New Patch?
 

Hey all,
Been playing SE IV for about a week now and absolutely love it. Well, cept for the (lack of)A.I.
I'm sure this question is somewhere else on the forum, but I haven't been able to find it. So, when is the next patch coming out? I'm at v1.67 right now. Thanks!

-Nox

Re: New Patch?
 

"Out of the kitchen! It'll be ready when it's ready." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Seriously, v1.67 is the most current publicly available Version. If there are any newer Versions, only the beta testers know about them.

Re: New Patch?
 

Beta is now at 1.71. Here is the history:

Version 1.71:
1. Fixed - Ships were unable to ram planets.
2. Fixed - Drones were not smashing into planets.
3. Fixed - Tactical Combat was not displaying correctly after a Ram.
4. Fixed - Distance to planets has been reduced.
5. Added - Added fields to Settings.txt to allow for a higher maximum
value or resource amount.
6. Added - Added a "Bases Can Join Fleets" field to Settings.txt.
7. Fixed - AI would attempt to add units even when a planet was full.
8. Added - Added "No Retrofit Adding Of Spaceyards" and
"No Retrofit Adding Of Colony Module" so players can set
whether the game will enforce these rules.
9. Changed - Fighters and Drones will have full movement when launched.
10. Fixed - In a Turn-Based Game, fighters can only be recovered if they
have their full movement points (and are not in combat).

Version 1.70:
1. Fixed - Troops were unable to drop onto planets in combat.
2. Fixed - Only ships and fighter Groups can join fleets.
3. Added - Added Fighters, Satellites, and Drones Weapon Target Types in
Components.txt.
4. Added - Added "Two Per Vehicle" to "Ten Per Vehicle" to Restrictions
in Components.txt.
5. Fixed - Minefields will now accumulate damage against ships when
hitting them.
6. Changed - If a mine will not do damage to a target because of its damage
type, it will not strike the target. For example, if the mine
only does engine damage, and the target does not have engines,
then the mine will not strike the target.
7. Changed - Engine Damaging Weapons no longer skip shields.
8. Fixed - Integer Overflow when viewing a planet report window for a planet
that had been captured during combat.
9. Fixed - Ai should be cloaking again in Simultaneous Games.

Version 1.69:
1. Fixed - The Massive Ship Mount stated that you needed a ship size of
1100kT but it should actually be 1200kT.
2. Fixed - Rare Integer Overflow in combat when a planet was attacked.
3. Fixed - There was a way to bypass the Next Player Password dialog.
4. Changed - A ship cannot be retrofitted from a design which does not
have a Spaceyard to one that does.
5. Changed - A ship cannot be retrofitted from a design which does not
have a Colony Module to one that does.
6. Fixed - Range Check Error when a luck trait tried to prevent a star
from exploding.
7. Fixed - Set Players To Computer Control window was setting all ministers
off even for human players.

Version 1.68:
1. Fixed - Fighters no longer share their supplies with other ships.
They will not pool their resources when in a fleet.
2. Fixed - Newly launched fighters in a turn-based game will have no
movement. The next turn after they are launched, they will
receive full movement.
3. Fixed - AI was not reacting with anger when a planet or system was
destroyed.
4. Changed - Increased the number of formation positions from 30 to 100.
5. Fixed - AI was still not always closing to optimum distance for
launching seekers against planets.
6. Fixed - Seeker hit on a planet would sometimes not show an explosion
even if damage was done.
7. Fixed - AI was not always moving on the first turn of Tactical Combat
if it was the first player.
8. Fixed - Planet hit points would not always accurately portray damaged
units on the planet as well.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I wonder what this means. Do ships attacking planets now start nearer? Or is it defending bases/ sats that are nearer?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There go those resupply exploits. Good riddance=-) Personally I'd like to see bases use the same supply system as ships. Bases not above a resupply planet would need solar panels/ QR or regular visits from resupply ship.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is a better fix for the fighter exploit than the previous solution.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">These should make the modders happy=-)

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good - this is far more balanced.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hooray!

All in all, a very good patch so far. I'm really looking forward to this one=-)

Re: New Patch?
 

I agree completely. I also liked the bit about specialty mines not hitting if their target component isn't present. Way cool.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">What? I've been using troops in virtually all my games, without trouble!

Steve.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">What? I've been using troops in virtually all my games, without trouble!

