Hello

[Machiavelli]

Hello, everybody.

I guess this is sort of my hello message and introduction. First off, I ordered SEIV Gold Last week (was that Friday?) and it's not my first time playing (in a way). I played the demo of SEIV for awhile, but then stopped playing it for awhile. And recently all my games seemed to be getting boring, and I thought of SEIV.

So I went to order it and it just so happened that Gold had been released just a couple months ago. So I ordered it and shipped it Ground - should be here towards the end of the week.

Additionally, I wanted to throw out a few questions that I recall from when I had the demo.

1) I recall reading that, when it came to damage absorbancy, regular armor IV is more efficient (when looking at tonnage) than shields up to level III. What is the deal with armor, shields and their usefullness in comparison to each other? If anybody cares to elaborate, would you bother telling me about the other armors and shields (emissive, phased, organic, etc)

2) When it comes to designing your race at the game setup screen, what are the best Advanced Race technologies - Organic, Crystalline, Psychic, Temporal(?) or Religious?

3) Early game considerations - colonization tips, scouting, "build orders", good early ship designs, good early-game research projects, etc.

4) Are there any good sites out there for SEIV? I found spaceempires.org, but it seems they had a recent server crash or something. Any other good ones out there (if I enjoy SEIV enough, I might put a site out there myself)?

5) I plan to play single player for awhile to re-familiarize myself with SEIV - but I plan to delve into PBW (perhaps quite heavily). Are there any, let's say, not-so-good players (can't really put that politely) who would like to include me in their PBW games?

6) Speaking of which, is it that much extra fooling around including Custom Race Styles in games, or is it not worth the trouble (and just stick with the defaults)?

Like I said, just some broad, general questions. Mostly, this is a hello message.

Hello and thanks for your help!

[ 09 April 2002: Message edited by: Machiavelli ]