New pirates shipset

[PsychoTechFreak]

SJ, would you mind to post your favorite basic game setup for a nice pirate single player challenge?
I mean things like:
-Map setup (Mid-life?)
-TDM races installation over P&N
-100.000 starting RPs (necessary?) to achieve (what first?) troops for example? Troops/Troop weapons cannot be analyzed and I do not yet see that many good troop transporters to capture from the AI.

And it looks like I could set the min/org/rad production to minimum limit if I do not use many captured planets with these facilities other than scrapping them for materials. Because remote mining is not affected as far as I have tested...

Your answers would be much appreciated, thanks.

PTF

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, midlife is your average map.
Ancient will give you an advantage with more places to hide and less trouble from the natives.
Paradise will allow the AIs to spread everywhere, forcing you to use your civilian ship's stealth abilities a lot more.

A pile of starting points will help a lot. I'd say that troops can really be left till later, since the expected returns on investment are realatively low. You do get great profits from a captured colony, but by the time they have enough facilities to be worth taking, the defenses will be fairly tough.
Getting the basics is probably best. Some chemistry/armor, for optimum strength (you can afford to micromanage repairs) and protection for capture ships.
Getting physics for bombardment missiles will help knock down those annoying shields and make things much easier for your boarding parties.

I highly reccommend mines. Not only useful for defense, as a Pirate you can make excellent use of them while on the attack.
Lay down one or two specialty mines in the shipping lanes of some unsuspecting alien race, and then pounce on the disabled ships with a spaceyard ship in tow. You can cap&scrap for instant profit, and build new mines at the same time.
Shield-destroying warheads are among the best to choose for this type of job. Engine disruptors will halt the ship, allowing missiles to be used at optimum effectiveness, and may even disable the weapons if there are no auxiliary supply tanks on board the ship.

Take note! Weapons which require zero supplies per shot WILL continue to fire after the ship is out of supply!
Take great care around ships with pure-energy weapons

[PsychoTechFreak]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
A pile of starting points will help a lot. I'd say that troops can really be left till later, since the expected returns on investment are realatively low. You do get great profits from a captured colony, but by the time they have enough facilities to be worth taking, the defenses will be fairly tough.

Do you keep your home planet for research and pirate hordes?

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by trooper:

About ships lights, I made some additions to the pirate shipset, see it on the link below.

No offense, but I think that adding the lights was a mistake. I mean, I usualy assume that a ship its really big, and with shipsets that don't have lights or windows our imagination decides how big a ship is. With those lights your frigate looks smaller than an scout in my mind. Now your destroyer, that still doesn't have lights, looks very big.

[jimbob]

I like the texture that's added with lights on the ships, but I too think that the larger "portal" windows that are on the ships now tend to make the ships look smaller. I guess I had in mind very small squares or even individual pixels as representing the windows. sort of the same scale as the windows seen on the enterprise.

I still like the ships tho

Edit: Oh, and the shark set is pretty sweet too! Is it over at PBW yet?

[ February 24, 2003, 19:14: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[trooper]

I will try to decrease the windows size, in order to make ships look bigger. In my opinion, a scout ship is a very minimalist ship, with one or two rooms for the crew. So I think that my scale is not as wrong.

the sharks and pexlerr shipsets are available on PBW file library.

[ February 27, 2003, 11:29: Message edited by: trooper ]

[Pax]

A scoutship may be very minimalist indeed ... but it still masses a hundred thousand tons ... !! Nae wee bairn, is THAT, laddie!

[trooper]

don't be ridiculous... look at what a 100000 tons ship would look like :

http://www.kryon.com/cruise%202003/cruise4more.html

I think it's definitively not the size of a scout ship. Moreover, spaceships are built in light materials, so they would be even bigger. Ship tonnages mustnt'be considered as real one in SE IV. they are just a way to say " a light cruiser is two times bigger than a fregate".

That's the way I think when designing shipsets.

[Fyron]

You should keep the scale of ship sizes as seen in the default ship sets when making custom ship sets. Otherwise, using the custom ship set gets really annoying, esp. when an escort pic is either the size of a BC, or a small fighter or something.

Pax:
The SE4 kT is not a literal unit, and it does not mean the same thing when used in different places. It is merely a comparative aid. Do you really think that a Bridge weighs (not that it weighs anything in space...) 10,000 tons? That would just be absurd.

[ February 28, 2003, 20:28: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[trooper]

You are speaking of the mini pictures, aren't you ?
I am used to making portrait images as big as I can, cause cause the purpose of the portait image is to show the overall "look" of the ship.

Unlike portrait pics, mini pictures have to be scaled. That reminds me a game against the addisian empire. As the escort ships are as big as battleships, every time I was encountering one of their fleet, I was terrified !

[ February 28, 2003, 21:50: Message edited by: trooper ]