I didn't choose to use the balance mod for a reason, and that's that I really don't like parts of what the balance mod does. Like, the tech tree redoing, I'm not a fan. And the resource reallocation. It makes sense that you need more minerals to build a ship than organics or radioactive, unless of course your ships are organic or crystalline, which does happen.
I like the AI changes, but ultimately I still prefer vanilla.
Space Empires IV: Gold remains one of my all time favorite games (Hello deathstars!). Never really looked into SE5 that much tho, it looks decent.
Also now that I think about it, it is still possible to build something like a deathstar in V. They kept in Base Stars, and they kept in planet-destroying bombs.
Obviously in this game, unless things get bad, I won't be using them. First off, more planets are always a good thing, even though I probably won't be having many more research planets, since I'm already so far ahead of technology curve. I may start a large genocidal campaign nearer to the end, but probably I'll be going for just smashing the hell out of people with troops and normal naval combat.
That, and if the research requirements for the Deathstars (or Base stars, but who wants to call them that? Anyone who doesnt want to get sued by Lucas, thats who.) is anything like 4 (which, judging by your LP, it is) it'll take you for-fucking-EVER to get the tech, and even then you have to build the components...
Fuckit, as soon as I go home I'm finding my SE4 disc and building some goddamn bases around some goddamn stars. With mines and satellites.
Actually, I had to go through the tectonic bombs to get the warp point opening tech, so I had no choice but to go through planet destroying weapons. The problem with them is that a fairly cheap to research and build facility can protect the entire system from planets being destroyed. Also Base Stars are fairly useless in my opinion. Less space than the stations, and they're really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really slow. Really slow. Really slow. Stupid slow. I'm not entire sure, but it's something like 3 movement total, which with quantum engines and solar sails still only means like, 7-8 movement total.
Actually, I had to go through the tectonic bombs to get the warp point opening tech, so I had no choice but to go through planet destroying weapons. The problem with them is that a fairly cheap to research and build facility can protect the entire system from planets being destroyed. Also Base Stars are fairly useless in my opinion. Less space than the stations, and they're really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really slow. Really slow. Really slow. Stupid slow. I'm not entire sure, but it's something like 3 movement total, which with quantum engines and solar sails still only means like, 7-8 movement total.
I think I may have called them the wrong things.
Once you mentioned movement, I remembered that there was a class of ship ala "base star" that moved super slow.... I never built those either.
EDIT: They're called "Worldships" in SE4
I've been referring to the "planets" you can create around stars. I know those things are huge (and don't move) and require tons of research and production. I'll try to figure it out tonight.
Actually, I had to go through the tectonic bombs to get the warp point opening tech, so I had no choice but to go through planet destroying weapons. The problem with them is that a fairly cheap to research and build facility can protect the entire system from planets being destroyed. Also Base Stars are fairly useless in my opinion. Less space than the stations, and they're really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really slow. Really slow. Really slow. Stupid slow. I'm not entire sure, but it's something like 3 movement total, which with quantum engines and solar sails still only means like, 7-8 movement total.
I think I may have called them the wrong things.
Once you mentioned movement, I remembered that there was a class of ship ala "base star" that moved super slow.... I never built those either.
EDIT: They're called "Worldships" in SE4
I've been referring to the "planets" you can create around stars. I know those things are huge (and don't move) and require tons of research and production. I'll try to figure it out tonight.
Oh god the sphere worlds.
Yeah they're at level 80 in Stellar Manipulation. I mention earlier than with my stupidly good research that even at 1% my military spending is still a little faster than the AIs military spending at whatever they have it at, I still at 100% was only 1/14th of the research to level 35.
Motherfucking sphere worlds. I may actually get those, just because Stellar Manipulation is my go to "Sink research into this" area, since it has pretty much no military use really.
I just typed up a whole giant like 5 page explanation of all the tech tree. Then I lost it. I'll re-do it tomorrow at some point, I've got a party tonight. The research tree in this game is crazy.
As an example, the tech tree I've almost always got open explains tech in the following way:
Bout time to make a new empire and play through it, good job taking out a lot of the monotony of this game. Do you know any way to just click on ship components, to add them to the design? I hate click dragging all my armor pieces and shield pieces and what not.
Bout time to make a new empire and play through it, good job taking out a lot of the monotony of this game. Do you know any way to just click on ship components, to add them to the design? I hate click dragging all my armor pieces and shield pieces and what not.
I will finish this empire's domination even if I have to restrict myself to doing no research and only using non-direct-fire weapons, or playing the whole game blindfolded.
Either way, I don't know of any way to automatically add, but one thing that makes building with armor and shields bearable is shift-clicking will place the component and not lose it, which makes it much easier to mass-place.
I'll have a screen of my empires stats soon, but here's an overview of technology
Tech tree explanation!
Hoo boy, this is a biggun. Ok. So the basics are that research is broken into three main fields, though on the research screen, it's shown as four, with weapons being their own tab.
Cultural Achievements
Theoretical Sciences
Applied Sciences
Cultural Achievements don't give any technology, but improve the race statistics, by 1% each level. They can be taken up to a maximum of 20 levels, so 20% of an add-on to the stat. Which can be pretty impressive, especially with, say, Mathematics, which increases research.
Cultural Achievements consist of the following:(Given in the format Achievement(Improved area)
Cultural Studies(This is the prerequisite for all the others, it doesn't give bonuses itself)
Civics(Loyalty), Economics(Maintenance), Education(Loyalty, Assimilation), Environmental Sciences(Environmental resistance), Ethics(Spying), Leisure Services(Reproduction), History(Weapon accuracy and damage), Mathematics(Research), Philosophy(Experience), Political Science(Trade), Sociology(War Tolerance), and Sports(Ground combat damage).
After that, we have the Theoretical Sciences, or:
Astrophysics, Biology, Chemistry, Construction, Industry, Military Science, Physics, Planetary Engineering, and Psychology. If you take certain racial traits(Crystallurgy, Organic Manipulation, Deeply Religious, Psychic, Temporal Knowledge), you can get access to Crystallurgy, Organic Engineering, Religious Studies, Temporal Studies, and Psychic Studies. I took none of the expanded research trees, because some of them I'm waaaaaay to comfortable with. Organic Engineering is my baby, and it would be even more one-sided than it is already.
