A pirates life for me...

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Fyron is most helpful. He should have the special title of Uber Helper or something.

He does have a special title. No one else can get anywhere near his post total, except maybe you and you are 'Special Ops' and won't have your title changed by your post count. So his title is unique and appropriate.

[atari_eric]

[quote]Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
[QB] You should be fine just with 3.1b. Extra shipsets are nice addons, but not necessary. The industry patch is optional, and I would recommend you play without it until you become more familiar with the mod.

The which? What is the "industry patch", and where is the link for it?

[Fyron]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that it was an optional addon that caused researching Industry to make all of your components cheaper. Not sure where it can be acquired...

[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, yes... the 800kb file that zips down to 43kb

Apparently, I only did that one for v2.6
I'll pull out the gridder and make you one for 3.1 if you're interested.

[dogscoff]

2 optional downloads that will make your P&N games a little prettier are the neo-expansion pack and proportional response pack- both available from my website (click the banner below)

They just fill out the stock races with some extra images that are used by P&N, as well as a bunch of other mods.

[Gandalf Parker]

Is there one mass package? or maybe a 3rd party program with a menu that will download and install everything into the right place? (Im spoiled by dselect on Debian Linux)

[WhiteHojo]

Mac good to see you again as well.. and it's good to be back as well.

I've been gone so long I have absolute no recall of even the most basic SE4 things so I've got some more Qs...

1) if you build a base in one of those sectors that has nothing but some 'storm' or somesuch in it and has the trait that mentions something about being opaq to level 3 scanners, does this mean no AI can see it if they pass thru unless they have level 4 or higher scanners on the ship?

2) same situation as 1, does this sector also limit the players ability to see AI ships w/o the lvl 4 scanners? (this would make sense but I wish to be sure)

3) in a regular sector, w/planets & a sun, if there is a little 1 space nebula with say the trait that it renders shields useless, does this affect ALL shields anywhere in that sector or only shields on ships that pass thru that one space in the sector? (agin, I'd say option 2 but wish to be sure)

4) all those 'weapon mounts' options for components - what effect in game does say using all bargain basement componets have? is there events tied to the quality of the component that could fire making one break (higher chance?)... I'm not sure of the effects/reasons of using the different quality of components.

5) Moving TDM races to P&N - do I just copy each TDM race that is not already in P/N to the Race's directory, then run the AI patcher?

6) the AI Patcher - it says it can convert up to 3.0... is this adequate for P/N 3.1?

7) Any suggestions for starting ship designs in P/N?

8) Any suggestions for starting tech's to research?

Thanks in advance guys

[Suicide Junkie]

Components:
- imagemod packs
copy the XYZpack.zip files into the &lt%se4%&gt/pictures/XYZ folder
P&N needs combat, components, facilities packs.

- P&N (and/or any mod)
Extract the files into your &lt%se4%&gt folder, and they will end up in a modfolder.
Or if you are not sure, unzip to a temp folder, and move the files yourself.

- TDM
Treat it like just another mod.
Copy the AIs into P&N if you like, then run the patcher and update them.

-----

Yes, that's the way storm systems work.

You can see out no problem. You just can't see in.

You can see all the effects of the budget mounts in the mounted component.
High grade components have more hitpoints and lots more cost
Low grade components have less cost and much less hitpoints.

Note that components are hit via a lottery-style decision based on hitpoints. So, a cheap mounted component is slightly less likely to be hit.
If you make all your components cheap, then you'll end up with the same probabilities as before but a much flimsier ships.

PS: It is almost always worthwhile to use Premium armor. Buckytubegel armor should be left unmounted for optimal hp/$

AI patcher:
Yes, it does 3.&ltany&gt

I like to get stellar manip 1 for monoliths on the first turn, but Fyron would certainly disagree with that

For pirates, you will want to get ship capture as soon as possible.
For nomads, larger ships are important to reduce the impact of the 50kt recycler node.

[WhiteHojo]

thanks for the quick reply SJ

some points of clarification:

1) pirates should get ship capture... don't they already have it at the start? or while not the 'ship capture' tech, they have 'swashbucklers' or something at the start and can capture ships... is the cost to get to 'ship capture' worth the reduction in penalty for the Swashbucklers? (something like 155,000 for lvl 1 ship capture to remove the 30% penalty the swash'klrs have?)

2) storm systems - so in the one space storms I can see everything in system but they can't see me... and in the system wide storms nobody can see anybody? (except your own ships)

[Suicide Junkie]

Yep.

The small storms tend to have only weak cloaking though.

For capture techs, what I really meant was:
- Armor
- Shield depleters
- Engine disruptors
- Speedy engines
- Long range, small weapons for picking off SDDs without bLasting big chunks of valuable components.

In addition to having the boarding parties you start with, you need to be able to catch up, survive the return fire, and disable SDDs.
Only then can you successfully capture a ship

Ion Mines are excellent if you can locate a heavy shipping lane. With shield regenerators, you can even bleed out the supply tanks on an engineless warship to make an easy capture with little risk.