Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Hopefully this bug will soon be fixed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Easy enough, now.
All you've gotta do is delete the solid shield research call in Atro's AIs.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

How do the kenetic missiles work? I have a ship with two sets of light kenetic missiles, one internal and one external rack. I also have gun crews on these ships. However, I can't target enemy missiles. It appears that i have enough supply as well.

Also, can I not shoot down missiles with guns?

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

I believe seeker-targetting weapons only work in strategic combat.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Ok then...how do you defend your ships in from missiles in this mod?

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Not simulated... AI-controlled (strategic) combat.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

The SE4 user interface does not provide a way to manually fire weapons at missiles.

Thus strategic or Auto-tactical are the only options if you want to survive.

I suggest going full out, simultaneous game mode; that keeps you sharp for PBW games.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Here's another bug from Atro's files.

AI General Settings Errors
*Unknown value "Hardy Industrialists" for Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 4 in record "Alliance to restore the Republic"
*Unknown value "Hardy Industrialists" for Race Opt 2 Adv Trait 4 in record "Alliance to restore the Republic"
*Unknown value "Hardy Industrialists" for Race Opt 3 Adv Trait 4 in record "Alliance to restore the Republic"
*Unknown value "Warriors" for "Galactic Empire"

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Played CB for the first time over the last few days. To avoid the errors that dumbluck and others mention you have to delete the AI files in \pictures\races. There is also a bug in the Troop Logo component. It has 0 structure and the AI WILL design a troop that has Troop Logo, Laser Rifle, Laser Rifle, Laser Pistol. Since all of these components have 0 structure the AI can build a Troop with 0 hit points. Naturally when this troop gets used you get DIVIDE BY ZERO errors and the game crashes. Edit Components to give Troop Logo 50 structure as a work around.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Odd, I was sure I'd fixed the rebels already.

See attachment for update to the CB1.6+Atro files

SCJazz:
You should have realized that was the wrong way to do it when the AIs started making illegal designs instead of just making an empire that was missing a non-critical racial trait.

The fix is simply to change the "Hardy Industrialists" call in AI_General to "Natural Builders"

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Just call me impatient! Wasn't sure what was hosing it up easier to just blow the whole thing away and force Neutral. By the way...

OMIGOD U R FRICKIN AWESOME!!! 6 years of playing and this CB thing is GREAT! Totally different. Challenging. At times seriously ticking me off. I'm on turn 114 of a 7 player slugfest and at work now and all I can think of is getting back to the game!

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Are you playing against coworkers? That would be sweet, just try not to glass your boss' homeworld http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

I wish I were playing. I'm monitoring Pfizer's Global Data Centers right now. Which on a Sunday means I'm waiting for something to break and otherwise I'm bored and reading forums. Only 8 hours left until I can start playing again.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

SE4 fits on a CD-RW, and even USB keys these days http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Works best if you have a dual monitor setup, so SE4 takes up the primary, and you can put all your status monitor stuff up on the secondary to glance at as you go.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Well, I tried auto-combat, which seems to work best for me. Now if I can just figure out the strategies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Suicide,
After about 30 minutes of tweaking this that and the other thing I got CB 1.6 working with AIs. However I'm not entirely certain that I have everything setup the way you would. In one of the 1.6 downloads I found 8 AI races. In another 1.6 download I found like 17 races (TDM + extras). At the risk of sounding ungracious would it be possible for you to release a 1.7 version with instructions on things like empty out the AI directory?

Setting up your mod required...

1) Install and update to version 1.94 of a clean SEIV
2) Install of ImageMod
3) Overlay of SB 1.6
4) Removal of extra Races in /Pictures/Races after I noticed that not all were included in 1.6.
5) Re-Install of ImageMod because I thought that would help fix an error referencing /Pictures/Combat
6) A bit more tweaking that I don't quite remember right now.
7) Another overlay of SB 1.6 /Pictures/Races

Was ALL of this necessary? Probably not...

