Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Anybody want to know the secret of unlimited range? The ability to be everywhere at once? Well now you can!

Take one baseship.

Add two quantum engines. This gives 5 movement.
Add one SolarSail III. You now have 8 movement.
Using racial trait "Advanced Propulsion" you get 9 movement (and FIVE in battle)

Add any integer multiple of:
- 8 Emergency propulsion Vs
- 1 Repair bay III

by using your EP Vs, you get an extra 40 movement.
At the end of each and every turn, you repair bay fixes all of the EPs.
On the next turn you have another 49 Movement!!!

Doubling the batch gives you 89 movement per turn!

This equipment takes up only a fraction of the space on your baseship, leaving plenty of room for weapons/shields/minesweepers.

NOTE: Minesweepers are critical, since you'll be passing through 90 sectors each turn!

You can now do hit-and-runs any where in the galaxy from a base anywhere else. Glass every undefended enemy planet in one turn! Spy on every enemy system each turn, without letting them know.

-< some features require hot-seat play>-

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

SJ - you are a devious sneaky imaginative little.... no wonder you're so active in the Pirate forum.

I like it - what features require the hotseat?

keep up the sneak

Ps - if this game ever gets modem play ability, you'll be one hell of a sneaky tough opponent



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

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Very nice, you deserve a few hundred pats on the back http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Using that came in very handy for me in the TG contest, when I needed to shuffle all my population to the ringworlds I was constructing. Each baseship could fill one RW to the 10B mark in one turn with that trick. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Haven't tried it and its a great idea, but will it work?? IIRC with SE3, your emergency movement components are used all at once - not selectively and / or in multiples and respective to class (resupply vs. movement). Also, they only gave you UP TO the maximum normal move. IOW, in your example, you would only get 9 normal movement then 9 emergency movement reguardless of how many emergency pods you have.

At least that's the way it worked in SE3 - any one know for sure 'bout SE4 or have you guys actually done this!! If it does work like that, I'd be for "fixing" that one....

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

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Yep, you activate the components one at a time so it works. Just be sure not to activate too many at once before moving there seems to be a limit of how many movement points over your max you can have.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Cool! I wasn't aware you can select individual emergency components...don't remember being able to do it. Sounds like a tough one not to use now....

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

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Contrats!,

They will now have to put in a limitation on the number of EP you can have. I think it should be equal to the number of engines you have.

------------------
Seawolf on the prowl

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Man how many times was this posted.. Richard pelase remove thanks
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Seawolf on the prowl

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

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

its been reported to mm. I think it should be limited to 1 component per ship- but maybe it could be made self repairing.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

dup

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

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Why would it be self repairing? If you did that, it wouldn't be any different than adding more engines or a solar sail. You wouldn't have any drawbacks to using it.

Repairing is too easy as things stand, I don't think we need to exacerbate the problem. I'd rather it work so that you could only use one of a certain type of component per turn, and repairs either cost resources, or took longer (or both).

Just my 2 cents.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Crap, I've been using this little trick since it came to me almost immediately when playing my first game. I put at least one emergency propulsion component in every ship I can and then build at least one repair ship doubling as a troop carrier to travel along with the fleet (also with emergency propulsion). You get to use the extra propulsion every turn since the repair ships will repair the whole fleet's components each turn. Try combining colony ships with this idea and you can really spread out fast. I also use this concept for boarding ships. With repair you can board a new ship each turn without having to return to a spaceyard to repair the boarding party components. With a emergency propulsion or two thrown in, no ship or planet is safe. You can zoom in from a full system or two away and take any planet or ship (I love troops and capturing worlds intact) I do like having these self sufficent fleets. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Now, did you have to go and speak up and share this neat tactic with everyone? They'll take away our shiny new toy. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/tongue.gif

Seriously though, humans will always be able to come up with slime tactics like this. Finding them is a lot of the fun in playing the game. I remember playing Conquered Kingdoms by QQP (great game) and discovering the "Double Wizard Fireball" tactic. Poor AI didn't know what hit it. I could mention the sneaky stuff you can do with combo tractor and repulsor beams but I'm sure most have figured that out already.

Maybe this stuff does unbalance the game but it sure is fun and the AI can't seem to put up a decent struggle straight up anyway so what's the difference?

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

More important to fix should be the "baseship with two engines" thing.

Make movement based on engines divided by mass.

Ie. engines provide 150 movement, and escorts require 150 engines per move, destroyers 300 engines per move.

