Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Does this limit you to kind of a small area of operations?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
It sure does. For the first while, you are going to be limited to a three-or four system maximum range.
Note: once your ships get out there & capture a ship, its OK if they run out of supplies on the way home. You can resupply them with another ship, or bring in a SYS to analyse and scrap.

[quoye]Seems like you would need to wait for an alien race to sort of blunder over your initial start area before you could really get into action.[/quote]
In the 100-system game I started, there were three races within 3 systems from me (15 races total). In a 250 system game, you have to travel much farther, but that's what 5kT supply storage pods are for.

PS. Please don't tell me you still have engines that store more supplies than a box of supplies the same size!?!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>It's too bad we can't build facilities on asteroids since the asteroid pirate hideout seems to crop in sci-fi novels etc quite a bit. I agree pirates shouldn't be colonizing much if at all, but the idea of hidden supply bases on moons or asteroids would have been interesting. Maybe even one pirate haven, the homeworld with minor intel facilities etc, although it should be possible to build a ship/base intel component.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hidden supply bases, are merely space stations with a cloak or in a storm system. By fleeting with the base, you get resupplied, and the base probably has a construction component for repairs/retrofits/analysing/scrapping, so you don't need a planet out there. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gifIf you also put your base in a shield-depleting storm, you can whomp on the helpless attack ships' hulls with armored ships http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Thing is, you don't really need intel to survive as a pirate. If you have no planets, then the other players can't make contact with you, and you are impervious to intel.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Been messing around with the Pirates Last night. I agree that full maintenance is to big of a handicap but zero is to big of an advantage. 10-15% seems right. It makes you choose between either Big ships/ low numbers or small ships/ higher numbers in your fleets. I have been playing the later. So far I can take on 3-4 cruisers but larger fleets than that usually spank me pretty good. I haven't built anything larger than a BC and I only built one due to the cost and time. My self imposed ship size limit is BB.
I have played like I think a pirate should, only colonizing tiny and small planet of the home type, ice. No trade, no treaty, capture, analyize and scrap any ships. Have added a few special items but still need to work out the bugs. It's working great. I think with a tech tree for Pirates it is a great addition to SE4.
Victory is very difficult with the current point scoring system. Points are gained through expansion and colonization, two thing I feel Pirates don't care to much about, give me the cash! I'm not the best player but I ain't the worst, altough in my game I am Last. If they victory points could be changed then Pirates and Nomads could actually win. If you received points for each ship captured or detroyed and this was scaleable, i.e. Pirates get 1000 points for each captured ship while standard races got 10 for example, and you got points for each game turn you survived, same way, then Pirates and Nomads could play true to style and have a real chance of winning any game except winner take all. I don't know if the victory conditions will be changed, the suggestions for hard code changes is quite large and this request would probably be far down the list.


[This message has been edited by Marty Ward (edited 10 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Perhaps 5% maintenance would be better, you could trade merchants for warriors, or something to boost your ships' attack/defence even more, while still having low enough maintenance to keep up with the pack, and have a chance to win.

With all the sneakyness of a human, you should at least be able to manage 3rd or 5th place, more than halfway up the rankings.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

I think if you were a Pirate in a game with all humans just surviving would be a challange and surviving 100-200 turns after being discovered should be a victory!
5% might be enough, just enough to keep you from massing a huge fleet but not so high that you HAD to colonize to keep a small fleet in being. To bad there are no leader units in the game. Pirate captain bonuses would be great!

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

SJ, in your game after you built your space station and yard, did you expand outward into other systems if so did you build hidden bases or what and where? Do you think the ship capture is to easy or leave as is? I was wondering on re-supply, that's why I thought pirates could at least colonize tiny/small moons as supply bases sounds like you have problem solved. What tech did you start with in your game?

WHojo, From what I see your topic has the highest interest, seems like everyone wants to be a pirate.. "shiver me timber". With everyone contributing, we should be able to come up with one heck of a pirate race.

I agree with the bloodthirsty, violent traits, what about diplomacy? Should it be made easier or leave as is? Sj did you have any problems with Diplomacy with the other races? Or did you just like loot, pillage, and be gone.. Did you use cunning or schemer as part of your traits. How about you WHoJo
hows yours going?? Just curious
mac

As far was winning by points, My opinion only, is that I like playing game out until I either know I'm going to win or lose. Pirates should be a challenge for Human, that's what makes it fun. If you win to easily by points I think it would take away from the game, just my 3 cents worth..

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 11 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

I have two secret bases in nebulas, which are not really being used anymore. They're more as backup, and make occasional ships to add to my fleets. What I use more, is CRs with spaceyards in the fleets. That way, I get to analyse the tech right away & can retro & repair without leaving the prime territory.

I've mainly switched to semi-autonomous fleets that can rove around and penetrate deeply into my "host"'s territory.

Headaches that have come up for my pirates have been:
-Shields (I take a lot of damage when having to tear down 750 shields before capping)
-SelfDestruct (15% of ships are no longer capturable, since the SDD is the Last component remaining. Also, and ships that are captured are heavily damaged & tech is often lost. My recent aquisition of Psychic Crew converters had allieviated these two problems
-Minefields. Really sucks when your fleet goes through the wormhole to prey on colonies, when the next thing you know, every ship is crippled beyond belief & the repair ship was killed.
Nobody has been kind enough to build me a minesweeper ship, either.