Would it work flawlessly if I just installed ImageMod on a fresh 1.94 installation and dropped your 1.6 zip in? No certainly not.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

actually, yes. yes it should, and it does for me.

I'm running a clean copy of the latest version of the game. I have the image mod installed directly on top of SE4 (as its non-destructive and does not hamper stock game play). Then I have CB installed into a specific mod directory, and I use the Mod Launcher to call it.

so, essentially:
- clean, latest, se4 install
- image pack
- mod

not sure what youre doing wrong. try again slowly and carefully.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

what I'm doing wrong is not using Mod Launcher cuz I'm just getting into this whole Mod thing and haven't downloaded it yet.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Woah, woah, woah!!!
3) Overlay of CB

That's your problem right there.
Never ***EVER*** overwrite your stock files with mods. (Only the imagepacks, since they are fully backwards compatible with savegames and PBW.)

You can add races to your stock se4\pictures\races folder no problem too, just don't overwrite stuff or put modded AI files into the stock folder. Modded AI files need to go in the se4\modname\pictures\races folders.


(Note: first, you'll probably want to restore your stock files from CD)
Here is how to install and play CB:
Step 1) Extract the zip to your SE4 folder (it will create a CB1.6 folder)
Step 2) Edit path.txt. Change the "path:=none" to "path:=CarrierBattlesV1.6"
Step 3) Run SE4.exe

These same steps apply to 99% of mods out there. Some have wacky directory structures in their zips, but all the major ones will work right.

To change mods, just change the path.txt, and run Se4.exe.

PS:
The mod launcher is overrated. Editing the path.txt yourself builds character http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

AHA! My excessive lvl of geekdom forced me by habit into tweaking the $^(% out of the files themselves!

OK doesn't change the fact that one of the 1.6 downloads has 8 races and another has 17 or so.

I'd like you to consider changing the range of the PBMs to something reasonable like 10. It does a couple of things first it allows the firing ships to not waste supplies by firing a second salvo at range 20 (if they are set to long range bombardment). Currently they fire a round at range 20 which finally hits the target at turn 25 or so and then they lob a second missile that can't possibly make it to the target before turn 30. This change would also have the effect of forcing a PBM armed Bombardment Ship into closer range making it more vulnerable. Alternatively change the reload time to 30 they won't fire a second round. Right now I've changed the range of PBMs to 10 (simulating direct orders to all ship captains not to fire a PBM beyond this range).

What is the point of plasma weapons? Less damage, pathetic range when compared to a Laser Cannon for the same weight. Uptweak them please. Seems their only purpose right now would be to nerf an AI race that was using them.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

The one download is the original 8-races included with the mod, while the second download inclues the 9 races that Atrocities re-worked to be compatible with the CBmod (total of 17).

I'll leave it up to SJ to explain the weapon choices. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

The plasma weapons are cheaper and fire twice as fast. So, where a laser cannon 1 does 340 damage (sans mount) the Plasma Cannon I does 400 damage (sans mount) in the same time period.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

OK but when I evaluate the lethality of a weapon I always use the formula...

Range1 + Range2 + Range3 ... /Weight/ROF = WeaponLethality

If I'm resource pour at that point I scale it for resource costs as well. Some variation of this formula always works for every game I've ever played. Hence the APB is the best weapon in unModded SEIV.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Keep in mind with longer range comes decreased accuracy. The figure is -6% to hit per square in CBmod (10% in stock) so your formula might give too much weight to range.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Definitely over-valuing range there.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Plasma weapons are indeed weak in the early game.

However, later on, they can be quite nice.
My plasma battleships came in extremely handy in this battle:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...Tudran2_02.jpg
As a rough count, my (nausea heap) forces numbered approximately 300, while the Pandorans (bluish shiny metal ships) numbered 400 plus significant numbers of fighters.

