New pirates shipset
 

Argh, just installed P&N mod yesterday and tried a pirate race.

No research center -> no troop -> no planet capture -> no ressources !!! (idem for miner satellites... far too expensive to research)

No intelligence center -> no tech espionnage

Ships still cost maintenance -> miner ships aren't profitable.

Every thing is so slow... and by this time AIs are developing... and will crush me at first sight !

What is the use of hight quality components ? low budget ones have the same abilities ?

I came to a deadlock. Did I miss something ?

[ March 04, 2003, 12:58: Message edited by: trooper ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

High quality have more hit points. Very good for armor.

Did you select the Pirate racial trait?

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Ah I see. that was what the "reliability" factor was standing for.

Yes I did select this trait.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Pirates have to make heavy use of ship capture.

Playing as a Pirate or Nomad gives a great challenge as opposed to playing as a Normal. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New pirates shipset
 

and scrap them to get ressources ? oh dear...

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mmm... race contacts are generaly established during a ship encounter in the same sector, aren't they ?

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mmm... race contacts are generaly established during a ship encounter in the same sector, aren't they ?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is correct. (Actually same system, not same sector neccesarily.) But if you don't have planets you can't actually make contact. You can see their ship and they can see yours, but you don't get a first contact message, and you can't communicate with them. You also lose contact if you later abandon all yoru planets or they all get destroyed. Even if you still have ships you lose contact. And if all the warp points leading to your planets are closed you also lose contact.

Geoschmo

[ February 12, 2003, 14:34: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

ship ability : "can completely avoid detection by posing as a civilian craft"
Does it mean thaht the Ias will never see thaht ship and will never be able to attack it, even on the same sector ?

Another question : In the civilian cruiser ship size description, it is written "requires no crew quarter and no life support", and the design do need them indeed...

[ February 12, 2003, 16:48: Message edited by: trooper ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">this ship basically has a built in level 5 cloak ability. So as long as it has supplies it can never be seen. However you can turn on and off the cloak like a regular cloaking device so you can attack.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

It costs no supplies to cloak them, but you just have to have 1 or more supply point to engage the cloaking device. If the ship runs out of supplies while it is cloaked, it remains cloaked just fine. But if you decloak it, it won't be able to recloak until you get some more supplies.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hrm. It seems that SE4 is not counting the lifesupport and crew quarters abilities I added to the hull towards the total on board.
They do still prevent the ship from losing speed, so all I need to do is change the requirements to zero instead of one for that hull.

Here is an updated file, in case you don't want to bother changing it yourself http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
<table><tr>
<td>
P&N 3.0 Vehiclesizeupdate.zip</td>
<td>
<TABLE BORDER=0><TR><TD BACKGROUND="http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/newuploads/1045084122.gif">http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/status.gif</TD></TR></TABLE></td></tr></table>

[ February 12, 2003, 21:13: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Suicide Junkie, I can't see your file ?

Another long term problem : Is survival the only goal for pirate empires ?

- If you capture planets and keep them, you stop playing as a pirate race.

- If you eradicate a race, you kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, so you are never the winner...

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Pretend you are vikings instead of pirates, and capturing planets is not a problem at all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Unless this was changed with ver 1.84 a ships cloaking does turn off if you run out of supplies. (at least it does with P&N's civilian ships and ver 1.78, I just tested it)

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Last P&N game I played my goal as a pirate was to piss off the other human players with my invisible ships. It worked great!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Trooper, no one said beign a Pirate was easy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

It is not a race choice you want to take if winning the game is your objective. It's a change of pace and a challange.

Historical examples of pirates are they are small bands of marauders that would not be able to stand up to a fight with the military force of even a small nation state. They exsist by preying on the weak and knowing when to run. They thrive in areas of relative lawlessness and try to eeke out a living without doing enough to warrant a large amount of attention from a major power.

If that is soemthing that appeals to you, be a pirate. If it's not, be a regular race. SJ's mod gives you the choice you don't have with the stock game.

Gesochmo

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Scrap them for resources, or anylze them for tech. And you don't need intel if you abandon your planets and live in true pirate/nomad style as intended. Without planets you can't make contact with other races and they can't intel you or vice versa.

Geoschmo

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Also, if you manage to con one of the AIs into a trage alliance treaty, you will be rolling in the resources.
If you can capture a resource colony intact, even better, but be sure to scrap the facilities (loot&plunder) before the AI's Fleets come to take it back http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Building a spaceyard base in a storm with cloaking ability is highly reccommended. And tactical combat is a must.
I also reccommend building a few Pirate Hoards, so you can stash your treasure until you need to spend it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ February 12, 2003, 14:25: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

I don't know if I have a pirate leader mind indeed... I like clear situations and stable, well-organized empires... just the opposite of pirate organizations in fact.