[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 11 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Would anyone mind explaining to me how to get the pirate race? mod, or just messing with the stats?? Explain for us not really in the mood to read 105 Posts http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Would anyone mind explaining to me how to get the pirate race? mod, or just messing with the stats?? Explain for us not really in the mood to read 105 Posts http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Would anyone mind explaining to me how to get the pirate race? mod, or just messing with the stats?? Explain for us not really in the mood to read 105 Posts http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

I apoligize for the annoying triple post thing, not intentional hit the button too many times http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Well, the Corsair Race had it's initial run this weekend - didn't have as much time to spend on it as I wanted but such is life.

Here are a few of my observations along w/some Qs for the group:

Started the race in a large galaxy (150 systems) on 1 world that was set to poor. Total of 18 races... could only view my own score (believe it or not this makes it more difficult than I thought it would - sucks not knowing what the race you're about to attack has)... all races set to high diff... med bonus... no neutrals...

the Corsairs (to the best of my recollection) had Nat Merch (no space port needed), Pys Tech, Prop exprt, min settings on ground combat, research, reproduction, all resource production & trade... max'd on ship att & ship def, & ship maintence and breathed none on rock...

race had a special Pirate tech that gives access to Machine Shop 1,2,3 (50kt that repairs 1,2,3), Pirate Space Yard 1,2,3 (200kt that builds at 500,750,1000), RetroYard (100kt space yard that doesn't build or repair - only allows the recovery of res from scrapped ships - a rather failed experiment), Pirate Intell center 1,2,3 (produces 1000,1500,2000 intell points), Pirate counter intell 1,2,3 (the only intell project that the Pirate Intell Centr can run w/o researching normal Intell), a Pirate colony ship (150kt hull w/2 engin max) & a pirate rock colony pod (100kt comp w/max cap of 1M)...

Started the game smack in the midd of the map on a small world w/no res above 85% - very little production goin on.

Built a scout ship & did a little exploration. This is where I ran into my 1st role playing test & I'm ashamed to say I failed - found a large rock planet w/no atmo that had 2 tiny moons w/no atmo - ashamed to say I moved my homeworld here - limited my self to building 3 min res mininers 1 org & 1 rad, 1 resup & 1 const - the rest was research & intell...

Anyway, after finding this home (took a VERRRY long time to colonize those 3 planets) I stopped colonizing. Built some Des sized Const Yard Ships, found acouple of systems w/storms and built pirate bases (500kt spaceyard w/pirate SY comp & some wpns - later put stealth armor on it to try to hide it) also built a few remote mining stations (500kt space station w/2 min & 1 each of org/rad) - researched like mad till I got ship capture (tech started on low w/med cost)... then I built some Des sized boarding ships and went a pirating...

found the Darlocks, captured a few - lost all to a dang minefield - built another fleet w/boarding, supply, repair & SY ships - and went in other direction - found a race w/PPBs captured much tech from them - lost a couple of fleets but am slowly making headway -

Played 175 or so turns and moved from Last to high of 8th... It's great fun and alot more difficult than I thought it would be.

the other roleplaying decision I was torn on is whether or not to accpt a races trade & research treaties (anything above that I flat out refused) - I sat back and thought what would a good pirate king do???

I accepted the treaties, of course... at least until I was unable to locate any enemy ships then I'd turn on the partner - brought a rather guilty feeling of pleasure to pounce on the unsuspecting ships of suppossed alies...

Found that once I'd captured the tech level for shield depleting wpn - life as a pirate was MUCH easier -no more slugging it out waiting for those shield to colapse. Also, putting a PPB on each boarding ship helped in those battles where I was outnumbered and obviously couldn't capture them all. Stealth armor was the defense of choice - either captured or researched to Stealth lvl 2 armor - better than shields in my opinion (for the pirate anyway)...

Gotta go - will check back later w/more thoughts... and as always, feedback is appreciated.

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[This message has been edited by WhiteHojo (edited 12 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

WHojo, sounds good, you don't want it to be easy. Question, what about using tracter beam along with ship capture or working something out on this. It seems that pirates would use a type of tractor beam to pull in enemy ships, hit victim with tractor beam, pull towards you then board with ship capture or is tractor beam part of ship capture routine? I haven't used ship capture yet so don't know. still experimenting with various things yet,,
Did you make the small worlds colonies or just bases for repair & supply? How did you get tech research, from your bases, planets, or thru liberating them from friend & foe or from all? mac

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I failed - found a large rock planet w/no atmo that had 2 tiny moons w/no atmo<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
That's why pirates shouldn't get colony tech. Instead, you'd have to capture a rock colony ship from somebody else before you could move in.

The pirates shouldn't be relying on planetary production, but thievery instead.

Question: Did you have min settings on environmental resistance?

If you have both min env. res. and min reproduction, you require a perfect planet to get any growth at all http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif Makes capturing slaves more important too. Finding a large transport with 500M people means you get to boost production on some planet by 20% or so.

-----------------------------
As for getting Mods/races. My Version hasn't got the latest patch, and I don't have time to redo the mod right now. If you want to quickly get into the Pirate mode, just set every racial trait that affects planets to its minimum value, and the rest is optional.

Ie.
Requirements:
- Research
- reproduction
- enviroment resist
- mineral, organic, radioactives
- trade
These should all be at their minimum setting. The rest is whatever you feel would be good.

