?? regarding minesweeping

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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.

[MrAnon]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
The original is playable as-is, but there are some minor things that could need improving.

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....:>

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

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 . 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?

[Captain Kwok]

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.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

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. )

Welcome to the forum.