On the third day of combat that month, the fighter squadrons had long since been wiped out, the missile tubes were completely dry, and only the torpedo boats with damaged engines still had ammo left (since they couldn't get into range and fire)
As the ragged, starving ships flew past the warppoint on yet another attack run, only my Plasmatica class ships were still doing significant damage.
In the end, my Plasma battleships turned a stalemate into a resounding victory.

The optimum range for Heavy Lasers early in the combat is medium to long range, so they stay out of the way of DUC/Plasma ships from both sides. Late in a multi-turn campaign it may better to close in to maximize your damage output since the ammo-using enemy guns will have fallen silent, but if there are any still-live short range DF guns, they will tear you apart.

Overall, heavy lasers are not that great a weapon in most cases. The Plasma shreds ships faster at close range, and Torpedoes deal more damage at long range. If you can afford to specialize your ships, do so.
Heavy lasers are better earlier on with smaller fleets... when optimal range means you can both get in close and demolish a torpedo boat, and stay far away from plasma ships to pick them apart. But if both torpedoes and plasma are present, then heavy lasers don't work so well.
Light laser cannons are always good as point defense however.

The value of lasers is certainly not the sum of damage at each range... after all, you don't get to fire that gun at all ranges each shot. You should consider just one damage value, at the typical range you hope to use it at, to be optimistic.

Using the Laser 1 - Unmounted as in the previous example, that is something lower than 300, every two turns.
A comparable tech level plasma cannon deals 50% more damage while taking the same space. (230 per turn)
So, if you can keep your distance, the laser might win taking no damage. But if you ever get into plasma range, you get roasted alive.

In small, early game combats, the laser ships have plenty of room to move around and avoid getting trapped. As the battles get bigger, weapon range means less and less, until plasma and DUCs become king.
At that point, the only benefit to the long ranged weapons is the fact that you can only fit 50 ships into combat squares right next to enemies... so the number of effective SR ships is limited.

This naturally leads to the re-introduction of good old military manouvers. Pincer attacks, crossing the T, such become quite useful.
After all, if you have surrounded the enemy, then you not only can fit more SR warships on your side of the (circular) front line than the enemy's side... but you also, by default, get to score some easy kills with SR ships vs the lightly armored missile boats typically found in the enemy's rear.

...

So, as for missiles. All missiles have infinite range in CBmod. They can only be locked and launched from range 20 due to vagaries of the SE4 hardcode.

If you wish for your antiplanet ships to hit twice, then you could order them to rush in. Most of the time, you should have warships cleaning up the resistance before your glassers do their work, so there will be little return fire.

...

PS:
The main failing of your formula is that it overvalues range, particularily when the ranges are short, as in CB. A range 2 vs a range 1 weapon is certainly not twice as powerful.
In one-on-one combat, a range 2 vs range 1 battle is mostly equivalent to a range 8 vs range 7.

The size of a battle is also a huge factor in deciding what weapons are best.
For example;
- If you are fighting with just two or three ships per battle, then long range weapons are the best. Cripple them before they get close, then kill at your leisure.
- If you are fighting with just two or three hundred ships per battle, then short range weapons are king. The enemy can't stay out of range, and short range guns deal far more damage. The short range guns shred the enemy before the long range guns can do very much damage.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Probably a better formula for weapon strength would be:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>((Range_x*(x*Dist_Accuracy_Penalty))/MaxRange) / (Tonnage * RateOfFire)</pre><hr /> It's not entirely accurate, but it gets closer to what weapon strengths actually are. My personal preference from CB v.1.0 is ships armed mainly with missiles and torpedos, with a few ships using heavy mount DUCs; and my fighters have mixed arms, with a mix of torpedos and lasers for anti-missile duty, and DUCs and torpedos for anti-fighter and some anti-ship support. The anti-missile fighters tend to be launched in groups of 3 with light weapons (has about the firepower to take out one or two missiles per volley), while the anti-fighter/anti-ship tend to be launched in groups of 8 or 10 with heavy weapons (has about the firepower to take out smaller stacks of fighters and do minor damage to ships per volley). Plasma tended to be left out in order to balance costs between minerals and radioactives; enough rads were already going to shields and engines, so the more mineral-heavy DUC, torp, and missile weapons gained dominance, and lasers were left in their cheaper, light forms. I might have opted for light plasma weapons for anti-missile duty, but light lasers offer more versatility, since I have fighters act as a screen, with strategies set to target the farthest missiles targeted on other friendlies, allowing for a wider range of coverage, at the cost of accuracy penalties (I think this is made up for by having a large screen, so what the front misses, the back has a chance to clean up on).