Some "almost nessesary" things:
- minimum maintenance (+20%) (or you're making it impossible to win)
- Rock/None race (for the pirate ambiance)

I also recommend:
- ship attack/ defence maxed out. (It helps when you can't miss and you can dodge everything http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif)
- propulsion experts (need speed to get in and board between shots)
- Psychic tech tree (makes capturing easy)

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mac5732:
WHojo, sounds good, you don't want it to be easy. Question, what about using tracter beam along with ship capture or working something out on this. It seems that pirates would use a type of tractor beam to pull in enemy ships, hit victim with tractor beam, pull towards you then board with ship capture or is tractor beam part of ship capture routine? I haven't used ship capture yet so don't know. still experimenting with various things yet,,
Did you make the small worlds colonies or just bases for repair & supply? How did you get tech research, from your bases, planets, or thru liberating them from friend & foe or from all? mac<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Regarding the tractor beams - I've never used em - never could find a need for them either - as long as your ships can manuever you're ok w/o em, plus they wld take up valuable space on ships (not to mention the costs)

Ship capture is simple - 2 things to remember - 1) make sure target ship has shields down (can't capture a ship w/sheilds still up) 2) make sure you're adjacent to the target ship and that your boarding ship has a undamaged boarding party

I made the 2 tiny moons Intell centers (6 Pirate intell center per)

got tech via research (to get to the initial ship capture - takes a looooong time) but mostly via ship capture/analyze



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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:

That's why pirates shouldn't get colony tech. Instead, you'd have to capture a rock colony ship from somebody else before you could move in.

The pirates shouldn't be relying on planetary production, but thievery instead.

Question: Did you have min settings on environmental resistance?

If you have both min env. res. and min reproduction, you require a perfect planet to get any growth at all http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif Makes capturing slaves more important too. Finding a large transport with 500M people means you get to boost production on some planet by 20% or so.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

to me capturing colony ships from other races and allowing the pirate race to use those for expansion allows the pirate race to expand MUCH faster than making em only use colony ships that they build themselves.

My game experience lends me to my new view on pirate colonization... A pirate should only colonize 1 planet at a time (this might be more a hybrid of SJ's view and my original limited expansion view)...

Once I found the 3 planets in one square - 1 large w/no atmo and 2 tiny moons w/no atmo I essentially abbandoned my original homeworld, and relocated to the new base of operations - kinda like finding a better island w/safer harbors that's more off the beaten path but also allows access to rich shipping lanes... After colonizing your preferred base, the pirate wouldn't need to find another unless that one was overrun and destroyed - If that happens, simply capture another races colony ship and either 1) use their race to populate your new home or 2) if you happen to have a small sampling of your pop handy (maybe stash some on a transport in some out of the way secret pirate base) and use them after jettisoning, er I mean makin the old pop on the colony ship walk the plank...

As for environ resist, I think I did min that one, but to this day, I'm not sure exactly what effect it has on the game...

I also thought that physic was the special tech to get at the start but now I'm not so sure - something about capturing a ship w/o any bloodshed offends my good pirate sensibilities.

If it wasn't for the pop increase special components that org tech gives, i'd think that Org would be the best for Pirates do to the incred armor that you get - armor, to me, is much preferable on a boarding ship than shields. As for mixing armor and shields, to me I like to keep my ships small and cheap (LC or smaller) so no room for both.

I also continue to voice my objection to using any captured pop as slaves or whatever... a pirate might deal in slaves but I don't see em using em to colonize planets. just allows too much expansion.

As for not using a planet to get resources I agree - to a point. I found that w/o using the planet at the beginning of the game b/f I got ship capture, I would have run out of resources and died of stagnation - it's unavoidable that a race will have to use planetside resource generating mines to get a foothold in the early game - after that, I agree that resources should come from the spoils of the sea...




------------------
Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

There isn't any formal mod for a pirate race yet. It's more of a role playing race right now. I know suicide junkie has played it for a while and some others have also explored it. I've fooled around with it a bit also. I hope one day that it could actually be made into a mod. It is a great idea and fun to play.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>to me capturing colony ships from other races and allowing the pirate race to use those for expansion allows the pirate race to expand MUCH faster than making em only use colony ships that they build themselves...... A pirate should only colonize 1 planet at a time ... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Q: how do you plan on enforcing this?
Anything you capture in SE4 can be used as if you built it yourself.

Also, if you have to use captured ships to colonize, you won't get any until some time into the game, and since you can't retrofit the colonies (you don't have access to the tech), you have to make do with an ice colony instead of that prime triple rock world.
Captured colony ships don't make expansion very fast at all.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>If [you find a better planet] happens, simply capture another races colony ship and either 1) use their race to populate your new home or 2) if you happen to have a small sampling of your pop handy (maybe stash some on a transport in some out of the way secret pirate base) and use them after jettisoning, er I mean makin the old pop on the colony ship walk the plank...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Are you supporting the use of captured colony ships here?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
As for environ resist, I think I did min that one, but to this day, I'm not sure exactly what effect it has on the game...
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
What I believe it does is make your growth rate drop faster as conditions deteriorate.
Ie. if you have god-like environment resist, a harsh world will have 1% less reproduction than a optimal world. For the pirates, anything other than optimal causes a severe decrease in growth.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
I also thought that [psychic] was the special tech to get at the start but now I'm not so sure - something about capturing a ship w/o any bloodshed offends my good pirate sensibilities.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yeah, I've found that it makes it too easy to capture most of the enemy fleet in one turn and destroy the rest with thier own ships. Boarding parties should be used instead.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
I also continue to voice my objection to using any captured pop as slaves or whatever... a pirate might deal in slaves but I don't see em using em to colonize planets. just allows too much expansion.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Note that the captured race gets all of your racial traits except for what they breathe. This means that any captured pop will have zero growth too. The addition of 20M people at a time is not going to expand your empire much.
If I would have allowed the construction of colony ships, I would have had three systems colonized instead of three planets.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
As for not using a planet to get resources I agree - to a point. I found that w/o using the planet at the beginning of the game b/f I got ship capture, I would have run out of resources and died of stagnation - it's unavoidable that a race will have to use planetside resource generating mines to get a foothold in the early game - after that, I agree that resources should come from the spoils of the sea...
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Naturally. The homeworld is/should only be good for getting the boarding party tech and for funding the first secret bases.
Not long into the game, you should be overwhelmed by intel, and be forced to abandon your planets, thus forcing you to become nomadic and getting your resources from ship capture. The zero maintenance thing I was doing was intended for the time when you lose all your planets.