The Theoretical Sciences, with the exception of Psychology, don't give you any facilities or components or vehicle designs or weapons. Instead what they do is they open up areas of Applied Sciences. For instance, if you research Construction to level 2(it starts at level 1), then you have access to the applied science fields of Fighters and Mines. If you research it to level 3, then you have access to Centralized Computer Systems and Robotics. You don't get any levels in these technologies though, you simply are then allowed to research them. Psychology does improve a component, it makes Crew Quarters able to hold more people, which is nice in keeping tonnage down, especially on the big ships. There's actually an alternative to having crews on your ships, a 40kT component called a “Master Computer”, From the Computers tech in the Industry tree, that removes the need for a bridge, living quarters, and life support. It also adds a bonus to combat. The problems are a: with properly researched life support and crew quarters, the bridge/life support/crew quarters takes up less space, and b: computers don't get the bonuses that the race will if they're piloting. So with a militarily strong race, the computer bonus may not be worth losing the normal crew. Anyways, that's Theoretical Sciences. Some applied sciences don't need a theoretical science, you start with the field available for research.
Finally, Applied sciences! I'm not going to list all of them because there are roughly 5 billion applied sciences. I have a tech tree open here, it's a 4 page flowchart. Dense. Some applied sciences just give components that are then constantly improved, such as “Starship support”, which just improves the Resupply Depot up to level 100. Some open up new components/facilities at certain levels, and either continue to or stop improving other components/facilities. For instance, Stellar Manipulation, every level improves the Monolith facility. At 10 is gives you a level 1 Beta Displacement Pulser. From 10-14 it improves both the monolith and the BDP. At 15 it gives you a level one Ionic Concussion Blaster. 15-19 improves both Monolith and the ICB. By the way, neither of those technologies are weapons. Weird, huh? Some applied sciences open up other applied sciences. Each engine technology, up to Quantum, at level 5 open up a better engine type. Ion and Contra-Terrene engines also open up some weapons fields.
So here's what I'm looking at when I give notes about the technology:
What does that mean? Simple, really. H-E Discharge Weapons are classified in the chart as Weapons Technology 7. It starts at level 0, and goes to level 100. Each level adds 3,000 to the research point cost. There's a prerequisite of Applied Science 35 at level 5(Contra-terrene engines). At level one, it gives you the Ripper Beam. At level 20 it gives you the Incinerator Beam. At level 1, if you also have Weapons Technology 22 at level 1(Smaller weapons), it gives you the Small Incinerator Beam. At level 40 it gives you the Wave Motion Gun. I've never used this technology tree much. But a Wave Motion Gun just sounds awesome. I want to see it fire.
So that's technologies mostly. At least an overview.
Turns out the Eee Consortium is fucking huge. There are two races in this system, but the Eee have all but one of the systems I've seen so far. This update is whittling them down. I also have a new rule.
This shows off my strategy. Basically, the plan was to take a system, populate it, move on. Then I got bored, so now I'm just wiping the Eee out and then doing more colonization.
Then we cut off Jokala
Then destroying the warp crushing ship. It's too advanced.
Then I see some mediocre news
Turns out that the Eee and this other race have been getting along with each other reasonably well. They've got a nice treaty going on, so when I started wiping out the Eee the other race started getting angry. Someone around here has a great story about GalCiv 2, where he had a really weak race, who everyone hated, except the Drengians. Those of you who know GalCiv 2 know that the Drengians tend to be an awesomely aggressive and militaristic. Well GalCiv 2 has this awesome diplomacy thing where people will check the players military and research and culture, and are a lot nicer if you can bust their asses without a second thought. They don't, however, check the same with your allies. So this guy would get people pissed off at him, and they would declare war, 'cause they could crush him without a thought. Then, I believe as he put it, the Drengians would say "WHOSE BEEN MESSING WITH OUR LITTLE FRIENDS", and would take out whoever attacked. Freakin' hilarious. Well I didn't end up attacking the one weak race and have my ass promptly handed to me by a strong race, but I did get the ally somewhat mad at me, which means they're less likely to be my friends. I don't really need friends, at least not in this cluster, but it'd be fun. I have a feeling the remaining half of the galaxy will be at least a little more advanced. These guys were in a constant state of peace, it's made them wimps.
Anyways, back to the battle!
This is encouraging to see. This station actually made me pause combat, and gave me my new rule, because it would've at least taken out one of my frigates if I didn't have a shield regenerator. So. No more shield regenerators!
I haven't really shown this feature much, but one of the uses of pausing in combat is that with multiple weapons you can select multiple targets. This can get really, really exciting and fun if you have large fleets. You can have one ship just spreading fire around. You can also do that with P-D weapons, against fighters/drones focusing or splitting up. This is most practical and useful in situations like this, and during large amounts of small drone/ship/satellite stuff you can focus P-D on a single target, like a drone over a fighter, if you want, while keeping the main weapons on the big ships. Or to tractor/repulse one ship while firing on others. I'm using it here because the frigates have planetary napalm on them, but they also, in this iteration, have a pair of Meson Blasters. In the next revision they keep the napalm but combine a DUC and a Ripper as their main batteries. Either way, the frigates have main batteries and bombardment weapons. So they used the Meson blasters against the station, and the napalm against the planet. I didn't need to do this, but it breaks things up and in the future I may need to employ more tactics. The blue lines are showing what's targeting what. They turn red as they get closer to what they're attacking.
Actually, there was one moment I did have to use some tactics, because the station had a warp beam, which moves a ship randomly. Well the fleet broke off the attack to get back into formation, and I had to tell them to break formation to continue actually firing and not getting shot a bunch more times.
I also attacked this planet. They have a weapons platform which could really cause some damage, but they're torpedo-based, and the fleets in such a tight formation that they can combine their P-D to intercept all three before they hit.
I just thought this kind of looked cool
This is awesome. When you create a fleet, it automatically names it. Alpha Fleet, Beta Fleet, etc. Once it reaches the end, it just starts doubling it up. Alpha Alpha Fleet, Alpha Beta Fleet, Alpha Gamma Fleet, etc.
Man I love this game too. A word of warning though, this game is pretty broken out of the box. Get it patched up ASAP and I would reccomend a mod, too as the vanilla AI can be pretty weak.
But I wholeheartedly agree that ship building is aces in this game. I liked to build pirate fleets. Two or three destroyers with stealth systems loaded to the gills with shield depleters and engine destroying weapons, accompanied by a larger stealth ship that acted as a quartermaster ship: sensors, extra supply storage/generation and a ship-based spaceyard. I would infiltrate these little fleets behind enemy lines looking for ships that weren't in a big group, then decloak, disable and board, then the shipyard ship would dismantle the disabled enemy vessle and repair the boarding party ships.
Also, earlier the you complained that you were having trouble with planetary invasions. I believe you can fix that by modifying the ship AI. It's been forever since I played, but I think I remember that you could put planets on a "Don't Fire On" list. One nice thing about this game is that you could sort of program how your ships react in combat by creating custom ship types. So you could create an "Invasion Escort" class of ship, and put planets in the "Don't Fire On" list. I think you could also change fleet and task force tactics so that your ships won't fire on a planet. I think you might have to set the task force that contains the troop transports to "Never Break Formation" and "Invade Planet" so that your troop transports don't go in alone and get blown to pieces by planetary defenses.
