Random Thoughts, Observations, and Questions...
 

Random Thoughts, Observations, and Questions...All Are Welcomed .

-----I'm assumming that there will be some great cinematic opener to the game. Can we get a preview of this?

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---I am thinking about MOO3 right now. Where in the hell did I put those damn disks? (Ebay time.)

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I have E-mailed Aaron Hall with the cinematic question.

I still Have the 'Master of Orion 3' CD's, box, and manual. I must admit that the openining cinematic for it was good. The Ithkul/Harvester attacking the Human and all. I recently saw MOO3 new at a discount store for $5. I was almost tempted to get it for a "keap sake". There was also the 'Risk' computer game for $5 wich I considered.

It's nice to see another skipping between the forums of Shrapnel and Strategy First at this hour. My fellow time zoner.

-Wade

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And yet another comrade in time-zones. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

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Yay! Welcome to another fellow time zoner. Have you any lively topic at this hour? Opening cinematic preview...What say you?

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IIRC both Atrocities and Renegade are beta testers and therefore are legally required to say nothing on the subject that might reveal anything not already public.

So am I http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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I...um...Hey, is that some cheese over there!?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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I'm not sure why you'd assume this, given that SE4 doesn't have one. Especially after the reaction Strategy First got just adding a couple splash screens. "Three more screens before I can get to the game? Outrageous!"

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SE2 had an intro movie of sorts.

"Calling all ships, the time has come to spread out into the galaxy."

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Where? Where?

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Sorry Narf, if you want that particular cheese you'll have to extract it from my digestive system...it disappeared a few hours ago http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

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An opening cinematic will be in line with most other games. This will help, some, to lift the series out of "obscurity".

-----(This has probably been mentioned.) We need Infantry or Tiny Troop as a starting technology in order to have a choice of planetary invasion in the beginning game. They should be weak and plenty of them would be needed to succeed over several turns. Later,they can also be cheap police units on all planets. (Forwarding to "SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List.")

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Uh, oh, exactly the wrong words... Do you really want the mouse to examine your digestive system? [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]
NARF! DON'T! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

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-----I like the new SEV human empire ships much better than the SEIV "Lego" patch work ships. They are featured in the screen shots at www.captainkwok.net.

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They are also available in Star Fury as well. And don't be too mean about the Terran ships in SE:IV, you'll make AZ cry. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

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I thought the Terran ships in SEIV were OK, not what I'd expect but not bad either..... Especially the Cruiser. That thing looks like a refugee from some obscure sci-fi (fan-made?) movie.

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I think the main problem was just the weird angle the pictures were rendered at. The ship designs were good.

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...I like to think I have some common sense...

...Somewhere...

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"baby arm" at the Strategy First forum has lead us to six new screen shots tonight, 7-27-06. They are the last six in the list. They're quite beautiful, even with the compression.

http://www.tacticularcancer.com/gall...%20Empires%20V

I wasn't aware that "Baseship" was included in Space Empires V! This is wonderful! Does this mean that some or all of the "Neo-Standard" classes are included?

-Wade

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Baseships are in stock in SEIV.

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http://www.dogscoff.co.uk/neostand.htm

I'm playing stock. I have not encountered Baseships. I looked in my C:\Program Files\Strategy First\Space Empires IV Deluxe\Pictures and they are not there.

Thus, you are mistaken.

-Wade

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That's be because they don't have their own image. They use the Starbase image:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Name := Baseship
Short Name := Baseship
Description :=
Code := BA
Primary Bitmap Name := Baseship
Alternate Bitmap Name := Starbase
Vehicle Type := Ship
Tonnage := 1500
Cost Minerals := 1500
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 0
Engines Per Move := 1
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Ship Construction
Tech Level Req 1 := 9
(rest snipped)
</pre><hr />

check vehiclesize.txt and see for yourself, or just start a High Tech game.

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Baseships are tech level 9 in ship production. They are very slow and so have only specialized uses like for WP defense. Most AIs rarely build them.
The DN is then the standard big attack ship while the BS is more of a defense ship.
This assumes a lot like playing a standard game of stock, but has at least a few grains of truth in it.

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Parasite, I see the AI throwing around baseships all the time. At least, the TDM AI's do. Recently I faced a fleet of about 100 ships; 84 of them were baseships.