Note that you always have 50k storage and 200 production of each resource. With zero maintenance, a Pirate race could theoretically come back from having only one space yard station.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

SJ & WHojo, what about limiting the amount of resources or tech from planet that you are on. Possibly limiting this to say after turn 50 or 100. that way you would have it in the beginning but after that you would have better luck on your bases, ships.
In regards to colony ships, is it possible to mod so that captured pop could be used as a form of trade. This way when you capture a
colony ship, you could trade to any player, if no takers, then they take the long walk on the plank, and you keep the ship. if this
is possible you could take away the colonization aspect of using captured pop to colonize thus cutting down on rapid expansion
As for tractor beams, it just seems that this is something in the game that is basically useless. I just thought by utilizing it as a vital piece it would liven up the boarding and make it worthwhile to have. I guess I read to much of the old Lesman series by EE Doc Smith. The pirates always used tractor beams to pull victims in.
just some ideas. mac

another quick thought, how about letting them able to capture and use robo-miners to get resources instead of using planets?

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
&lt;snipped a lot of stuff&gt;
Note that you always have 50k storage and 200 production of each resource. With zero maintenance, a Pirate race could theoretically come back from having only one space yard station.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

And you could always have your pirates do some remote mining; in fact, maybe the "secret base" could be a base station or starbase in an asteroid field with some mining components and a repair bay; when the asteroids are mined out (or you've maxed out storage and you don't need to mine for a while), retrofit the base to include something else besides the miners. Or use satellites (if you've researched 'em, or captured an enemy's satellite layer).

Just some thoughts. I realize pirates aren't necessarily good miners, but you could just think of them as scavengers instead, and they're just taking whatever they can find in the asteroids in addition to preying on ships.

BTW - I have a reason for the 200 production per turn (besides the obvious fact that it's one of the default settings): it represents the pirates preying on the "invisible freighters" used by all empires to move their resources around. Of course, I think the pirates should get a bonus on this one... http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Ah, the joy of the active thread - come to work, check the board and find that there are others who have the same priorities in life as me - scary...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Q: how do you plan on enforcing this?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I assume you'd enforce it the same way you would enforce the no planet sided mining after the beginning or any other preferrence, via the roleplay.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Also, if you have to use captured ships to colonize, you won't get any until some time into the game, and since you can't retrofit the colonies (you don't have access to the tech), you have to make do with an ice colony instead of that prime triple rock world.
Captured colony ships don't make expansion very fast at all.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm only basing this on my 1 game as a pirate but by the time I got ship capture, I was running into as many colony ships as war ships - my first capture and analys was a colony ship - If I was allowed to use captured colony pops and colony ships all the time for expansion, I'd have been expanding at a rate far exceeding that available to me using only slower, lower cargo capacity pirate colonizers. (should be noted that the game setup will also affect this - I was using only colonize homeworld type, rock).

Not sure i understand the "can't retrofit" part of the post but it's early...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>If [you find a better planet] happens, simply capture another races colony ship and either 1) use their race to populate your new home or 2) if you happen to have a small sampling of your pop handy (maybe stash some on a transport in some out of the way secret pirate base) and use them after jettisoning, er I mean makin the old pop on the colony ship walk the plank


Are you supporting the use of captured colony ships here?...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Dire situations call for dire actions - when faced with the extinction of the pirate race, sure.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Note that the captured race gets all of your racial traits except for what they breathe. This means that any captured pop will have zero growth too. The addition of 20M people at a time is not going to expand your empire much.
If I would have allowed the construction of colony ships, I would have had three systems colonized instead of three planets.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I recognize this, but to me being able to dump 20M (if capture a colony ship) or upwards of 200M (If capture a transport w/pop - seen this one 3 times in my 1 game) flies in the face of what I thought we both agreed was an important limiting factor of the Pirate - slow, very slow expansion...


SJ, do you think maybe we're focusing too much on the roleplayin aspect of the pirate race and instead maybe we should be working on the programing of the AI to play a Pirate? Personally, Untill the AI can show me it can handle Ship Capture on a consistant basis, I don't think it's possible to have a AI run Pirate Race that is competitve - I believe they'd be the equivelant of a Neurtal...




