What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Hi

at the moment I am playing with the star trek mod, and I really love it, I feel like every time I play, I do have a lot of fun, and could play a hundred more games with it, but at the same time, I really want to try something a bit diffrent and was wondering if anyone can recommend any good mods that are really good and worth playing?

Thanks

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Probably the two best mods are Proportions and TDM. Proportions makes homeworlds *much* more important than they are normally, and makes some interesting changes to the tech tree. TDM is mostly unmodded SEIV, but the AI's are toughened up considerably.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

I will try proportions, I looked on pbw and saw 2.0, is this the latest version?

I have always thought that homeworlds should be more important! I have not tried the mod yet so I really cant comment on that, but whenever I play SEIV, I just think they should have some mass influence, and not the only diffrence be their type name, for example your empire collapses with it, some massive disadvantage, or like one central command building, and without it, morale is lower, you loose your culture bonuses.... something like that which is better than just loosing a space port and loosing a few bonuses untill it can be rebuilt!

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

The latest version of proportions is 3.0.5. Get it here: http://www.latibulum.com/pvk/proportions/

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

wow, I love this mod so far!

my head hurts trying to take it in, and work out all the diffrent areas of research! This looks really good!

Im going to have fun! again nothing against the normal game, or the star trek mod, they are great and I could play over and over again, but sometimes you fancy a change, and this one seems really good!

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Ok, I really like this mod, but having a few problems trying to understand what I am meant to be doing :S

The homeworld planets all have cultral centers, and I can tell they are much better than the other sort of settlements,

Is it meant to be that I build on each planet as soon as I colonise, a settlement, then just upgrade to the latest whenever I can, but then the cultral center is something that I should aim to get much later on, if there is enough time to build it on a planet?

also I always seem to mess up on buildings that give bonuses both system wide and planet wide, however hard I try, I never really understand this and always seem to mess up, I was wondering if you have a systemwide and planetwide feature that do the same but do not stack, will it just do the first one built, or the one that gives the highest bonus?

With all the bonus giving things here, I am sure I will mess up, and just want to make sure I will not loose out!

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

The best system-wide bonus will stack with the best planet-wide bonus. If you have a Mineral Scanner III and a System Mineral Scanner III, you get a total bonus of 1.3 * 1.3.

If you want to play a mod that is very different, try Adamant Mod.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Thanks for that info, Im happy that the best ones stack!

I like the look of that mod, I will play a few games with this one, and then I will try that one. As much as the core of the game is the same, I really like these mods that change everything and make it a lot more fun!

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Are you playing Proportions #3, and not #2? If so, you will find that there is only one, uber facility in your homeworld, and everything else is mundane. That one facility is *very* important, so be sure to protect it! Other than that, you can customise your homeworld: do you wish more research? Build more research centres at home then, and scrap those mining facilities, and watch your research soar.

Your other colonies are going to want some cultural facilities too, but the Homeworld ones take *thousands* of turns to be completed on most planets, so let's forget about them. In #3, Cultural facilities are a lot more attractive because of their planet-wide bonuses: for example, a middle-level Metropolis gives X5 to mineral production, among others.

Upgrading your cultural facilities is usually the best option, as it is cheaper, faster, and brings you some benefit along the way. Minor Cities are the first cultural facility that allow to upgrade all the way up to Arcology, so you may want to build these if you would like to improve it further afterwards. Colonial communities are very cheap and give a lot of bang for the buck, but they are a dead-end; Spaceport Cities are nice, but are also a dead-end.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Carrier Battles Mod is very very different too.

No AIs, but I've got PBW games open (both competitive and newbie games).

Overall, CBmod has an aura of honorable, stand up combat.
It has significantly less "stuff" in it than stock (components, facilities, hulls, etc) but each item is finely tuned, so there is infinitely more variety in gameplay.
No mines, leaky shields and armor, leaky PD which almost never gets them all, but hits more often when there are a lot of missiles.

