Offering a pile of RP's to start off with would be kinda interesting--we could have the Romulans with Plasma Missiles and Cloaking devices squaring off against Hiigarans with massive ships and heavy ion cannons with the Empire and it's giant stinking fighter hordes and Doomstars right from the get-go, and nobody would be able to get that good of a start without some tradeoffs.

Sure, some setups might be more broken than others, but if we played in a small galaxy, we might only need to play about two months to get an idea of who is going ot come out on top.

[Nephtys]

I sorta wish the research was more like MOO2. There's a big gap between tech levels, but you get something wholly different and in some cases revolutionary. So your laser beams don't upgrade to laser beam 2, they upgrade to Graviton Rays, and such and so.

It'd also be nice to have that 'you can only pick one tech from this list of three', so we'd have empires with completely different tech distributions.

[MKSheppard]

I just uploaded Flagtastic v2.0; basically 3 new flags:

South Korean
United Nations
Third Imperium (traveller)

but what really made it jump from 1.4 to 2.0 was that I did a second set of "TNZ small flags" for all of the flags.

[Hotfoot]

Frankly, I like more gradiated technologies, because it means that you're not totally fucked if someone is a level or two ahead of you. I think that making a system where components become not massively better in terms of damage, but in cost, size, or so on would be best, however.

[brianeyci]

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm calling my "nuclear missiles" photon torpedoes, my "point-defense cannons" phaser arrays and my "dreadnaughts" starships. RP doesn't have to follow mechanics.

The problem is the genre is 4x Explore Expand Exploit Exterminate. That means the "problems" of starting at nothing is actually intrinsic to the genre. Starting with the technology of a galaxy-spanning empire is just removing 3 out of 4 factors of the whole genre. I actually rather like starting with nothing and sending out stuff to colonize, and starting with low technology.

Changing the fundamental nature of the game will be difficult, if not incredibly time consuming and a part-time job. Witness the Adamant Mod, the "Mother of Mods" the "King of Mods" which attempts the most distinct, radical changes in SE:IV. An Adamant kind of mod for SE:V would be a massive undertaking.

Of course if all you want is your nuclear missiles called something else, then it's pretty easy, but I don't think that's what's in mind.