------------------
Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mac5732:
SJ & WHojo, what about limiting the amount of resources or tech from planet that you are on. Possibly limiting this to say after turn 50 or 100. that way you would have it in the beginning but after that you would have better luck on your bases, ships.
In regards to colony ships, is it possible to mod so that captured pop could be used as a form of trade. This way when you capture a
colony ship, you could trade to any player, if no takers, then they take the long walk on the plank, and you keep the ship. if this
is possible you could take away the colonization aspect of using captured pop to colonize thus cutting down on rapid expansion
As for tractor beams, it just seems that this is something in the game that is basically useless. I just thought by utilizing it as a vital piece it would liven up the boarding and make it worthwhile to have. I guess I read to much of the old Lesman series by EE Doc Smith. The pirates always used tractor beams to pull victims in.
just some ideas. mac

another quick thought, how about letting them able to capture and use robo-miners to get resources instead of using planets?

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 13 March 2001).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Mac - I think you're right on target w/the limiting planet side mining to the early game - that's what I did anyway. I put a self imposed limit on my new large planet base of 3 or 4 (can't remember exactly) min miners and 1 each of org & rad. Kept the original planet's setup the same (w/the exception of scrappin 1 Min miner and building a Res facility early on)... some type of self imposed limit on the number of mining facilities is required in my opinion (but I don't know of any way to mod these into the game -just have to trust the player)

don't know of any way to actually trade captured POP other than offering the whole colony ship to someone - if there was another Human player of 2 in the game, imagine the price you could get for a colony ship loaded w/a race that breathes a diff atmo than them... let the resources role in!!! However, I'm not sure if the computer would count the Pop in a colony ship as a bonus or not (or even if they'd recognize em at all - trade value wise)

Personally, I've never seen a valid use for the tractor beam or repulsor beam... if anyone else has used em let us know. To me, they'd just be wasted space.

The robo miners, I must confess, became a guilty concession in my game - I found myself building em quite often - but only on spacebase platforms - only way to get a return on the investment - but the depleting resources is kind of annoying (and I know you can disable it, but it's not that bad)

keep up the ideas



------------------
Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I assume you'd enforce it the same way you would enforce the no planet sided mining after the beginning or any other preferrence, via the roleplay. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Ah ha! There we go. I am trying to get the game to automatically force you to be piraty.
If you aren't allowed to do something, then you will be tempted to do it anyways. But, if you can't do it, theres no problem.

What I suggest is removing (ice/rock/gas) colony components from a pirate race's tech areas. Thus, you have to select a racial trait of "not a pirate" to get colony techs.
Therefore, pirates can not retrofit a captured colony ship to whatever colony type they want. They also cannot retrofit a cruiser to have a colony component.
I will also now suggest that Pirates do not get mineral/organic/radioactives/monolith facilities. ( http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gifOOOh http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif)
Note: robo-extractors are still OK.
As you can see, now pirates only get their home planet's original resource production, and any colonies only produce research or intel (or population, or ships) Remote mining is still an option, but will run out as the planets are depleted.
We now have Pirates that start out just like now, expand resource wise, but then fade back to about 7k minerals per turn after a few years. Now, the pirates have a base, and rely on captured ships for resources! The only way to permanently expand your resource production is to capture a (fully developed & hence defended) enemy world.

Note that it is a lot easier to resist cheating once (when creating your race) than to resist each and every turn. Therefore we should have our pirate limitations built into the racial traits.
Note also, that although my suggestion eliminated the major resource source for pirates, there are still many different options for gathering resources. SE4 rules!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I'm only basing this on my 1 game as a pirate but by the time I got ship capture, I was running into as many colony ships as war ships - my first capture and analys was a colony ship - If I was allowed to use captured colony pops and colony ships all the time for expansion, I'd have been expanding at a rate far exceeding that available to me using only slower, lower cargo capacity pirate colonizers. (should be noted that the game setup will also affect this - I was using only colonize homeworld type, rock).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
"Only colonize homeworld type" ?!? Owch! that's why you had so many colony ships running around, they couldn't find any good colonies at home.
An easy solution is to have the AIs add a Self-destruct to colony ships. Then, most of the time, you will have destroyed the colony component before taking out the SDD, making the ship useless except for slaves. You will still be able to use the occasional colony ship, but it will be limited by the game itself. (No willpower required)

---------------------------------

I think we all agree now that Psychic tech is bad for pirates, and Boarding Parties are good.

---------------------------------

I think the key difference in our opinions stems from the fact that you are trying to be pirates using willpower, while I'm trying to use the game engine to funnel these races into doing Piraty things.

IMO, the only self-restraint required should be during race creation. If you fail doing that, hey, you just made a non-pirate race, so it dosen't matter. If you succeed in following the ground rules for Pirate races, then good for you. You can now do your worst and pull out all the stops to get ahead in life. Once you have designed your race anything that SE4 lets you do should be completely legal.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

The only way to force the computer to act like a priate is to build the tech tree in such a way that all the items you do not want the pirate to have are not researchable. I think this would require creating the standard tech tree as an option. This would probably screw up all the other AI's or at leastrequire additional prorgaming for each one.
Role playing is the easiest way to get around this although it would be great if it could be made a game function.
I can see tractor/repulser beams being very useful to a pirate espescially if you only want to capture certain ships in a fleet battle. You pull the one you want to capture in close while you push the others away.
I have not used these features much, only tried the tractor beam and I am not sure if it worked. I am going to try the repulser beam on fighters, I don't know if it will work on them though or on sat either. It would be nice to push some of those Groups away when they are circling like sharks!