Setting your ships' tactics made a huge difference I remember. I was in one fight where they computer had about 200 low tech frigates/destoyers while I had about 35 technologically advanced ships up to cruiser size. I ran a simulation with the standard "Optimal Weapons Range"/"Target Ship w/ Most Damage" AI and got obliterated. But since my ships had both range and speed on the enemy, I set my ships' AI to "Maximum Weapons Range" and my targeting priorities to 1. "Closest", 2. "Fastest", 3. "Least Damaged" and won easily, as my ships effectively kited his fleet to death.
Question: Is there a way to get your point defense systems to target different fighters? I hate the fact that my point defense ships will fire 10 point defense cannons at one lousy fighter doing 300kt damage to something with only 30kt damage.
Two more, final things on this overly long post: I thought in vanilla SEV, Shield Regenerators don't stack and that if you have more than one regenerator on a ship, you're just wasting tonnage.
Also, if I remember correctly, if you take over alien populations, in addition to their racial bonuses, they keep their same breathable atmosphere. So if your race is an Oxygen breather, and you take over a planet with Hydrogen breathers, if you have any hydrogen worlds, you can move/scrap your oxygen breathing population and move in the Hydrogen breathers. When you do, that world will "un-dome" and you can build up to it's full potential on it. And, if I remember correctly, once a world is un-domed you can move Oxygen breathers back to the planet and it will remain un-domed. Much easier than waiting 80-100 turns for your Atmospheric Reprocessors.
That alien race that cropped up in the middle of your system early on might have been the biggest boon you had going for you had you invaded the planet rather than glassed it.
Man I love this game too. A word of warning though, this game is pretty broken out of the box. Get it patched up ASAP and I would reccomend a mod, too as the vanilla AI can be pretty weak.
But I wholeheartedly agree that ship building is aces in this game. I liked to build pirate fleets. Two or three destroyers with stealth systems loaded to the gills with shield depleters and engine destroying weapons, accompanied by a larger stealth ship that acted as a quartermaster ship: sensors, extra supply storage/generation and a ship-based spaceyard. I would infiltrate these little fleets behind enemy lines looking for ships that weren't in a big group, then decloak, disable and board, then the shipyard ship would dismantle the disabled enemy vessle and repair the boarding party ships.
Also, earlier the you complained that you were having trouble with planetary invasions. I believe you can fix that by modifying the ship AI. It's been forever since I played, but I think I remember that you could put planets on a "Don't Fire On" list. One nice thing about this game is that you could sort of program how your ships react in combat by creating custom ship types. So you could create an "Invasion Escort" class of ship, and put planets in the "Don't Fire On" list. I think you could also change fleet and task force tactics so that your ships won't fire on a planet. I think you might have to set the task force that contains the troop transports to "Never Break Formation" and "Invade Planet" so that your troop transports don't go in alone and get blown to pieces by planetary defenses.
Setting your ships' tactics made a huge difference I remember. I was in one fight where they computer had about 200 low tech frigates/destoyers while I had about 35 technologically advanced ships up to cruiser size. I ran a simulation with the standard "Optimal Weapons Range"/"Target Ship w/ Most Damage" AI and got obliterated. But since my ships had both range and speed on the enemy, I set my ships' AI to "Maximum Weapons Range" and my targeting priorities to 1. "Closest", 2. "Fastest", 3. "Least Damaged" and won easily, as my ships effectively kited his fleet to death.
Question: Is there a way to get your point defense systems to target different fighters? I hate the fact that my point defense ships will fire 10 point defense cannons at one lousy fighter doing 300kt damage to something with only 30kt damage.
Two more, final things on this overly long post: I thought in vanilla SEV, Shield Regenerators don't stack and that if you have more than one regenerator on a ship, you're just wasting tonnage.
Also, if I remember correctly, if you take over alien populations, in addition to their racial bonuses, they keep their same breathable atmosphere. So if your race is an Oxygen breather, and you take over a planet with Hydrogen breathers, if you have any hydrogen worlds, you can move/scrap your oxygen breathing population and move in the Hydrogen breathers. When you do, that world will "un-dome" and you can build up to it's full potential on it. And, if I remember correctly, once a world is un-domed you can move Oxygen breathers back to the planet and it will remain un-domed. Much easier than waiting 80-100 turns for your Atmospheric Reprocessors.
That alien race that cropped up in the middle of your system early on might have been the biggest boon you had going for you had you invaded the planet rather than glassed it.
Yeah, I'm playing it through steam, so it's always patched. I never played it before most of the bugs were fixed.
I'll see about changing the ship AI, but if they're not trying to fire on the planet, will it still not count as combat over?
Also, for the question, You can't get P-D to target a specific missile, but using the "Fire specific on target" you can target fighters individually per weapon.
Also, yeah, populations retain their breathable atmosphere. I have one planet with Arcadian population now in the new system and everyone else is the Eee population. The Eee are Carbon Dioxide, and we're Hydrogen, it makes it nicer to work with. I still have to use atmospheric converters in some places still though.
I think regenerators do stack, at least I've put multiple in and seen it make a difference. Also, yeah I should've invaded, but I didn't have any troops built, I didn't know what their defenses were, I just wanted to put pressure on it, but I didn't expect them to be defenseless, and goddamn planetary napalm is so powerful. It isn't really a problem, since I'm not really any other time crunch other than trying not to get bored. In fact I could use some more sunken time.
I do normally change basic strategies, but the only one I've made so far has been the one used by the screen, where they had a priority list set up to take out missiles, then drones, then fighters.
I wish there was a way to tell it to take X turns in a row without stopping. Unless you are attacked, or some other condition you specify is met. Would make it less mind numbing when you have nothing to do for 10-20 turns while you wait for something to finish researching/building.
I'll see about changing the ship AI, but if they're not trying to fire on the planet, will it still not count as combat over?
If I remember correctly combat ends no matter what after a certain period of time. So if you're in a stalemate, just crank up the speed to max and combat should end pretty quickly. Also comes in handy when that one last fighter had it's weapons blown off but not it's engines and your whole fleet is chasing it around the map in a huge circle.
Update whatever it is: I lose a fleet and a half, decide to get a head start on trying to make more of a challenge for the rest of the universe, and find that there may be a point where I have to actually use and continue researching my military technology! Yay!
Here's where we left off, with me slowly crushing the Eee. I left what I assumed was their homeworld untouched for a while. It looks reasonably defended.