I still need to look more into the balance between weapons in versions 1.4-1.6, see if things are different, but I would imagine I would use Plasma a little in the early game when there isn't as much a drain on radioactives, but switch back to the Missile-Torpedo-DUC triumverate in the mid- to late-game.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

I know what you mean... It is fairly hard to justify the resources to build plasma weapons in bulk.

My ships tend to be really heavily armored, at the expense of everything else, and I build a lot of radioactives extractors, since I know I'll need them... that gives me more wiggle room for installing the high energy toys. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And of course, you can't have your entire fleet be made up of plasma battleships. I had only about 15-20 of them in a fleet of 300. But despite their small numbers, they really cleaned up, scoring at least half the kills in that battle.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Here is the updated basic version (4.5mb)

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

An update; default events were a little too extreme.
This is the full atrocities version (8mb)

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

OK my comments regarding long range weapons and plasma weapons being nerf magnets sure as hell didn't even contemplate situations where 300 ships engage. However I'm going to revisit this subject after some more review.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Yeah, SJ and them get some insane battle going in pbw. All weapons in CB have their uses, and that's part of what makes it so awesome.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

I'm getting an invalid culture error for the Imperials. they're warriors instead of berserkers.

Re: Carrier Battles Mod
 

Easy enough to fix when I get back from the cottage.

PISSED !!!
 

I downloaded Carrier Battles v1.6a, started a game, and so far it's an exercise in frustration: fighters WON'T load onto my carriers, Kinetic Missiles won't target seekers, and my ships all run out of supplies BEFORE they even leave the system.

What is the point of THIS???

Re: PISSED !!!
 

Make sure you're putting supply pods on your ships. you NEED them.

The Anti-missle missles only work in strategic combat, not tactical.

The Fighter bays have no cargo capacity in and of themselves. But you are forced to add cargo bays, too, so I don't know why the fighters wouldn't be loading...

Re: PISSED !!!
 

Dumbluck has most of the answers covered.

The SE4 UI does not support targetting seekers; use AUTO tactical, or strategic. Preferably simultaneous turns.

Might you be designing a carrier using a warship hull? That would allow you to put a fighter bay, but no cargo bays.

Re: PISSED !!!
 

I built Carriers on designated Carrier hulls, complete with cargo storage, then built fighters. Once the fighters were built I couldn't load them on the carrier. They also could not move within the system they were in. They were stuck, frackin' useless, on they planet they were built.

I tried the Kinetic Missiles in Non-auto tactical combat, and nothing happened. It wouldn't target or fire at any seekers fired at my ship. I was fully equipped to handle incoming missiles and got hammered because not a single frackin' thing worked like it said it would.

Re: PISSED !!!
 

As it was mentioned by others, the kinetic missiles only work when they can be auto-fired. SJ really intends the mod to be used with either auto-resolved combat or strategic combat.

What was the displayed cargo storage of the carrier? What was the tonnage of the fighters being added? Are you using the transfer cargo window? If your carrier has cargo space, there should be no reason why the fighters won't load.

Lastly, remember that you need to two types of components for movement. You'll need the reactors (for supplies) and drive thingies for actual movement points.

Re: PISSED !!!
 

Tactical just won't work, because the SE4 UI does not support clicking on missiles.

