Babylon 5 Mod

[pathfinder]

Note all: Come 4 March I won't have a lot of time for the B5 MOD other than PBW turns.

[grumbler]

PF: I hope you cannot continue as much due to GOOD reasons (like new house, new spouse, new kid, etc).

ALL: I ran my synthetic weapons analysis but found that I didn't include enough ships per side to make the stastics valid Am starting again with 10 ships per side and including reversed starting order (moving first had a disproportionate effect on the outcomes as well).

So much for doing it simple - shoulda known!

[pathfinder]

Grumbler: Naw, something called Freelancer not throwing in the towel, just not spending nearly as much time. still have Yolu (molecular weapons similar to Minbar + plus some ships for them) to do yet...

[AGoetz]

Been no Posts for a while, so here's the (as I remember) status of my current Single Player game.

Note : The Abbai AI continues to cause unexplained RCEs at odd times, fortuntly they aren't in the current game.

Highest AI level, Highest AI bonus.

I'm the Gaim and I control a 25 system section of a large map. There are 8 jump points out of this region, the Vree or Centuri lie on the other side of most of these. Each jump point is guarded by 6 Heavy Cruisers (5 Particle Concentrators + PD), 2 Heavy Carriers (180 Medium Fighters (Particle Guns) each, Packet Torpedoes, PD), 4 Escort sized Assualt ships (2 Gaim Boarding Parties each) and 1 Medium Repair vessel (loaded with Packet Torpedoes). I have close to 40 planetary ship yards, over 130 star-base mounted ship yards and have a stock pile of over 3 million Minerals so I could build one massive navy in a hurry if I needed to. To keep happiness up, every one of my planets has 100 Light Infantry - the main reason why I have more units than most the AIs put together.
I'm currently rated as number 5 out of the 9 remaining empires (the Raiders have bought life to my O2 worlds , no neutrals).
The LLort are the largest empire with over 40 systems.
The Centuri have the largest Navy (by quite a margin) - they have 500 ships in service. They have been launching Intel attacks on me for ages, but now that I've gotten some decent intel buildings up and running they aren't getting through. Takes the computer a couple of minutes to process the Centauri's turn
I know that the Centauri and Vree have at least Dreadnought hulls but they have shown no sign of having the advanced armors yet (mmm, Assault ships).
To speed up turn times I'm contemplating building an exploration force and culling that Centauri fleet a little . I figure half a dozen BaseShip sized vessels should do the trick.

[grumbler]

AGoetz,

Are the Raiders working now? I remember one of my first games, before I realized that the nomad races didn't work, saw me capture a nomad homeworld. When I hit facilities upgrade the world upgraded to one shipyard and eighteen Manufacturing facilities! That one world could build with more minerals (something like 55,000, 'cause I was an ancients race) than I could produce in the whole empire!

I stopped playing using nomads after that!

[pathfinder]

grumbler: they are probably only working as a "standard" race.

[AGoetz]

No, the Raiders weren't working. When I showed up they had plenty of tech, but no ships or units. As a Nomad they also had no colonies other than their Homeworld. It was an easy task to load a transport with some of keep-the-peace troops and take them.
Problem : far too easy
Benefit : at least doubled my productive worlds as I can now fully exploit H2 and O2 planets.

Game update : the Markab started RCEing Last night. I've turned off their Design Minister as I'm not ready for the game to end (it's the usual suspect, Ultra Efficent Fusion Engines). Once I've researched a bit more of the advanced armors as well as finished off the ECM/Sensor techs I'll be putting together an annilation fleet to speed the game up - when there are 3 AIs with over 350 ships it takes ages to process a turn.

[pathfinder]

AGoetz: Are you using v 1.49 or Gold B5? I find that Gold is MUCH more stable

[grumbler]

I haven't had a chance to add anything to my simulation runs lately, so I thought I would post the results of the first four runs to keep the interest up.

I ran a series of simulations of a "long range" ship versus a "short range" ship design using various combinations of range, ROF, and damage, in aneffort to help us get a better hand on weapons mix.

Starting assumptions:

1. Ten ships on each side fight to the death. One “Long Range” (LR), one “Short Range” (SR)

2. Both fleets use “optimum firing range” with no formations.

3. Max (ancient) tech available for both sensors and ECM

4. Use Shadow battleship as the base hull for all ships, with UE bio drive V. Speed 18.

5. No passive armor, Refracting armor 5

6. Each ship had 10 weapons of the exact same type.

7. Each case had two tests, alternating which side went first.

8. All weapons were DF with no to hit bonuses or special damage types. No damage reduction due to range.

Case 1: LR-1 vs SR-1
LR-1 had range 10, damage 100, ROF 2
SR-1 had range 5, damage 100, ROF 1

Results: In both runs, the SR-1 won, losing 2 ships when moving second, 3 when moving first.

Case 2: LR-2 vs SR-1
LR-2 had range 20, damage 100, ROF 2
SR-1 as above

Results: LR-2 won both runs, losing 3 ships when it moved first, and 5 when moving second.

Case 3: LR-1 vs SR-2
LR-1 had range 10, damage 100, ROF 2
SR-2 had range 10, damage 100, ROF 1

Results: SR-2 won both rounds (duh!) losing no ships when moving first and 3 ships when moving second.

Case 4: LR-2 vs SR-2
LR-2 had range 20, damage 100, ROF 2
SR-2 had range 10, damage 100, ROF 1

Results: This was the interesting one. SR-2 won the round when LR-2 moved first, 10-2. But when SR-2 moved first, LR-2 won, 10-3.

My assumption here is that the side that moved first didn’t get in range, so took the first hit and never recovered.

More results and analysis to come, if people think these sorts of things are going to be useful.

[AGoetz]

As this is my first PBW game, there are some things that are surprising me.

Firstly - just how many neighbours I've found (or have found me) and it's only turn 12. I'm still running around on prototype fission drives (oh will you researchers please hurry up) and I've already got 3 spots on my other empires screen occupied. I've only visited about 6 systems!
Second is more of a question - should I be trying to get treaties with the other players - or building war fleets? I haven't seen enemy fleets yet - but that doesn't mean that they aren't already under construction.

In a versus AI game I'd quite happily stick a couple of warships on the a jump point and then ignore whatever is on the other side. In a human game I'd expect assaults, tactics and treaty use to be a bit better thought out.

Main point of paranoia - I'm the only H2 breather on the map so the other players are going to want my people (oh well, even if I'm wiped out, this means that some of my people are likely to survive to game end - they're just too valuable to completly xenocide.)