Ingame notes? SE5 forgets types? Ministers? LAN?

[Lohr]

Hi

At first, i have to say, that I use SE5 1.66 and Catpain Kwoks Balance Mod 1.13. I'm playing a game hot seat with a friend of mine.
Perhaps someone may help is with some questions:

1. I think, its nearly a must, that a big strategygame like SE5 has to have the possibility to make notes within the game. May I anyhow make some notes within a game? Something like to send myself a message in about 10 turns to remind me something? May I make some notifications, reminders, and textnotes in the game?

2. My friend and me noticed in a game, that SE5 loose the status of a colony from one turn to another. I tell SE5 "This is a mining colony, and that is a military installation", and in the very next turn SE5 has forgotten this. I have to say, that we are playing a hot-seat game, and my friend is number one in the turn-order, and I'm number two. Furthermore, we are playing with Captain Kwoks Mod. The game-version is 1.66, and Kwoks mod-version is 1.13 (the fitting one to SE5 1.66)

3. I made a "pure" Population-Transport-Ship (to aim at not to confuse the Minister-AI). It's made of cargo-space, life-support, engines, and so on. Nothing other than needed to transport population from one planet to another. I toggle 2 or 3 ships to minister, and ... : nothing happens. The Pop.-Transport-Ships do nothing, and dont get any oders from the ministers.
I'm second in the turnorder, for my race I had chosen moderate minister-style, and the shiptype is set on Population-Transport.
He told me further, in his solo-game the minister are playing well.

4. My friend told me, he tried to start a multiplayer game on one machine. He tried to get connected on his own machine, and had no success to connect neither to local host, nor to through other methods (127.0.0.x and other). So we decieded not to waste time to get it running via. TCP/IP over the net, and trying to ask in the forum.

In these days, we trying to get enough components for a "Network-" Computer, which we want to doposit in the corner, to activate it, when we want play a weekend .
Is there a practible way in the meantime to play SpaceEmpire 5 on two different machines (TCP/IP via local area network oder through the web?)

Hot Seat is not realy an option...

[Sardia]

Hot seat is so much better and faster, no? Especially humans vs comps, with tactical.

[Captain Kwok]

1. You can make notes via the system report. Right click on a sector and you'll see a system report option at the bottom of the list.

2. I've seen this from time to time, not sure what causes it. It's sort of random and will only effect certain planets.

3. Sometimes the internal design type (used by the AI) doesn't match a player's design type. Updating to v1.14a should fix it.

4. You can use PBW for non-hotseat play. Here's a link that explains how it works: http://www.pbw.cc/text/faq.jsp

[Lohr]

Thanks for your answer.

Captain Kwok said:
1. You can make notes via the system report. Right click on a sector and you'll see a system report option at the bottom of the list.
http://www.pbw.cc/text/faq.jsp

Thanks. This is a kind of something, I was searching for.

Captain Kwok said:
2. I've seen this from time to time, not sure what causes it. It's sort of random and will only effect certain planets.
http://www.pbw.cc/text/faq.jsp

o.k.... i doesn't think we find out the reason for it, but we will pay attention to it further.

Captain Kwok said:
3. Sometimes the internal design type (used by the AI) doesn't match a player's design type. Updating to v1.14a should fix it.
http://www.pbw.cc/text/faq.jsp

Well, we look foreward to this in our next game, when we're patching SE5 and your BalanceMod on my machine.

Captain Kwok said:
4. You can use PBW for non-hotseat play. Here's a link that explains how it works: http://www.pbw.cc/text/faq.jsp

We don't want to use the web for playing with 2 physically presented local machines. He is in the neighboring room.
So, is it possible anyhow to play it via local area network on two machines, without using the web? Is there something we may try out? Or is there a known practible method?

[Captain Kwok]

You can play it TCP/IP, but it can be difficult to get it to work smoothly, especially with routers involved!

PBW with 2 players can be just as fast and works smoothly.

Either way the game mode will be simultaneous, so you should be probably familiarize yourself with that game format, it works a bit differently than sequential mode.

[Lohr]

Captain Kwok said:
You can play it TCP/IP, but it can be difficult to get it to work smoothly, especially with routers involved!

If we are planning to play in a LAN, we connect our Computers with a twisted pair cable.

Captain Kwok said:
PBW with 2 players can be just as fast and works smoothly.

Well, we'll try it out, if we can't get working it with TCP/IP in a LAN.

Captain Kwok said:
Either way the game mode will be simultaneous, so you should be probably familiarize yourself with that game format, it works a bit differently than sequential mode.

In our hot-seat-game we are playing with simulaneous turns, already. We are looking foreward to play in a pbem one day, or somthing.

[Suicide Junkie]

You could also try specifying a network drive as the save game location during the game setup.

Then it would be like manual move mode, except you don't actually have to move anything because it is already in the right place.

[Lohr]

Ah, local network drive, nice idea.

We will try this out as soon as our "trash-box" (=a computer made out of old computer components, which we are collecting here and there at the moment) is ready for duty.

Iv've got here an oled netgear router, an old 4 port hub., as well as a twisted par networl cable.

I think, we will try out first the hub, then the twisted pair cable. I think, the the router we may have the smallest success, at all.

[Fyron]

The router should actually give you the best success rate, since it's DHCP server works with Windows to create the LAN automagically for you, unlike the hub or archaic twisted pair cable. SE4/5 TCP/IP works great in such a LAN environment; its just going over the Internet where one or more parties are behind home routers that issues arise.

[Arralen]

I can't even connect to the server instance of SE5 with the client on my very own comp, neither on it's IP not on 127.0.0.1 (localhost) - and I'm running W2k therefore firewall can't be an issue. Tries to connect but times out with error message "Unable to establish provider" .. whatever this means