Space Empires V PBW game?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I'm working on a relatively simple SE V mod along the lines of what I talked about before. It's actually not very time consuming to mod the game if you keep your goals modest. I have the 3 tiered ship size model up and running so far and the mounts to go along with them.

[Covenant]

I think that one of my options gives me an undocumented minus to shipyard production speed. I have 20 less production speed (fucking 20) than I've ever seen my setup have. That tiny, tiny decrease can't be from anything else than like a 1 percent decrease in speed right? And I certainly didn't take anything that slowed me by, like, .01 or something.

It's actually .006 of a percent slower... which is really annoying.

I say this because I wondered why none of my ships got built. My carefully maximized shipping didn't pop out on it's turn. What's the deal? Well, apparently it was 20 over cost. ;p

That's super shitty! Ah well. A few wasted turns won't kill me in the longterm I suppose. Anyone got an idea what the problem is? Is it, like, population happiness or something?

[brianeyci]

Hahahaha both you and Nephtys same problem, over micro for teh lose.

You load population, your bonus from +60% construction rate goes from +59% and you go a little lower than expected.

No worries: construction bleeds in SE:V so the advantage isn't double the amount of colony ships if you can't optimize one turn or less like in SE:IV, but just one turn off. Just make sure to add more than one colonizer to your queue... like add 10 at once. The disadvantage is outdated ships, but basic sensor 3 is good enough.

I can't figure out how to move my colony ships in an unexplored system like I did in SE:IV as soon as I warp, and I'm not going to bother to try. Fuck micro, fuck it hard: I'm going to win with strategy and politics not uber micro.

EDIT: If you haven't already research Ion Engine 2, it lowers the cost of engines by 50, so that'll put you under 20 bucks for sure. If you've got 2, get 3. But in the long run it doesn't matter: it's just one wasted turn, not many, if you use the wrench icon and add 10 at once to a queue (not 10 separately.)

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I don't think you can warp and move in SE V, which is good IMO. That was a pretty cheap tactic.

[brianeyci]

Well there is a "clear all orders as soon as you enter a system with enemy presence" option (by default on, I turned it off). So there is warp moving.

I think warp move is possible, as long as you've had vision of the system, as in fog. If you've never been in the system ever, looks like warp move's impossible.

Another thing people might want to look at is the "all transit simultaneously" option. I don't want my ships coming one by one through a warp point. Might be an advantage of sending certain ships ahead of others, like warships before carriers, but I'm just massing everything through at once if I ever attack.

[Covenant]

Hahahaha both you and Nephtys same problem, over micro for teh lose.

You load population, your bonus from +60% construction rate goes from +59% and you go a little lower than expected.

No worries: construction bleeds in SE:V so the advantage isn't double the amount of colony ships if you can't optimize one turn or less like in SE:IV, but just one turn off. Just make sure to add more than one colonizer to your queue... like add 10 at once. The disadvantage is outdated ships, but basic sensor 3 is good enough.

I can't figure out how to move my colony ships in an unexplored system like I did in SE:IV as soon as I warp, and I'm not going to bother to try. Fuck micro, fuck it hard: I'm going to win with strategy and politics not uber micro.

EDIT: If you haven't already research Ion Engine 2, it lowers the cost of engines by 50, so that'll put you under 20 bucks for sure. If you've got 2, get 3. But in the long run it doesn't matter: it's just one wasted turn, not many, if you use the wrench icon and add 10 at once to a queue (not 10 separately.)

D:

She just explained this to me. I am teh failure!

But yeah, one turn. Oh noez! I just don't want to get horribly out-expanded in the early game. A few turns here or there shouldn't do much. I'm just glad you told me this!

[brianeyci]

If that kind of micro mattered, gups might as well resign, he's got 6 colonizers compared to most people's 9 or one fuck even has 12.

But it won't matter. There's not that many greens to go around, and no warp moving means your colonizers are delayed every time you transit into an unexplored system. Add in the fact gups probably has bonuses in other areas than construction that matter a lot more like special technologies or whatever, and this early part doesn't matter as much as you'd think.

It mattered a lot in SE:IV because of lameass tricks. One was ramming. A SE:IV colonizer can ram a turn 0 frigate and win most of the time with no damage. Another was warp move. Another was because no bleed over with construction rate. Someone who didn't have a perfectly set up empire could be double the colonies behind someone else.