Steve.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Planet center was move to the center of a planet, not one of the corners. As troops only had a "range" of 1, they could never drop after one of the beta patches.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now that is a good addition. Should come in very handy!!
Good job Aaron and the beta-testers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMO this is the best feature in the listed.
This thing will realy balance the things.

A suggestion:
There are three engine-damage weapons: Ionic Dispenser, Ionic Missile and Massive Ionic Dispenser. The first one is fine because its easy to get, the second one is seeking so its fine too, but there is the Massive Ionic Dispenser. I suggest that this weapon will have "skips shields" innit.

Re: New Patch?
 

"7. Fixed - AI would attempt to add units even when a planet was full."

That's a very important one IMO.

"7. Changed - Engine Damaging Weapons no longer skip shields."

Just when I balanced these weapons in my mod and reduced their effect. Now I have to start again!

[ May 23, 2002, 13:50: Message edited by: Q ]

Re: New Patch?
 

Taera- I agree. The "massive" weapons are already too weak, with their reload rate of 30. This would give it a little more appeal, IMHO.

Re: New Patch?
 

I like the fix with the AI moving lst when lst player in tactical, it very rarely if ever does it at present, at least in my games, this makes a big difference, definitly look foreward to it, tks Mephisto for heads up on patch

just some ideas mac

Re: New Patch?
 

But will the engine-damaging weapons do _damage_
to shields ? Otherwise if I have a specialized engine-killing ship, it will be absolutely useless even against puny Shield I !!!

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMO this is the best feature in the listed.
This thing will realy balance the things.

A suggestion:
There are three engine-damage weapons: Ionic Dispenser, Ionic Missile and Massive Ionic Dispenser. The first one is fine because its easy to get, the second one is seeking so its fine too, but there is the Massive Ionic Dispenser. I suggest that this weapon will have "skips shields" innit.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The more I think about this the less I like it!

I absolutely agree with you Taera that the engine damaging weapons were too powerful. But that's a quantitative problem and can easily modified by decreasing the damage amount, decreasing the weapons range, increasing the reload time, increasing the component size or any combination of these!
But this fix MM made completely alters the quality of the weapons and IMHO makes them pretty unattractive. But the worst is that this is now hard coded and we can't change it!!
If I created or modded a race that uses heavily this weapon type I would be rather frustrated, because the research and design files of this race will have to be significantly redesigned after the Version update.
Why not just add a new damage type (only engines, does not skip shield) while keeping the old one (only engines, skips all shields). That's what you propose for the massive ionic disperser and I strongly agree with you Taera. Then at least we can decide what damage type we give these weapons.
After all patches should add something to the game not remove things!

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMO this is the best feature in the listed.
This thing will realy balance the things.

A suggestion:
There are three engine-damage weapons: Ionic Dispenser, Ionic Missile and Massive Ionic Dispenser. The first one is fine because its easy to get, the second one is seeking so its fine too, but there is the Massive Ionic Dispenser. I suggest that this weapon will have "skips shields" innit.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The more I think about this the less I like it!

I absolutely agree with you Taera that the engine damaging weapons were too powerful. But that's a quantitative problem and can easily modified by decreasing the damage amount, decreasing the weapons range, increasing the reload time, increasing the component size or any combination of these!
But this fix MM made completely alters the quality of the weapons and IMHO makes them pretty unattractive. But the worst is that this is now hard coded and we can't change it!!
If I created or modded a race that uses heavily this weapon type I would be rather frustrated, because the research and design files of this race will have to be significantly redesigned after the Version update.
Why not just add a new damage type (only engines, does not skip shield) while keeping the old one (only engines, skips all shields). That's what you propose for the massive ionic disperser and I strongly agree with you Taera. Then at least we can decide what damage type we give these weapons.
After all patches should add something to the game not remove things!</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There was a lot of concern about this one, but in my experience it is not the problem that it seems to be at first. I was in the middle of developing an AI that used Ionic Dispersers fairly heavily when this came down. They do damage shields and, as long as they are used in conjuction with other weapons, they are quite deadly. Remember that once the shields are down, three hits from an ionic disperser doing at least 40 points of damage (level 3/large mount) in an unmodded game will completely render a warship useless unless it has undamaged supply storage or a quantum reactor. Even if it has those, it is a sitting duck. When I was testing my new AI, I watched a fleet armed with Telekinetic Projectors and Ionic Dispersers tear a similar sized Rage fleet of mixed missiles and PPBs to pieces (after the change to not skip shields). Remember too, that it still skips armor, so they are especially effective against organic races that try to rely on armor.

