Ages of Space Empires for SEV

Cool, thanks Kwok

And for those of you who are new to the community, here's a recap of the Ages mod:

The tech tree is divided up into eight distinct Ages, represented by special tech areas. Each Age signifies a great leap forward in technology and is only revealed once an empire has researched a certain number of standard techs. As a result, each Age requires different strategic, tactical and ship design strategies.

0 - The Space Age (starting Age)
1 - The Nuclear Age
2 - The A.I. Age
3 - The Antigravity Age
4 - The Antimatter Age
5 - The Warp Age
6 - The Hyperspace Age
7 - Ascension

Age details:
Space Age
strategy: Boarding, Ramming, Blockades and Troops
description: Space travel has been achieved. Space propulsion technology has developed far enough to create ships capable of leaving and re-entering a planetary atmosphere. The discovery of Warp Points allows easy access to the resources of other star systems. The possibility of developing off-world colonies exists, but it's much more efficient to leave manufacturing, construction and resource processing facilities on the homeworld. Most off-world bases are simply outposts used to resupply spacecraft, observe stellar phenomena, support remote resource extractors, and scout for new resources. Ship-to-ship combat in space is limited, since the effective range of most weapons is relatively short, and most space vessels lack the speed and endurance to travel far from established supply lines. It's more common to blockade an enemy homeworld and invade with large numbers of ground forces, or eliminate enemy outposts one by one, destroying an enemy's economy.

Nuclear Age
strategy: Dreadnoughts and Missiles
description: Safe and cheap Nuclear energy leads to a rebirth of space exploration. Huge Nuclear reactors power some of the largest starships ever built. Nuclear missiles dominate space warfare, but smaller direct-fire weapons still play a small role in space battles. Large dreadnoughts are designed with heavy armor to withstand a Nuclear attack.

A.I. Age
strategy: Light Cruisers, Destroyers and Torpedos
description: While your race hasn't achieved computer sentience, artificial intelligence technology has developed to a point where machines can take over most menial and repetitive tasks, leaving your race free to focus on creativity, leadership, and science. Smaller more sophisticated ships can easily outmatch Nuclear Age dreadnoughts. While Nuclear weapons are still useful in space warfare, their power has been tempered by the emergence of energy shield technology and AI controlled point defense grids. This age also sees the advent of Plasma weapons to counter shields and guided torpedos to counter large armored ships. Nuclear weapons become small enough to use on fighters, which are typically launched from colonies and converted cargo ships, rather than dedicated carriers.

Antigravity Age
strategy: Carriers and Beam Weapons
description: The development of practical Anti-gravity technology creates a revolution in space travel and industry. The development of the inertial dampener and artificial gravity generators means that manned space craft can travel faster and operate for much longer durations than ever before. Gravitational technology leads to the development of effective medium range particle beam weapons. Carriers also come into their own with the introduction of gravitational arrestor catapults for launching and retrieving fighters in combat.

Antimatter Age
strategy: Superdreadnoughts, Base Ships, Missiles and Planet/Star Destroyers
description: Antimatter power becomes safe and effective. While the Antigravity Age's massive particle beam weapons pushed the envelope of Nuclear power, the development of the Antimater reactor has made such weapons practical even for small and medium size ships. Once again missiles become effective for use against large vessels and hardened targets with the introduction of Antimatter warheads and point defense evasion technology. Both shields and armor evolve to counter the vast destructive capability of Antimatter, but they require the use of larger ships, the largest of which surpass even the ancient Nuclear age dreadnoughts. Antimatter weapons also make destruction on a planetary, and even stellar scale possible.

Warp Age
strategy: Faster Ships, Missiles and Stealth
description: The technology to Warp and shape the space-time continuum has developed. This leads to the development of incredibly fast Warp drive systems, as well as the technology to Warp space around objects, making them difficult to hit with direct fire weapons, giving missiles an advantage. The development of smaller, more powerful Antimatter weapons that are able to warp past armor and shields has turned space warfare into a game of deception and strategy, with each side trying to decimate the other with a first strike, and both large and small ships emphasizing offense more than defense. Antimatter weapons become small enough to use on fighters, making carriers deadly once again. The invention of warp point generators allows ships to slip into a system behind enemy defenses.

Hyperspace Age
strategy: Individual Cloaked Ships, Beam Weapons
description: Warp technology takes a great leap forward, letting ships actually punch through the space-time continuum into another dimension called Hyperspace. Ships are able to travel through Hyperspace, making travel across the galaxy even faster than before. The ability to tap into Hyperspace for energy allows the construction of space vessels that have practically infinite range. Warp point generators become compact enough to use on small ships. Powerful weapons can disintegrate matter on a Hyperspacial level. Some smaller vessels are able to stay "submerged" in Hyperspace permenantly, making them invisible to nearly all sensors. Eventually Hyperspace weapons become so potent and so compact that any single space vessel can take on whole fleets of ships using earlier age technology.

Ascension
strategy: Star Killers, as close to MAD as you can get
description: Technology that allows beings to shed their material bodies and exist as pure energy becomes available to all. However they still need resources, particularly radioactives, to thrive. Space warfare becomes a tool used by Ascended races in their pride and jealousy against one another. The machine decendants of those computer systems that emerged in the A.I. Age have developed full sentience and taken their former masters' place in dominating the material world. Ascended individuals are able to posess a material spacecraft and fight without the use of technological weapons, making the ship largely immune to nearly all material weapons and able to regenerate quickly. The only way to kill a ship embued with the spirit of an Ascended being is to cause a nearby star to go nova and catching it in the blast wave. Stealth technology of any kind is useless against an Ascended race.

I put Antigrav before Antimatter because I wanted more space between the Dreadnoughts of the Nuclear Age and the Superdreads of the Antimatter Age. I also needed a good way to transition between Torpedoes and Carriers. Antigrav fit.

In terms of fluff, Antimatter power would exist in the Antigrav Age, but it would be much too dangerous/expensive/inefficient to use in any practical applications. Much like we have nuclear fusion power now, but don't use it because it's impractical.

Antigravity technology will still continue to be developed through the later Ages. In my notes, even projectile weapons get some love all the way through the Warp age, uncovering things like Hyperkinetic Cannons.

I've started porting Ages over to Space Empires 5.

I'm learning as I ago, as all the modders are doing, but when I was building the mod for SE4, I had a detailed knowledge of how the AI files worked. I was able to build the data files knowing how the AI would eventually use them. With SE5 I feel like I'm building the mod in the dark.

However, the task is not as daunting as I first thought. I'm very pleased with the formulas. You can do some things in SE5 that weren't even possible in SE4.

Update
I've imported all the tech area files from the Nuclear Age Preview that I released a few months ago. The first SE5 test release will probably include the A.I. Age as well, since I was almost done with it in the SE4 version.

I really like Shang's idea of the Forward Supply Base, and I'll probably add that in as one of the starting Space Age facilities to coincide with the idea of supply lines that was never possible in SE4.

I will be adding in racial techs like Organic, Psychic, Temporal and Crystalline technology. They will be integrated with the rest of the tech tree, but only available to races that have those particular racial traits.

They'll also follow the same Age progression as the normal techs, but they might use slightly different strategies just to spice things up a bit.

And I never liked the Religious trait, so I might just drop it or replace it with something else.

- Nuclear Age
- AI Age
- Antigravity Age
- Anitmatter Age
- Warp Age
- Hyperspace Age
- Ascension