The outpost is still powerful though: the idea behind the outpost is try and sneak a colony ship into no-man's land and plop down a colony. In SE:V the outpost can build fighters and immediately begin to exert regional influence. However, the outpost in SE:V cannot build a resupply depot like in SE:IV as a forward fueling station since the main way of resupply in SE:V is building tankers (resupply depots make a pathetic 1k suppies a turn). An outpost is not the difference between life or death, win or lose in an invasion. So a colonizer rush is still important, but in SE:V if you don't perfect it I don't think you'll die.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

To me the main tradeoff is whether you spam colonizers early on or whether you devote the first few turns to base space yards and scouts. If you build some space yards early, then you'll be able to produce a shit-ton of colonizers before the others can ramp up production that much, but you'll be short a few colonizers early on that might have been able to take some great planets and claim systems. Personally, I decided to build one colonizer, one space yard, one scout, and then five colonizers at each planet. The space yards, of course, replicate themselves until their production is at or near the resource base and then spam colonizers.

[Covenant]

Yeah, well, I got screwed on the first turn because of something and now my other colonizers are taking longer, so I've only made 4 and no starbases. Beat that!

So I think I have a pretty bad start. But it's okay, I think I'll do fine. A few turns won't really ruin things. Even if someone out-expands me in my area and gets starbases up and such and has a definitive lead, it's hard for someone to aggressively deny me terrain in my own home areas. I think we're going to be doing a lot of elbow-rubbing for a while. If someone attacks sometime soon I can't imagine it being fairly successful, so the early game matters as always, but I don't think it's as direly important as a game of Warcraft.

[brianeyci]

I have an inborn hatred of base space yards lingering from the B5 game where I had to click thousands of them, with a little lag bug so my turns took at times hours.

Plus base space yards have half the build rate, take maintainence and so on. You make them if you want guys: I'm sticking with planetary ones, that take full advantage of my racials and can go on emergency for even greater spam goodness if I'm bum rushed.

[Keevan_Colton]

I have an inborn hatred of base space yards lingering from the B5 game where I had to click thousands of them, with a little lag bug so my turns took at times hours.

Plus base space yards have half the build rate, take maintainence and so on. You make them if you want guys: I'm sticking with planetary ones, that take full advantage of my racials and can go on emergency for even greater spam goodness if I'm bum rushed.

Space based ones can use emergency build too...unless that's been altered in the balance mod?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

In SE V you can put all of your base space yards on or off emergency at once, so the aggravation factor is very much lessened.

[GuppyShark]

Yeah - six colony ships was a carefully planned strat. I won't claim to be awesome at SEV or anything but there's a reason I didn't just go "Repeat Build 1 Turn colony ship"

[darthkommandant]

For me base space yards are a necessity to get a large fleet of ships up quickly. I have about 3 of them producing the latest model ships. Additionally I have managed to colonize 2 of the 3 reds in my start systems and have managed to link my two systems but one of the warp points is small.

[brianeyci]

Turn one colony ship no... but turn two colony ship, that's another story. Basic sensors 3 good enough. IMO only reason not to repeat build and take advantage of bleed past turn 2 is if you're trying exotic strategies like arming your colonizers or installing shuttle bays on them.

As for emergency build on base space yard, yes. But 50% of 1000 is only 1500 while 50% of 2000 is 3000. Add in racial and population bonuses, most of which only apply to planetary ones, and my planetary ones are worth 3 space ones. All those reds I usually build space yards on. If you have many reds, you can have many space yards like 10 or so in your home systems and don't have to rely on BSY at all. You only have a weakness of 5 turns, but that window's over quickly.

DK mentioning latest model is important too -- BSY in the middle and late game tend to build ships several tens of turns later than planet bound ones, making for outdated equipment. Even know, my BSY would build ships three turns behind what I could make with a homeworld.

[ColonialAdmiral]

Hiigarans are up at spaceempires.net...

Anyway, I've been reading reports that the sats are bugged in 1.35.
I haven't done any testing myself, but it seems like people are having lots of issues. It appears that when sats are placed in groups, all the sats armour gets added up, and then that number is applied to EVERY single sat.
I don't know....

P.S.

If any of you are interested in a Play by Community game for SEIV....We've started one at SE.net. We are currently looking for more players, we need captains for now...But more opportunities should be available soon...

[Covenant]

Cool!

Thanks CA, glad to hear it. I wonder, are those imperial and rebel shipsets from Warlords?

