A pirates life for me...

[Suicide Junkie]

-Names are easy to change: Normal, Pirate, Nomad.
-solar sail/solar collector combo
-'small' Versions of everything + fighters very early. Small sensors, small cloaking devices, small solar sail/collector, etc.

quote:

---

I have yet to test if 'Solar Resource Generation' works on a component. Does it?

---

Nope thats the first thing I tried

quote:

---

Research and Intelligence are the weak point.

---

Definitely, research is a problem, but intel is not. When the nomads lose their home planet, they will lose contact with all other races, and intel will not be a factor.
Research will have to be done on the homeworld, and later stolen because of how the game works.

-unique fighter hull, larger than a standard 'large' fighter.
(instead of lower engine limit, multiple engines per move)

(I really don't like arbirtary limits being imposed on stuff. This way you can decide for yourself how much to spend on engines)

Thats some good stuff. I'm on it.

[Nitram Draw]

Have you tried giving the solar resource generation ability to a vehicle?

[Suicide Junkie]

No, I didn't try giving it to the hull. I noticed the negative maintenace worked before I got to that.

--------------------
Results:
- Solar Sail/ collectors for fighters
- Small Versions of most stuff. The cloaking devices are 40KT, so they were left out, but sensors are included.
- Nomads get +3 in Fighter tech. This means you start with medium fighters (lev 0) then get Large, Heavy (35 KT), and Massive (50KT, 2 engines per move) fighters. Max engines on Heavy/Massive is 99
Warning: you need fighters Lev 1 to get small ion engines, so if you don't research fighter tech, you're left with lame fighters that need to use solar sails

You can mount Full Size PDCs on Large & better fighters , as well as boarding parties. (I don't know if they work yet)
There is now a Null-space weapon for fighters.
Much more choice for armor on fighters.
Armor maxes out at 14pts/Kt, shields are Standard at 15pts/Kt.
Supply storage is available for fighters. (useful on solar-sail powered fighters, where you can cram weapons & shields instead of engines )

This Mod Version is compatible with any Version of Pirates&Nomads, but not with the original game, or the Pirates Mod.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 04 April 2001).]

[The Finn]

Wow... just spent way too long reading this entire thread (go ahead and laugh but I've looked at parts and it was very cool - just HAD to make sure I wasn't missing anything).

Waaayyy back someplace, SJ and WHoJo were debating pirate colonies and the idea of adding SDD to colonizers came up. I have a thought on that.

Could you just mod the colony components to self-destruct? That would ban ALL colonizer capture and the AI wouldn't need to be re-coded. I'm not sure if you can do it, I'm still playing the demo - getting the full Version this month. WOO-HOO!!! Can hardly wait.. I feel like an addict waiting for a hit *twitch, twitch*.... but I'm sure I'll hold out fine. *twitch*

In a way it makes sense.. not from the aspect of an empire killing off their own citizens instead of allowing someone to capture them, but in the sense that colonizers from one race would be of minor value to another. All of the technology of any importance would be at the very least an annoyance to use, at most impossible to figure out.

I'm of the mindset that pirates shouldn't colonize at all. This just makes it harder to do so.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

Could you just mod the colony components to self-destruct?

---

The problem with that is that pirates NEED to expand their planet base.
For the nomads, that would be OK, since they aren't supposed to get any colonies.

The pirates are supposed to expand, just not as fast as the current AI lets 'em because of the defenceless colony ships.

Now, I suppose, you could just force the pirates to use troops to capture intact planets.

What do the rest of you guys think?
I would still prefer to change the AI to put SDDs on colony ships, to slow down, but not prevent colony ship use by pirates.
A) Leave as is
B) AI adds SDD
C) Colony module is an SDD

[Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz]

SJ, I think SDDs on every colony ship would actually handicap the AIs. Human players would have the sense to only use SDDs when they encountered pirates.

Even then, I don't think SDDs on colony ships make sense from a game-theoretic point of view. If the ship/pop is lost anyhow what is the value of depriving a potential enemy of a potential colony?

I suspect that other than in the very early stages the benefit is less than the cost of a single SDD component - certainly not sufficient to cover the expense of installing SDDs on the other 95% of ships not encountering pirates.

Maybe a better solution is to only load minimal pop onto each colony ship and to have re-usable pop transports equipped with SDDs?

------------------
Resistence is futile.

[Lucanos]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz:

Resistence is futile.

---

Only if you fail to resist!

[Nitram Draw]

My thoughts are this.
Pirates need colonies but they must be prevented from establishing a lot of them, otherwise they are just another empire.
Their colonies don't have the same function as a standard race. Pirates need to scrap, analyize, resupply, repair and build new ships. They don't need resource production, research or intel facilities as much. At least that is how I read the thread and from my own limited pirate experiance.
If pirates are not allowed a colony module the only way they can colonize is capturing ships.
Limiting colonies can only be done easily in a few ways, limit colonizing to home planet type and home atmosphere type. This effects all races though.
I would vote for SDD's on colony ships if nothing else was changed.
I would vote for no SDD's if Pirates were given a huge negative to happiness, you can have all the colonies you want but if they are rioting you get no benefit from them.

[mac5732]

first, WHoJo and SJ, great thread, its the most popular and gets bigger every day. SJ great work on your mod. Caught up on the Posts and my opinions on some of your questions.

1. pirates definitly should have ftrs, Ftrs should have capability of cloaking as well

2 as for capital ships, I like the idea of them building up to BC's only, but also include Lt. Carriers. Other then that they have to capture or steal the larger ones.

3. SDD on colony ships for sure. if they can be modded, don't know.

4. Pirates should have some form of research capabilities. In old days wasn't necessary, but with Space Pirates this would be a must.
They would either steal scientists to keep up to improve their "evil ways" or steal it. Maybe restrictions but definitly should have some type of this capability.

Like the idea of ftrs being able to capture
this would be interesting.

As for fast expansion, how about limiting the number of colony ships they could use at any one time or over a year or two? or make it tougher to make deals with AI or have at least 1 AI, blood enemies of pirate race where they never deal and seek out pirate planets and bases?

Keep up the good work, just some ideas,
Mac

[The Finn]

Have no idea if the following will work or not - really not sure about modding since I'm still stuck with the demo.. and the demo doesn't have refit rules that I'm aware of.

Ok, assume you are using the 'not a pirate' rules for colony ships so pirates can't have standard colony ships...

Add the rule the the colony ship HULL and then create a new pirate colony ship HULL (same size, etc as the standard one) that's much more expensive than the normal one.. that would slow down the production of the pirate's colony ships (make it take approx. a year (or two?) say to build one). Thus the pirate could still build colony ships but very slowly and at great expense. Not something to be done frivilously.

Then, add the SDD function to the standard colony components (that way the AI ship design doesn't have to be changed)...

Here's my questions - you destroy the colony component (and therefore the SDD) and capture an AI colonizer. Can you then REPAIR it(which would pretty much defeat the purpose of the SDD)? AND, could you take the damaged hull back and retrofit it into a pirate colony ship?

My hope would be that this would allow the pirate to make relatively cheaper Versions of "his" colony ship - since the expense is in the hull not the component. You capture an enemy hull.. pay a small amount to refit it with your colony component as opposed to paying a large sum for a colony ship built from scratch. All the while keeping the number of colony ships the pirate has to a minimum.

[This message has been edited by The Finn (edited 06 April 2001).]