Note that there is a limit of 255 on these values, so you have to divide by 10. But it still works.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Drake:
[b]Repairing is too easy as things stand, I don't think we need to exacerbate the problem. B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I ALWAYS crank my repair aptitude down to 50% at game start up anyway...those points are really nice. Baseships are really the only ship where you can load up on EP and still have a decent attack/defense ship. If you want to limit the number of EP per ship, I would recommend just limiting the number on baseships only. Even then, I don't think there should be a limit.

A fully loaded baseship takes a fair amount of time to build. I would rather crank out three or four dreadnaughts or battleships in the time it takes to build one baseship. So what if someone can move through several systems, I will have plenty of fire power there to make him wish he had just stayed home. I would rather have a fleet of battle ships or dreadnaughts than a single baseship, especially in tactical combat.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ColdSteel:
Crap, I've been using this little trick since it came to me almost immediately when playing my first game. I put at least one emergency propulsion component in every ship I can and then build at least one repair ship.... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yup, I've done this also. The point I'm surprised at is the fact about being able to activate 1 or 2 Emerg Mov modules at a time - I thought you used 'em all or none. I also thought that if your ship had a normal (with bonus) 9 move points, you would move your 9 spaces, activate EM pods to get up to 9 more points, then move 9 more, then end turn. It seems (according to this thread) you now could put, let's say 10 EM pods. Same ship moves 9 spaces, activate 2 EM pods, move 9 more spaces, activate 2 more EM pods, etc. That to me is an exploitation and not part of the game's "spirit". IIRC, SEIII was an "all or nothing" when it came to emergency pods (supply and movement).

I personally would prefer to see it in the "all or nothing" mode....

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Self repairng was just a thought - if the limit is 1 EP component per ship it would make sense.

If there is not a limt on the number of EP allowed on a ship - then I would tend to agree - it should not be self repairing.

Actually I would like to see a component that is called damage control - that only repairs a few components at a time.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

I call them "Federal Ships", those millitary vehicles that can be transported to any place in my empire within ONE turn.

They are essential so I don't need lots of fleets in every system.

One thing though:
To bad I can use the Component when the ship is assigned to a fleet.
So I must first disband the fleet, Use the emergency propulsion, and then assign them to the fleet again.

Another thing. If you have enough pop transports you could (theoretically) move an entire planets population to the other side of the quadrant in ONE TURN just by transferring the cargo from transport to transport.

Is this a bug? Mabbe not if you have access to temporal knowledge? Perhaps there should be some kind of turnlimit for transfering population?

Which brings me to a final ...thought,
What's with Cargo Containers vs Population?
How come an entire planets population can be stored on a light cruiser?

I mean... isn't that wierd?

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

The colonists are dehydrated and frozen then stored on racks thereby using up much less room http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif. Just defrost and add water.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AJC:
Self repairing was just a thought - if the limit is 1 EP component per ship it would make sense.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Argh, don't say that! My point was that it never makes sense to make it self repairing. Even if the limit was 1, if you had it self repair, what would be the point of calling it an emergency propulsion component in the first place? It would serve the same function as the solar sail, by allowing more movement each turn. The only difference would be that it wouldn't carry over into combat, and you'd have to go through the annoying process of manually activating it each turn.

(mini-rant on) Manual activation under your suggestion would reward people who put them on every ship, and took the time for each ship to use the component, which would be restored for the next turn. Basically you're encouraging micromanagement, which I consider to be A Bad Thing. I seriously think a good strategy game should reduce pointless micromanagement as much as possible. Otherwise instead of a strategy game, you have a micromanagement game. Much as I liked Stars!, that's the kind of game it turned out to be for me after a while. I found myself able to compete well on a strategic level, but had to resort to brutal MM to optimize things, or risk losing to ppl who were willing to put more time in. SEIV is a little better in that regard, but not by that much. The TG contest drove home that point to me when the ministers proved woefully inefficient for what I needed to do to optimize my score. I eventually caved in at one point and settled for a less efficient execution of my plan in order to save what was left of my sanity. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif
(mini-rant off)

Anyway, I think it would make more sense to have the component completely destroyed and made unrepairable without retrofitting at a SY, IMO. Then maybe people would only use it in an emergency.

Since I would be surprised if the change could be made without other potential problems being introduced, either a component limit should be introduced, use of the components causes damage to the ship because of the stress on the hull, or it should be an all-or-none thing. I'd prefer one of the first two, as the all-or-none solution gives the possibility of wasted components. If someone won't ever get the benefit from 4 (actual number may vary) EPs because they have to use all 4 at once and there is a max movement for the ship, don't let them put 4 on the design in the first place. Limit it to 1/2 the number of engines or to 1 or something.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Probably the best way to fix it is to make repairs cost supplies.