To make a long story short (too late), I think that it makes sense for shields to interfere with a weapon of this type, and it does not make them useless. Rather it forces them into a more secondary role, which makes sense given the type of weapon they are.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IMO this is the best feature in the listed.
This thing will realy balance the things.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting, because in my view this was the WORST thing!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Yes, it makes (IMHO of course) this weapon useless: who will continue using this weapon now?

Against enemies that like to use armors instead shields, the boarding parties are more effective, I think.

The two AI scripts files that I did, use a lot the Engine destroyer with success, but now would be a real bad option for them. I should remove the Engine Destroyers for both (specially for the Aquilaeian), but probably never will do it... I'm so lazy to start to do all the test that did in the past again.
I think that a better approach to fix the "engine damage problem", should be shorting the range or changing the reload time, but the current fix (in my view), was the worst.

Talking about to balance weapons, IMHO again:
a) The PPB should be balanced (very easy to research, very strong even against Phased
Shields).
b) Weapon damage weapons should not skip shields anymore.
c) PDC cannons. They're so strong, that is not good to use Missiles after the first turns.
d) Give some kind of bonus for the Torpedoes weapons (maybe more cheap?). Altough I know that a few people like to use them, in my games (against humans/AI) the experience have proved that the Torpedoes are not good weapons.

Why "fix" the Engine Damage weapons, and keep the others like now?
Don't tell me that I can mod the game myself and balance the techs to my taste... because I can say the same about the fix that was done! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New Patch?
 

This controversy would be easily solved if all damaged types did exactly what they were supposed to do, and that only. And add the possibility of giving weapons multiple damage types.

If you want engine weapons that skip everything, you can have them...if not, then not.

Re: New Patch?
 

"7. Changed - Engine Damaging Weapons no longer skip shields."

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

"To make a long story short (too late), I think that it makes sense for shields to interfere with a weapon of this type, and it does not make them useless. Rather it forces them into a more secondary role, which makes sense given the type of weapon they are."

Except for the problem that by the time a ship's shields go down in SE4, it's ussually about to die anyway. This really cripples these weapons and IMO should be moddable.

EDIT: and it *completely* kills off the massive engine killer. Because it's a once-per-combat weapon and the AI will fire as soon as possible, you have two options:
-let the thing be nothing more than a big gun that hits shields
-let it do so much damage that is breaches ANY ship's shields and kills the engines.. making it completely unbalanced and overpowered. Not because of the engine damage, but because of the shield damage!

Phoenix-D

[ May 23, 2002, 20:00: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: New Patch?
 

This whole discussion just points up the complexity behind any little change. Everything affects everything else, and so on.

The engine damaging weapons were a powerful wepon. But, IMHO, not overpowering &lt;b&gt;UNTIL&lt;/b&gt; the previous patch made weapons unable to fire once supply was gone.

This a seemingly minor change that was well and truely requested by a large number of people for various reasons. But it had the unintended consequence of making the Engine Destroying weapons very close to being an "Uber-Weapon".

Most people put no supply components on attack ships, prefering to concentrate thouse on support ships that will stay out of the way during combat. Because of this the ships supply is dependant on the supply capacity of the engines.

Before that change knocking out the engines meant the enemy was dead-in-the-water. Now they were just &lt;b&gt;DEAD&lt;/b&gt;, cause they had no capability to fire back as well as not being able to move.

Plus, it was noticed that the other "Only" type components were not able to skip shields the way the engine only ones were.

You start out just trying to change one little thing that most people agree needs changed, and you end up cascading problems into other areas.

It's a very delicate process. I doubt we have seen the end of the changes in these areas. It will take some time to reach an equilibrium. Remember the early patch changes to Seekers/PDC? It seemed like every patch changed one or the other, or both.

My favorite part of taking away the shield skipping ability of the engine targetting weapons though is that it gives more incentive to use shileds. Shields were becomeing a bit out of vouge in the PBW games I have been playing lately. People don't bother because as soon as they put them on the other guy comes in with engine destroyers. This keeps that little factor in the air longer. It should result in more variety in ship design, which is what most people say they want to see.