For example, there is no "best" weapon. Mixed fleets are basically required. Without a proper balance of heavy missiles, light missiles, light torpedoes and lasers for PD, heavy short-range DF, and lots of dogfighers, interceptors and bombers to fill out your ranks, you are vulnerable.
Some long range heavy torpedo boats don't hurt either.

War in CBmod is brutal, gruelling and bloody. Even when you win, you can expect very heavy casualties. And casualties in CBmod are quite often due to cripplings, not vaporizations.
In CB#2 on PBW, the last two players standing had a nasty melee in a central system. When it was over, both sides were left with 30% of their navy stuck in parking orbits at the repair yard facilities behind the front lines http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

All of the cultures are playable, even though they are wildly different in effect.
You can get everything from 2x-build-rate "Disposable Societies" to the maintenance-free "preservationists", to the good 'ol Berzerkers, and the egg-head "brainiacs".

In fact, in CB#3, we have both a "Preservationist" and a pair of "disposable societies" in the same game.
There is a "Hard workers" player buffering the two so the disposables haven't managed to kill off the P's early. As the game progresses, those Preservationists will become ever more powerful, and eventually have some nice, big, maintenance-free, stomping fleets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Gonna be interesting.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

That sounds really good, I like the sound of CBmod and may try it later, but I do not really want to start any more games at the moment as I am playing 2 pbw games and a few diffrent solo ones on diffrent mods! I will give the mod a look when I am finished a few others, I only really like playing the game for restricted hours at weekends and pbw as that only needs one turn every few days as I have a lot of work to do and dont want to become addicted!

Thanks

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

I understand a bit better now about the buildings, thanks Alneyan, but another question now, I captured a planet, and I wanted to move some of my pop over to it, I have a troop transport (the one I used to capture the planet with) And I can not load one person on to it :S this may be something obvious, but what did I overlook or do wrong?

Thanks

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Proportions requires 1000kt to transport one million settlers, so you will need specialised vessels (Starliners to do that), using the specific component. It also means you will have a hard time moving a bunch of settlers around... well, a bunch as in "250 millions" (one million is already a bunch, after all).

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

ok, I just built a rock habitat on a planet already with a cultral center, and it gave a big resource bonus :S I thought that both give a planet wide bonus, so do they stack?

I just love the game so much, but as I said before, stacking really confuses me! what order they go in, what can you have with others... ARGH!

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

You mean a Colonial Community or-that-other-facility-in-the-same-line-but-
whose-name-I-forgot?

If so, your increases production does not come from the planetary bonus, but from the production of the facility itself. So, take that Cultural Centre with X15 to planetary mineral production (figure pulled out of my hat), and build a mineral facility producing 200 minerals.

You will now have 15X200=3,000 minerals because of the bonus granted to you by the Cultural Centre, plus all the other bonuses, including happiness, mineral values higher than 100%, your mining racial aptitude, and the like. So, a facility producing a mere 200 minerals on your homeworld will end up giving you a good 4,000 minerals or more, and you will be swimming in money.

On an aside, system-wide facilities do not affect the output displayed in your colonies, but does affect total production (in the budget, research and score screens), so you may experience a gap here.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

If I can ask, the moment you colonise a planet in this mod, what do you build?

so far I have done the cheapest rock settlement as the production values are so low, then fill it up with either research or mining.

I just want to know if I am doing this right? the other thing I was thinking, if the rock colony on the planet stacks, and it mines at the same time, it will take ages to build, but am I better off to build a planet full of colonys :S

Thanks

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Do what you think is right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I usually build one cultural facility (Colonial for small colonies, Minor City for big ones), giving me added production for everything else on the planet, and then I usually fill the planet up with basic extraction/research facilities. Once that is over, I will upgrade that Minor City (or build one) to a better level, or I build a Central Computer for research planets.