Fighters are intended to not be able to fly through space on their own. They must be delivered to the combat area via carriers, or have the combat come to them, ala planetary defense.

Not being able to load cargo is bizarre; I presume you are familiar with the standard SE4 interface. Perhaps a screenshot would shed some light on your situation.
A savegame would let us try it ourselves too.

Re: PISSED !!!
 

One of the BEST things about this Mod IS the fact that NOTHING works the way it does in straight SEIV. That is the whole point, well not really the whole point but a major side-effect. I've spent 3 or 4 weeks now re-learning everything I knew about tactics, design, research, etc. It is frickin great!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gifExcept the part about Plasma Weapons being totally useless nerf material which I still standby! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: PISSED !!!
 

Plasma weapons are perfectly useful, just as the other weapons in CBmod are, but they're less immediately apparent.

1) They use no supply whatsoever.
2) They fire every turn.
3) Their costs make them extremely useful for balancing costs in large fleets, reducing build time and maintenance.
4) They have a large 'punch'.

The first point is fairly obvious in its meaning and benefits. Ships with energy weapons can continue fighting long past the limits of kinetic-armed ships, and they can devote all of their supply storage to engines. They have longer operational range and time than their kinetic kin. Especially if you plan to share supplies between ships and you have missile ships (which chew up supplies like there's no tomorrow), this is an important aspect to pay attention to.

Firing every turn is an enormous benefit in close-quarters combat and in large-scale operations. Ships on the front line will take lots of damage and they can't move around much, so they have to shoot at point-blank range into the enemy right next to them. You might find it interesting to put ships like this one in your simulator and watch how efficiently those twin cannon chew up ships. Short-range DF weapons are far superior to long-range DF weapons for massive battles.

Point 3 is extremely important to note. Everyone knows how horrible Stock SE4 is on this subject - everything is minerals. Life is minerals. If you are unlucky enough to start in an area without many minerals, you're going to die. Ships cost ridiculously high quantities of minerals to build and maintain. Energy weapons require radioactives almost exclusively, making them very useful for balancing firepower and cost from the scale of the individual ship to the scale of the 500-ship fleet. You won't be able to build as many as you can if the kinetics, but they'll keep your minerals cost down and make sure you can use your spaceyards with a lot more efficiency. Stock shipyards spend about 80% or more of their time sucking up minerals but they often build the orgs and rads in the first turn of construction. Keeping ship costs balanced means you can make better use of your colonies' resource amounts, can maintain your ships more effectively, and perhaps most importantly, build very powerful ships much faster.

This brings us to perhaps the deciding factor - damage. Leaky shields are very interesting in their effect of draining damage from each shot. I'm sure you're all aware of how futile it is to launch 50 20mm DUC shells at a ship with even 20 shield points. You're going to get 2 shots through to the hull. As the damage absorbtion on the target increases, so does the amount of 'punch' (damage per shot) required to break through the shielding and inflict damage that can be felt to the underlying hull. Let's examine the options...

<font color="red">Torpedo weapons</font> - long range, massive damage that *increases* as range increases, long reload time (3). These weapons are the heaviest guns you can find, easily. But... they have hefty size requirements, and even their longer range won't be useful when the entire battle map is clogged up with 400 combat ships and literally thousands of fighters. Plus, they fire once and then they're useless for 3 turns. On the plus side, you can't put enough shields on a ship to protect it from a torpedo hit.

<font color="red">Beam weapons</font> - long range, very high damage that trails off as range increases, medium reload time (2). Masers, Lasers, X-Ray lasers, GRasers, these guns do huge amounts of damage when they hit, and even the heaviest of shielding is well-nigh useless against them. However, they have an incredibly high cost in Rads, and they suffer from the same reload time problem that torpedo ships suffer from.

