Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Shonus]

I'll join in, though in a lax position. I will be gone for 2 weeks at Scout Camp soon too.

I'll put you on my team, then.

[RAM]

I was going to post this privately, but I don't see any trade secrets so I will put it here for anyone completely new to race generation...

Spoiler: commentary on SE V racials (click to show/hide)

Resources:
 Generally, intellectual and material resource generation bonuses just mean you don't have to build so many resource generators. So 5% more research for 5% less intelligence doesn't affect much, you end up building more intelligence building and having less space for research buildings. There are some exceptions:
 You can gain a bonus to mineral production to balance your resource harvest, you will generally use much more minerals than anything else. Resource sources are all pretty uniform and there are some somewhat nice buildings that gather equal amounts of material resources. So getting a bonus to minerals harvesting is always good...
 If the vast majority of your resource generation is directed towards one element, then the bonus will be much more effective. So if you plan to binge on research, or dominate intelligence, or field the largest fleet ever seen, then you will gain a benefit from maximising the relevant resources.
 Research has a maximum level, after which you can research no more. So in the extremely late game any points spent on research are wasted.

Combat:
 Projectile weapons need to hit to do damage, and some projectiles can stop missiles, which in turn need to dodge. Gaining bonuses to combat means your ships will hit more and/or be hit less. Technology also influences this, so you cannot rely upon it, but it increases your combat abilities throughout the entire game. I don't really know by how much though...

maintenance, construction, and repair:
 Pretty much everything you have will need maintenance, which will use up your resources. Maintenance reduction will make keeping stuff around cheaper, which is great for all your buildings and keeping fleets next to that neighbour who is 'supposed' to be neutral... Construction rate lets you build faster, this helps set up new planets and build up new ships. Repair rate is good for keeping your ships in working order and for updating your old ships when new technology appears. Some components are damaged in the normal course of their use, this includes armour, boarding parties, and stuff that changes the map.

happiness:
Generally provides bonuses to production and construction or causes your planets to become hostile. Buildings and troops can be used to mitigate this, so you can generally get by without putting too much into this, but that approach can get costly...

loyalty and assimilation:
I don't really know...

trade and intelligence:
 trade requires treaties with other empires and intelligence can damage peoples property at random. Relying on diplomacy can be tricky, people may not want to trade with you if they see that you get more from trading then they do, and a shift in the diplomatic situation might find you suddenly without half your income. But having said that, you can get a great deal of loot from trading and more can only help... Intelligence can be accounted for by just building more intelligence buildings, but if you want to completely dominate intelligence, causing mass defections and stealing technologies from all around you, then a bonus here and there will serve you well...

reproduction:
 More population means better resource production and faster construction. It doesn't help with stuff once you get away from the planets, but a higher population can be an enormous boon for an empire.

There is an ability for -20% supply use, it basically increases the range of your ships or reduces the amount of ship space you spend on supply. Weapons and some components also use supply, so it is a good all-around boost to your fleets. But it doesn't do much for you if your forces are close to home, not that you want to be fighting over your own land...

another trait makes you immune to plagues. plagues are pretty rare, but can take out an entire planet given time. there are technologies that can eventually make you completely resistant to plagues anyway. Although if someone drops a plague on your homeworld in the early game it would cripple you...

bad events and sabotage are, well, bad, they range from wiping out an entire system to transporting one of your scouts to uncharted territory. Luck is good, but I wouldn't get worked up over it...

+1 movement is useful in that having more movement lets you set your range to some extent. Good for particularly long or short ranged forces and everyone will love the increased ability to send out colonies...

20% storage is huge, it not only gives you more space for troops and warmachines, it also gives you more space for buildings. Buildings are what makes your world go around...

ancient race tells you the location of all systems, which lets you get into choke-points early and know if your enemies are trapped. I don't believe that it tells you the contents of the systems, so you will still need to go looking for those choice planets to live on... Not really worth much in the mid-late game.

Crystallurgy is known for its shield manipulation and use of radioactives, which is good, because it takes some of the pressure off of minerals. It also has a nice array of weapons for bypassing armour, which is odd because they have nice armour which recharges shields a bit when it is damaged. They are also handy for reducing maintenance...

Organic manipulation is nice for its use of organics, which once again reduces the pressure on minerals, and quickly increasing your population. It also has some regenerating armour, which can be useful for long fights and doesn't need repairing and some good missiles, though that is mostly thinking about SE IV, in which the organic missiles were incredible...

Psychic technology is great for messing with other people's ships, including taking them for yourself. It also has some decent training facilities and sensors.

religious technology has all manner of bonuses, mostly affecting combat but there are some nice resource effects too...

temporal technology is famed for its factories, which significantly better than the competition, and its use of radioactives. it has some weapons that specifically counter different defences and some sensory and happiness equipment.

hands freezing, running away...

