New SE4 Total ConVersion Mod "SMod" open on PBW

[Snorky]

The official SMod Game v2004-10-14 is now open and everyone can join it on PBW!

Snorky's mod or shortly SMod is a full conVersion modification for Space Empires 4 Gold.

The mod changes nearly everything that can be changed:

- components: many new added, changed olds, costs and usability tweaked, many-sided weapons resolve in more tactics

- weapon and mounts: many new added, each mount has advantages and disadvantages

- costs: blue minerals are important for construction, but green and red are important for components and are harder to harness

- cultures and racial traits: completely new and cheap spending, everybody has a basic race and can, depending on the racial points level the race up

- events: new added, now there are bad and good events

- buildings: completely redesigned and expanded

- spying: totally changed, intelligence projects can't be blocked, but with other intelligence projects. projects are expensive, but tactical powerful

- quadrants: completely changed the look, more different quadrants

- ships: added many new ships and unit types

- techtree: completely changed, research is longer available and there are more directions, all techs are researchable

- all values changed: systems in galaxy set max to 250, more empty systems, special wormholes, min resources to 500, population weight to 10, set max ships and units to a higher value, maintenance set to 25%, mothball 80%, retrofit difference 25%, max trade benefit 10%, etc.

- mines: can only launched from space, not from planets, are not too deadly, but still protects

- fighters and drones can only be targeted with point-defense cannons and fighters can fly through minefields, but satellites have an anti fighter weapon

- cloaking: more and different cloaking levels, tech is early researchable and countermeasures are always availably

- races: many many new races collected from the Internet, now 130 different races including star trek, star wars, babylon5, nostalgics and normal, most of them lightly reworked

- tweaked many things: i.e. colony modules can't be traded when chosen as racial trait, technological colony modules can still be traded

- every changeable picture and sound was changed, fonts replaced for better reading, and many more ...

- no AI implemented and the mod takes about 500MB disc space. the downloadable forms are 120MB rar or 150MB zip.


The first official game is now open on PBW and uses these settings:

Game starts: soon as possible
Starting resources: 20000
Starting planets: 1
Home planet value: Good
Score display: all
Technology level: Low
Racial points: 3000
Quadrant type: Mid-Life
Quadrant size: depends on number of players, hopefully large
Warp Points located everywhere in the system: Yes
Event frequency: Medium
Event severity: Catastrophic
Technology cost: Medium
Maximum units: 5000
Maximum ships: 500
Computer players: None
Neutral empires: No
Victory conditions: total domination, player has 3x the score of 2nd player, all techs have been researched, Quadrant is in peace for 2.0 years, conditions take affect 5.0 years after game start, winner is the player with the highest score
Other game settings: Allow Surrender is off, Players can see complete tech tree, all techs allowed

The deadline for every turn will be 48h. My mod supports the No-AI setting, this means the only thing the computer will do for a player if he/she misses a turn, is to research new techs. Nothing more should be touched, so missing one turn is not the end of the world.

Experts and Novices are welcome, but please no arrangements before the game starts and please do not play in a team with your best buddy just because you know he would not betray you. These alliances will make a game not so interesting.

You can download the mod and read more infos here:
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~snorky/se4index.htm

For joining the PBW game go to http://seiv.pbw.cc and look in the open games list for "Official SMod Game Round 1".

I hope to see you there.