?? regarding minesweeping
 

The CTL-M/sweep mines button seems to do nothing. Is this a simultaneous turn only feature or is there some quirk to using it?

And - when I send a sweeper into a marked minefield, I lose the ship although it clears some mines. Is this always going to be the case or will the ships survive at some point (level of mine tech, amount of armor, etc.)?

v1.94, TDM Mod, single player turn-based.

Mucho thankso!

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

The sweep mines button is only really useful if someone launched mines where the ship is after it got there or if someone who already had a minefield there breaks a treaty with you after your ship got there. In those situations, you would have to move away and back in order to sweep the mines if not for the sweep mines button.

You keep losing your minesweepers because they don't have enough minesweeping ability. Each minesweeping component has a limited number of mines it can sweep each time it is used. When a ship enters a minefield, it sweeps as many as it can and then any remaining mines can blow up to destroy it. If multiple ships are in a fleet together, they all get to sweep before the minefield triggers. In stock (and TDM, which is only an AI mod), there is a maximum of 100 mines per sector for each player, so a fleet with at least 100 minesweeping ability can sweep any minefield that doesn't involve multiple empires without taking damage.

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

Welcome to the forums.

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

Ah...light dawns over yonder head!

Thanks for the answer and the welcome! SE4's nicely challenging and fits neatly into my schedule of "play a few minutes here and there when you can". It also has a nice, small memory footprint for that quick ALT-TAB when the boss walks by... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Not to mention that it fits nicely onto a thumb drive... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

It may fit nicely into your schedule of "play a few minutes here, play a few minutes there" but watch out!, JOMT Syndrome* may crop up soon!

Oh, and thanks for the info about how minesweeping works, I never knew how it worked until now. Never used it too, but what the hey.

*Just One More Turn Syndrome. The symptoms are saying "OK, I'll just play one more turn then I'll get to work/go to bed/get out of bed/have breakfast/etc." all the time and not complying. Results may include SEIV games lasting all night, deterioration of personal life, not being able to think of something else than SEIV for more than a few seconds at a time, yadda yadda yadda. This has been a public service broadcast. Thank You

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

You haven't experienced Mods then yet, have you? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif My SEIV directory is a few gig anyways...

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

As a veteran of Civs I-IV, AoE I-III, et al, and turn-based wargames dating back to the ORIGINAL Empire (not the Deluxe hack job) I'm very well acquainted with JOMTS http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Hell, I remember when the term was first used! Boy...I'm getting old...I even remember typewriters and vinyl records....

Fortunately, I have an understanding wife who loves me in spite of my addiction. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

Not much yet, just the TDM. I'm realllllly old school - I like to master the base game before getting into the mods (except in cases where the original isn't playable without a mod).

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

The original is playable as-is, but there are some minor things that could need improving. For example, Intel could be much improved (Puppet Political Parties is exceptionally powerful, just to name an example), Point Defense is too uberpowerful (so fighters, combat sats and seekers become basically useless when PD is first fielded) and the Quantum Reactor is too bloody cheap for such a powerful device (never having to resupply is powerful, and it only takes up a small space).

Alternatively, instead of looking for mods which balance out stock, you could also go with one of the themed mods. Of course, the Star Trek Mod is an easy example, but you should try the Carrier Battles Mod if you want good fighter combat, the Dark Nova 4 mod for a heck of a lot of hulls (and lots and lots of other new stuff, but the hulls are probably the first thing you'll notice) or the Eclipse Mod which makes the game slightly more realistic. Last but not least, I recommend the Adamant Mod, which is too much to explain in a few sentences - but lemme just say you can also play as a race of organic sentients (i.e. sentient plants, or living spaceships, et cetera) and even as a race of magic users.....

(P.S. Would that be this Empire you're talking about? Would you recommend it?)

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

It should be noted that too much familiarity with stock can actually be detrimental to your play in a mod such as carrier battles.

Naturally familiarity with the interface, and how to do things is good.
You will probably not be hung up on your old "best weapon", since you are consciously re-analysing the weapons.

Its not the obvious things, but the hidden subconscious assumptions that you build up over time. Things like the "fact" that there can only be one weapon at the top of the hill. Or that you can have a single warship class to comprise 90% of your military, because it is the best design so far.
Or the importance of spreading your fire to cripple lots of enemy ships rather than vaporize one at a time.

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

Or, to name another example, getting confused in a QNP mod. (Or, for that matter, designing Star Trek Mod colony ships with no movement.) QNP = Quasi Newtonian Propulsion, i.e. larger ships need more standard movement to move 1 sector than smaller ships. Some mods (like, IIRC, Pirated&Nomads) have rather accurate QNP systems, where engine power is actually measured in kT of thrust, and where the Engines Per Move is based on the ship's kT size, other mods have QNP systems where thrust isn't measured by kT but where bigger ships still need more engines. And of course then there's mQNP, or mount-based Quasi Newtonian Propulsion, where engine components are either huge, terribly expensive or both, and where you can/must use mounts to adjust them to a size which can be placed on your ship, or to bring down the cost to an acceptable level.

And, to continue on the mounts thing, some mods make extensive use of mounts, sometimes practically requiring them for certain components to be placed. In stock, mounts are nothing more than bigger, more expensive, more powerful weapon hardpoints, in mods they can be anything from a miniaturized weapon, to an armored component, to a shield generator with increased output. In stock, there's a good chance you'll not use mounts on anything else than specialized warships/battlestations, so if you're playing a mount-heavy mod, you're not likely to find out about them until you see the enemy use them.

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

I didn't mean to imply SEIV was unplayable in the original form - but we've all seen games that were. Like anything by Derek Smart....:>


Yes, it is! I'd recommend it for a trip down nostalgia lane. The AI is actually pretty good, considering it was nearly 30 years ago (my, how the years have flown!). The endgame becomes a "hunt the last unit" situation but it is a fairly challenging game. It was JOMT material before anyone knew what JOMT was http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Getting it to run on a modern box, however, might be problematical. IIRC, the best the graphics ever got were lo-res EGA.

Historical note: I actually bought Empire (on 360k 5 1/4" disks....) becaquse of a review by Jerry Pournelle in Byte magazine...how many readers remember the disks or the mag?

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

The original Empire first got me interested in this line of games - except I found it in the late '90s cleaning out someone's garage. They didn't have the manual anymore, so I used to have the guess the "Enter the word" from page X line Y. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: ?? regarding minesweeping
 

I've got games where I don't know where the copy protection is (Well, it's in the computer room, but...)

Anyway, yeah, you can crack those pretty quick just by guessing. (Pretty quick, compared to a whole day. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )

Welcome to the forum.