[ColonialAdmiral]

They are evileJedis ships from homeworld 2, just converted to SEV format.

Of course, that could be what warlords is...

[Kingside_Bishop]

I have a strong preference towards planetary space yards, especially in the early game. With them on emergency build, and with my racials, I can build 6,000 resources per turn on my homeworlds. Compounded with the fact that I'm using crystalline hulls, which helps distribute the resources away from minerals, I've got a pretty good build rate. I usually build 2-3 space yard stations in the last turn or two of emergency build, though, so that I'm still building at a high capacity in the vicinity of my homeworlds.

[brianeyci]

When I went emergency build for colonizers in the last SE:V game I was stuck with a whole bunch of colonizers and no worlds.

Most worlds are reds and a few more reds won't make a big difference. Meanwhile saving up your emergency build for a... oh I don't know, a real emergency, sounds sexy to me. People can emergency their colonizers all they want -- I'll save it for when I've got enough technology to make lasting frigates and destroyers.

[ColonialAdmiral]

Hey covenant, theres a guy over at SE.net whos having problem with the shipset. Says they are firing from space instead of the ship. You should probably look at your firing points...

[Luke Starkiller]

Hey covenant, theres a guy over at SE.net whos having problem with the shipset. Says they are firing from space instead of the ship. You should probably look at your firing points...

Yeah, I'm playing an SP game with the set and it is doing that for me too; the frigates at least shoot their beams from several ship lengths ahead and a bit off to the side.

[Covenant]

Hey covenant, theres a guy over at SE.net whos having problem with the shipset. Says they are firing from space instead of the ship. You should probably look at your firing points...

Yeah, I'm playing an SP game with the set and it is doing that for me too; the frigates at least shoot their beams from several ship lengths ahead and a bit off to the side.

It was the cost of getting it out in time.

That's because the ships fire out from the settings defined by the firing locations. But since we were starting on Tuesday, I didn't have the time or motivation to retune the firing locations. I frankly didn't care where they fired from, it was utterly irrelevent to me. I'm a little amazed someone actually gives a shit. Once you have like 15 of them on a screen fighting another 15 ships, you won't even be able to tell the difference.

Plus, this was a shipset I made for me, that then other people wanted me to upload. If someone else cares a ton, tell them to contact me and we can work on it together. I'll re-release it with their name on the file too. One thing I've seen from Modding though is that few people are willing to step up and help, and mostly view it as a service. They have a shipset and it looks nice. It may have odd weapon effects in battle but we're playing multiplayer so it's precomputed anyway. I'll barely be able to enjoy the in-battle effects anyway, so I didn't care much.

I made the tanks fire out of their base, but that's about it. Nothing else seemed important besides the graphics. I wanted the shipset to look nice, but I wasn't terribly interested in doing more than that. I didn't consider beam locations part of the looks, especially since that would require me to actually playtest this. Remember, I threw this together in a few days while doing real work too. Neph commented that they were firing from outside the ship too, but I didn't care then either. The issue is with the scaling. SEV handles scaling really poorly, so I'd need to do a lot of manual fiddling to do the guns.

I did it with the engines. All my ships have nice little engines flares. That's something nobody else does! But the guns? C'mon.

If people want me to fix it, do some playtesting and get me some screenshots and such. Also, where's this board? I'll respond to them to make sure they know I know.

[Kingside_Bishop]

First contact(s). I'd say it was definitely the right decision to go with large.

[Covenant]

First contact(s). I'd say it was definitely the right decision to go with large.

Speaking of that, I sent you a message. Check your PM box here.

Ah hell, I'll just mail you.

Here's another question, I was looking at the treaty stuff.... there's a section about old techs being swapped. Are we going to add that into the 'no tech trading' rule? We need to be clear, lest people choose that to get around 'direct' tech sharing.

And also, what about colony trading? I think that'd probably be cheating too. If I'm ice and you're rock, we shouldn't be allowed to gift colonies to each other, should we? Even without the tech to make them, having the different atmosphere populations seems like a really unfair way to get ahead, and swapping planets is just a way of avoiding the cost of upgrading. Because then, instead of just giving me a colonizer and having me take it apart, you go directly to colonizing worlds for me and giving them to me. Seems really cheesy.

I'd like clarity on this. We may not be able to adequately monitor these situations, but I'd like to think that any cheaters out there would feel a sense of shame at being lame, if this did happen.