Geoschmo

[ May 23, 2002, 20:35: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">How bad a ship is doing when the shields go down depends upon the design of the ship. With enough armor, a ship can Last for a while without shields, especially in fleet combat. It all goes back to the rock/paper/scissors scenario. I agree that it would be nice to be able to mod, and maybe that is the real solution, but without this change, Ionic Dispersers are way too powerful now, given how easy it is to research them. Even with the shield skipping gone, they are nearly as good as DUCs from a damage standpoint, and capable of slightly better range, plus they ignore armor and, when they get through are guaranteed to damage something significant to the immediate combat. I'm not yet ready to throw them away as a secondary weapon.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It's like changing the "physical laws of the universe"... it will simply force people to change their tactics. If gravity became 10% less strong, we'd adapt.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It's like changing the "physical laws of the universe"... it will simply force people to change their tactics. If gravity became 10% less strong, we'd adapt.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">True. The same could be said for those that rely heavily on the Engine depleting weapons though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Adaptation is a fact of this game that will exsist as long as Malfador continues to put out patches. Really longer than that, as long as people continue to make mods.

Geoschmo

Re: New Patch?
 

I have to agree with Geoschmo. Changing the engine damage will help rebalance the shield issue.

It seems the shields are only good now (v1.67) for warding off boarding parties at wormholes.
The PPB and Shield depleter strength should also be notched down some.

The Crystraline weapons should more powerfull. Most other weapons can blow away both armor and componants faster than the crystal weapons bypass attack.

Maybe we need an Armor Only Weapon??? in a general research catagory.

edit: Grammer good speak I not ummhh?

[ May 23, 2002, 22:23: Message edited by: Wardad ]

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think most the people (me included) doesn't bother to use shields, mostly because the PPB... and this weapon still was not fixed!

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This I will agree with, the PPB is out of line compared to everything else. I'll also agree with Wardad that crystaline weapons are still underpowered for their research cost.

I want to see a game where all of the weapon systems have a place, and there is no one dominant weapon system. I think we are getting closer, but there is still a ways to go.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think most the people (me included) doesn't bother to use shields, mostly because the PPB... and this weapon still was not fixed!</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But that's the point. With PBB's early and then Ionic weapons later there isn't even any reason to research shields. Now there is. Anything that makes people think more about their research and design is a good thing. This gives people choices. And as Alpha says they are still pretty useful as they aren't much less powerful than PPB's and they skip armor.

Will races that are heavily devoted to ionic weapons have to adapt? Yes, and they should anyway, but they shouldn't scrap the ionic weapons altogether. One weapon only is boring.

And I would be very careful trying to change the PPB's. I disagree they are too powerful. Maybe a little too easy to research, but that could be said about a lot of stuff in SEIV. They are kind of expensive, which helps balance them. And they aren't that much stronger than APB's and Meson BLasters.

Geoschmo

[ May 23, 2002, 23:23: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: New Patch?
 

Perhaps engine damaging weapons should be blocked by phased sheilds, but not normal? This may rebalance the use of phased sheilds? thoughts?

Re: New Patch?
 

The more I think about this, the balance is maintained, Phased sheild 1 sucks, another reason that an early phased shield is good

Re: New Patch?
 

The massive engine destroying weapon could still be a uber weapon, skip all sheilds, after all it is ruins discoverd

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I must disagree, sorry Geo!
At the time that I can research a decent Phased Shield, most the people had Shield Depleters and use it with PPB from a long time ago, and with very good results (or use the Null Space Projector), ERGO: still the Shields are not a good option.

The only decent defense against short/a-bit-short range weapons (like PPB and Null space projector) "was" the Ionic Disperser.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">95% sure that most the AI races should not use Ionic Dispersers anymore. Maybe the Temporal races (because their bonus against shields), could still use the Ionic Disperser.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Disagree 100% about it.
With the PPB like now, probably still I'll not use shields anyway.
Come on Geo, you can't tell me "maybe a little too easy to research"!!! Compare it to the cost to research some good Crystaline/Organics weapons!
The PPB is VERY easy to research, and 99% of the good players use it in their ships very fast! And a lot more fast when the game is started with medium tech.
About that they're expensive... I never had problems with their cost.

You said "One weapon only is boring", well, still I have not reasons to do not use more weapons than PPB (and sometimes with Shield Depleters if the opponent have heavy Phased Shields).

What bother me, is that in my view the Ionic Disperser was fixed in the worst way (why not a long reload time like the Null-Space Projector? for example), when still does exist several weapons that are screaming be fixed (PDC, PPB, Shield Depleters, for example).

[ May 24, 2002, 00:40: Message edited by: Master Belisarius ]

Re: New Patch?
 

BALANCE, my whole point was to add another reason to early phased sheilds, why would you want to research phased sheilds, block Phased phoreron beams? armor will do that. Please understand where I am coming from. No phased sheids you are done.