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Ah ha! There we go. I am trying to get the game to automatically force you to be piraty.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ah ha!! Now we're on the same page. Now that we have a defined parameter things should be alot clearer - I was doin it the willpower way (alot simpler, but not as effective) so now I'll change my plans...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>What I suggest is removing (ice/rock/gas) colony components from a pirate race's tech areas. Thus, you have to select a racial trait of "not a pirate" to get colony techs.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

interesting... not sure how the most efficient way to mod that would be - how'd you do it? Don't know off the top of my head how to remove a tech from a race w/o denying it to all races - any ideas?

Like the idea but the more I played the pirate, the more I am in favor of letting the pirate have ONLY 1 colony stack (stack b/c it could include a planet and it's moons) in the game at a time - the rest should be bases as you say. Just seems more Piraty/Carribean to me...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>[b]I will also now suggest that Pirates do not get mineral/organic/radioactives/monolith facilities( http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gifOOOh http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm ok w/that - no monoliths seems ok since after the 1st of the game resources should only come from existing mining facilities and the robo extractors in the asteroids...

However, I think they should be able to improve the robos they build.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>An easy solution is to have the AIs add a Self-destruct to colony ships. Then, most of the time, you will have destroyed the colony component before taking out the SDD, making the ship useless except for slaves. You will still be able to use the occasional colony ship, but it will be limited by the game itself. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


I suppose this is possible, but then you would have to redesign other components (either colony pod, the engines, the crew/life/bridge, supply or cargo to allow the fitting of the self destruct device on the ships, not to mention having to redesign all the AIs to use the new design.

I would like to keep the changing of the existing components and races to a minimum... adding components should be ok since they're specialized pirate stuff and wouldn't be included on other race ships anyway. Also, some of the best races are the TDM mod and tinkering around w/them is not something I would encourage. (they seem pretty balanced right now)

What's your feelings on trade/research treaties? I have found they are rather nice and can be justified as the ole Letters of Marque that some pirates/privateers used to "justify" their actions against the rich shipping of the "enemy"




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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by WhiteHojo:
Personally, I've never seen a valid use for the tractor beam or repulsor beam... if anyone else has used em let us know. To me, they'd just be wasted space.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I haven't been playing long but in my first game repulsor/tractor beams saved my butt.

The problem I was having was that the enemy ships would move right next to my space station and launch their missles, which would then explode against my station before my PD would get a chance to shoot them. Anytime they came in range I would shoot them with everything except repulsors and then repulse them.

Later I adapted the strategy to work with my ships. I would tractor them in, move one space and fire everything except repulsors then repulse them and move the rest of my movement away from them. They had to perpetually fire from longer ranges and I always got point blank shots. Works great when combined with high damage low range weapons. Missing the all-important repulsor shot almost never happens (point blank range). In strategic combat it's a little more difficult as the ai doesn't think of them as anything other than weapons, but it could still work if you are very careful how you design your ships: Tractor beam first, next ALL Other normal Weapons, and finally Repulsor beam. I haven't experimented much with the ai but I doubt that it will use it's own movement effectively in conjunction with repulsor/tractor weapons.

Tractor/repulsor weapons are great for dispersing the enemy fleet, for example you can repulse one ship behind you and the others in front thus isolating one ship at a time.

[This message has been edited by Felan (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

INTERESTING, Felan!

I messed with the tractor/repulsers once way back in the pre-release demo, and they didn't seem to do ANYTHING, so I never touched them again.

What are the limits? I know in Starfire you could only move a ship around with tractors/repulsers if it was smaller than your ship...

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Possum:
INTERESTING, Felan!

I messed with the tractor/repulsers once way back in the pre-release demo, and they didn't seem to do ANYTHING, so I never touched them again.

What are the limits? I know in Starfire you could only move a ship around with tractors/repulsers if it was smaller than your ship...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't think there were any size limits or such. If you can target it (ships and even starbases) you can move it if you hit it. If one were to change the target options of it to include fighters and satellites then perhaps it would work on those as well, not sure though.

I seem to remember that when I attacked planets my tractors/repulsors fired, but the planet thankfully didn't move.

I think the damage listed in the tractor beam is how far it will pull. If 2 then it will pull 2 squares and 4 will pull 4 squares. Inversely so with repulsor.

But a tractor beam will only pull the ship toward yours, which means they will stop in the same hex as you. I wasn't able to select or target anything in that hex but I've recently figured out that you can flip through your list of ships with the controls in the upper right corner so I will probably try to select my ship and target the enemy at a truely point-blank range and see what happens.

That actually brings up another potentially interesting strategy of using suicide ships loaded with tractors to pull in a bunch of enemies and then self-destructing the ship with all the enemy in the same square I imagine it could be quite damaging.

If my statement of the damage to push strength of repulsors is accurate then it would also be useful to install a repulsor 3 along with a repulsor 4 (or if you can actually target enemy ships in your square) 2 repulsor 4's as you could then push for a total distance of 7 or 8 squares, respectively. The enemy will likely have a movement of just enough to get back in range of your tractors for a repeat.

If I remember right they are also affected by the mounts (I didn't know about them in my first game) so starbases could get some tractors of frightening range and repulsors would get terrible pushing weapons (power of 16) which could be used to give your ships a boost or keep the enemy away from your planet.

[This message has been edited by Felan (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Tractor beams can be tough. I was playing a game vs. the Borg where they fired missles, then tractored me in after I was damaged and used troops to board my ships and capture them. Ouch. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif Its just to bad the repulser beams don't fire like in Moo1,(like pd weapons, pushing the ship away when it moves into your range b4 it fires its weapons.).

