New to S.E. IV & problems patching

MarkL · #1 September 23rd, 2007, 06:46 AM

Hi,
I have purchased this title and are in the process of getting started. I have purchased the Delux edition that installs as v 1.93

When I try to patch the game with patch1 that is supposed to be from 1.93 to 1.94 I get an error message saying wrong version and to reinstall. I did anther reinstall and received the same message. I did try the 1.94 to 1.95 patch and it installed and the game appears to run ok and shows 1.95.

I downloaded the patches from the home page for the game.
Is there a problem with my installation, or possibly the patches. I do not want to start playing till I get this sorted out. I would hate to get part way through only to find out I have an incorrectly patch game.

Any help would be appeciated.

Cheers MarkL

Suicide Junkie · #2 September 23rd, 2007, 09:35 AM

The newest patch should be good. Public patches are typically happy with any older version, although in the past, daylight savings time has been known to confuse it.

You will probably want to get the Imagepacks while you're installing.
http://bt.spaceempires.net/download....7_2007.torrent
They're fully backwards-compatible addons to the stock graphics; includes new weapon animations, components, facilities and space objects.

Note: This does not change the stock game, but the majority of mods out there have the imagepacks as a dependency.
(Downloading and installing them once saves lots of time and space)

MarkL · #3 September 23rd, 2007, 04:37 PM

Thanks for the reply.

Will download the image packs as well. I have noticed there are a lot of mods for this game. It will be very hard to know where to start. Looks like it could end up like my flight simulator installation with many mods in the future. But I will have to work out which ones to start with.

Cheers MarkL

MarkL · #4 September 23rd, 2007, 04:42 PM

I just noticed the above mod is being distributed by torrent. Is there a link or something that I can use to see what ever other mods are being distributed by torrents?

I am not very familiar with torrent downloads

Cheers MarkL

Suicide Junkie · #5 September 23rd, 2007, 05:12 PM

http://bt.spaceempires.net/index.php

Most of the stuff isn't available as torrents, but the SE torrent index is here: http://bt.spaceempires.net/index.php

The other good place to look is on PBW (http://seiv.pbw.cc/)
All the mods that people play multiplayer are available up there (since the PBW server processes the turns for you, they need to be

)

Fyron · #6 September 23rd, 2007, 08:00 PM

The best mod list is on the Wiki... PBW doesn't necessarily have every mod it supports available in the download library (especially larger mods).

http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Mods_(SEIV)

Parasite · #7 October 17th, 2007, 12:09 PM

I would do the tutorial and start with the basic game (maybe with TDM or Expansion packs added) Later, after it gets boring you can switch to the mods. It has not gotten boring to me yet, so I am still on the basic game, but there are a lot of interesting mod and shipsets out there.

Also there are a few "Mod Selectors" that will allow you to choose which mod to run for a game and load the appropreate files. It saves a lot of moving and manual switching.

MarkL · #8 October 18th, 2007, 04:49 AM

I started to try to play without doing the tutorial because I thought it was too long. My error.

I have now started and are learning more than when I trying by trial and error.

Cheers MarkL

capnq · #9 October 18th, 2007, 10:15 AM

The tutorial is good for learning the interface, but less good for basic strategy. (For one example, you will never start a normal game with any empty facility slots on your homeworld, the way you do in the tutorial.) Once you've finished the tutorial, I personally recommend dropping that game and starting a fresh one.

I once thought about writing a "better" tutorial myself, but never got around to it.

Possum · #10 December 19th, 2007, 07:10 PM

Mark,

Yeah, what everybody is implying and nobody has said bluntly is that you can patch from v1.93 directly to v1.95 in your situation.

Welcome to the community! I support the above calls for TDM Modpack. It's needed to make the AI more challenging once you learn the game a bit, but it might cause the AI to kick your butt if you install it right away!

I'd suggest you play the game box stock until you're comfortable with the mechanics, and you start finding the stock AI too easy. Then install the TDM modpack, which really just adds a bunch of new AI empires, and makes all the AI empires play in a more challenging fashion. TDM Modpack does not change the game mechanics in any way.

If you find you like stock SE4, or rather stock SE4 with TDM Modpack, you're invited to come play with us at PBW. We have a regular group there that plays stock or near-stock SE4.

And watch out for the RAGE!