BTW, have someone ever done any pirate dedicated shipset ? I'm thinking about my next shipset, and I'm aiming in that direction, even if pirate life seems not to be my cup of thea. That's a work I dedicate in advance to Suicide Junkie and the great work he has produced for P&N mod.

I've got a clear idea of what kind of look I would like for my ships :

http://www.shipschematics.net/yamato...p_arcadia2.jpg

source : http://www.shipschematics.net

Perhaps it will remind to some japanese mangas fans an artist called Leiji Matsumoto...

Maybe I'm totally wrong in my idea to draw such a shipset, because pirates don't build their own ships, if I well understood the philosophy ?

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Hey Trooper,

Nice ship, I'd love to see an entire ship-set!

Also, I'd love to see a ship-set for Nomadic races... oh, and if the pirate thing isn't your cup o' tea, try joining the Nomads! Sure, we don't have "civilian cloaking" ability, but we've the ability to churn out a gob of resources (from remote mining) and our maintenance costs just can't be beat! If you're playing against humans, you can always trade near-zero maint. ships and resource gatherers in exchange for some colony ships (mind you, if you're playing the pirates, you should be boarding colony ships and taking them over in the early game = colonies)

cheers

Re: New pirates shipset
 

It's gonna take a little time, I'm trying to figure out how Bryce works...

The first steps are slow but... encouraging.

http://diesel2035.free.fr/firsttry.jpg

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Hey, you know, I think the imagemod could use a pirate flag component http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Here is my first pirate ship (and my first spaceship designed with Bryce), let's call it a... cruiser. I think it's the beginning of a great shipset !

http://diesel2035.free.fr/state/pirate_cruiser.jpg

Has anybody ever created a race call simply "pirate" ?

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Trooper, that's great! It's like Starblazers meets P&N! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif This looks like it'll be a good set.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Trooper:

Nice ships, I'm looking forward to collecting the whole set! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Just one thing I'm wondering, is it easy to add windows (little points of lights/small lit squares) in Bryce? It would probably give the ships the Star Trek look... and probably be way easier than going for lots of texture as in Star Wars models.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

"Just one thing I'm wondering, is it easy to add windows (little points of lights/small lit squares) in Bryce? It would probably give the ships the Star Trek look... and probably be way easier than going for lots of texture as in Star Wars models."

That would depend on how you made the ship and how you do the windows. On a simple cube it would be fairly trivial to add an "inside" hollowed out area, put a bright light there and then punch holes through the outer skin to let the light through. On more complicated models, it gets harder.

Phoenix-D

Re: New pirates shipset
 

I think it's quite simple, putting a lightened sphere and a negative tube under the surface of a ship. I gonna make some tests...

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I really like ships that are long, somewhat resembling a naval ship. That's why I love so much the Shadri shipset, my favor of all.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Long ships are impressive, but it's hard to show them in details with a 128x128 pixel square...and mini pictures will all look the same if all ships are long and thin.

As a conclusion, animated gifs as ships pictures would be great in SE V !

About ships lights, I made some additions to the pirate shipset, see it on the link below.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Actually, SE5 is most likely going to have 3d rendered combat.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

SJ, would you mind to post your favorite basic game setup for a nice pirate single player challenge?
I mean things like:
-Map setup (Mid-life?)
-TDM races installation over P&N
-100.000 starting RPs (necessary?) to achieve (what first?) troops for example? Troops/Troop weapons cannot be analyzed and I do not yet see that many good troop transporters to capture from the AI.

And it looks like I could set the min/org/rad production to minimum limit if I do not use many captured planets with these facilities other than scrapping them for materials. Because remote mining is not affected as far as I have tested...

Your answers would be much appreciated, thanks.

PTF

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Well, midlife is your average map.
Ancient will give you an advantage with more places to hide and less trouble from the natives.
Paradise will allow the AIs to spread everywhere, forcing you to use your civilian ship's stealth abilities a lot more.

A pile of starting points will help a lot. I'd say that troops can really be left till later, since the expected returns on investment are realatively low. You do get great profits from a captured colony, but by the time they have enough facilities to be worth taking, the defenses will be fairly tough.
Getting the basics is probably best. Some chemistry/armor, for optimum strength (you can afford to micromanage repairs) and protection for capture ships.
Getting physics for bombardment missiles will help knock down those annoying shields and make things much easier for your boarding parties.