<font color="red">Projectile weapons</font> - short range, good damage, negligible reload time. Projectile weapons have the best damage/turn/kt ratio of all the weapons in CBmod, and if they can get within range of the enemy, they'll slice through enemy ships like a tablesaw through... well, anything, really... the main disadvantage of projectile weapons is against ships with very heavy leaky shielding. Since even the 100mm ones do ~120-150 (not sure of the actual entire range here) per hit, if a high-tech ship with around 60-80 points of shielding goes up against a DUC ship, the armor will not have to absorb much damage to keep the ship fighting and alive.

<font color="red">Plasma weapons</font> - the focus of this article. Plasma weapons are *almost* twice the damage of projectile, twice the size, and have slightly less cost than the beam weapons. It is important to note that on their own they are a very good mix of beam and projectile weapons. However, the trick here is the punch - while the extremely important ratio of (damage / turn / kT) isn't quite as good as the projectile weapons, they do a lot more damage *per shot*. This is important:

Consider a ship with 80 points of leaky shielding. We'll pit it against two potential designs in the safety of our minds. Each ship will spend 50 kT on weapons.

Design 1 features twin 100mm Depleted Uranium Cannon IIIs (114 damage each, up to 3 range). It will do 228 damage each turn to the enemy. However, due to the way leaky shielding works, each shot will lose 80 points of damage, thus, we'll get each shot doing 34 damage on average, for a turn total of 68. A lot worse than 228, no? Also, this will use up 100 supplies a turn...
Weapons cost: 1500, 0, 250
Damage lost to shielding: 70%

Design 2 features a single 100mm Plasma Cannon III, doing 209 damage to 3 range. It will similarly lose 80 points of damage per shot to the shields, but, since the damage is so much higher, it will be doing 129 damage a turn average.
Weapons cost: 250, 0, 4800
Damage lost to shielding: 38%

There is no denying that the plasma cannon is significantly more expensive, but note the difference in combat prowess. Design 1 has to make 4 times the number of shots in twice as many turns to pull off the same amount of damage to the hull as Design 2. In this time, enemy ships will be shooting at it, it might miss, it is blocking space that other ships need for moving around in...

Just imagine that the shielded target has some armor. 34 damage a shot is just enough to take out a single 20cm armor component of Tritanium. Another tech level up, and your projectile cannon can't even knock out 20cm armor. The only way it could do much damage would be to score a very low-probability lucky hit against a shield generator and reduce the shielding, whereas the plasma ship will be slicing out chunks of the hull with a vengeance.

Against heavily shielded enemies, plasma is clearly superior. Against enemies without much shielding - and for general purpose construction, due to cost - projectile is clearly superior. This is the beauty of CarrierBattles Mod. Everything is balanced very, very well.

Hope this helps http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: PISSED !!!
 

It should be noted that in that particular example you used, the 100mm DUCs would be dealing 34 more damage than the shields can handle, and that damage adds up each turn.

Although it would take more than one round worth of hits, the higher tech armor would slowly crack.

Re: PISSED !!!
 

Good to note, yes. Still, one round is a lot of time.

Re: PISSED !!!
 

nice little splurge there Vio. Very usefull. A+

A Newcomer\'s Commentary
 

OK so I finished my first full CB game. I've played 2. The first one I quit around turn 120. I was just learning the ropes. I thought I'd provide some feedback from the viewpoint of first time player. This is not meant to be a list of suggestions or complaints. It is simply what I think after having played one game and some of the experiences I had while playing it.

My playing style: Always research intensive, always try upgrading ships, always get the Propulsion Expert trait!

First and foremost I enjoyed the experience!!! So whatever else I say in this post should be viewed through this lens.

1) The game lasted until roughly turn 210. This is about twice as long as a stock or TDM game. TDM is the only other mod I've ever played. I was playing against high number of high difficulty AIs with no bonus as suggested in the docs. My feeling is that the game took so long because of the very large number of ships involved, the difficulty/inability to easily destroy planetary defenses, and the overall requirement to basically capture every enemy planet. Adding to this is the relatively slow speed of the ships. I was using basically speed 6 for nearly every design up to the very end. Around turn 170 I started mass producing a speed 8 destroyer design. Normally, at the end of a game I'd be using speed 13 battlecruisers and just glassing every world I came across.