Re: New Patch?
 

I don't think that the PPB itself is the problem. I think that the counter-measure not working is the problem. If it worked properly you would be able to use Emissive Armor to deal with PPB. But because it has always been 'all or nothing' it has never been useful. Either it completely blocks the damage, and you are immune, or it does nothing and you are using an expensive piece or armor for no reason. If it would subtract the rated amount of damage from hits even when they exceed the emissive rating it would be working properly and be a pretty decent way to resist the PPB and other shield-ignoring weapons. Instead it becomes useless when cruisers appear and can use 'large mount' weapons.

[ May 24, 2002, 01:12: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: New Patch?
 

Balance is certainly something where opinions differ greatly.
Therefore it should be possible to modify the factors that influence the balance as much as possible.
And that's my critic about the change MM made for the engine damaging weapons: you can't modify what they did, it alters the game balance irreversibly!!
Just for comparision: I strongly plead for the "move to" order for drones, but this should be made an option not something we can't change.
In this stage of the development of SE IV irreversible changes of the game balance should be avoided IMO because the many modifications that have been created with a lot of work might otherwise just get obsolete.

[ May 24, 2002, 11:07: Message edited by: Q ]

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Why ? Add second ability to Ionic Dispersor:
"Skip phased shields" and bingo, you have old good ID !!

Actually, I have an idea : why not to add shield skipping ID to higher level of engine damaging weapons ? As it is now, there is no much reason to research beyond level IV, ionic missile sucks.
Now we will have a whole new area to exploit !

Re: New Patch?
 

Oleg this is not possible: you can only have one damage type for a weapon and the types are hardcoded. You may choose "skips all shield" (there is no "skips phased shields") but then you will have no "engines only" damage. Or you choose "engines only" and then you must accept what MM changed: that this weapon will not penetrate shields.

Re: New Patch?
 

pity http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Then I agree, this change is very bad.
Before, we had only two really usefull early game weapons: PPB and ID. Now only PPB remains. Nice game balancing, MM ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: New Patch?
 

Very well.
I'll have to say again that this change realy improves the balance. Even back at SE3 days i realized how efficient if ID at crippling an enemy, and the very many strenghts of this weapon made it realy dangerous, especially if used against you.
On the other hand, I have to agree with MB that this was the only answer to ships using PPB/NSP, especially when talking about NSP - i've set strategy to max. weap. range and just outshoot the enemy - the winning design was torpedoes and ID.

Now talking about PPB.
I have to say this is _the_ strongest, best, whatever weapon in the game.
It is realy easy to get it - lvl.2 physics and to research - only 5 levels beginning from 5k cost.
By the time i am researching my APB 7 the enemy would already have PPB 5 which does quite more damage. Very well, lest see...(starts the game)

APB 12 does only 5 more points of damage and has 8 range. PPB 5 has only 2 less range (when using high-tech armor and electronics, the 2 extra range wont save you - you'll miss). There is hardly any difference in cost.
Meson bLaster is no way compared to PPB.
Torpedoes. Have the same range at max level and does almost the same or less (on closer distances) in its two-turn ROF, and takes more space and thrice(sp) longer to research.
WMG might be the answer due to longer range and bonus to-hit. Still if it does not kill the target, it will be killed untill recharged. Does less damage than PPB in same time at any range, costs by half more and takes almost twice the space.

Only several racial technologies can be roughly compared to the weapon, but then again they either do less damage, cost more or take more space.

Very well, the answers i see:
*Decrease the damage
*Increase the ROF to 2 (IMO best solution)
*Make it more difficult to reach (say physics lvl2, astrophysics lvl1, Energy Stream/Pulse Weapons lvl3)

The PPB in SEIII was doing less damage (exactly the amount the emmisive armor could reflect) and was more difficult to reach on the technology tree.
I strongly suggest for people to think it all over because this weapon for the moment is _the_ most unbalanced.

I also have to agree about the crystalline weapons but this one is less urgent IMO.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is not possible, yet. We have proposed a change that would allow multiple damage types. Malfador has responded positively, but that's not the same thing as being sure it will be added. cross fingers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">My way was to remove it as a unique weapon.
Instead, it becomes an "upgrade" for other standard weapons. You get the same weapon properties (ROF, range, size, cost, etc) , but 80% or so of the damage, and a phased damage type.

Phased energy + Energy Stream (APB) = PPB
Phased energy + Torpedoes = Polaron torpedoes
Phased energy + Missiles = Polaron missiles.

