Ultimate Mod from spaceempires.org

[TacticDragon]

I have been playing SE4 on and off since the beginning of this year and I recently installed spaceempires.org's Ultimate Mod. I had already patched the unmodded Version up to Version 1.49, so I had to tweak the settings file to make the mod work.

I always play on max number of AI opponents (including neutral races) and max difficulty/bonus for AI. My race, called the Altuvian Nomads, is Psychic, Propulsion Experts, and Religious; honorable warriors with the rest of attribute points spent on research/intelligence/space combat. I like huge middle-aged galaxies.

One of my problems is that I have yet to finish a single game. Not because it gets too long (I like epic games and don't mund playing the same one for weeks or even months at end). But because I usually reach a point where I basically know I have won the game and it is simply not challenging enough to be fun anymore. So I start a new one, which is fine I guess . Anyways, I installed the Ultimate Mod to see if it would make the game even more interesting (don't get me wrong, I LOVE this game).

Here are some of my findings on the Ultimate Mod:

1) It is great, and certainly adds new dimensions to an already superb game. Please keep this in mind as you read below.

2) I am not so fond of all the new races' bitmaps though, since they are not always conforming with the original races' styles. This is just my personal preference though.

3) I just played a battle against 25 heavy cruisers equipped with almost only 270mm machine guns as weapons. Since this weapon only takes up 5 spaces in the design, it means that each cruiser was equipped with loads and loads of these low damage, relatively high range weapons. Not a fun battle. It would probably take a day to play it in tactical mode. If any of the authors read this, please do something about it!

4) On retrofiting captured ships. Maybe this is a bug, maybe it is related to me installing the mod on Version 1.49 of the original SE4. But somehow, captured enemy ships have a VERY low maintenance cost. Example: 241/0/0 for a heavy cruiser (new ship size, between the cruiser and battle cruiser). This is ridiculous and seems wrong. Consequently, it becomes impossible to retrofit these ships into my own designs, since I would always violate the "there can be a max difference of 50% cost between ship designs". Since retrofiting enemy ships is part of my usual strategy, I had to tweak the settings file again, and change the 50% into 10,000%. Which brings me to my next point.

5) This point is not specific to the Ultimate Mod, but to SE4 in general. What is the point of having this 50% rule? Let's say I want to retrofit "design1" into "design3". If the rule is violated (eg. when you want to install those new expensive Master Computers into your old ships), an easy but tedious solution I found was to create an 'intermediate' design, say "design2" whose cost is somewhere in between "design1" and "design3". I would then retrofit "design1" twice in a row: first to "design2" then into "design3". It is expensive but still better and faster than scrapping "design1" and building "design3" from scratch, thereby losing crew experience etc.

I would enjoy seeing more comments about the Ultimate Mod here. I am always seeking the "ultimate gaming experience" in strategy games, and SE4, with all its editable files, seems to be able to live up to such an experience. AIs will always be stupid, but there are ways to make them less so and more of a challenge to the human player. I would like to have your comments and ideas on this.

Thanks!