Cowardly Ships

Me no know. Sorry

You didn't happen to set its strategy to "don't get hurt", did you?

What happens if you turn off auto-move and auto target and order it in manually?

Have you checked your ordnance. If you run out they will run away. This happened to me a few times. I now put ordnance storage on all my combat ships.

That's likely the problem. You can't alter strategy in-combat, just before it. If you press the "Set Strategy" button on the main design screen, is that all blank as well? The button is 3 slots above the space simulator button.

Did manual control work?

I had this problem once... saving and loading the game (or maybe restarting se5, I can't remember) fixed it (strategies appeared).

Have you given your ships direct individual orders? If they still won't fire I would check ordnance.

Sounds like your installation got borked somehow. Try reinstalling- if that doesn't work I can copy/paste the strategy files here for you to stick into your SE5 Data directory.

You do have to manually target. Right click on the ship you want to shoot.

I think you don't have any strategies listed when you don't pick a minister type in the game setup - but I'm not sure. If someone can test that...

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Not if you chose "new game" since you can't load empires. If you chose Quickstart there will be several to pick from.

EDIT: yep, not chosing a minister type causes this problem.

I'll recommend that it should default to default if there is no choice made as it is easy to miss.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

ALL the fields should have a default, really, since most of them causes errors if you don't pick something.

This is good info as I did not realize that minister style effected default ship strategies.

I tested a new game without adding overall minister style, and the ships run away!

What do they do if you give them specific orders?

I made them attack each other and they did... but they diden't fly around in circles like there suposed to do.

I've been having problems with my starbases, not firing and not having the shields they are supposed to. for example my starbase had 17000 some sheilds but started combat with 0/0 and didnt fire a shot even though it was bristling with weaponry. I tried setting different strategies but none of that worked.
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Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

Make sure you have supply storage on that starbase. Unlike SE4, bases don't have infinite supply. Ships you can sometimes get away without additional storage, since their engines store a fair bit, but with bases that doesn't work.

Well would you look at that, that is the problem right there. Quantum reactors for starbases it is.

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Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

The QR doesn't work the same way either. It just makes supplies now- no idea if it does so in combat or not. I'd still put supply storage on.

Don't forget ordnance as well. Most combat ships and bases should have some.

Yeah, i will do that, im a bit dissapointed that they change the QR. I liked the infinite supply. Maybe I can mod it back to the way it was.
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Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

You could always change it to create 99999999999999 supplies each turn....
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I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

I like the fact the Quantum Reactor produces a set amount of files per turn rather than infinite. It means that from time to time you'll need to pause in order to regenerate your ships power. In late game SE:IV a strategic element was removed when you had unlimited supply.

Even better though is that SE:V has an ability for supply generation that is not linked to the number of stars in a system!

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

I have not yet researched the Quatum reactor in the SEV demo. Does it create ordnance as well as supply. If not that will create a major strategic element. Like a modern day carrier, the reactor will let it deploy for a long period of time but it still needs to resupply with jet fuel, bombs, missiles, rockets, etc. etc. etc.

It just makes supplies. The Organic racial trait has a Ordnance Vat that generates ordnance as a QR makes supplies.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Good. That will be an interesting departure from SEIV

This happened to me once, and it was because when I first started the game, one of the empire choices you are supposed to make is AI Minister Style. It's right under the choice for Ship Names file.

It doesn't look important, and it isn't "mandatory", so I didn't pick one. Hey, I'm going not gonna use ministers, right?

But then it told me "cant find file 'something\something\.' which looked like a blank filename, and I later discovered that for that game the Ship Strategy box was empty. So I guessed that it is also how the game gets your strategies.

Which is probably also why you're not allowed to make your own strategies up (Like Tanker, Sattelite Layer, Ordinance Transport, Repair Ship...)

You can make your own strategies in the Empire Options screen.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

I ran into this same problem as I posted under Bug Reports,
and it does seem that you have to chose a minister style to avoid that data file error.

You can only add new strategies if you don't have the bug which removes all the strategies - because you need to select one to get access to the Add New Strategy button
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I think I just had an evilgasm.....
The (now official?) Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26