If You Ever Wanted To

[douglas]

dogscoff said:
It *is* possible to mod in components that can destroy ring/sphereworlds in a legitimate manner, isn't it?

Yes, it is. Just count how many entries are in PlanetSize.txt before and including the ring/sphereworld one and give your mega-planet destroyer a Destroy Planet ability with value at least that high.

[dogscoff]

Hmmm.... How to break SE4:

1 Mod a ringworld-killing component.
2 Build lots of construction bases over a star, with plating/ cable/ ringworld generator ships on repeat build.
3 Let X=1

4 Construct a ringworld.
5 Destroy it. Note that it leaves an asteroid field.
6 Place a star on the same square.
7 Turn the asteroid field into a planet and colonise it.
8 Turn the star into a ringworld. You now have a X planets and *and* a ringworld in the same sector.
9 Let X=X+1

10 Repeat steps 4 to 10 until X is equal to a few hundred. Open some warp points from that sector as well, and chuck in a few storms, just for good measure.
11 Save the game.
12 Persuade an enemy to attack this sector. (Or gift one of the planets to him.)
13 Point and laugh as the game tries to fit way too many planets, ringworlds, warp points, ships and things into the combat map, then collapses spectacularly. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Grenade.gif[/img]
14 Post the savegame to this forum so we can all see it for ourselves.

Don't forget to convert all the planets to your native atmosphere, max conditions, population & value, and then fill them with monoliths.

[geoschmo]

grin Dogscoff. I don't know for sure it would break SE4, but don't count on it running through on PBW.

Someone once posted a screenshot of a combat where there were more ships then squares on the combat grid. What happened was the game placed ships on-top of each other. You couldn't move a ship on top of another, but the game will place them there if it rounds out of room setting up the combat turn. I assume it would do the same thing in the case of planets.

[Atrocities]

You see, there should have been a max ship per combat limit in SEIV. Proof positive right there in that example.

[Kamog]

I experimented some more to try the remote nebula-creation trick.

OK, your nebula-creation ship has to be sitting at a star in a neighboring system to the one you want to destroy. Then you order your ship to warp to the target system and then create the nebula. The ship has to end up somewhere in the target system but it doesn't have to be in the same sector as the star. Of course your nebula ship will be destroyed when the system is destroyed. This works. So your opponent could have a huge fleet parked over their star and you can blow them up without fighting them.

However, if there's a sphereworld in the target system but no star, this trick doesn't work. You can still issue the order, but when your nebula ship arrives in the target system you get a message that says you can't create a nebula because there is no star.

So I don't think you can use this method to create new asteroids where none existed before.