I highly reccommend mines. Not only useful for defense, as a Pirate you can make excellent use of them while on the attack.
Lay down one or two specialty mines in the shipping lanes of some unsuspecting alien race, and then pounce on the disabled ships with a spaceyard ship in tow. You can cap&scrap for instant profit, and build new mines at the same time.
Shield-destroying warheads are among the best to choose for this type of job. Engine disruptors will halt the ship, allowing missiles to be used at optimum effectiveness, and may even disable the weapons if there are no auxiliary supply tanks on board the ship.

Take note! Weapons which require zero supplies per shot WILL continue to fire after the ship is out of supply!
Take great care around ships with pure-energy weapons http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Do you keep your home planet for research and pirate hordes?

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No offense, but I think that adding the lights was a mistake. I mean, I usualy assume that a ship its really big, and with shipsets that don't have lights or windows our imagination decides how big a ship is. With those lights your frigate looks smaller than an scout in my mind. Now your destroyer, that still doesn't have lights, looks very big. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New pirates shipset
 

I like the texture that's added with lights on the ships, but I too think that the larger "portal" windows that are on the ships now tend to make the ships look smaller. I guess I had in mind very small squares or even individual pixels as representing the windows. sort of the same scale as the windows seen on the enterprise.

I still like the ships tho http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Edit: Oh, and the shark set is pretty sweet too! Is it over at PBW yet?

[ February 24, 2003, 19:14: Message edited by: jimbob ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

I will try to decrease the windows size, in order to make ships look bigger. In my opinion, a scout ship is a very minimalist ship, with one or two rooms for the crew. So I think that my scale is not as wrong.

the sharks and pexlerr shipsets are available on PBW file library.

[ February 27, 2003, 11:29: Message edited by: trooper ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

A scoutship may be very minimalist indeed ... but it still masses a hundred thousand tons ... !! Nae wee bairn, is THAT, laddie!

Re: New pirates shipset
 

don't be ridiculous... look at what a 100000 tons ship would look like :

http://www.kryon.com/cruise%202003/cruise4more.html

I think it's definitively not the size of a scout ship. Moreover, spaceships are built in light materials, so they would be even bigger. Ship tonnages mustnt'be considered as real one in SE IV. they are just a way to say " a light cruiser is two times bigger than a fregate".

That's the way I think when designing shipsets.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

You should keep the scale of ship sizes as seen in the default ship sets when making custom ship sets. Otherwise, using the custom ship set gets really annoying, esp. when an escort pic is either the size of a BC, or a small fighter or something. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Pax:
The SE4 kT is not a literal unit, and it does not mean the same thing when used in different places. It is merely a comparative aid. Do you really think that a Bridge weighs (not that it weighs anything in space...) 10,000 tons? That would just be absurd. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ February 28, 2003, 20:28: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

You are speaking of the mini pictures, aren't you ?
I am used to making portrait images as big as I can, cause cause the purpose of the portait image is to show the overall "look" of the ship.

Unlike portrait pics, mini pictures have to be scaled. That reminds me a game against the addisian empire. As the escort ships are as big as battleships, every time I was encountering one of their fleet, I was terrified !

[ February 28, 2003, 21:50: Message edited by: trooper ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Both the Portraits and Minis. It does not look good when all ships are as big as they can be. You need a relative perspective of ship sizes, and the default one used for the SE4 races is the best you can use, as it is a good standard.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Okay, think that way if you wish ... but let me tell you this: we've never BUILT a starshipc apable of transiting a wormhole, now, have we? 8)

As for makjing spacecraft out of light materials: we only d that now, because of the incredible cost of lifting HEAVY materials up out of Earth's gravity well and into orbit.

Build it in space, and you can make it as heavy as you like (engine thrust :: mass issues notwithstanding).

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mmm... I will try to keep this in mind when designing portraits. thanks.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

As raw materials come from the ground, the problem is the same.

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

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Only with current innefficient technologies. With more effecient engines and fuels (or even the sci-fi anti-gravity devices), you can eliminate the expense of getting materials into space.

Also, you can get materials from low gravity planets and asteroids too. Those require very little thrust to get the materials where you need them.

[ March 02, 2003, 09:00: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Except the ground on Mars is a lot easier to get to orbit from, than the ground on Earth. Much lighter G-well.

Then of course there's the asteroid belt. Various moons. Etc.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Several pic finished, any comments are welcomed.
I'll have to resize a bit mini pictures, in order to make them more easily identifiable.

Re: New pirates shipset
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Except the ground on Mars is a lot easier to get to orbit from, than the ground on Earth. Much lighter G-well.

Then of course there's the asteroid belt. Various moons. Etc.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah, the beauty of redundant information. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Well, Ships CAN be huge, if you like.
Mmm... what about the shipset ?

Re: New pirates shipset
 

Very nice looking set. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif