A pirates life for me...

[WhiteHojo]

quote:

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Originally posted by mac5732:
SJ & WHojo, what about limiting the amount of resources or tech from planet that you are on. Possibly limiting this to say after turn 50 or 100. that way you would have it in the beginning but after that you would have better luck on your bases, ships.
In regards to colony ships, is it possible to mod so that captured pop could be used as a form of trade. This way when you capture a
colony ship, you could trade to any player, if no takers, then they take the long walk on the plank, and you keep the ship. if this
is possible you could take away the colonization aspect of using captured pop to colonize thus cutting down on rapid expansion
As for tractor beams, it just seems that this is something in the game that is basically useless. I just thought by utilizing it as a vital piece it would liven up the boarding and make it worthwhile to have. I guess I read to much of the old Lesman series by EE Doc Smith. The pirates always used tractor beams to pull victims in.
just some ideas. mac

another quick thought, how about letting them able to capture and use robo-miners to get resources instead of using planets?

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 13 March 2001).]

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Mac - I think you're right on target w/the limiting planet side mining to the early game - that's what I did anyway. I put a self imposed limit on my new large planet base of 3 or 4 (can't remember exactly) min miners and 1 each of org & rad. Kept the original planet's setup the same (w/the exception of scrappin 1 Min miner and building a Res facility early on)... some type of self imposed limit on the number of mining facilities is required in my opinion (but I don't know of any way to mod these into the game -just have to trust the player)

don't know of any way to actually trade captured POP other than offering the whole colony ship to someone - if there was another Human player of 2 in the game, imagine the price you could get for a colony ship loaded w/a race that breathes a diff atmo than them... let the resources role in!!! However, I'm not sure if the computer would count the Pop in a colony ship as a bonus or not (or even if they'd recognize em at all - trade value wise)

Personally, I've never seen a valid use for the tractor beam or repulsor beam... if anyone else has used em let us know. To me, they'd just be wasted space.

The robo miners, I must confess, became a guilty concession in my game - I found myself building em quite often - but only on spacebase platforms - only way to get a return on the investment - but the depleting resources is kind of annoying (and I know you can disable it, but it's not that bad)

keep up the ideas



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

[Suicide Junkie]

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I assume you'd enforce it the same way you would enforce the no planet sided mining after the beginning or any other preferrence, via the roleplay.

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Ah ha! There we go. I am trying to get the game to automatically force you to be piraty.
If you aren't allowed to do something, then you will be tempted to do it anyways. But, if you can't do it, theres no problem.

What I suggest is removing (ice/rock/gas) colony components from a pirate race's tech areas. Thus, you have to select a racial trait of "not a pirate" to get colony techs.
Therefore, pirates can not retrofit a captured colony ship to whatever colony type they want. They also cannot retrofit a cruiser to have a colony component.
I will also now suggest that Pirates do not get mineral/organic/radioactives/monolith facilities. ( OOOh )
Note: robo-extractors are still OK.
As you can see, now pirates only get their home planet's original resource production, and any colonies only produce research or intel (or population, or ships) Remote mining is still an option, but will run out as the planets are depleted.
We now have Pirates that start out just like now, expand resource wise, but then fade back to about 7k minerals per turn after a few years. Now, the pirates have a base, and rely on captured ships for resources! The only way to permanently expand your resource production is to capture a (fully developed & hence defended) enemy world.

Note that it is a lot easier to resist cheating once (when creating your race) than to resist each and every turn. Therefore we should have our pirate limitations built into the racial traits.
Note also, that although my suggestion eliminated the major resource source for pirates, there are still many different options for gathering resources. SE4 rules!

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I'm only basing this on my 1 game as a pirate but by the time I got ship capture, I was running into as many colony ships as war ships - my first capture and analys was a colony ship - If I was allowed to use captured colony pops and colony ships all the time for expansion, I'd have been expanding at a rate far exceeding that available to me using only slower, lower cargo capacity pirate colonizers. (should be noted that the game setup will also affect this - I was using only colonize homeworld type, rock).

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"Only colonize homeworld type" ?!? Owch! that's why you had so many colony ships running around, they couldn't find any good colonies at home.
An easy solution is to have the AIs add a Self-destruct to colony ships. Then, most of the time, you will have destroyed the colony component before taking out the SDD, making the ship useless except for slaves. You will still be able to use the occasional colony ship, but it will be limited by the game itself. (No willpower required)

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I think we all agree now that Psychic tech is bad for pirates, and Boarding Parties are good.

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I think the key difference in our opinions stems from the fact that you are trying to be pirates using willpower, while I'm trying to use the game engine to funnel these races into doing Piraty things.

IMO, the only self-restraint required should be during race creation. If you fail doing that, hey, you just made a non-pirate race, so it dosen't matter. If you succeed in following the ground rules for Pirate races, then good for you. You can now do your worst and pull out all the stops to get ahead in life. Once you have designed your race anything that SE4 lets you do should be completely legal.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 13 March 2001).]

