possible bugs in v1.35

Your point #1 is not a bug, although it is confusing. The planet was clearly not one that your race could breathe. When you colonize a non-breatheable atmosphere, you are only able to use 1/5 of the facility, cargo, and population capacity of the planet. When your population was killed off, it simply reported the real size of the planet. When you recolonized it, it went back to the restricted amount.

Incidentally, a ship with cargo bays on it could have transported population to the planet to repopulate it without the need to recolonize.

On point #2 - the engines work as intended. Bear in mind however, that researching engines provides more supply space in the engines, either increasing the amount of time your ship can travel without resupply, or reducing hte number of supply pods you need on your design. Also, that +1 movement is more useful than you might think, particularly in combat when pursuing a fleeing ship, such as a colony ship.

#3 - I agree. Weapons are overpowered vis a vis armor and shields, particularly shields, in my opinion. However, part of the problem is also the AI. The AI is very weak in stock. Improvements are expected, but at the moment the primary goal of patches is correcting bugs. I suggest trying one of the mods. I play Balance Mod, but there are others out there as well, particularly IRM.

#4 - I suspect this is the same issue as #1. My guess is that the planet did not have a breathable atmosphere for your race. With the right tech you can terraform it to be breathable, or you just acquire other races for your empire and settle them on planets with appropriate atmospheres.

Hope this helps.

1) You're hopefully aware that your race has a breatheable atmosphere type. If you colonise a huge (I think if it can have 25,000kt) planet thats not bretheable (is domed), you only get 5000kt. If it is breatheable, you get the full 25,000 kT. Similarly, if you get a race that can breathe a different atmosphere to your own race (conquest, migration etc), you can pull you own race off domed colonies and move that new race on to it to get the full amount. I'm guess SEV interprets 0 pop as a breatheable race occupies and boosts the limits to full. As for your attempts to repopulate the world, don't recolonise, just move a ship full of population (a coloniser would suffice though, but really anything with cargo storage with at least 1M pop stored) and drop them onto the planet. No need to abandon and recolonise, though if you drop a race that can't breathe it, you'll be back to 5000kT.

2) Engine boosts do not stack. You can have one contra-terra engine giving you one movement and one bonus overall, or twelve for 12 movement and just one bonus. A lot of things don't stack in this game.

3) Stock is quite unbalanced (for example, just send one carrier full of fighters into enemy territory and it'll hardly notice its being attacked. The fighters are that overpowered) Try IRM or BM for a more balanced game.

4) I dunno. Firing on it destroys facilities and population, other than that, which makes it harder to utilise effectively from conquest (you'd need to colonise and rebuild the facilities), I doubt there's any negative effects of it. I'm curious to know if bombardment affects the conditions of a planet...

I hope this made sense...

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The Zanshaa Docks

1) Okay basically what happened here is your colony was domed. and therefor limited to 1/5th of the normal space. once your people died the planet "Un-domed" for all purposes yes your colony was "Dead" But you cant recolonize it because technically it is still a colony. What you need to do in this sort of situation is to Use a population transport to move some of your population to this unpopulated colony.

2) The bonus movement is ONLY given once.(SO for... 4 quantum engines you would get 7 movement) BUT you MUST have all of that type of engine on the ship to receive the bonus (In balance mod this doesn't occur because engines give you movement points ect. Anyway that was a bit off topic) The main issue with catching ships in combat is the starting distance AS WELL as the speed. It will catch up slowly but you wont notice it "Mowing the ship down" (my words) Unless its double the speed or some such. Engines however make you move much faster and store more supplys ect per tech level.

3) The AI is completely ridiculous in stock. Its terrible. If your looking for a challenge through that try Balance. IRM. Or other mods. (Stock is basically a beginners thing in my book - IRM changes the way the game is played almost completely however. So I recommend Balance if your looking for something familiar with a bit better set up)

4) As far as I can remember or have noticed I haven't noticed a downside to firing on a planet (I remember in previous SE's the Conditions or value would degrade. I haven't noticed that here in SE:V )
Reguarding size: Once again this is from the "Dome-ing" Of a planet. If your people cant breath that atmosphere you loose 4/5ths of the max capacity. ---- You can convert an atmosphere over time by using a facility deep in the "Planetary utilization" Tech. But it takes a bit.

Edit-(DOH FOILED AGAIN! Curse you proofreading CURSE YOU! I hate being late...)

Yes.

Planets come in different sizes. The sizes correspond directly with the number of facilities you can build on them.

Planets have atmospheres. When you colonize a planet with an atmosphere breathable to your colonists (who needn't be of your own species), you'll be able to build the maximum number of facilities allowed for a planet of that size.

If you colonize a planet with a species that cannot breathe the planet's atmosphere, you end up with a Domed Colony. This severely restricts the size of the colony, and you will not be able to utilise the full potential of the planet (unless you terraform it).

Basically, the size of the planet's no bug. You suddenly had far more space available, because the dome-dwelling colonists were dead. When you threw a bunch of new colonists at the planet, you neglected to choose ones capable of breathing the planet's atmosphere, so you ended up with a domed - and much smaller - colony again.

I haven't tried to abandon a colony yet, so I can't help you there.

In SEV, engines is the primary supply storage for your ships. Refining engine tech allows your ships to go further. Discovering new engine types allows your ships to go faster. It's two completely different things.

Not all hull types are equally fast. If you pay attention in combat simulation ans ship design, you'll not only notice that different hull types have different tactical speeds, augmented by their engine type, but also that they accelerate, turn and so forth, at different rates.

