Great Naval Battles v 1.0 released!

[MKSheppard]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Fill us in, what exactly is the mod?

It's in a rough state, but it is an attempt
to recreate the "feel" of Naval combat
from 1906 to 2002, and this is the first
mod to support microdrones as missiles, I think.

[Atrocities]

It like what your doing. Nice naval image at start up. I did however encounter a few errors created by the nutrual players.

LOOKIE

I got a lot of them, but I figure you'll get the jist from this.

BTW, nice work, another fine mod to add to my collection.

[MKSheppard]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
It like what your doing. Nice naval image at start up. I did however encounter a few errors created by the nutrual players.

I got a lot of them, but I figure you'll get the jist from this.

BTW, nice work, another fine mod to add to my collection.

Well, like I said below, v1.0 of GNB is PBEM
only, with no AI at all...I changed too much
around. I might release a 1.01 patch in a few
days fixing:

Worthless Weapon Platforms: Due to MM not making
a Ship/Base/Weaponsplatform tag, in order
to remove all the full sized components from the
Drone section, I had to make copies of all
components for the weapons platforms...I have
to copy a LOT of stuff, and that is time consuming.

Rudimentary AI: I'll try and make a simple
AI that works with the game and copy it to
the other 20 racial slots. Everyone in the game
will now act the same, but you won't be getting
those errors.

Minor Hull Changes: The ship hull sizes
will remain the same, but engines per move will
be tweaked to fix inconsistencies, and I will
see about adding some "special" abilities to
the smaller hulls like Destroyer and Destroyer-Escort
to make them viable in the mid-to-late game, where
everyone has l33t battleships.

[MKSheppard]

Does everyone want a beta Version of the next
GNB patch, 1.01?

A few new ships are added to 1.01, torpedoes
go back to being non-microdrone as a seeking
weapon, a Rudimentary AI for the Abbidion
is being worked on, special advantages are
implemented mostly, with small ships gaining
an automatic combat move bonus, making smaller
ships worthwhile in the later game, and allowing
me to correctly implement battlecruisers.

Contrary to SE IV's default hull sizes,
Battlecruisers in real life were both bigger
AND heavier than contemptorary battleships,
due to the increased space needed for boilers
and fuel to keep them running. Quite a big
price to pay for 5 knots of extra speed with
the WWI battlecruisers, and 10 knots of extra
speed with the Hood.

I'm sorry to all of you for posting this mod
in such an incomplete state, but I felt it
was the best way to 'light a fire' under my
@$$, to force me to WORK on the mod and
get it finally finished after over a year's
of playing around.

[ June 17, 2002, 09:11: Message edited by: MKSheppard ]

[dogscoff]

Sounds like a cool concept for a mod. A few things:

-You might want to wait for the next game patch before doing any more modding: I think you'll find the forthcoming changes to mounts very useful. (Might save you some work)

-There's nothing to stop you changing *all* the graphics to a naval theme, IE seascape instead of stars in the background, islands / ports instead of planets. You might have to manually create your own maps for it to make sense. You could. Not sure how you'd justify warp points, either...

-The space vikings are a nice boaty- themed (ish) shipset. Might be good for your mod (although it sounds like you're not interested in "antique" naval warfare)

-That would be a cool mod though... Imagine starting with nothing more than wooden ship technology and no weaponry. The you have to research your way through ramming hulls and catapults and cannons, metal hulls, steam ships and modern engines, all the way up to submarines (cloaked), aircraft carriers, long-range missiles and maye even some future tech that is now only on the drawing board.

[MKSheppard]

Originally posted by dogscoff:

-You might want to wait for the next game patch before doing any more modding
<snip>

I might, but I've seen that it won't change
that much, except allowing mounts to be researched,
allowing me to recreate in greater fidelity
the weapons race from 1900 to 1945 resulting
in ever larger calibre weapons......

The old 14 inch guns of WWI had less range and power than the "new" 14 inch guns of WWII...etc

[MKSheppard]

Great Naval Battles For Space Empires IV Gold

Patch 1.01 Release!

GNB Patch 1.01
(1.56 MB in size - future patches will only be 100k)

Fixed Components.txt File
(32 KB ZIP)

(original 1.01 patch made bases unusable due to
errors in life support/crew quarter component
data fields)

*************************

First of all, I'd like to apologize to all of you for
releasing GNB in such an unfinished form...but I had to
do it to light a fire under my *** to get me to WORK WORK
WORK, and FINISH FINISH it after a year's worth of
fiddling around.

This Version should work. As before, send all
comments/complaints/ideas to rrc3813@yahoo.com

Seven AI races are now used in this. Don't expect
anything TOO bright from them, as they pretty
much research and design ships in the same
way....

John Beech's Ship Set: "Neo-Canadians" is supported
now in GNB, and is included in the patch, mostly
because I'm 50% Canadian Anecestry .

The minor changes to it are:
-Fixing the Canadian Flag to be cleaner.
-Changing the Ruler's name and title to
one of my canadian friends.
-Changing the AI so it works with GNB.

Weapons platforms are still pretty much useless,
as I have a LOT of work to do on them still,
mostly involving the tedious work of copying
the component data for everything and making
duplicates of them using the WeapPlatform tag.

But everything else has been fiXored, and lots
of new stuff is included, and it's all been
playtested somewhat by me.

I've split the Ship Yards into three different
areas:

Deepdock (component for bases - Fastest shipyard due to zero G assembly line)
Planetary Yard (facility for colonies - 2nd fastest due to sheer size)
Mobile Ship Yard (component for ships - slowest due to fact it has to
fit on a moving ship)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Download the patch.
Go into your /GNB_Mod directory and delete the following folders:
AI
DSGNNAME

Then Go into the PICTURES directory and delete the RACES folder.

Unzip the 1.01 Patch into the GNB_Mod Directory using the folder
option of Winzip, and PLAY!

[ June 18, 2002, 10:15: Message edited by: MKSheppard ]