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[sprinkled chariot]

Are there any stashes of art from/about this game?

[Il Palazzo]

Are there any stashes of art from/about this game?

Not sure what you mean exactly, but if it is general 'lore' artwork that you're looking for, then just google for Fading Suns - that's the RPG system this game is using as a setting.

[Gollor]

Turn sent some time ago.

[joulupunikki]

Does anyone know if there's a good unit viewer where you plug in a unit.dat file and can more easily read all the information about them? Rank, tech, etc. If one doesn't exist, I think I'm going to go ahead and make one

Here is an ODF spreadsheet of the current game unit.dat. I did a bit of preprocessing to get the dat-file into LibreOffice. Sorted by MT/Rank

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7pbLNesu2qwM2lMRm5JSXZoV0k

Hey, joulupunikki, how did you get the dat file into the spreadsheet format? I suspect you did not painstakingly copy everything by hand?

I'm asking because I've got my mind half made up to put all the techs, and maybe some other files into spreadsheet format. Play with it all a bit, maybe.

Sorry for the late answer ...

Not too much manual labour, I just removed all lines that do not start with a " (the funky unix command is

Code: [Select]

grep "^\"" UNIT.DAT) to get a file that can be easily loaded into a spreadsheet, and then did some spreadsheet manipulation to get the final format. I just put all that functionality into a macro, and wired the macro to a button labeled "load file" in the A1 cell. To get macros running on LibreOffice you probably have to go to Tools->Options...->LibreOffice->Security->Macro Security...->Trusted Sources and click Add... to designate some special directory as a trusted location for LibreOffice files (copy the  EFS_unit_viewer.ods there and the macros should work.)

EFS_unit_viewer.ods

Getting LibreOffice to export the edited unit stats in EFS UNIT.DAT format requires a bit more tweaking.

And I'll try to finish the turn by sunday night.

[Margrave]

How's the turn looking joulupunikki?

[joulupunikki]

Turn sent

[Il Palazzo]

And who are you, the proud lord said,
that I must bow so low?
Only a cat of a different coat,
that's all the truth I know.

In a coat of green or a coat of red,
a lion still has claws,
And mine are long and sharp, my Lord,
as long and sharp as yours.

And so he spoke, and so he spoke,
that lord of Severus,
But now the rains weep o'er his hall,
with no one there to hear.

Turn sent

[Kebooo]

Ok, I'm completely confused. I'm not sure if there's a huge bug in EFS or a misunderstanding on my part, but I had a working relic (I made sure to test it out prior to ever moving it into harm's way) in that carrier and it didn't show up in combat at all. Considering that was the difference between being able to easily dispatch Palazzo's attacks with 12 accuracy dreadnoughts, and having my entire fleet destroyed, it's either the worst bug I've ever encountered or the worst misunderstanding on my part. Not to mention I would've never parked those there without it. Does anyone know the real rules behind these? I know for sure I've fought defending stacks where the relic was in use, so I don't think it's that. Probably won't finish the turn til Sunday given the low motivation due to such a crushing bug or convoluted rules, whichever one it was. To be honest, I can't help but feel the game is more or less entirely ruined for me the rest of the way.

[Il Palazzo]

It did show as active on my side, for what it's worth. (IIRC, I'll check again later)

edit: yup, shows as active all right

[Kebooo]

It did? It seems unusual for combat to last as long as it did with high accuracy relics against low armor bombers. I would be curious if you could try sending the turn along with the same stack sitting there and let me attack yours to see how the results compared, perhaps I'm overestimating it's value but I know in the other EFS games the 8 accuracy relic leads to quick annihilation usually. I didn't see it showing up in either of the two battles.

[Il Palazzo]

I have a vague recollection of this issue (meaning, bonuses not showing up for one player) popping up at least once in some other game.

Anyway, I could send you the turn with the same composition, but you'll have to give me a screenie of how it looked like, since I don't remember exactly.

However, by my reckoning this is roughly how it should play out - remember that my fighters and bombers have 40 armour, or 44 if they're elite, due to the battlemaster bonus. This pushes the damage table to 2:1 or 1:1 respectively - which gives 10% or 0% chance of instakill even by a dreadnought. Furthermore, even at 12 accuracy, unspotted fighters have 11 agility, so roughly half of ranged attacks miss, and most hits don't kill.
On the other hand, a 30 damage fighter with the relic gets to roll in the 1:2 table  - which is approx. half the damage it receives from a dreadnought hit. (no, that's not right, you also have the battlemaster, which gives 1:3)
Additionally, lots of dreadnoughts means very few close combat attacks (which are most numerous at 4 a pop), whereas I had lots.


What mystified me, though, is how my high-rank ships were being targeted when they shouldn't (especially in the round I was just moping the remains and my hauler got hit). This goes against my understanding of the mechanics, unless there's some hidden assassin-like targeting scheme for regular ships.



But eh, fuck. I know it's a major setback, which is never fun, and I also get the feeling the game mechanics are at the very least absurdly biased towards the attacker. This might be a good moment to pause for some discussion of these issues.

[Gollor]

But eh, fuck. I know it's a major setback, which is never fun, and I also get the feeling the game mechanics are at the very least absurdly biased towards the attacker. This might be a good moment to pause for some discussion of these issues.

I propose to give all spaceships 2 movepoints (except special cases) and triple their armor, so it becomes very hard to destroy a ship in one turn.

[Il Palazzo]

Oh, by the way, there was a PTS firing on a landing marauder on Cadavus - with 50% HP damage inflicted.

[Kebooo]

There'll definitely have to be a combat re-balance for me to consider using this mod again. Nova's space is definitely leaps and bounds ahead of this one. It's almost as if space combat wasn't tested at all, given the results of these recent battles and relative worth of the units going head to head. Here's a video link with the results (so you can see what it started with):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60053610/EFSBattle.mp4

Both with relics and nobles, it seems very clear which composition of ships should win handily, and yet with 12 accuracy in ranged attack and 90 strength (with relic), virtually no damage is done in the ranged space round. I would expect that perhaps if you were wielding the defense relic, but I under no circumstances considered that what you attacked me with, even with the strength relic, would be able to defeat my fleet. I've suffered worse losses (mainiac's double relic destruction of my fleet in that random galaxy way back when) but this one takes the cake in terms of being unexpected. At this point I see 0 reason other than to churn out nothing but transports, bombers and fighters.

[Il Palazzo]

But do take into account that I had a few good, and unusual at this stage advantages - marauders are brutal if shielded until close combat (as repeated battles show), the carrier has both ranged and direct in addition to close, and I had 9/100 psych units loaded. That, and I could replace losses and damaged ships with brand new ones.

By contrast, the more regular composition that I had over Sutek, when I later played with the turn to see how it'd do against either you or Margrave, failed miserably the few times I tried it.

However, I definitely do agree the too low performance discrepancy between the lowest tier and the highest tier ships is troubling.
Gollor's suggestion might be worth considering, but it might very well end up being a Pandora's box.