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Felan:

That actually brings up another potentially interesting strategy of using suicide ships loaded with tractors to pull in a bunch of enemies and then self-destructing the ship with all the enemy in the same square I imagine it would be quite damaging.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Cool idea, but how do you voluntarily self-destruct? What occurs to me is using tractor beams with ramming ships!

(/me flashes on Ben Hur)

"Ramming speed!"

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Interesting Repulsor beam story:
I once had Massive mount repulsor beams (20) damage) on a starbase. A fleet of enemy cruisers was simmed, and I'd fling five of them across the battle map each battle turn http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif
Now, on one shot, however, the ship I targetted just plain dissapeared! After I hit end turn, two ships moved from the same square! The guy I'd hit with a 20 point repulse flew 5 squares & nailed one of his friends! Unfortunately, they were both fine. If they had done ramming damage to each other that would have been Awesome!

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>interesting... not sure how the most efficient way to mod that would be - how'd you do it? Don't know off the top of my head how to remove a tech from a race w/o denying it to all races - any ideas?

Like the idea but the more I played the pirate, the more I am in favor of letting the pirate have ONLY 1 colony stack (stack b/c it could include a planet and it's moons) in the game at a time - the rest should be bases as you say. Just seems more Piraty/Carribean to me...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>you have to select a racial trait of "not a pirate" to get colony techs.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
It is a simple matter of copy-paste to add a free racial trait to all AIs &non-pirate races.
A second racial trait of "is a pirate" could be used for stuff you don't want non-pirates using. The GM would have to ensure that only one option is chosen.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>However, I think they should be able to improve the robos they build. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Note that I said "facilities". By this, the tech area is researchable, but Pirates cannot get the facilities (ie. facilities have an additional requirement).
The components are totally not affected.

"self-destruct on colonies"
All you have to do is copy paste an "add SDD to colony ship" in the AIs designs. You could add 10Kt to the size of a colony ship if you wanted to keep the same parts, and just ADD the SDD.
Alternatively, you could have an integrated Bridge-with-SDD. If its the same familiy as a normal Bridge, the AIs will use them instead as soon as they become available.
Pirates just have to be more careful when deciding when to board http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>What's your feelings on trade/research treaties? I have found they are rather nice and can be justified as the ole Letters of Marque that some pirates/privateers used to "justify" their actions against the rich shipping of the "enemy"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yeah, it would also be pretty hard to prevent treaties.

I see the trade/research treaties as more of a "friendly" protectorate treaty. Ie. you pay in order to not have pirates attack you. The pirates give you nothing in return except "protection" (since they produce nothing) http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

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http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif Tractor Beams + Organic Armor = kickass ship.

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BTW, there is a "delete" check box at the top of the edit window, for when you double-post.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Possum:
Cool idea, but how do you voluntarily self-destruct? What occurs to me is using tractor beams with ramming ships!

(/me flashes on Ben Hur)

"Ramming speed!"
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think I self-destructed a ship once that had the self-destruct component in it. Just go to the use component option and use it. But maybe I'm wrong and it was that I had just wanted to self-destruct it but couldn't.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

For the Tech trees you could put all the standard techs in a separate trait with no cost. Then if you did not choose this trait you could never use any tech from it.
This would allow you to modify all the standard races to get the tech without affecting the points in the game.
The Pirate could not use this tech. I don't know if there could be a flag to disallow choosing both Pirate and Standard trait but if there is a way, you would solve the problem. Of course the Pirate tree would have to be fairly large if you wanted a lot of variety available to the Pirate.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

As I have said about three times,
-----------------------------------

-most things are left alone

-Colony components & other stuff pirates don't have require the racial tech
"Not a Pirate"

-Pirate stuff requires the racial tech
"Is a Pirate"

Just don't let anyone choose both.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

SJ,
Do you have to rename the components when you paste them to them in the pirate tech?

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

How about doing this instead:

create a "Pirate tech tree" and fill it with loads of cool pirate stuff, only each pirate ship item you add generates negative research and if possible negative happiness.

What this would do would be to make a race that became more "Pirate" less able to research things, and force them to fill their bases with improvements that generate happier populations rather then research, mining, etc . . . You might want to add in some special pirate happiness facilities too.

Some techs for ships:

Plunderer: remotely mines enemy worlds destroying recourses like robo-miners do for astroids.

Pirate: Advanced early ship capture technology, much more efficient then what you get later from the regular tree.

Pirate research center: Very small component that lets you analyze ships in space after you catch them, the way pirates get most of their tech.

Pirate retro-fit center: small shipboard component that lets pirates install their more advanced technologies onto ships they capture from primitive races.

Pirate mine warheads: Powerful mine warheads that only target engine, security center, armor, and shields. Basically small automated seekers designed to make enemy ships easier to board.

Large base-cloaking devices: A huge device designed to cloak pirate bases in enemy systems, learned early on it's easy to build, but it's too big to put on anything but stations/starbases, it does however give you excellent hiding ability, maybe later Versions could also do double duty as shield components for the base?

Pirate figher crew: small crews of pirates who specialize in manning fighters and using them to board enemy vessles.


Another advantage of this system is that eventually the pirate race could reform, disband its fleets, and start developing a real empire, not likely but possible. As for colonies, let them colonize, the more they spread out the more dangerous they are, and what happens if they wipe out all their prey? ARGH!!!!