I did take on one of their somewhat fortified planets, and this happened
Yeah, that's one of my Hercules-class frigates being all about to been blown up.
Also a note, for those of you wondering about the names of the class ships for this phase of the game, I'm going after pretty much any name invoking ancient history. Get it? Ah. A Ha Ha. I'm so clever.
Well, I also decided to take a run at the Eee homeworld
Here's them
And here's me
Uh oh.jpg
Man, space combat in this game looks so cool when on a scale like this. All pew pew baDOOSH pow bam! Fwooooom
Pew pew neeeeeeeeeer kaBOOM duhnuhnuhnuh
The game actually supplies some cool sound effects for the weapons. With direct fire weapons you can tell from the look and sound of the weapons what was being fired, they have unique sound/look combinations. It's not entirely necessary, since at this close range, you can scan enemy ships without Long Range Scanners, and see how they're outfitted, to get a general idea of how you stack up, and who to attack first, that sort of thing. But it is a nice touch, and it keeps things interesting looking and sounding during combat.
Motherfucking Eee actually took out my fleet. I caused some damages, but the AI will have a fleet back up in no time. The AI has some super-human building capabilities, but they only use it to get to a certain amount of fleet numbers. It's kind of funny, they'll go from 3 ships in orbit to 7 in like, one turn, but then stay at 7 eternally.
Anyways, in another part of space, a colony ship is spotted going through a system that I don't have full control over, providing me with all the justification I need for always garrisoning at least one fighter per system. I prefer satellites for defense, because you can pretty much have endless sats in space, and they can still pack full-sized weapons. Fighters carry "Small" forms of everything, Small shield generators, small engines, small armor, small weapons, etc. They also have no mounting for the weapons. The small versions do fractions of the damage of the main version, at a fraction of the cost and space. Drones have no weapons other than warheads, so using them as the main defensive screen is risky. Run out of drones and uh oh. Weapons platforms are cheap and have the most tonnage available, but they take up a lot of space and have some punishing maintenance for some reason. Satellites though, you can launch to space if they're taking up too much cargo space, have reasonable cost and maintenance, and use the full sized weapons, with mounts. The problem with them, obviously, though, is that they have no engines. A sat can't chase a ship. That's where fighters and/or drones come into effect. Drones can cross systems, fighters can't. Drones still have the same problem, but can be very useful in certain areas. I'll get to them later. Fighters though, if you have one or two on a planet, can be launched, and sent anywhere in system. They're also incredibly fast, so can catch up with most things. I like to have one fighter with engine destroying weapons, and one with direct fire weapons, so they can leave a ship dead in the water, then beat it up the rest of the way. Anyways, the colony ship comes by, and I launch one fighter
It beats up the ship, losing the Eee another potential planet.
Slowly. Smaller weapons, remember. It takes a while, but it does kill the thing eventually.
Anyways, quick aside again, here's why drones are so cool.
Drones can go through warp points. They are fast, they do a huge amount of burst damage, and they're cheap to make en masse. They also are "units", like fighters, satellites, troops, and mines. What does that mean, class? That's right, they can be made anywhere. They have limited supplies somewhat, but hey... they tend not to need to go too far from the empires reach. They're single-use, which is their weakness, but I'll explain later why that's still not so bad. The best use for drones I've found is sending them as cruise missiles, basically. Soften up the enemies from long-range, so that while they're rebuilding, you can send in the fleet and deal with a crippled defense structure. Also useful to burst through blockaded warp points. Since they're so cheap and can be built anywhere, it's not going to weaken a fleet that's being built to have them in production on another planet.(Remember that with this many technology levels, if you're researching a tech, it's likely that you'll be a level behind by the time a fleet's built and ready, so taking any break can be problematic if you're having a weapons race with another species) So you can build a bunch of drones, send them through, and then when they're all dead, send in the real fleet to just fry everyone else. It's expensive, relatively, to just building a reusable fleet, as long as you don't lose ships, but very, very effective. The reason the single-use thing isn't too much of a problem is that drones are so fast, and can be outfitted with normal defenses, that having a drone getting destroyed before it delivers its payload really only happens if you're so technologically impaired that nothing you do can hurt anything on your opponent. Hell, if the Eee were to build drones, I bet they could hit a fully stocked and surrounded Khoo a few times. They're really hardy craft, so P-D has to be impressive and focused to take them out before they get in close enough to ram. So pretty much no matter what, if a drone is used, it's gonna hurt something. Straight up damage. Even if it's used when you didn't want it to be necessarily, you still blew something up but good.
Next I decide that since I'm basically just on mop-up now with the Eee, I'll just start sabotaging their fleets. Well with enough intel, you can take ships over.
That happens.
Several times.
Turns out, the computer cheated again. The Eee, despite being in their own corner of space with level 10-ish technology at best, managed to have colonies in the lower part of the galaxy too. Turns out, everyone knew everyone out there, and they weren't all compartmentalized like I was. How convenient for them
Anyways, even though I've almost completely wiped the Eee out in my sectors, they have troops in other parts of the galaxy too. I've also decided to see about wiping out that little empire that only seems to have one sector, in the top left of the map. They seem to not be slouching in their defenses though, I'll probably have a fleet twice the size of my Eee-eradicating fleets to take out their sector. Hopefully.
Anyways, to end this update, I got some good news and had a bit of a scare.
I had my Eee ships parked wherever they were, when this happened.
4 battleships. All armed with level 20 Anti-proton Beams. My A-P beams are at 37 I believe, so they're still not quite up to my level, but that's still an impressive fleet on average. It would shred one of my current fleets with restrictions. If I start doing too badly against them I'll loosen the restrictions, but this just looks like we'll have one crazy interesting end-game when I go up against them.
I also opened up a warp point to another arm, to try to get on a species good side, then give them technology, cut them off, and return to see a military juggernaut that would give a fun battle.
They decided to be a bitch about it, and invaded my space. They actually destroyed my hastily constructed defense fleet at the warp point, but remember those fighters I made before the redesign with restrictions?
Yeah, they were still laying around in this system.
Get off my lawn, bitches.
Your LP has inspired me to start up a game myself.
Is there some trick to getting you ministers to launch Sattelites for you automatically? I would like to use sattelites more for planetary defense but it seems like unless they're launched before combat, they don't participate. For some reason, even though I activate what look like the appropriate ministers, I always have to launch sattelites manually, which gets pretty friggin' tedious.
No update today, sorry, but tomorrow I'm going to have a massive update. I should finish off one sector, start in on a new one at least. We're approaching the end pushes.
