A toast to Slick, Anklebiters kicks butt...

[geoschmo]

This game has turned out really spectacularly. The mod changes, (no ships bigger then frigate) while seemingly so simple, really make some substantial changes in strategy.

Victory, like always in Se4 still comes down to who has the best ships and more of them, but it's not so all or nothing. You can still come in with 170 top of the line ships and win the battle, but don't expect to walk all over any defenders with little or no damage to your own fleet. Even "winning" a battle can be bad as it may require you pause for a significant amount of time to repair your damaged ships.

Mines aren't irrelevant anymore. It takes a half dozen or more sweepers to be safe. It's not always easy to remember when you are fighting battles on three different fronts. You can forget and frigates die very quickly against high-tech mines.

Stellar manip is still available, but it's significantly slowed down. You can barely fit one on a frigate. You have to skimp on engines, so they are slower. And you can't have a repair compinent on the stellar manip ship, or even on another ship in fleet with it. So it's got to go to a planet or base somewhere and get fixed.

No more sneaky mobile space yards hiding in nebulae building up a vast enemy fleet to suprise you with.

Planets can hold there own against small to moderate fleets. The weapons platforms really have a range and damage advantage against frigates. Planets can still be taken out of course, but even large fleets will suffer casualties.

Limited space on your war ships really makes you do some serious tradeoffs in design. Shields or armor or weapons or sensors? You can't have it all anymore. PDC, used to be an afterthought. Stick a few on every ship whether the enemy is using fighters or not, just to be sure. Now they take up space you desperatly need for other vital systems.

And your top of the line ships are pretty cheap. Lose a couple battles in a typical SE4 game and you are dead. The enemy wasn't scratched and it will take you months to build enough replacments to stop him. Now he's banged up so he can't press his advantage as quickly, and you can crank out ships in no time.

Really cool.