Zippy's SE IV Mod (Note: It's HUGE!!!)

[zippy]

Skulky: I'll break down your issues so it’s easier for me to reply...

Skulky "Nice mod, the new components are great"
Zippy "Thanks"

Skulky "a little high damage ... Still i think you could tone down the damage on the weapons and the sheilds"
Zippy "I spent considerable time balancing Beams, Torps, Missiles, Point Defenses, Shields and Armor for ships AND fighters. Sure, a 980 Torp seems high, but note that torps have a fire rate of 1 shot per 3 turns (so that their rate of damage is less than beam weapons). Furthermore, armor gets up to 900 -- and you can have 2 armors for the space of one torp for a total armor of 1800! Of course large weapon mounts cause more damage, but they also take up more space. I'm not saying that things are perfectly balanced, but that's what you get with a game as complex as SEIV "

Skulky: "and waht is the no intel no troops no mines deal, we should be able to choose that not be forced upon with it. cloak is nice, but only for organic? ... And no stellar manipulation???? what is that?" (Bold added by Zippy)
Zippy: "Hey, good idea. Maybe I should write a program called ZippyMod AI Setup Utility.exe and put it in your ZippyMod folder Most of the TechAreas that you mention are disabled by default because the AI doesn't use them. My Home Page has more info about this stuff. Organic still has cloak because my program isn't perfect (see Help - Notes - TechAreas from within the program)."

Skulky: "if you aren;t religious you are screwed"
Zippy: "hmmm, I'm not sure about this one. In my mod the Religious Talisman costs 1000 of each resource and requires a space of 80 while in the original Version the cost and space are 300 and 50, respectively. As far as I know everything else is the same for the religious trait between my mod and the original Version. So, it would seem to me that taking religious is slightly less desirable in my mod."

Skulky: "The ratios are so negatively in favor of weapons hitting"
Zippy: "Wouldn't this make the religious race even less of an advantage? Anyway, I assume that you are referring to missiles and torps. Missiles always hit, but they can also be shot down and outrun. Also, PD's require 20 space while missiles require 50 so the advantage should always go to the defender. The reason for the torp bonuses was to improve game balance between AI-controlled static defenses (bases, satellites, WP's) and human-controlled ships. Without the bonuses a human player could just park his/her ships at maximum weapons range and take out the static defenses; ships would have a 100% chance to hit the static defenses, while the static defenses would have a low chance of hitting the ships at that distance. My hope is that now human players have to use a little strategy when attacking bases."

I hope that these long-winded replies are useful. I'd love to hear your reaction

[Skulky]

I've started getting used to the damage now, it doesn't really matter that much anyway.

The armor is great stuff, i like the organic armor better (the sludge stuff, or is that some other racial?) it regenerates which is so much better than just having high hit points. I think that regeneration is a little high. It makes it almost impossible to kill someone with it as they can regen thier armor faster than you can kill it.

I think that the cloak is cool, i use it a ton, but there needs to be a way to detect it, maybe a large base and WP only device that can see lvl 5 cloaks and then give every racial one lvl 5 type and the normal ppl only a lvl 4 so that racial allows you better cloaking. for religious or physic you could have it called a S.E.P field (from Life the Universe and Everything, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy trilogy) Somebody Else's Problem renders things invisible due to you not caring about it and you can only see it if you are looking for it/know its there.

I played a full tech start just to see everything and i am using the religious thing to totally dominate becuase everything i fire hits the enemy. I think the problem was that one of my ships wasn't designed with a combat sensor so it had like -200% or something and then i used religion. I just never tried it before, its great now and ill probably take it in every game from now on.

I still don't agree with the nearly impossible to overcome to-hit odds. I think this is one area where the odds could be lowered and it would still be playable. Static defenses aren't as good as ships in real life anyway. Have you heard of the Maginot Line? Not as great as a massive army of tanks. And what if i get the AI to gift me one of its super good infinite resource worlds? then i am set for life. Better thana ringworld.

IIRC i have seen AI's that can do troops and stellar manipulation (a little eratic but hey) at least we shoudl get the destroyers, the ai uses those, a little wierdly but at least it doesn't killit self as i once feared.

I just found the Warp gate tech, cool.

[Phoenix-D]

"Static defenses aren't as good as ships in real life anyway. Have you heard of the Maginot Line? Not as great as a massive army of tanks."

Uh, I dunno. It was good enough to prompt the German army to go AROUND it.

That's the main disadvantage of static defenses- they don't move.

Phoenix-D

[Skulky]

my point

[Phoenix-D]

Right.. but static defenses, where you can't go around them or otherwise exploit their immobility, tend to be pretty nasty customers.

Tangent:
"Retrofit Max Percent Difference in Cost := 10000"

Ran into this line from settings.txt..not sure this is a good idea unless you want to drasticlly shorten build times from the human player. This could let you build an empty ship, then retrofit it to an attack or even stellar manipulation ship much faster than those ships would have been built on their own.

Phoenix-D

[zippy]

Skulky: Thank you very much for the feedback. I'll strongly consider your suggestions in the next Version. I still have one question though -- Are you referring exclusively to Torps when you say "the nearly impossible to overcome to-hit odds?" I can see how the Torp bonuses might be a tad too high, but I'm not sure what I could do to improve Beams and Missiles. Also, do you have any suggestions for the Torp bonuses (assuming that this is your area of concern)?

Thanks again!

[zippy]

Phoenix-D: Darn, I never considered your point. I set Retrofit Max Percent Difference in Cost to 10000 back in Version 1.7 of my mod because the AI doesn't retrofit often enough to avoid the original 50% limit. The biggest problem is with Bases which the AI upgrades every 10 turns or so. If the cost of upgrading a base exceeds Retrofit Max Percent Difference in Cost after 10 turns, then the AI will never upgrade the base! Unfortunately, I don't see any way to address your concern AND insure that the AI will always upgrade ships and bases. Personally, I think the best solution is to keep things the way they are so that AI bases don't become obsolete; human players will just have to refrain from building empty ships. I'd appreciate any other ideas

[Phoenix-D]

Well, the easiest/hardest solution is to play with the number until it's low enough to make it a little more difficult to abuse, but high enough so the AI will retrofit.

Phoenix-D

[Husky65]

quote:

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Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"Static defenses aren't as good as ships in real life anyway. Have you heard of the Maginot Line? Not as great as a massive army of tanks."

Uh, I dunno. It was good enough to prompt the German army to go AROUND it.

That's the main disadvantage of static defenses- they don't move.

Phoenix-D

---

The Maginot line also took a massive amount of money out of productive defence procurement (Tanks, AFVs, Aircraft, effective mobile communications, etc) and put it into pouring concrete for about 10 years and resulted in a very passive defensive doctrine on the part of the French, which contributed a great deal to their collapse.

It was an unmitigated disaster for France.

[Phoenix-D]

"It was an unmitigated disaster for France."

Yes, but in an actual fight wasn't *inferior* to what could have been produced; given the advantage of fixed fortifications, a head-on assult against it would have been very painful. Probably moreso than the equivilent amount of mobile units. So IF you can go around a fixed defense or exploit it's immobility, it's worthless. If you can't do that, things get a little nasty.

And in SE4, it's much harder to go around a fortifiction. Sure, you can make a new WP in- but then you have to find a non-connected system to make a new WP in. Worse, a system shield makes that a non-option, so now you have to find a different warp line in.

In some cases, you end up with no choice but to attack through the defenses; I had a warp nexus in one game. It was guarded mostly by forts and sats, and anniliated over 10 times it's tonnage in attackers by the end of the game. Quite the investment, I'd say.

Phoenix-D