New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

A new pbw game using SJ's Gritty Economics Mod has opened. I hope to have a large number of players(15 max). 50 hour turns, low starting tech. Check it out.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Why is the game using an old version of the mod? PBW lists it as using 1.03 but the latest version available for download is 1.06...

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

We are using version 1.06. There's a small bug in pbw, the game type listing only had 1.03, not 1.06. I posted in the admin requests so it'll be fixed very soon.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

All fixed

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

We still need many more players!

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

I'd be interested in getting into a new game. Where can I find the mod, so I can check it out first?

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

You can download it from PBW's massive mod library...

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

You know I checked PBW and couldn't see it. Of course with the cold I had I never realised I was looking at the default shipsets page and not mods http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Question about the Gritty economics Mod.

I'm not sure that reactive armor works they way it is intended.

I've noted that missiles have a +200 defensive bonus and fighters can select an anti-missile pod that negates this bonus, but ships with reactive armor don't (apparently) cancel out the bonus in any way. So does that make reactive armor hit only once in every 100 shots (the default worst-case to hit ratio)? Seems like reactive armor is not working the way it is intended.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

It's not noted anywhere that shows up in the in-game description of the component, but if you check the data files you'll notice that Reactive Armor has a +300 weapon modifier. It should hit 99% of the time.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Got it, thanks.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Bug report in Gritty: if you upgrade you ships the existing armor is changed to "bunker" armor, which is 20x as strong (ie: Bunker armor is 600 points compared to 30 for the armor it replaced). This is a game-unbalancing bug IMHO.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

All such designs should be considered illegal.
I have been making a patch which should be posted to PBW soon.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Oh, you are making a patch? Well, before you finalize it, there was one minor problem I found with the mod but didn't get a chance to mention to you:

The Space Yards and Manufacturing Pod all are in the same family, even though they are different sizes. This can make upgrading designs a bit of a chore, as if you don't want the biggest yard available you have to manually replace it with the one you had in the first place. How about moving the yards to separate families? (This also has the benefit of making the Manufacturing Pod more visible to players! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif) Of course, if you do this, you would also want to remove the roman numeral 1 from the Manufacturing Pod so it isn't the same as the SY I...

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Easy fix.

Anything else?

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Well I was going to complain about the 200kT and 400kT ship hulls using the same pic, but I guess you had no choice there, seeing as you have 10 ship hulls and only 8 stock pics! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Well, for neostandard shipsets, you'll get the scout picture on the 200kt ships.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Some thoughts for your up-coming mod:

Emissive Armor: My initial thoughts on the Emissive armor is that it was top heavy on cost for the amount of gain you get for it. Maybe that re-balances better toward the top end of its development, but on the low side of the tech scale it is pretty costly and large for its modest combat contribution.

Intel (Shipbombs): Another thought I've had is whether or not you want to continue with shipbombs as a intel project. The crushing difficulty of repair makes an intel-attack that gives your ship damage very difficult to respond to. Though there are counter-intel projects, this aspect of the game is processed player by player in sequence...so the guy at the top of the queue has a VERY large advantage in this area throughout the game.
I'd recommend that the small ship-bomb be increased to the price of the "standard" ship bomb (50k), the standard ship-bomb be increased in price to 100k, and the large one get increased to 300k in order to tone-down their effect on play.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Even level 1 emissive armor will increase your survivability against beam weapons by 5-20%

It is true that the low to medium tech EA is only much use on the larger ships, but that's ok.
Grit Econ needs to encourage larger ships anyways.

--

As far as I can see, shipbombs are pretty underpowered as is, but you've clearly had a different experience.

Small ship bomb costs 20k points for 100 damage, which is enough to break two armor components... if you're lucky or the enemy forgot to add armor to their support ships, you might just blow out a critical component too.

Regular ship bomb is 50k for 500 damage. Stands a modest chance of crippling an otherwise-average warship that dosen't have auxiliary control and other backup systems. Unless you've really concentrated on building intel facilities, you're not likely to be able to send too many of these per turn.

Typical warships (that I design at least) have 5k to 10k hitpoints, so these attacks do very little damage in the big picture. The medium ship bomb is a bit weaker than a single CSM hit.

That said, the counter intel does need some work... or maybe just removal.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

What, even leaky intel isn't enough for you??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Fair point: I can only judge by what I've seen, and our game is still working on the lower end of the tech scale with not much infrastructure built up, so smaller ships rule the day and they are hurt badly by ship bombs. I'm sure I'd have a different view if our current game were more advanced and we had a mid-game look.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Talking with Darkant, it seems the three homeworld start is the big influence.

Too much intel production for the amount of infrastructure you've built up.
You will definitely want to work on building up your BSYs.

The more construction infrastructure you've got, the bigger you can make your warships without falling behind in numbers.
Definitely try to get a SYS to your warppoints... Use it to build a small BSY, then have the small BSY to build a bigger BSY, and so on. Soon you'll have the constuction power to build a hearty array of awesome defense bases.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Well, I've revised my opinion about ship bombs being too powerful... Once you get more ships in the middle game that tactic is relatively ineffective...

New question: What is the upper limit for number of components of the same type? I thought it was 100 since I recall a former game that gave me error messages once you went beyond that amount, but now I've a valid ship design that has more than that.... I don't want to waste a turn of construction only to find that it was invalid.

Bug report: The small numbers in the lower right side of the combat scanners and ECM stop at 3, but there are more levels. Since we have had to manually do upgrades to latest components due to the bunker armor thing, I've missed upgrading those components since the ship's component display and the one on the new component selection screen had the same number. Can you change the roman numerals of those components to match the numbers of levels available.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

You can have as many of any component as you like, except for those that are specifically restricted to one per ship, or such.

Adding too many engines can have wierd effects, but the limit is 5120kt worth of thrust. Beyond that, it wraps around to zero and starts counting up again.
Don't worry about ever seeing it crop up in a Gritty game.


Those upgrade issues were fixed a couple patches ago...
I'm not sure why the PBW game hasn't updated to use them.
Numerals fixed for v1.11

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

You da man! Thanks for the ECM / Scanner numbering fix.

The current Gritty game is winding down, so I think we'll just use the new version in the next game that is in the works.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

The game has finished with Emperor's Child and Violist destroying my homeworlds.
It was one of the best pbw games I've played. Thanks Everyone

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

Those last few turns were some of the most thrilling I've had in a game, and unfortunatly luck seemed to go my way. In our initial engagements I lucked out by putting my forces where they stumbled into your fleets as they were assembling for defense, defeating them in smaller portions before they could assemble and swarm my smaller fleet.

Same type of lucky break when I made a run at your home planets, My attack fleet managed to cripple ships in your defensive fleets sent to stop them while not getting slowed themselves, got away from 2 major engagements and parked on top of your other homeworld, albeit broken, battered, bleeding, and running on fumes.

This was a case where I took a gamble and it paid off.. In our early skirmishes I lost a key supply ship that was bringing critical supplies, so I had to decide whether or not to continue the attack to your home system with low supplies or go to the defensive on the warp point. Ultimatly I thought that if I had gone defesive I'd give you the initiatave so decided to continue on regardless.

If I'd lost that battle in your home system you had the advantage in construction facilities and could have easliy out-produced me to regain lost territory.

Re: New Game: Gritty Galaxy
 

If I had one that battle for my homeworld I would have been able to battle back because I had finally fixed my economy. It was quite a game.