In stock, at max tech, Baseships aren't significantly slower than Dreadnoughts. A dreadnought can travel at speed 9, and a baseship at speed 8. The advantage of the Massive mount and an extra 500kT of space outweighs the slight speed disadvantage (in my opinion, of course).

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Yeah, I hardly ever use Dreads. Either BCs or BBs for speed, or Baseships for firepower.

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-----Request for Game Play Advice: Should Monolith Facilities obsolete regular facilities or are the regular facilities still good for cheap specialization? I'm thinking that this is the right idea.

If, on a planet, I have one high resource value and the other two are low then should I specialize that facility but still build some monoliths as well?

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You should build the regular facilities first, since you can do them in one turn each.

Then replace them gradually with monoliths, since the monoliths take a while to build.

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Thanks. I had that in mind too but are all those steps neccesary ecspecially if my empire is rich?

A "regular" Facility 2 is taking .1 year. A Monolith Facility 1 is taking only .5 years.

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-----With the sudden influx of new players that Space Empires V will bring I think that 'Strategy First Forums', being the official site and where they'll go, might become our "hangout" more so than Shrapnel Community.Com.

If only 'Strategy First Forums' could set theirs up like this one with number of views, last poster, have the standard setting begin with "show all topics", etc.

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Yes they need to revamp their forums...Of course...I'm sure we can still hangout here, and of course SE.net

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Usually in games I play, I only ever get the chance to fully use Monoliths if I'm playing against the AI (don't last long enough against human players http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif )

What I do, is once I have fully developed my empire and have a few well defended chokepoints, I slowly scrap all my 'traditional' facilities and start replacing them with Monoliths. Simultaneously with this, I smack Atmospheric Converters on the planets that need them. After all, by scrapping the min. miners, org and rad facilities, I have space for the converters. Then, after the converters have done their thing, I slap a few of the facilities that add planet value by 3% per year (should remember the name, can't at the moment) so that the Monoliths that I'm building have more and more to work with the whole time, and my economy will be increasing steadily even if I don't physically expand my empire into any more systems. Once that's all done in my entire empire, I start building sphereworlds and methodically wiping out the AI's, who are usually ahead of my by now in score and number of ships, but who can't penetrate my warp point defenses (though the Aquilaeians came close in my current game, they threw over 100 ships at me, 84 of them baseships...).

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The first thing Strategy First needs to do with their forums is make them easier to find. I don't remember how I got to their forums the first time I went there, but I didn't think to bookmark the forums page, and the next time I went back, I had to use Google to find the forums again.

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Oh man, I recently went there to try and find the patch, because the link on malfador.com was broken.
Thank goodness for flashblock. There were are lot of crazy hoops to jump through to get anywhere, and none of them were obvious.

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I can see 2 main ways to get to the SE4 patch page, which seem pretty straight-forward to me, given how many games they have to support.

1)

If I go to Support &gt; Patches, there is a direct link to them, albiet in a huge list of all. Using the dropbox to select SE4 goes to a page with the 3 patch files for it.

2)

In the Flash menu, mouseover Games, select Browse by Genre. On the page that loads up, go down to Sci-Fi, click on Space Empires IV Deluxe. On the SE4 page, click on Downloads.

2a)

There is a direct link to the Sci-Fi genre games just below the Flash menu. This goes to a page with more info on each game in the genre, rather than just a big listing, but it's still easy to get to SE4 with a find on page.

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I must have ended up in the nether reaches of the site after trying to get to the link.

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One item that sucks a little bit other than the lack of options with the SFI forum is that there is no link from the forum pages to the SFI main site.

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-----SEIV: The "Ships/Units" list should show the class under the name like the ship lists in a system. This way I can better decide what needs retrofitting in the "Ships/Units" list.

For this reason I keep my ship names the same as the class.

Examples: "Date-Tactical Role-Strategic Role-Size"

Tactical Role: Short, Medium, Long, Missile, Carrier, Rock, Etc.
Strategic Role: Sentinel, Guardian, Defender, Attacker, Supporter, Collector, Colonizer, Scout, Etc.