2) I liked the QNP. I hated the fact that the larger exhaust ports were basically unusable because of the loss of efficiency. So I was forced into using warship designs with rediculous numbers of small ports. The only designs I used the larger ports on were non-combatant support ships like the fighter ferry/transports. I would have used larger ports but I felt that the inefficiencies of thrust vs weight basically were too high and would put my combatants at too high a risk of losing full speed due to battle damage.

3) The leaky designs were really freakin cool!

4) It was a complete pain to repair my fleet escorts! The whole repair bay/repair facility thing was pretty annoying and time consuming. I appreciated the whole concept of having to really setup fleet repair facilities and dedicating entire planets to the task with years of setup required. Still the large number of very small easily damaged components left me with a significant management task of constant repairs throughout the game. This got a bit old. I've started my second game and after the initial push I'm considering using the small number of very large components approach. Minimal use of 20mm mounts, larger engine ports, minimal use of 20cm armor. Perhaps this will work out and I won't feel the loss of efficiency too much though even writing the last two sentences irked me.

5) Missiles are just too damn slow. OK this part is a gripe. I had to use ship designs that were speed 6 because otherwise I was going to get jammed up with the whole fleet-outruns-the-missile-bombardment problem. Toward the end of the game when I was using speed 4 and 5 fighters primarily I nearly stopped production of my A series fighter bombers because of this very problem. In the end I just suffered ludicrous losses to this fighter class. I'd like to see the missile speeds increased at higher levels to maintain some sort of parity with the possible combat speeds of ships. Some might comment along the lines of missile speeds are just fine for me because a) I use slow ship designs b) always use strategy X which is superior. Whatever your point of view missile speeds totally do not work for me because they are too slow and don't fit anything in the way of my design philosophy or combat strategy. Along the same lines I never used the nuclear missiles because it just made this problem worse. Then there is the whole multiple salvos chasing after the target because it is retreating. Sets up a situation where 4 to 6 salvos are fired on a target over around 15 turns, the first salvo finally hits the target around turn 16 when the map border stops the retreat. Naturally this wastes supplies and causes target saturation problems. Missiles should be faster than the ships that they are designed to kill. Reference US torpedo design after the release of the Soviet Alfa attack sub for an object example. Speed up the missiles... the end.

6) Plasma cannons are useless in AI games because the AIs never use 100cm armor. Actually never saw them use anything but 20cm armor. DUCs seemed more useful because of their weight and cost. I'm sure that in a PBW game plasma cannons become useful but not against the AI. I never play PBW so... plasma cannons are nerf toys. BTW I only saw 2 fighter designs by one race out of like 8 AIs that used plasma cannons at all.

7) I got the impression that the AIs weren't varied enough. One game isn't enough to tell but they all seemed to use the same ship designs.

8) AIs kept having a problem with what I think were their PD or anti-fighter designs. I killed hundreds of these ships in 1 on 1 engagements. They would not return fire on my ships even though in cases they had range advantages and more than enough of a chance to shoot. Would it be better to weight the AI designs toward generally useful designs rather than specialized to avoid situations where the AI sends out dozens of these essentially useless ships to get blasted. Mind you I'm not saying the designs are useless I'm just pointing out that a more generalized approach for the AIs might be better because they don't use the ships correctly. Alternatively AI strategies could perhaps be changed so that PD ships will fire on ships and fighters, etc.

9) Not one AI used a PBM against any of my planets. OK not like they had much of a chance but they seemed intent on wasting their time using DF weapons against a few planets in totally fruitless and repeated attacks. Not sure what can be done about this... perhaps an AI cruiser that uses a few DF weapons and PBMs get to a very generalized attack strategy.