Typically, only fighters and the like will be able to catch retreating vessels starting a significant distance from you. It sucks, but at least it works both ways.

It's not so much that those techs are overpowered. They are, but that's not the issue here.

The real problem is the AI has no research strategy, no combat strategy, frequently ceases to do research altogether, never adapts to known player strategies, and isn't old enough to understand the concept of ship design. Or sum up; the AI don't know how to play. It's A alright, but there's nothing I about it.

It's not exactly a bug, unless the SEV AI in it's entirety can be called a bug. Not that I'm opposed to that. Mainly the AI seems to concern itself with being self-defeatingly inept.

I don't know. I've never managed to spoil a planet by shooting it with a random assortment of weapons from space, but it should be possible to make it significantly worse. Then again, it's mostly hypothetical. As soon as you have the tech to lay waste to a planet like that, the AI is completely at your mercy. After all, it is incapable of thinking far enough to counter you.

Kwok's Balance Mod goes a long way in adressing the tech tree problems and even seems to alleviate the most extreme acts of hopeless AI ship design. It's worth a try. But don't expect miracles. The AI is no more capable of playing SEV with the Balance Mod, than it is capable of serving beer. I'm loathe to say it, but I think SEV's pretty much a play by email game exclusively. At least until the AI and turn resolving's sorted. Sadly neither appears to be a priority at all.

EDIT: Never type a reply as you work.. Sorry. Didn't mean to repeat what all you guys said over & over

When your cargo vessel is in orbit around a planet that has what you want on it, look to the big square button panel on the lower right of your screen. One of the buttons with arrows on is a load cargo button. When you click it, a box will pop up with your vessel's stuff on the left and the planet's on the right. Anything that appears on either side of the list can be loaded or unloaded, including aliens, mines, fake beards and glasses.Ever had a ship or fleet run out of supplies, just as you were conquering the galaxy? Cargo ships brimming with supplies will soon be your bestest, friend ever. Trust me.It's not as simple as that. I'd guess roughly half of the branches has less than 20 levels, and the rest has in the neighbourhood of 100 levels. Some mods address this over-complication quite nicely. The Balance Mod, for example. Actually.. Didn't the game come with a tech tree?You can get +1 from traits, +4 from spiffy engines, and - IIRC - 12 from the number of engines in a hull. I'm pretty sure that's the maximum outside battle. In combat, speed depends greatly on the hull type. Fighters with afterburners are probably the fastest things you can create.In single player, you don't need anything special. A couple of cheap carriers and a supply ship can destroy a medium galaxy without pausing to restock more than once, if at all.

But if you don't use fighters, beam weapons is the way to go. A couple of levels in beam weapons, resupply and armor, will enable you to kill the entire galaxy with a couple of frigates and a resupply ship in short order.

There's all sorts of ways to counter specific weapons and defences, but it's not relevant in a single player game. The AI almost couldn't put up less of a fight, and it in no way tries to defend itself.

Mines are extremely handy for creating borders. Just mine warp points. 1 level of warheads and mine tech (forgot the name), is enough to keep you safe from the AI indefinitely. Unlike you, it won't try to minesweep. Instead it'll periodically send a ship or two to any minefield it already knows about, in an effort to demonstrate that mines really do pop out for dinner and a movie on occasion... At least, I prefer to think that's the reason. The more obvious conclusion that MM's created the world's first virtual lemming and used it as an opponent in a computer game involving death and destruction, hurts my brain too much.

5. Carrier/Warship Hybrids.

It's funny how everybody kept answering the same question in basicaly the same way...

Not true, since 1.33 the AI has been building fighters/weapon platforms / satillites to help defend its self EVEN MINES! however they do not seem to upgrade there ships or anything really, 6 of my frigates had problems with a small enemy planet as it wiped out several heavily armoured and armed ships with low losses on its side. So the AI is formible against a newbie.

Cargo bays can't store supplies. As well as population, they can store weapons platforms, fighters, satelites, mines and troops (ie, any type of unit). To store bucket loads of supplies, install bucket loads of supply storage components on your ships.

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The Zanshaa Docks

I'd like to add that when researching engine tech, besides the extra mineral storage you get, the engine also gets cheaper to build by a few minerals. This can make a differense in how fast you build your ships. Not a lot... granted... but a difference nevertheless.

~Myrath

as other people have already said, throw away stock and play either balance mod or IRM.
personaly I prefer balance mod, it's closer to stock and a bit more refined than IRM.

Download Balancemod here:
http://www.captainkwok.net/balancemod.php
Though you might want to wait for 1.07 which has got even more AI refinements (due out realy realy soon)

at the end of the day however, the most fun is in multiplayer.
PBW is the best place to go to find them:
http://seiv.pbw.cc

there's also a King Of The Hill legue (KOTH) which is 1vs1 player games. (usualy go a lot quicker than other games)
http://koth.spaceempires.net/se5/rules.html

-----
an se5a is a ww1 fighter, it is also a car.

I highly recommend King of the Hill. I think it is easier to manage one opponent for a new player in your first 'human' game. And it is still a TON of fun and very, very challenging. Though I was blessed with a fine opponent.

Javaslinger

2: The fleeing very interesting in this game, because the catch depend on the direction of the ships (your and enemy) and it depend of your weapon range (I think)!

4: Try higher computers! you can switch on this option: able to see all score (later :races menu/comparison), and you can see the computer usually have not too much research points, but they have many technology! I am play to over research the computer, but it is very hard work(in hard difficulty).

Olly.