2410.0-Med-Def-Cru
2410.1-Car-Def-LigCru
2410.5-Mis-Gua-Des
2410.0-Gas-Colo-ColShi
2410.9-Min-Coll-Des

-Wade

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-----Do you have any Ba'als?

-----So, I assume that SEV is approaching it's final release form.

-----Awsome! I just figured out that I have this function, "Fill Queue", to allow me to save and load queues on new planets. I never really looked much at those buttons to the right. I was just begining to think of how it would be nice to have this feature like other games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

-----Is there a keyboard way to cycle ships and fleets; as oppossed to clicking the arrows?

-----My game play time has been losing to work, sleep, and other.

-----We don't need carrier hulls . This has most likely been discussed. I thought I would lend support for it and hear opinions. We could just keep it like it is now with Fighter Bays placed in any hull and eliminate the carrier hulls. This will eliminate clutter in our lists and mystify our fleets more to our enemies.

Transport hulls for that matter too. Other support roles are filled by any hull. Examples: Mine Layer/Sweeper, Satellite Layer, Space Yard, Repair Bay, Kamikaze...Imagine the hassle if all these roles had their own hull. And if they did..."Why?" So why not eliminate the carrier hulls too?

-----I guess it wouldn't be spam if one was to post the same exact statements on another website of a completely different company. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

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I,ve been offline and off computer for about a week. My 60 G hardrive would not start.
I bought a 200 G Maxtor for $100 and started over.
Since I'm not very computer savy and not very motivated the shop did did the work. They also installed Windows XP (profesional version, or what ever). They removed an older unused soundcard. They said my mainboard (the match for an Intel Pentium 2.8 Ghz.My RAM is 1 G) is quite excellent with high quality onboard sound (that's what I've been using)eqaul to or better than the older card (a Sound Blaster PCI 512).
Labor: $190
Total: $296

-Wade

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High quality integrated sound? Heh, good one. Sure, it's probably better than the sound blaster, but still.

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Yeah...but the integrated sounds good to me with my bass speaker. The shop guy said that it could run up to six speakers.

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Well sure, but that's just a matter of putting more of the same chips on there.

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www.malfador.com has "What's New" for 8-15-06: SE5 Empire Style.

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-----I invite people here to play chess at http://playgames.comcast.net/ . It's under "Multiplayer". It features score points, a ranking legend, chat, a lobby, tables to choose, and a decent angled view.

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-----Is there a way to keep units and ships allowed in space set at 20,000 instead of having to click it there each new game? Probably not.

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Yeah, settings.txt.

All my mods set it there by default.

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Oh thanks. I don't really mod. I suppose I could try that though. I'll look into it.

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SE IV settings.txt:

Default Number Of Units Per Player := 20000

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-----So I was just at my local Game Stop. They have one box of Space Empires IV for $9.99.(I wish businesses would just put $10.00, etc.).It was on the bottom shelf. I moved it to the top facing forwards.HeHe.
They have like 10 copies of Civilization IV, Warlords Expansion for $29.99 ($30.00 grr). I will get it at a later date; maybe cheaper. Right now I have not been allowing myself much playing time. It has been SEIV lately.

What I did buy there for $19.99 (...$20.00) is Space Rangers 2, Rise of the Dominators. It is "Turn based, stategy gameplay in outer space and real-time 3D battles on the surface of planets!". That's what it says. Also,"RPG Element: Choose which race you want to belong to, which type of spacecraft you want to fly, and develop skills and the strategy you want to employ."
It's not gonna be like SEIV of course but some thing different on the side. I've read some reviews. Does anyone have opinions of this game and experience playing it? I have not yet opened it.

-Wade

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-----Strategy First states that SEV is due out in late September. http://www.strategyfirst.com/press/D...ArticleID=3298

"Strategy First will be hosting various Contests, with promotions and prizes to play for. Upcoming Contests include: Best Game Modification (Mod) Contest, Best Fan Site Contest, and a Space Empires Trivia Contest. More information on these contests will be coming your way soon.

Please also stay tuned for the first edition to the Space Empires Dedicated Newsletter which will be out September, 2006.

Space Empires V is due to be released late September, 2006. Is rated E for Everyone by ESRB. For more info on Space Empires V please visit: http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/SpaceEmpiresV/"