10) The mount descriptions make to hit chances unreadable in Tactical Combat. Take note I'm not manually fighting ships in Tactical but I do use it to get a feel for planetary defenses (which you can't see in any form in Strategic) or Fleet make-up (same problem). I wanted to go in and edit the descriptions to read 2c, 2cm, or 20 but never did. I get the impression that Mount descriptions should only be 1 character because of this issue.

11) AIs should use more Training Facilities. I think.

OK that is enough... there is more but this is a good chunk.

Again... I enjoyed the overall experience and am already at turn 50 of my 2nd game. Thank you SJ and the entire modding community for making SE so playable for so very very very long!

(NOTE: This entire post was written using Writely another cool toy from Google. It is currently in Beta @ www.writely.com. Check it out and help destroy the MEE known as M$!)

Re: A Newcomer\'s Commentary
 

Part of the overall AI weakness you are seeing is the fact that you are playing a sequential turn game.
AIs are hardcoded to treat it as simultaneous all the time.

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The game is intended to involve trench warfare, but a fleet of Planetary Bombardment missile ships can either chew through it or soften the enemy up before your invasion.

About the size/number of components, I think you've got it.
#2 and #4 are your design tradeoffs. You can pack a bit more in, or you can make it easier to repair. And the large engines are much cheaper in resource cost too.

They are indeed pretty slow for open combat, but open combat is pretty hard on all the weapons.
Big densely packed fleets make all the weapons more effective; the targets won't be able to evade or run, and there will be a lots of targets to choose.
Choosing a strategy that spreads your fire around is also very important. Because of the leaky shields and armor, crippling an enemy is much easier than destroying them; 2 or 3 disabled enemy ships means less return fire than 1 vaporized ship. This is particularily so with missiles since they tend to overkill a ship.
I think I will increase the speeds by 1, however.

The size of the armor is not the important part of making plasma cannons more useful, but rather the shielding.
Strong shields can block most or all of a DUC shot, but plasma has almost double the punch.
Still, plasma is the least commonly used weapon. It does make an effective anti-planet gun; high power and no ammo means you can leave the ship in orbit to rain down death for as long as you need it to. The low accuracy is mitigated by the fact that there is no ammo needed and all the time in the world to blast away.

The AIs are indeed mostly the same. The only major differences are what culture they choose at the moment. Rollo should be around again this fall to finish up the AIs, I believe.

One on one engagements with a warship vs a PD ship are clearly one-sided. Even if they did fire, PD guns would bounce off your shields harmlessly and merely waste ammo.

I find that the AI tends to blockade a planet and send down suppressing fire while they bring in their troop transports. If you don't push them off fast enough, they'll eventually take the planet. And if the planet is undefended, they'll wipe it out with DF and move on. Not bad for an AI.

And as for training facilities, it is known that the AIs can't be made to use training except by blind luck. The training is quite slow and limited, which mitigates this somewhat.

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Having defeated the AI, how do you feel about taking over an empty slot in a PBW game with real humans?

"Carrier Battles #8" and "Carrier Battles Deluxe #2b" both need one more player to replace Axel, who is doing well but got kicked in the head by real life.

It should be noted that these two games both are using older versions of the mod.
- CB8 uses v1.3e, which has oversized carriers (400-1000kt) and a different missile scheme, among other things.
- CBd2b uses v1.4a, which has a faster missile scheme and lacks some of the latest features such as AIs, logos and ruins.

Both games are at their peaks, with big empires, large navies and plenty of battles involving hundreds of ships.

PS:
I think the slow missiles in v1.6 may have been left over from when I was trying to fit a "missile propulsion" tech into the mod, which would increase their speed; 2 and 3 being the base low-tech speed.
I'll make a few more tweaks and release v1.6b soon.

Re: PISSED !!!
 

About 2/3rd through my first full game I started production of a similar design. It became the single most produced class of ships.