[Nitram Draw]

The only way to force the computer to act like a priate is to build the tech tree in such a way that all the items you do not want the pirate to have are not researchable. I think this would require creating the standard tech tree as an option. This would probably screw up all the other AI's or at leastrequire additional prorgaming for each one.
Role playing is the easiest way to get around this although it would be great if it could be made a game function.
I can see tractor/repulser beams being very useful to a pirate espescially if you only want to capture certain ships in a fleet battle. You pull the one you want to capture in close while you push the others away.
I have not used these features much, only tried the tractor beam and I am not sure if it worked. I am going to try the repulser beam on fighters, I don't know if it will work on them though or on sat either. It would be nice to push some of those Groups away when they are circling like sharks!

[WhiteHojo]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Ah ha! There we go. I am trying to get the game to automatically force you to be piraty.

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Ah ha!! Now we're on the same page. Now that we have a defined parameter things should be alot clearer - I was doin it the willpower way (alot simpler, but not as effective) so now I'll change my plans...

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What I suggest is removing (ice/rock/gas) colony components from a pirate race's tech areas. Thus, you have to select a racial trait of "not a pirate" to get colony techs.

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interesting... not sure how the most efficient way to mod that would be - how'd you do it? Don't know off the top of my head how to remove a tech from a race w/o denying it to all races - any ideas?

Like the idea but the more I played the pirate, the more I am in favor of letting the pirate have ONLY 1 colony stack (stack b/c it could include a planet and it's moons) in the game at a time - the rest should be bases as you say. Just seems more Piraty/Carribean to me...

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[b]I will also now suggest that Pirates do not get mineral/organic/radioactives/monolith facilities( OOOh )

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I'm ok w/that - no monoliths seems ok since after the 1st of the game resources should only come from existing mining facilities and the robo extractors in the asteroids...

However, I think they should be able to improve the robos they build.

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An easy solution is to have the AIs add a Self-destruct to colony ships. Then, most of the time, you will have destroyed the colony component before taking out the SDD, making the ship useless except for slaves. You will still be able to use the occasional colony ship, but it will be limited by the game itself.

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I suppose this is possible, but then you would have to redesign other components (either colony pod, the engines, the crew/life/bridge, supply or cargo to allow the fitting of the self destruct device on the ships, not to mention having to redesign all the AIs to use the new design.

I would like to keep the changing of the existing components and races to a minimum... adding components should be ok since they're specialized pirate stuff and wouldn't be included on other race ships anyway. Also, some of the best races are the TDM mod and tinkering around w/them is not something I would encourage. (they seem pretty balanced right now)

What's your feelings on trade/research treaties? I have found they are rather nice and can be justified as the ole Letters of Marque that some pirates/privateers used to "justify" their actions against the rich shipping of the "enemy"




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

[Felan]

quote:

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Originally posted by WhiteHojo:
Personally, I've never seen a valid use for the tractor beam or repulsor beam... if anyone else has used em let us know. To me, they'd just be wasted space.

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I haven't been playing long but in my first game repulsor/tractor beams saved my butt.

The problem I was having was that the enemy ships would move right next to my space station and launch their missles, which would then explode against my station before my PD would get a chance to shoot them. Anytime they came in range I would shoot them with everything except repulsors and then repulse them.

Later I adapted the strategy to work with my ships. I would tractor them in, move one space and fire everything except repulsors then repulse them and move the rest of my movement away from them. They had to perpetually fire from longer ranges and I always got point blank shots. Works great when combined with high damage low range weapons. Missing the all-important repulsor shot almost never happens (point blank range). In strategic combat it's a little more difficult as the ai doesn't think of them as anything other than weapons, but it could still work if you are very careful how you design your ships: Tractor beam first, next ALL Other normal Weapons, and finally Repulsor beam. I haven't experimented much with the ai but I doubt that it will use it's own movement effectively in conjunction with repulsor/tractor weapons.

Tractor/repulsor weapons are great for dispersing the enemy fleet, for example you can repulse one ship behind you and the others in front thus isolating one ship at a time.

[This message has been edited by Felan (edited 13 March 2001).]

[Possum]

INTERESTING, Felan!

I messed with the tractor/repulsers once way back in the pre-release demo, and they didn't seem to do ANYTHING, so I never touched them again.

What are the limits? I know in Starfire you could only move a ship around with tractors/repulsers if it was smaller than your ship...

[Felan]

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Originally posted by Possum:
INTERESTING, Felan!

I messed with the tractor/repulsers once way back in the pre-release demo, and they didn't seem to do ANYTHING, so I never touched them again.

What are the limits? I know in Starfire you could only move a ship around with tractors/repulsers if it was smaller than your ship...

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I don't think there were any size limits or such. If you can target it (ships and even starbases) you can move it if you hit it. If one were to change the target options of it to include fighters and satellites then perhaps it would work on those as well, not sure though.

I seem to remember that when I attacked planets my tractors/repulsors fired, but the planet thankfully didn't move.

I think the damage listed in the tractor beam is how far it will pull. If 2 then it will pull 2 squares and 4 will pull 4 squares. Inversely so with repulsor.

But a tractor beam will only pull the ship toward yours, which means they will stop in the same hex as you. I wasn't able to select or target anything in that hex but I've recently figured out that you can flip through your list of ships with the controls in the upper right corner so I will probably try to select my ship and target the enemy at a truely point-blank range and see what happens.

That actually brings up another potentially interesting strategy of using suicide ships loaded with tractors to pull in a bunch of enemies and then self-destructing the ship with all the enemy in the same square I imagine it could be quite damaging.

If my statement of the damage to push strength of repulsors is accurate then it would also be useful to install a repulsor 3 along with a repulsor 4 (or if you can actually target enemy ships in your square) 2 repulsor 4's as you could then push for a total distance of 7 or 8 squares, respectively. The enemy will likely have a movement of just enough to get back in range of your tractors for a repeat.

If I remember right they are also affected by the mounts (I didn't know about them in my first game) so starbases could get some tractors of frightening range and repulsors would get terrible pushing weapons (power of 16) which could be used to give your ships a boost or keep the enemy away from your planet.

[This message has been edited by Felan (edited 13 March 2001).]

[Deathstalker]

Tractor beams can be tough. I was playing a game vs. the Borg where they fired missles, then tractored me in after I was damaged and used troops to board my ships and capture them. Ouch. Its just to bad the repulser beams don't fire like in Moo1,(like pd weapons, pushing the ship away when it moves into your range b4 it fires its weapons.).

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"The Empress took your name away," said Chance.
Owen smiled coldly. "It wasn't hers to take. I'm a Deathstalker until I die. And we never forget a slight or an enemy." -Owen Deathstalker.

[Possum]

quote:

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Originally posted by Felan:

That actually brings up another potentially interesting strategy of using suicide ships loaded with tractors to pull in a bunch of enemies and then self-destructing the ship with all the enemy in the same square I imagine it would be quite damaging.

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Cool idea, but how do you voluntarily self-destruct? What occurs to me is using tractor beams with ramming ships!

(/me flashes on Ben Hur)

"Ramming speed!"

[Suicide Junkie]

Interesting Repulsor beam story:
I once had Massive mount repulsor beams (20) damage) on a starbase. A fleet of enemy cruisers was simmed, and I'd fling five of them across the battle map each battle turn
Now, on one shot, however, the ship I targetted just plain dissapeared! After I hit end turn, two ships moved from the same square! The guy I'd hit with a 20 point repulse flew 5 squares & nailed one of his friends! Unfortunately, they were both fine. If they had done ramming damage to each other that would have been Awesome!

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quote:

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interesting... not sure how the most efficient way to mod that would be - how'd you do it? Don't know off the top of my head how to remove a tech from a race w/o denying it to all races - any ideas?

Like the idea but the more I played the pirate, the more I am in favor of letting the pirate have ONLY 1 colony stack (stack b/c it could include a planet and it's moons) in the game at a time - the rest should be bases as you say. Just seems more Piraty/Carribean to me...

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you have to select a racial trait of "not a pirate" to get colony techs.

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It is a simple matter of copy-paste to add a free racial trait to all AIs &non-pirate races.
A second racial trait of "is a pirate" could be used for stuff you don't want non-pirates using. The GM would have to ensure that only one option is chosen.

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However, I think they should be able to improve the robos they build.

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Note that I said "facilities". By this, the tech area is researchable, but Pirates cannot get the facilities (ie. facilities have an additional requirement).
The components are totally not affected.

"self-destruct on colonies"
All you have to do is copy paste an "add SDD to colony ship" in the AIs designs. You could add 10Kt to the size of a colony ship if you wanted to keep the same parts, and just ADD the SDD.
Alternatively, you could have an integrated Bridge-with-SDD. If its the same familiy as a normal Bridge, the AIs will use them instead as soon as they become available.
Pirates just have to be more careful when deciding when to board

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What's your feelings on trade/research treaties? I have found they are rather nice and can be justified as the ole Letters of Marque that some pirates/privateers used to "justify" their actions against the rich shipping of the "enemy"

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Yeah, it would also be pretty hard to prevent treaties.

I see the trade/research treaties as more of a "friendly" protectorate treaty. Ie. you pay in order to not have pirates attack you. The pirates give you nothing in return except "protection" (since they produce nothing)

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Tractor Beams + Organic Armor = kickass ship.

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BTW, there is a "delete" check box at the top of the edit window, for when you double-post.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 13 March 2001).]