Latest Patch Rating

rbyrd · #1 June 22nd, 2001, 02:36 PM

It may have corrected the fighter stack problem, but I still can't figure out how to divide fighters into Groups in Strategic mode. All the fighters launched from a carrier or planet still go in one huge group. The only way I know around this is for planet A to launch x fighters per turn and send them to planet B while planet B launches fighters and sends them to planet A etc. Same thing if you are going to guard a jump point, your carrier has to start dropping its fighters as it approaches and have them fly the rest of the way there.

I like using a lot of fighters with rocket pods, so one huge group is worthless unless you want to be able to kill one ship 10 times over, but have nothing left for the others. Personally I wish they would up the cargo capacity of planets and not allow fighters to end their turn in space, but as long as they can they should make them work properly by allowing you to divide them however you feel like at the beginning of tactical combat.

Satellites are also still a problem. They should be evenly distributed around a planet or jump point even if in one big group.

capnq · #2 June 23rd, 2001, 02:48 AM

quote:
It may have corrected the fighter stack problem, but I still can't figure out how to divide fighters into Groups in Strategic mode. All the fighters launched from a carrier or planet still go in one huge group.

I don't know if it can be done for planets, but in theory, you should be able to set your carriers' fighter group size under Strategies/Launch. I say "in theory" because I mostly play in Tactical, and have never actually used fighters in a game in Strategic mode.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Noble713 · #3 June 23rd, 2001, 06:10 PM

quote:
Originally posted by capnq:
I don't know if it can be done for planets, but in theory, you should be able to set your carriers' fighter group size under Strategies/Launch. I say "in theory" because I mostly play in Tactical, and have never actually used fighters in a game in Strategic mode.

I thought there was a line in one of the text files that was supposed to do this: Fighters/Satellites per Group, with a default setting of 20. I don't think it ever worked though.

jowe01 · #4 June 23rd, 2001, 09:08 PM

It is a 05.

It solidly fixes some bugs, but does not really make the game more challenging.
Might be ok for games against humans but the the largely unchanged, lame AI still makes me fall asleep in front of my computer.
Have not played SE4 for three months and after this short try will no do it again until the AI gets really beefed up. Arggh, Jesus, I can live with a crash and a bug here and there, but please, make that AI finally a little bit of a challenge !

Possum · #5 June 23rd, 2001, 09:33 PM

I'm gonna give it a 6 (Average)

We waited a long time for this, and it didn't really do much of anything, other than fix the fighter stack bug. That by itself should have been the work of no more than a week or so.

OK, so we piss and moan about the AI sucking rocks, and we get lectured about how hard it is to design a good AI. OK, fine.

But where are the Drones? Where is the scenario editor? Where is the IP connectivity?

Possum · #6 June 23rd, 2001, 09:36 PM

Oh yeah, and I personally do not think fighters should be able to fly around in space within the system like they do. I think they should have no strategic movement at all, and thus be limited to the sector in which they are launched.

As they are, fighters are too damn powerful, and they skew the balance of the whole game. Not to mention that carriers are greatly diminished in importance by the way fighters work right now.

Suicide Junkie · #7 June 23rd, 2001, 10:24 PM

quote:
Oh yeah, and I personally do not think fighters should be able to fly around in space within the system like they do. I think they should have no strategic movement at all, and thus be limited to the sector in which they are launched.
As they are, fighters are too damn powerful, and they skew the balance of the whole game. Not to mention that carriers are greatly diminished in importance by the way fighters work right now.

That is really easy to mod. Just go into ShipSizes.txt and change the fighters. Set them to require 4 engines per move, max engines of 4 if you want. Add a third ability to the hull. The ability should be "combat movement" and give them something like 4 extra combat movement to compensate for the loss of normal engine effectiveness.

Instantly you have fighters than can only move one or two squares per turn on the map (so they can attack, but can't replace carriers), and have near-normal speeds in combat.

You can fiddle with the bonuses given by the afterburners in components.txt, boost the fuel usage of the fighter engines, until you get the mix just right for you.

If you remove all of their strategic movement, then fighters won't be able to attack. You will then have to remove the fighter engines from the game, and add more sizes of afterburners so they get movement bonuses of 6-9 in combat.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 23 June 2001).]