[gajus]

Hey, I'm a noob on this board but have been playing SEIII, SEIV for years now. I have a stupid but interesting problem. I am using v1.49 of SE IV (because I am too poor to buy Gold right before SEV comes out).

My problem is this: My brother and 40 turns into a kickass humans vs. computers game in a large galaxy. I had never played over e-mail before, and naturally I selected the "Different Machines" option in the game setup. I DID NOT check the "no tactical combat" check box. I made triple sure. The problem is this. I get most of my fun out of the tactical combat aspect, and I can't even figure out how to capture planets in auto combat. The Different Machines (play by e-mail) option seems like it doesn't actually allow tactical combat. What I want to do is hack the savegame file to switch the game from Different Machines mode to Hotseat mode so we can use tactical combat. I know it will make e-mailing the savegame a little more annoying, but it is preferable so we can have tactical combat. I know the option for Different Machines or "same machine" is entered in plain text into a header portion of the savegame file. I have tried editing this with wordpad to "same machine" (as I saw in a different savegame file created as a hotseat game). This didn't work though and loading the hacked file crashed SEIV. Has anyone here ever done this or have any idea where I am going wrong here? Is all hope lost? Should I just start a new game?

Thanks for reading this far.