This thread has inspired me to try this game out too. I haven't played it in forever. However After the title screen, no text shows up at all. Nothing in text boxes describing the mods, or the buttons to accept or cancel(they are just buttons with no text, had to guess which was which). I assume when I get into a game it won't show any text either.
This thread has inspired me to try this game out too. I haven't played it in forever. However After the title screen, no text shows up at all. Nothing in text boxes describing the mods, or the buttons to accept or cancel(they are just buttons with no text, had to guess which was which). I assume when I get into a game it won't show any text either.
That may not necessarily be the case. I actually had a few shots where I showed off, originally, how the empire was created, and no text showed up on the screenshots. I think text in game and text in the menus may be handled differently, since text obviously shows up in the screenshots in game.
Though that is weird...
Also, Next update has two empires being quashed. Onto the upper right arm also.
Also, Next update has two empires being quashed. Onto the upper right arm also.
That sounds like awesome news. I look forward to the reports of the empire's progress. I wonder if the rest of the galaxy will put up a better challenge for you.
good read. I'm sad to hear about the AI though, it's always been the biggest short coming of the series. I forget which one it was (I want to say III but maybe IV?) where you could set your intel to make planets go into uprising. You could basically win the game just taking over massive planets this way And I've always had to go out of my way to tech as slow as possible or else my research eclipses my opponent(s).
good read. I'm sad to hear about the AI though, it's always been the biggest short coming of the series. I forget which one it was (I want to say III but maybe IV?) where you could set your intel to make planets go into uprising. You could basically win the game just taking over massive planets this way And I've always had to go out of my way to tech as slow as possible or else my research eclipses my opponent(s).
There is a balance mod, someone mentioned it earlier, which helps a little. I'm not using it just because it changes too much and changes some things I don't like changed. And actually, the AI has its high points. It constantly applies pressure. When you outnumber them and outmilitary them this isn't a problem, but at the beginning of the game, you have to be very sure to balance a military and infrastructure. Once you get going though... it can be a little weird. Harder difficulty just gives it cheat numbers of vehicles. One thing they fixed is that the AI does seem to react well. From the moment I started attacking the Eee to the point of eradication they jumped 6 levels in Meson Blasters, their main weapons. They also love torpedoes, which can cause some serious damage if you don't have PD, and they'll research them pretty well. Not human well, but pretty well.
Allright, folks, as of later today(after a nights sleep), I'll be updating more periodically than daily. Sorry, but I'm super-busy now, crazy stuff going on. I'll still be here to answer questions, but I've got gigs from sunrise to sunrise again this semester, so I'll not be updating save on saturdays-ish. Sorry... but I swear... I'll goddamn finish this eventually.
WEird, the ship layout design AI has a serious hardon for small arms. I have like level 10 Organic Weapons and it still tries to use the level 1 cannons.
First off, the Ordinance vat, as stated, regenerates ordinance in addition to storing it. However, the Electric Discharge, which is one of the weapons for organic ships, uses no ordinance. Also, yeah, they have regenerating armor. Another great thing is, similar to Crystalline technology, their construction uses a material different than mining, because they have great dependence on farming as well. This allows you to balance out economy, as planets with good farming are now much more equal in value to high mineral planets. Crystalline does the same but with radioactive materials. Also it allows you to build ships faster, because ship yards construct with x minerals, x organics, and x radioactives... so if you're using equal minerals and organics the construction can go faster than if you're using double minerals and almost no organics.
Organic was the first thing I took for a long time in the game, I originally took it because I liked the idea from an RP standpoint, but then started taking it just because it had some awesome ships.
I'm going to start up with this LP again soon, I started a new game to get back into the hang of playing the game, and now that I've got that down again I'll start up where I left off.... I tried just to jump back in but had sort of forgotten how to handle a larger empire. We still have about half the galaxy to conquer, and with my limited fleet it looks like it should be interesting. Especially if I can convince an AI to take my technology at some point and have a real all-out war.
So I got monoliths and have about 50 planets full of normal factories that now need replacing. Is there a way to automate that, or do it en mass, or am I resigned to having to open up each planet, destroy all the old factories, then build new ones?
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http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php
I like the AI changes, but ultimately I still prefer vanilla.
That, and if the research requirements for the Deathstars (or Base stars, but who wants to call them that? Anyone who doesnt want to get sued by Lucas, thats who.) is anything like 4 (which, judging by your LP, it is) it'll take you for-fucking-EVER to get the tech, and even then you have to build the components...
Fuckit, as soon as I go home I'm finding my SE4 disc and building some goddamn bases around some goddamn stars. With mines and satellites.
I think I may have called them the wrong things.
Once you mentioned movement, I remembered that there was a class of ship ala "base star" that moved super slow.... I never built those either.
EDIT: They're called "Worldships" in SE4
I've been referring to the "planets" you can create around stars. I know those things are huge (and don't move) and require tons of research and production. I'll try to figure it out tonight.
Oh god the sphere worlds.
Yeah they're at level 80 in Stellar Manipulation. I mention earlier than with my stupidly good research that even at 1% my military spending is still a little faster than the AIs military spending at whatever they have it at, I still at 100% was only 1/14th of the research to level 35.
Motherfucking sphere worlds. I may actually get those, just because Stellar Manipulation is my go to "Sink research into this" area, since it has pretty much no military use really.
Could you skim over the research areas available and the racial traits you selected or didn't select and why? I always like hearing about those parts.
As an example, the tech tree I've almost always got open explains tech in the following way:
WT7 - High-Energy Discharge Weapons
0:100/3,000
AS35(5)
└(1) COM: Ripper Beam
└(20) COM: Incinerator Beam
└(1);WT22(1) COM: Sm. Incin. Beam
└(40) COM: Wave Motion Gun
Good lets play, more genocide!
I will finish this empire's domination even if I have to restrict myself to doing no research and only using non-direct-fire weapons, or playing the whole game blindfolded.
Either way, I don't know of any way to automatically add, but one thing that makes building with armor and shields bearable is shift-clicking will place the component and not lose it, which makes it much easier to mass-place.
Hoo boy, this is a biggun. Ok. So the basics are that research is broken into three main fields, though on the research screen, it's shown as four, with weapons being their own tab.
Cultural Achievements
Theoretical Sciences
Applied Sciences
Cultural Achievements don't give any technology, but improve the race statistics, by 1% each level. They can be taken up to a maximum of 20 levels, so 20% of an add-on to the stat. Which can be pretty impressive, especially with, say, Mathematics, which increases research.
Cultural Achievements consist of the following:(Given in the format Achievement(Improved area)
Cultural Studies(This is the prerequisite for all the others, it doesn't give bonuses itself)
Civics(Loyalty), Economics(Maintenance), Education(Loyalty, Assimilation), Environmental Sciences(Environmental resistance), Ethics(Spying), Leisure Services(Reproduction), History(Weapon accuracy and damage), Mathematics(Research), Philosophy(Experience), Political Science(Trade), Sociology(War Tolerance), and Sports(Ground combat damage).
After that, we have the Theoretical Sciences, or:
Astrophysics, Biology, Chemistry, Construction, Industry, Military Science, Physics, Planetary Engineering, and Psychology. If you take certain racial traits(Crystallurgy, Organic Manipulation, Deeply Religious, Psychic, Temporal Knowledge), you can get access to Crystallurgy, Organic Engineering, Religious Studies, Temporal Studies, and Psychic Studies. I took none of the expanded research trees, because some of them I'm waaaaaay to comfortable with. Organic Engineering is my baby, and it would be even more one-sided than it is already.
The Theoretical Sciences, with the exception of Psychology, don't give you any facilities or components or vehicle designs or weapons. Instead what they do is they open up areas of Applied Sciences. For instance, if you research Construction to level 2(it starts at level 1), then you have access to the applied science fields of Fighters and Mines. If you research it to level 3, then you have access to Centralized Computer Systems and Robotics. You don't get any levels in these technologies though, you simply are then allowed to research them. Psychology does improve a component, it makes Crew Quarters able to hold more people, which is nice in keeping tonnage down, especially on the big ships. There's actually an alternative to having crews on your ships, a 40kT component called a “Master Computer”, From the Computers tech in the Industry tree, that removes the need for a bridge, living quarters, and life support. It also adds a bonus to combat. The problems are a: with properly researched life support and crew quarters, the bridge/life support/crew quarters takes up less space, and b: computers don't get the bonuses that the race will if they're piloting. So with a militarily strong race, the computer bonus may not be worth losing the normal crew. Anyways, that's Theoretical Sciences. Some applied sciences don't need a theoretical science, you start with the field available for research.
Finally, Applied sciences! I'm not going to list all of them because there are roughly 5 billion applied sciences. I have a tech tree open here, it's a 4 page flowchart. Dense. Some applied sciences just give components that are then constantly improved, such as “Starship support”, which just improves the Resupply Depot up to level 100. Some open up new components/facilities at certain levels, and either continue to or stop improving other components/facilities. For instance, Stellar Manipulation, every level improves the Monolith facility. At 10 is gives you a level 1 Beta Displacement Pulser. From 10-14 it improves both the monolith and the BDP. At 15 it gives you a level one Ionic Concussion Blaster. 15-19 improves both Monolith and the ICB. By the way, neither of those technologies are weapons. Weird, huh? Some applied sciences open up other applied sciences. Each engine technology, up to Quantum, at level 5 open up a better engine type. Ion and Contra-Terrene engines also open up some weapons fields.
So here's what I'm looking at when I give notes about the technology:
WT7 - High-Energy Discharge Weapons
0:100/3,000
AS35(5)
└(1) COM: Ripper Beam
└(20) COM: Incinerator Beam
└(1);WT22(1) COM: Sm. Incin. Bea
└(40) COM: Wave Motion Gun
What does that mean? Simple, really. H-E Discharge Weapons are classified in the chart as Weapons Technology 7. It starts at level 0, and goes to level 100. Each level adds 3,000 to the research point cost. There's a prerequisite of Applied Science 35 at level 5(Contra-terrene engines). At level one, it gives you the Ripper Beam. At level 20 it gives you the Incinerator Beam. At level 1, if you also have Weapons Technology 22 at level 1(Smaller weapons), it gives you the Small Incinerator Beam. At level 40 it gives you the Wave Motion Gun. I've never used this technology tree much. But a Wave Motion Gun just sounds awesome. I want to see it fire.
So that's technologies mostly. At least an overview.
This shows off my strategy. Basically, the plan was to take a system, populate it, move on. Then I got bored, so now I'm just wiping the Eee out and then doing more colonization.
Then we cut off Jokala
Then destroying the warp crushing ship. It's too advanced.
Then I see some mediocre news
Turns out that the Eee and this other race have been getting along with each other reasonably well. They've got a nice treaty going on, so when I started wiping out the Eee the other race started getting angry. Someone around here has a great story about GalCiv 2, where he had a really weak race, who everyone hated, except the Drengians. Those of you who know GalCiv 2 know that the Drengians tend to be an awesomely aggressive and militaristic. Well GalCiv 2 has this awesome diplomacy thing where people will check the players military and research and culture, and are a lot nicer if you can bust their asses without a second thought. They don't, however, check the same with your allies. So this guy would get people pissed off at him, and they would declare war, 'cause they could crush him without a thought. Then, I believe as he put it, the Drengians would say "WHOSE BEEN MESSING WITH OUR LITTLE FRIENDS", and would take out whoever attacked. Freakin' hilarious. Well I didn't end up attacking the one weak race and have my ass promptly handed to me by a strong race, but I did get the ally somewhat mad at me, which means they're less likely to be my friends. I don't really need friends, at least not in this cluster, but it'd be fun. I have a feeling the remaining half of the galaxy will be at least a little more advanced. These guys were in a constant state of peace, it's made them wimps.
Anyways, back to the battle!
This is encouraging to see. This station actually made me pause combat, and gave me my new rule, because it would've at least taken out one of my frigates if I didn't have a shield regenerator. So. No more shield regenerators!
I haven't really shown this feature much, but one of the uses of pausing in combat is that with multiple weapons you can select multiple targets. This can get really, really exciting and fun if you have large fleets. You can have one ship just spreading fire around. You can also do that with P-D weapons, against fighters/drones focusing or splitting up. This is most practical and useful in situations like this, and during large amounts of small drone/ship/satellite stuff you can focus P-D on a single target, like a drone over a fighter, if you want, while keeping the main weapons on the big ships. Or to tractor/repulse one ship while firing on others. I'm using it here because the frigates have planetary napalm on them, but they also, in this iteration, have a pair of Meson Blasters. In the next revision they keep the napalm but combine a DUC and a Ripper as their main batteries. Either way, the frigates have main batteries and bombardment weapons. So they used the Meson blasters against the station, and the napalm against the planet. I didn't need to do this, but it breaks things up and in the future I may need to employ more tactics. The blue lines are showing what's targeting what. They turn red as they get closer to what they're attacking.
Actually, there was one moment I did have to use some tactics, because the station had a warp beam, which moves a ship randomly. Well the fleet broke off the attack to get back into formation, and I had to tell them to break formation to continue actually firing and not getting shot a bunch more times.
I also attacked this planet. They have a weapons platform which could really cause some damage, but they're torpedo-based, and the fleets in such a tight formation that they can combine their P-D to intercept all three before they hit.
I just thought this kind of looked cool
This is awesome. When you create a fleet, it automatically names it. Alpha Fleet, Beta Fleet, etc. Once it reaches the end, it just starts doubling it up. Alpha Alpha Fleet, Alpha Beta Fleet, Alpha Gamma Fleet, etc.
But I wholeheartedly agree that ship building is aces in this game. I liked to build pirate fleets. Two or three destroyers with stealth systems loaded to the gills with shield depleters and engine destroying weapons, accompanied by a larger stealth ship that acted as a quartermaster ship: sensors, extra supply storage/generation and a ship-based spaceyard. I would infiltrate these little fleets behind enemy lines looking for ships that weren't in a big group, then decloak, disable and board, then the shipyard ship would dismantle the disabled enemy vessle and repair the boarding party ships.
Also, earlier the you complained that you were having trouble with planetary invasions. I believe you can fix that by modifying the ship AI. It's been forever since I played, but I think I remember that you could put planets on a "Don't Fire On" list. One nice thing about this game is that you could sort of program how your ships react in combat by creating custom ship types. So you could create an "Invasion Escort" class of ship, and put planets in the "Don't Fire On" list. I think you could also change fleet and task force tactics so that your ships won't fire on a planet. I think you might have to set the task force that contains the troop transports to "Never Break Formation" and "Invade Planet" so that your troop transports don't go in alone and get blown to pieces by planetary defenses.
Setting your ships' tactics made a huge difference I remember. I was in one fight where they computer had about 200 low tech frigates/destoyers while I had about 35 technologically advanced ships up to cruiser size. I ran a simulation with the standard "Optimal Weapons Range"/"Target Ship w/ Most Damage" AI and got obliterated. But since my ships had both range and speed on the enemy, I set my ships' AI to "Maximum Weapons Range" and my targeting priorities to 1. "Closest", 2. "Fastest", 3. "Least Damaged" and won easily, as my ships effectively kited his fleet to death.
Question: Is there a way to get your point defense systems to target different fighters? I hate the fact that my point defense ships will fire 10 point defense cannons at one lousy fighter doing 300kt damage to something with only 30kt damage.
Two more, final things on this overly long post: I thought in vanilla SEV, Shield Regenerators don't stack and that if you have more than one regenerator on a ship, you're just wasting tonnage.
Also, if I remember correctly, if you take over alien populations, in addition to their racial bonuses, they keep their same breathable atmosphere. So if your race is an Oxygen breather, and you take over a planet with Hydrogen breathers, if you have any hydrogen worlds, you can move/scrap your oxygen breathing population and move in the Hydrogen breathers. When you do, that world will "un-dome" and you can build up to it's full potential on it. And, if I remember correctly, once a world is un-domed you can move Oxygen breathers back to the planet and it will remain un-domed. Much easier than waiting 80-100 turns for your Atmospheric Reprocessors.
That alien race that cropped up in the middle of your system early on might have been the biggest boon you had going for you had you invaded the planet rather than glassed it.
Yeah, I'm playing it through steam, so it's always patched. I never played it before most of the bugs were fixed.
I'll see about changing the ship AI, but if they're not trying to fire on the planet, will it still not count as combat over?
Also, for the question, You can't get P-D to target a specific missile, but using the "Fire specific on target" you can target fighters individually per weapon.
Also, yeah, populations retain their breathable atmosphere. I have one planet with Arcadian population now in the new system and everyone else is the Eee population. The Eee are Carbon Dioxide, and we're Hydrogen, it makes it nicer to work with. I still have to use atmospheric converters in some places still though.
I think regenerators do stack, at least I've put multiple in and seen it make a difference. Also, yeah I should've invaded, but I didn't have any troops built, I didn't know what their defenses were, I just wanted to put pressure on it, but I didn't expect them to be defenseless, and goddamn planetary napalm is so powerful. It isn't really a problem, since I'm not really any other time crunch other than trying not to get bored. In fact I could use some more sunken time.
I do normally change basic strategies, but the only one I've made so far has been the one used by the screen, where they had a priority list set up to take out missiles, then drones, then fighters.
This one's combat system looks really cool compared to most, though.
If I remember correctly combat ends no matter what after a certain period of time. So if you're in a stalemate, just crank up the speed to max and combat should end pretty quickly. Also comes in handy when that one last fighter had it's weapons blown off but not it's engines and your whole fleet is chasing it around the map in a huge circle.
Here's where we left off, with me slowly crushing the Eee. I left what I assumed was their homeworld untouched for a while. It looks reasonably defended.
I did take on one of their somewhat fortified planets, and this happened
Yeah, that's one of my Hercules-class frigates being all about to been blown up.
Also a note, for those of you wondering about the names of the class ships for this phase of the game, I'm going after pretty much any name invoking ancient history. Get it? Ah. A Ha Ha. I'm so clever.
Well, I also decided to take a run at the Eee homeworld
Here's them
And here's me
Uh oh.jpg
Man, space combat in this game looks so cool when on a scale like this. All pew pew baDOOSH pow bam! Fwooooom
Pew pew neeeeeeeeeer kaBOOM duhnuhnuhnuh
The game actually supplies some cool sound effects for the weapons. With direct fire weapons you can tell from the look and sound of the weapons what was being fired, they have unique sound/look combinations. It's not entirely necessary, since at this close range, you can scan enemy ships without Long Range Scanners, and see how they're outfitted, to get a general idea of how you stack up, and who to attack first, that sort of thing. But it is a nice touch, and it keeps things interesting looking and sounding during combat.
Motherfucking Eee actually took out my fleet. I caused some damages, but the AI will have a fleet back up in no time. The AI has some super-human building capabilities, but they only use it to get to a certain amount of fleet numbers. It's kind of funny, they'll go from 3 ships in orbit to 7 in like, one turn, but then stay at 7 eternally.
Anyways, in another part of space, a colony ship is spotted going through a system that I don't have full control over, providing me with all the justification I need for always garrisoning at least one fighter per system. I prefer satellites for defense, because you can pretty much have endless sats in space, and they can still pack full-sized weapons. Fighters carry "Small" forms of everything, Small shield generators, small engines, small armor, small weapons, etc. They also have no mounting for the weapons. The small versions do fractions of the damage of the main version, at a fraction of the cost and space. Drones have no weapons other than warheads, so using them as the main defensive screen is risky. Run out of drones and uh oh. Weapons platforms are cheap and have the most tonnage available, but they take up a lot of space and have some punishing maintenance for some reason. Satellites though, you can launch to space if they're taking up too much cargo space, have reasonable cost and maintenance, and use the full sized weapons, with mounts. The problem with them, obviously, though, is that they have no engines. A sat can't chase a ship. That's where fighters and/or drones come into effect. Drones can cross systems, fighters can't. Drones still have the same problem, but can be very useful in certain areas. I'll get to them later. Fighters though, if you have one or two on a planet, can be launched, and sent anywhere in system. They're also incredibly fast, so can catch up with most things. I like to have one fighter with engine destroying weapons, and one with direct fire weapons, so they can leave a ship dead in the water, then beat it up the rest of the way. Anyways, the colony ship comes by, and I launch one fighter
It beats up the ship, losing the Eee another potential planet.
Slowly. Smaller weapons, remember. It takes a while, but it does kill the thing eventually.
Anyways, quick aside again, here's why drones are so cool.
Drones can go through warp points. They are fast, they do a huge amount of burst damage, and they're cheap to make en masse. They also are "units", like fighters, satellites, troops, and mines. What does that mean, class? That's right, they can be made anywhere. They have limited supplies somewhat, but hey... they tend not to need to go too far from the empires reach. They're single-use, which is their weakness, but I'll explain later why that's still not so bad. The best use for drones I've found is sending them as cruise missiles, basically. Soften up the enemies from long-range, so that while they're rebuilding, you can send in the fleet and deal with a crippled defense structure. Also useful to burst through blockaded warp points. Since they're so cheap and can be built anywhere, it's not going to weaken a fleet that's being built to have them in production on another planet.(Remember that with this many technology levels, if you're researching a tech, it's likely that you'll be a level behind by the time a fleet's built and ready, so taking any break can be problematic if you're having a weapons race with another species) So you can build a bunch of drones, send them through, and then when they're all dead, send in the real fleet to just fry everyone else. It's expensive, relatively, to just building a reusable fleet, as long as you don't lose ships, but very, very effective. The reason the single-use thing isn't too much of a problem is that drones are so fast, and can be outfitted with normal defenses, that having a drone getting destroyed before it delivers its payload really only happens if you're so technologically impaired that nothing you do can hurt anything on your opponent. Hell, if the Eee were to build drones, I bet they could hit a fully stocked and surrounded Khoo a few times. They're really hardy craft, so P-D has to be impressive and focused to take them out before they get in close enough to ram. So pretty much no matter what, if a drone is used, it's gonna hurt something. Straight up damage. Even if it's used when you didn't want it to be necessarily, you still blew something up but good.
Next I decide that since I'm basically just on mop-up now with the Eee, I'll just start sabotaging their fleets. Well with enough intel, you can take ships over.
That happens.
Several times.
Turns out, the computer cheated again. The Eee, despite being in their own corner of space with level 10-ish technology at best, managed to have colonies in the lower part of the galaxy too. Turns out, everyone knew everyone out there, and they weren't all compartmentalized like I was. How convenient for them
Anyways, even though I've almost completely wiped the Eee out in my sectors, they have troops in other parts of the galaxy too. I've also decided to see about wiping out that little empire that only seems to have one sector, in the top left of the map. They seem to not be slouching in their defenses though, I'll probably have a fleet twice the size of my Eee-eradicating fleets to take out their sector. Hopefully.
Anyways, to end this update, I got some good news and had a bit of a scare.
I had my Eee ships parked wherever they were, when this happened.
4 battleships. All armed with level 20 Anti-proton Beams. My A-P beams are at 37 I believe, so they're still not quite up to my level, but that's still an impressive fleet on average. It would shred one of my current fleets with restrictions. If I start doing too badly against them I'll loosen the restrictions, but this just looks like we'll have one crazy interesting end-game when I go up against them.
I also opened up a warp point to another arm, to try to get on a species good side, then give them technology, cut them off, and return to see a military juggernaut that would give a fun battle.
They decided to be a bitch about it, and invaded my space. They actually destroyed my hastily constructed defense fleet at the warp point, but remember those fighters I made before the redesign with restrictions?
Yeah, they were still laying around in this system.
Get off my lawn, bitches.
Is there some trick to getting you ministers to launch Sattelites for you automatically? I would like to use sattelites more for planetary defense but it seems like unless they're launched before combat, they don't participate. For some reason, even though I activate what look like the appropriate ministers, I always have to launch sattelites manually, which gets pretty friggin' tedious.
Raptr profile
That may not necessarily be the case. I actually had a few shots where I showed off, originally, how the empire was created, and no text showed up on the screenshots. I think text in game and text in the menus may be handled differently, since text obviously shows up in the screenshots in game.
Though that is weird...
Also, Next update has two empires being quashed. Onto the upper right arm also.
That sounds like awesome news. I look forward to the reports of the empire's progress. I wonder if the rest of the galaxy will put up a better challenge for you.
There is a balance mod, someone mentioned it earlier, which helps a little. I'm not using it just because it changes too much and changes some things I don't like changed. And actually, the AI has its high points. It constantly applies pressure. When you outnumber them and outmilitary them this isn't a problem, but at the beginning of the game, you have to be very sure to balance a military and infrastructure. Once you get going though... it can be a little weird. Harder difficulty just gives it cheat numbers of vehicles. One thing they fixed is that the AI does seem to react well. From the moment I started attacking the Eee to the point of eradication they jumped 6 levels in Meson Blasters, their main weapons. They also love torpedoes, which can cause some serious damage if you don't have PD, and they'll research them pretty well. Not human well, but pretty well.
First off, the Ordinance vat, as stated, regenerates ordinance in addition to storing it. However, the Electric Discharge, which is one of the weapons for organic ships, uses no ordinance. Also, yeah, they have regenerating armor. Another great thing is, similar to Crystalline technology, their construction uses a material different than mining, because they have great dependence on farming as well. This allows you to balance out economy, as planets with good farming are now much more equal in value to high mineral planets. Crystalline does the same but with radioactive materials. Also it allows you to build ships faster, because ship yards construct with x minerals, x organics, and x radioactives... so if you're using equal minerals and organics the construction can go faster than if you're using double minerals and almost no organics.
Organic was the first thing I took for a long time in the game, I originally took it because I liked the idea from an RP standpoint, but then started taking it just because it had some awesome ships.
I'm going to start up with this LP again soon, I started a new game to get back into the hang of playing the game, and now that I've got that down again I'll start up where I left off.... I tried just to jump back in but had sort of forgotten how to handle a larger empire. We still have about half the galaxy to conquer, and with my limited fleet it looks like it should be interesting. Especially if I can convince an AI to take my technology at some point and have a real all-out war.
Its a vicious cycle of abuse that only strange people on the internet can save me from.
The game has a severe memory leak, save and exit every hour or 2.