Re: New Patch?
 

Hey Andrey, I agree 100 % with you about the possible ways to fix the PPB.

About new tools to balance the weapons using mods, are fine with me too.
But... sorry guys, I like to play SE4 mostly with the original tech tree and unmoded weapons… then, I want to play a balanced game without need to mod myself the weapons.
If the argument is: "Why cry if you can change the weapons for yourself?" (and for example, mod the Ionic Dispersers to allow again destroy engines skipping shields), then, my answer is: Why was fixed the Ionic Disperser and don't fix the other unbalanced weapons? Why change the original tech tree if everybody could fix the ID at their own taste?

Re: New Patch?
 

"quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Q:
Oleg this is not possible: you can only have one damage type for a weapon and the types are hardcoded. You may choose "skips all shield" (there is no "skips phased shields") but then you will have no "engines only" damage. Or you choose "engines only" and then you must accept what MM changed: that this weapon will not penetrate shields.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is not possible, yet. We have proposed a change that would allow multiple damage types. Malfador has responded positively, but that's not the same thing as being sure it will be added. cross fingers.

Geoschmo"

This, IMO, would ROCK. Add in a CompEnhancement (weapon mounts) that would be triggered by research not ship sizes and I would be in heaven! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: New Patch?
 

SJ - brilliant idea!
Just some more work:
Lvl2 physics is still requied, it opens an expensive (50k?) technology called "Phased Technologies" (something like that), which will also make a new tech tree - phased shields aviable.

LVL 5 APB + Phased Technologies = Phased Beam Weapons
LVL 5 Torpedoes + Phased Technologies = Phased Todpedoe Weapons (that'd be cool)
LVL 5 missile (expensive but hey, those are MISSILES!) + Phased Technologies = Phased Missile Weapons

Neat!

Mephisto or any other BT, could you propose the general idea to MM? I realy think that phased weapons should be moved back to their secondary/special/support/fighter killer (yes) level.

Re: New Patch?
 

I do understand the importance of balance and I agree on most of the proposed changes you made...

but...

do you really want MM to spend their very limited time on this while so many other important improvements have been proposed that can only be realised by them??

A "consensus group" of experienced modders could create a "neostandard" mod that would give more balance and would be widely accepted as is now the TDM-Mod. This could be based on polls on this forum. But be warned: like the task of Sisyphus this work would never end!

Re: New Patch?
 

I did not say that. I have only said that the thing could use some balancing should be proposed to MM. I didnt say that they should do it at once.

A question that is bugging me is does SEIV have multi-requiement technologies? I do not remember seeing one in my games (i've never reached full tech but still).

After all, all the changes can be done by a group of modders and then presented to MM and all they will do (of course if they do like the idea and will want to implement it in future patches) is simply copy-paste the right lines to the right place and release it as the next Version of the game.

As several other people here i prefer to play the standard "mod" because IMO it makes it a little more challenging to adapt to a system you havent invented and where not everything is just how you would like it to be. Still the two most powerfu... no, i should say useful and efficient weapons were the ID and PPB. Now that ID is 'fixed' only the PPB remains. Once it is fixed, i will have no other major complaints about the technologies. Crystalline weapons remain, but thats less urgent IMO.

Re: New Patch?
 

I like the way PvK balanced PPB in Proportion' mod: He basicaly made PPB to follow APB tree than MB tree. Namely you have 10 levels of PPB at 5k cost. Low-level PPB are very weak. To get high level PPB one must spend about the same number of research points as to good phase shields.

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">WooHOOO! My massive fighter swarm system defence may not be dead!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New Patch?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Individual components or facilities can require multiple technologies to be available. This is modded in the components.txt file or the facilities.txt file and it works.

Individual technology fields can NOT require multiple other tech fields for some reason. The format of the techarea.txt file allows for it but it doesn't work Last I heard.

Re: New Patch?
 

"Individual technology fields can NOT require multiple other tech fields for some reason. The format of the techarea.txt file allows for it but it doesn't work Last I heard."

It works now (1.67) I have NO idea when this was fixed, but it does work.

Phoenix-D

Re: New Patch?
 

From History.txt, looks like v1.34: <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Re: New Patch?
 

Well now i recall that there are technologies actually using multiple technology prerequestments. The smaller weapons.

Could be exploited to create the PP weapons.

SO back to the big question, will the problem of balancing PPB be presented to MM as more-or-less urgent topic?