[Volatar]

I seem to have misplaced my copy of SEV. I might not be able to join this after all 

[RAM]

To get things started, how do people feal about these settings, those not mentioned are assumed to be set to the defaults. I am basing this off of Balance mod 1.19g.

cluster-medium-all points connected
defaults-player can only view own score-medium technology points for new players-medium racial points-no neutral computers-low number of computers-high difficulty computers-no computer bonus
4000 units each-500 ships each-team mode-no technology trade-no surrender

massive expansion-sole survivor-10 years


I haven't had much luck finding decent roleplaying games, they all seem to die off really quickly...
I found this, which gives a bit of an idea... http://www.spaceempires.net/forum-49.html
Basically I am thinking that something other than just "win before anyone else does" would be interesting and involve less being stomped into oblivion...

[Lord Shonus]

I'm cool with the tech and racial points. I'd prefer no AI players [/i]at all,[i/] because they're pretty hopeless and wouldn't add much more than tedium. Don't like the timed victory condition either. How about we substitute Peace Through The Quadrant (10 years without wars) for that? If you absolutely must have a timer, I'd suggest 50 or even 100 years. Yes, each year will take a lot of time to play, but I'd rather just abandon the game if everyone gets bored to having a game everyone's enjoying to just end.

Edit: Is there an in-game way for empires to trade ships/units? If there is, I'd be OK with no tech trade, but if you can't, then boarding would be too powerful (you can scrap a foreign ship that has tech you don't to gain some of said tech.) Remember, If we play a political game, teams aren't going to want to trade too much tech for fear it will be used against them.

[RAM]

I thought that the timed victory setting were a minimum time, to stop someone willing by points after conquering a homeworld or something early on. If they are indeed a limit upon how long the game runs then I agree that we don't want those. It isn't actually likely to matter with those option anyway, I was thinking of having points victory but decided against it, didn't remove the timer with it...

I thought that a few computer opponents set to homicidal rampage could make interesting pirates and generic villains. But I don't feel strongly on the matter.

And yeah, I could get behind peace, I just worry that it is one of these things that can sneak up on you and end the game without warning...

[Lord Shonus]

Peace for ten uninterrupted years might sneak up on us? If the intrigue is interesting enough for that to happen and we're still interested enough to play, we'll revert a month and start a border war.


Edit: I've spoken with Captain Mayday. Once we get teams and rules ready, we send our empire files to him and he'll make the game.

[Talvara]

I'm quite interested in joinin aswell, I'm quite a novice player though, I never made my way into dreadnaughts ....

Would you fine alien specimens be interested in using the balance mod by Kwok?

[RAM]

I believe that The Balance mod was suggested in the first post...
Actually, the latest balance mod, I am still on g, but apparently h was due a couple of weeks ago...

[RAM]

Posting my interest in this game, Also wandering if expensive tech would be a good idea, slows down the game a bit but lets you smell the roses...

[Lord Shonus]

Maybe, but if so we should up the starting tech points to compensate. That way we can reduce the number of "dead" turns at the beginning of the game. For the same reason, I suggest giving everyone 3 or even 5 homeworlds to start.

[Talvara]

I am still interested, and hope I'll get teamed up with a nice person/people.

Can we get a summery of how the rules stand for this moment?

[Toaster]

How does Space Empires V compare to IV?

[RAM]

Ummm, I prefer the interface on IV, probably the technology too, and the ship design was easier if a bit arcane, and I probably preferred the looks of everything to, shipsets were certainly more plentiful...

SEV has realtime combat without an obvious grid, it is also 3 dimensional, but that doesn't really count for much unless you are suffering from bugged ship positions, I have had 30-odd ships stacked one on top of each other before... Ships tend to converge, so they are usually more concentrated. Wall formation is still pretty much universal, you can try to set up weird stuff with pickets and whatnot, but that really just ends up with your ships being out-concentrated... Ships don't get in each other-s way so much, OH, and boarding craft exist, they launch little pods that cannot be attacked, but they are really slow, a fast ship can outrun them and they have a limited range.

Ummm, hex map, and moons no longer occupy the same space as their planet, and the ship orders has had a revamp, you will need to learn how to program your ships again...

ooh, and the research/intel assignment has been modified, you cannot queue up research anymore and intelligence assignments are completely different...

Hex map, directional damage to ships, realtime combat with multiple ships on the same tile, many interface changes, 3d graphics, that's most of it.

Oh, and the screen where you balance your racial scores is gone, you just pick fixed values, no more trading individual points. All in all a lot of things were done that I don't really like, but there are some fun new aspects that are worth investigating...

[Lord Shonus]

So me, RAM, and Talvera are the only ones who are still interested? We won't be able to do teams, but three people is small enough to run tolerably without them.