[This message has been edited by Windborne (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

SJ,
Have you tried a game where you left out the resource facilities from the pirates tech? What did the game put in place of the resource facilities on your homeworld?
Cutting and pasting is a whole lot easier than creating a whole tech tree http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/blush.gif

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

I must not be following the rest of you... I'm a little lost on the some of the concepts mentioned here.

If you place all the tech that you want a PR (pirate Race) to have access to in a special Pirate Race Tech tree, the PR will still have access to all normal tech - all races have access to normal tech.

If you make the PR a racial trait selectable on startup and then allow em access to tech that is tagged somehow Pirate Tech (similiar to Org or Crystal, etc tech) but limiting em from access to normal non PR tech I'm not sure I understand how you do this?? A little further explanation might help (such as where exactly do you paste these "is a Pirate" and "is not a pirate" lines)

I have tried to add a new special racial tech similiar to the Org/Temp/Crystal/etc techs in the racial traits file and the Tech Area file - can't get it to work, keep getting an invalid parameter errror. Anyone els have success doin this??

While I'm on it - anyone know what the Restricted Trait and Required Trait lines in the racial Traits data file mean/do???

Another Q - anyone know of what all can be listed in the racial traits file as a racial trait type?

this modding makes my head hurt...


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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

This will get the trait to show up as a choice but with the mod pack installed you can't load any existing race for some reason. You can create a new race though. You would need to add some techs to it to get anything out of it.

Name := Pirating
Description := Gains access to the Pirating Technology Tree.
Pic Num := 0
General Type := Advantage
Cost := 3000
Trait Type := Tech Area
Value 1 := 6
Value 2 := 0
Required Trait 1 := None
Required Trait 2 := None
Required Trait 3 := None
Restricted Trait 1 := None
Restricted Trait 2 := None
Restricted Trait 3 := None
If you want to restrict the Pirate from accessing all the standard techs you must make all the standard techs part of a trait that allows access to them and have no standard techs available. This may not be possible, as some techs may need to be present to set up the game.

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Nit - have you tried this new racial trait in the game yet?

I put that info in the racial trait file then designated the new Pirate Tech as a racial area of 6 (the next one available I assumed)...

tried to start a new game and when I attempted to add an existing race I get a error message saying can't find whatever-empire-I'm-trying-to-add.emp file....

message goes away when I remove the pirate racial trait.

very upsetting

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Yeah for some reason it will work with the TDM mod pack but it will only allow you to add a new race. I haven't added,saved and restarted to see if the saved one will work. I'll try that tomorrow.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

The "is a pirate":

Name := Pirates
Description := Gains access to the Pirating Technology Tree. Cannot use planet based resource extraction facilities or Colonizing tech.
Restricted Trait 1 := Non-Pirating


The "is not a Pirate":

Name := Non-Pirating
Description := Gains access to Colonizing components, colony ship hulls and resource extraction facilities.
Restricted Trait 1 := Pirating

See?

----------------------

As for the homeworld, the game is apparently hardcoded to give you 1 organic, 1 radioacitves, 1 spaceport, 1 resupply, 1 ship yard, and the rest 50%/50% between research and minerals or something.

I assume it would still do the same, but the pirates just wouldn't be able to build more.

Will do a quick test right now.

Dang. It just filled my planet up with research facils.
Any Ideas on how to prevent resource facilities from being built on colonies?

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 13 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Somebody suggested that pirates could get resources by capturing robominers. There's a small problem with that: hardly anybody builds any robominers for the pirates to capture.

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Cap'n Q

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

SJ,
Where did you put the "is a pirate" and the "is not a pirate" stuff? Did you create separate traits or modify existing ones?

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

I haven't actually done that. I'm gonna wait to get the next patch until I finish my game, and when I get the patch I'll have to redo most of my mod anyways, so I'm gonna wait until then.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Nit - that's the same line of problems I ran into - which is why I wondered if anyone has successfully added a race to the race trait file... if you can't use the game in it's capacity, to me that's not a successfull mod.

I'll keep fiddling but w/o someone elses imput I don't feel very confident of the chances of moding a true Pirate Race. Might have to go back to the willpower way...



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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

It actually worked well in the mod pack directory, except for those few time with the blank screen (???)
I don't know what is different with the main directory. Maybe it is coded in where only the original number of advanced characterestics are available. I wonder if anyone else has been able to add a trait. I remember a mod, Daves or Denullvis (?) that added a trait called nano technology but I never tried it so I don't know if he was any more successful.
I'm gonna keep fiddling with it. I think if I recreate all the original races as new and save them then I will be able to add them to the game. I think I'll have to wait till the weekend to do that though.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

I think you have to create a new game rather than load an old one for the changes to work.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

UM- nope, that doesn't work either - if I mod the racial trait file to add a new Pirate race and then restart the game, click on new game and try to add an existing empire, I get the error I mentioned below. If I create a new race, no problems. If I let the computer randomly add a existing race, no problems, but for some reason, I can't add an existing race when the racial trait file has been modded.

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[This message has been edited by WhiteHojo (edited 14 March 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Yeah it's odd. I can start a new game and add create new races but I can't add any of the standard existing races. They will join if the computer picks them and act normally. My only guess is that it has to do with the .emp file. I get an error that it can't find the .emp file.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Nit - yep, same here

what exactly are .emp files and how do you read em?

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.