A pirates life for me...

[Suicide Junkie]

The secret bases are no mod, they're just space stations hidden in storm sectors, or (not so secretly) in asteroid fields.

Some of the mods that I did make:
A machine shop, much smaller than the original repair bay, but only does 1 component per turn. Good to fit on regular ships if you feel like it.
Ablative Armor. 5 Levels, 1Kt space, 6 to 15 Kt damage absorption. Note that shields provide 8 hitpoints per Kt at best. This is so that there is a point to armor in combat. You can either have shields, which regen after battle, are armor, which must be repaired slowly, but protects better.
Shields: the hitpoint values have been swapped from normal & phased. I figure, you can either have more hitpoints, OR block phased weapons. Its another tradeoff decision, that depends of what your enemy is doing. Shields also regenerate a token amout of shields during battle (5 points for Shield V) Its just for atmosphere, really, the only real effect is on the difficulty of ship capture.
I also spread shield regenerators out, so you get A new regenerator level every two shield tech levels, rather than all at the end.
I also boosted the output of Massive Planetary Shields, to 10,000, seeing as they were pretty useless as they were. I may even boost that higher, and make the ruins technology researchable, at the end of the tech tree.


For a humans vs Humans game, I would probably make bases have limited supply, and resupply depots more expensive, So solar panels are needed, (or resupply ships).

Just thought of another thing I did:
Supply storage: is now 5KT of space.
If you think about it, an engine stores the same amount of supply PLUS moves your ship. Supply storage should be smaller than an engine, rather than LARGER.

What I also want to do (when exams are over) is to add components for an organic race, such that most components have living Versions that will regenerate just like the armor. HaHa. Those Ion weapons won't slow me down for long Tachyon bLasters? One turn and the organic weapons are ba-aack Not sure what the disadvantage would be. Cost, maybe?

Crossover techs would be really cool. Such as organo-crystalline armor, that pumps up shields AND regenerates when destroyed.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 06 March 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

My home planet is not shielded or cloaked at all (I've had an average of 7000 research over 80 turns) I just have 5 Defence Stations & a fleet of 10LCs in orbit. Plus 50 missile/PDC/Spy sats

Mostly, alien ships don't return home to tell the tale of the pirate home system, but join my empire instead

The only classically "secret" thing I have is my hidden base in a nebula system. Once that is operational, I will have no further need for my home planet, except as for the (painfully slow) armor & psychic research. Everything else, I can steal.

One thing that a pirate race REALLY needs is a Tiny space yard for constructing hidden bases early on. Perhaps a 100KT SY, that builds 300KT /turn & repairs nothing. Then you could cram one on an escort (with two movement points) and get a hidden base going immediately.
With my low construction trait, i'd be getting a 150Kt rate, so It would take many years to finish a real construction base. But I could start early. Even with no planet, I could build capture ships, grab a colony, and be back in the research business.
As it is it took 80 turns before the aliens... I mean My empire discovered Cruiser hulls.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 06 March 2001).]

[Windborne]

Hidden bases don't need to be in a nebula, armor four or five gives you camoflage armor that lets you cloak your ships before cloaking devices come Online and provides some defense too. Build space stations in astroid belts with remote miners on them, and cloak the ship, later scrap these and build base-ships so you don't have to worry about the astroid/planet your looting becoming strip mined and useless.

[WhiteHojo]

Suicide - you are the reincarnation of Blackbeard - sounds like you are doin w/pirates what I was attempting to do w/my 1st post - good job - maybe I can attempt this play style myself soon.

happy hunting

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[Lupusman]

You can make a component using the ability 'Sector - Sight Obscuration' line. This basically hides everything, up to the level you want it to work. I've played around with it a little, and if a ship or base has a component like this, it can hide an entire planet. There's lots of stuff that can be done using this.

[Nitram Draw]

Cool! Hidden bases think of the possibilities!

[Lupusman]

It's more than just hidden bases. You can already do that with regular cloaking. With this, you can make a base that cloaks the entire planet.

[This message has been edited by Lupusman (edited 06 March 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

Is anybody interested in getting my components & race file for Pirates?


With the sector- hiding ability, does it leave any indication, like a storm pic, or just empty space?
It could be really funny if you walked into a system, and saw no stars, or just one that was offset like a binary. Little do you know that there's two sphereworlds full of ships two squares away...

[Lupusman]

It hides planets, ships and bases, etc, but not storms, suns, or warp points. I'm pretty sure there are stars in the background so it looks just like normal space. I didn't even try ringworlds or spheres to see if that worked. It might hide it like all the other constructed things, or it might act like a sun, and not hide it.

[Nitram Draw]

I like the machine shop idea. Makes perfect sense for a pirate race.
What did you do with your original homeworld?
Can facilities be cloaked? If all facilities could be cloaked wou7ld the colony be invisible until the proper scanner was used? You really should have to search for pirates.