Ie. to repair a Emerg. supply pod (2000) requires 2500 supply.
to repair a Emerg. movement pod requires 500 supply.
A good guide to how much repairs should cost would be say 10% of the resource cost of the part.
Then you wouldn't be able to retrofit and repair unlimited numbers of components. You would need to add a bunch of dedicated supply generation ships that make a few thousand supplies per turn in order to keep your repair ships running.

Just add another line in the components.txt
---------------------------------
Supplies to repair :=
---------------------------------

Thus, a repair ship must carry a lot of supplies (spare parts) and will quickly run out after repairing a few ships.

If you have a quantum reactor, then using emergency power for engines every turn is OK.



[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 16 March 2001).]

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

It's a good idea, but it will take more than just adding a line to the txt file. You have to rewrite the code in the exe file to look for the data on that line, and to change the function of the reapair bay. That will take some work for MM. Otherwise all you end up with is a line in the txt file that doesn't do anything.

Geo

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

You shouldn't need to do much. Just edit the repair bay component to use supplies. It should cause supply usage to occur when components are repaired, at least it looks this simple.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Reading ColdSteel's message, I gotta comment:
Conquered Kingdoms! I _LOVED_ that game! If someone wrote a modern updated Version, I'd buy it immediately. &lt;sigh&gt; I really miss QQP.

I'm really curious, though: what was the double wizard fireball tactic? I played the game for a long time and never heard of it.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

LintMan, I really miss QQP too. They were a great wargame company. All their great games (except for The Perfect General) were programmed by Thurston Searfoss III. They were just ready to publish his "The Lost Admiral II" title when QQP folded. Boy i was bitter. He also did Conquered Kingdoms and The Grandest Fleet (another great one).

The "Double Wizard Fireball" tactic? Each wizard could either teleport up to (I think it was) 15 hexes OR cast a fireball spell every 5 turns or so. One or the other but not both, as you may remember. When they teleported they carried with them all the units that surrounded them in adjacent hexes. The trick was to have several wizards available. With 3 wizards available one wizard could teleport 2 other wizards plus some dragons, archers and other units up to 15 hexes. Then the second wizard could teleport the rest another 15 hexes. When they got to their final destination, the Last wizard could then use his fireball to roast the clustered enemy troops. This was particularly effective on the very first turn because the AI was still clustered and had not had time to spread out yet. What carnage that was. God, I wish someone would redo that game with modern graphics. Remember putting 2 archers on boats to take out dragons? That game was so much fun.. I do really miss it (wipes away a fond tear). http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>You shouldn't need to do much. Just edit the repair bay component to use supplies. It should cause supply usage to occur when components are repaired, at least it looks this simple.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nitram, we are getting a little over my head here, I am by no means a programmer, but I think that that would not work because repair components do their work automatically. You dont' really tell it what to do or when to do it.

Now I believe you could add a supply usage value to the repair component, but I believe the effect would be a constant supply usage, whether or not you were actually repairing anything, but even that may not work.

Geo

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>You have to rewrite the code in the exe file<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I knew that when I posted. Since M is going to do something about the 89 movement point Baseship, they might as well do this to fix it, and get some extras in at the same time.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

Why do you think the emergency propulsion component is destroyed after use? This has always confused me. The only reason I can think of is for gaming purposes. I mean it's not like the thing would blow up after use.
I can think of two work arounds until the code is changed, if ever.
One would be to make the emergency propulsion component use a lot (1000-2000) of supply when used, this makes sense if you are using more fuel to get the extra movement. The only problem with that is by using quantum reactors / emergency supply pods you reduce the penalty for using them every turn.
The other option is to make the component larger, say 50-75 kt space each. This would probably force you to limit how many you put on a vessel.
I hope they fix this little anomality along with the emergency resupply pod. Then you would only use them when needed.

Re: Secret of the 89 Movement point BaseShip
 

It's because SEIV can't handle a component being removed permanently after use - destroyed under the current design is the next best thing I suppose. So many things could be handled better in the game if a component were 'removed' completely. You'd either have to create a new ship type for all the ships with removed components, or you'd have to rework how ship types are stored, I'd guess. Probably the former makes things too confusing and the latter would be to difficult to change at this time. Hard to say for sure, but that's my guess as to why it's the way it is. Of course, everything could just be that way because that's the way they wanted it, who knows... *shrug*

[This message has been edited by Drake (edited 18 March 2001).]