But the best way of seeing what is best is to do some calculus, depending on what you want, how much time you are willing to wait for it, etc. Don't forget remote-mining, though: while it has been watered down, it is still very nice to supplement your income, particularly for radioactives, and everything that's remote-mined give your planets some more room for research facilities.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Ive finished that game now, had a lot of fun!

if I am honest, there are a few things I do not like on that mod that confuse the hell out of me, and make me slightly enjoy it less, it is really all the diffrent levels of diffrent citys there are :S

I have always thought that SEIV should have this sort of system, but it confused the hell out of me on this mod because with some messing around (at end of game, log off, and keep pressing f12 for quick build) I found that having a cultral center, and then by having a rock settlement I think it was, or a earlier settlement basically had a stacking effect. I like the idea of having one building giving a big advantage, but this confused the hell out of me, and I am wondering if it is best to have one of each building on a planet!

other than this confusion, I really really enjoyed the mod!

next weekend, I will be trying a diffrent mod, and I would enjoy coming back to this one sometime in the future.

Thanks

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

There's always Dark Nova 4 mod to try next. I'm just finishing some details of the newest version v4.18. 4.17 is available on PBW right now.

There is also a new PBW game using DN4 v4.18 that is about to start.

Here's a link to the overview on SE.net:
DN4 review

It's kinda out of date but I intend to update it once this newest version is complete.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Ok, speaking of Proportions, does anyone out there know what techs I need to attain to get to warp opening technologies in the latest version? (and, yes, this is for *that* PBW game...)

Thanks,

Alarik

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

I do. 100,000 minerals for the answer. I can also loan you the relevant vessels, since you can pretty much bet I *always* research Stellar Manipulation.

You should download the SEIV Modder to easily see the prerequisites. There are quite a few of them, and they ended up taking me a good 100 turns of research to get, so I hope you are patient.

The prerequisites include Quantum Theory (Mathematics 3 is the main prerequisite), and Quantum Physics II, plus Universe Manipulation III, Warp Physics I, and a bit of Gravitational Technology.


Think of the cultural facilities not as facilities, but abilities. They have two main abilities:
- Resource production: in that aspect, they are just mineral facilities/rads... and they have their own production. Let me repeat that: cultural facilities have a production of their own.
- Planetary system increase: only the best value for each resource applies here, and usually the better the facility, the higher it is. Note that Agrarian facilities increase organics far more than anything else.

So, if you have a Minor City and a Cultural Centre, the City will still produce its resources, but the Cultural Centre will be the "ruling" facility for resource increase abilities. Because the City produces something, it will still increase your resource production, and it will benefit from the Cultural Centre huge planetary resource increase (X14 for minerals, if memory serves).

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Has anyone here ever played Escape Velocity by Ambrosia Software? I think it would be cool to create a mod for SEIV that mimics the ships, people, and places of the EV universe.

You could call it the SEIVEV mod, and make all the dialogues in Russian.

(j/k about the russian part)

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

You better get started modding now then! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

I posted a few more tips for Proportions 3.x to another thread.

PvK

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

I think one of the localized versions of deluxe will be in Russian.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

I just want to know what makes deluxe actually deluxe!?

this makes me wish I was a more active member here and a member on the "in" crowd who got betas, and knows what is going on!

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Deluxe is really just to unify owners of Gold and Classic, and serve as an introduction to the Space Empires series for new players before SE:V comes out.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Mostly in the retail market, since SE4 has traditionally been sold as an online only game.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Likely there will be no bug fixes or additions to Deluxe that are not already included with GOLD other than additional languages. (speculation at this point)

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Likely there will be...

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

I did say Speculation at this point in my post, but as of yet no confirmed bug fixes or game additions. It would be nice if there was more info on Deluxe before its release.

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Seems like the main point of Deluxe (from fans' perspective) is to make the game available for sale again, since it isn't at the moment. I might've been able to introduce a few new players while the game has been unavailable to buy. I assume it'll get some exposure to new people since it will be carried by a new publisher who may even put it on store shelves. Hopefully a bunch of new players will be summoned from the ether.

PvK

Re: What mod can anyone recommend to try next?
 

Back on topic, I think the best way to play Proportions mod is on PBW, and Alneyan has been looking for players to take over his PBW empires in PBW Proportions Game #1 and #3 for some time now. So I'd recommend that - let me know if interested.

PvK