SE:V Changelog v1.51

Shield regenerators now stack eh. hmm.

I think #16 may fix a lot of PBW crashes....

Javaslinger

MAJOR FINGER SAVER!

Flavorful, but takes some of the fun and power out of Long Range Scanners.

Going back and forth was a real labor, I won't have to make fleets now to move multiple ships. Great.

The next patch is looking better and better, can't wait.

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They used to in SEIV. That will now add a bit more realism to the game in that a few fighters shouldn't be able to easily kill a dreadnaught.
(Have you ever tried taking down a capitol ship in X2 when you were in a fighter? your weapons couldn't do enough damage to drop their shields because the regen was too fast.)

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Ouch. Personally, I don't think they should stack, at least not at the same cost. Perhaps if successive stacked regenerators took more space it would sound more palatable, but this sounds like something that could remove some of the variety from the game. Now phased polaron beams will be more indispensable.

What do you mean by a "few" fighters easily killing a dreadnought?

I dunno, perhaps in stock this makes sense...I play BM almost exclusively.

I see no reason why shield regeneration ability shouldn't stack linearly. It is how they have always worked in SE, and how they should work. If you don't want more to be used on a ship, mod in mounting restrictions to the vehicle hulls.

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1: Sounds interesting and useful in some way.

2: Bummer, that was actually kind of handy, except times where the AI seems to change orders each turn...

4: +10% Facility space? As in 'more room to build on planet'?

8: Annoying little thing, nice to see it get fixed.

11: Nice to know. time to pull out (again) ideas for starbases witn too many shield regenerators

12, 13: That will probably be slightly handy, and be one less thing to baffle me when numbers don't seem to add up.

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Yah for the mouse wheel setting, I think I sent that one in about 3 or 4 months ago. Some one is really listening.

SEV, more than a feeling.

IMO, if you can see what they are carrying, how much ammo they got, how much fuel/energy the got, and what components and level of said components are, then it should be easy for at seeing seeing which direction they are travelling in and what course they might have plastered all over displays on their bridge... or at least tell where they are going in that system, even if it is just what planet they are heading to, or if they are heading to a warp point, even if it is with no mention of why they are going there....

But if that is cheating, then give me a bigger, more expensive, ship computer hacking capable scanner that will allow someone to get detailed info on where ships are going, whether or not it also says what they are planning to do when they get there...

I guess by cheating you mean you could see where they were going and drop minefields in their way?

I think it should be an intelligence project that when it succeeds, let's you see all of an empire's orders for the turn. Wouldn't that be a cool flavor of espionage?

That would make a decent espionage operation, if a bit more limited in scope... See the orders of a fleet, or maybe at best in a whole system. But the whole empire? No thanks.

The cheating aspects of being able to view the orders of enemy vehicles are far-reaching and obvious.

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Its not cheating to know where an enemy is going from an spy mission or reading orders. When in wartime countries here break codes and know where and what the enemy is planning you think its cheating and we arent going to try and stop them or move forces to the area. Get real.

That's not what he's saying. It's cheating to obtain a ships orders merely by scanning it.

Game balance trumps petty concerns about "realism" every day of the year.

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Fyron, I really don't know what you mean about cheating from seeing orders. Has anyone ever come on the board and said, "This game is broken, you can see the computer's orders and that makes them totally helpless against you"? It's only relevant in the rare case that he has two possible targets and you can only defend one -- and that's hardly cheating. Mostly you just use the ability to see what the heck that fleet is doing floating out in the middle of nowhere (usually, it's going to attack someone halfway across the galaxy and run out of supplies before it gets there).

Maybe it wasn't intended for scanners to be able to see orders. But it was a fun feature that let you peek into the AI's brain and see what it was trying to do. I've learned from Galactic Civilizations that giving the AI a master strategy is much less appreciated by the player if he has no way to know what they're up to. By revealing the orders to the player you can change his experience from "the AI is shuffling fleets around randomly" to "the AI is calling all his ships to his home system. He must feel threatened."

Which is ironic, because I always thought Long Range Scanners were fairly useless until I recently discovered they could reveal orders. Previously I hadn't even considered researching them in a real game. Unfortunately it would appear they're back to "mostly useless" again

It's OK to be unfair to the AI sometimes. The computer doesn't have the advantage of you telling it, "System X has been claimed by Noumenon's people. We will fight to defend it." But it makes the game more fun to have that in there because it humanizes the AI when you reveal its motivations and plans.

You don't really gain any big insight into the AI's strategy by seeing its orders, though. I guess it's no big deal.

Well, even if it was supposed to be like that, there should at least be some sort of countermeasures for it.

Like Scanner Jammers, you mean?

My feeling is that Long Range Scanners should be pumped up until their power level is just at the point where you're considering putting Scanner Jammers on some important or sensitive ships. I think you could do that by making them show not only orders, but the strategies assigned to each task force in that ship's fleet. (With a corresponding intel project that lets you review the opponent's strategies by name.)

Well, the Scanner Jammer just reduces the range, doesn't it? I was thinking something more along the lines of the germans' Enigma.

With respect to LR Scanners, it would be nice if what they see was reflected in the Empire intelligence information on an enemy. My scanners show he has level 12 armour and the empire info window still says he has level 3 armour etc.

Cheating against the AI is only cheating yourself. There are ramifications for multiplayer play, where avenues of cheating "allowed" by the game mechanics can become a real problem...

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Anyone know if the public release will be this Friday?

It's been awhile...

Javaslinger

I can hardly see how anything is cheating if it isn't readily available to everyone. In the case of scanners anyone can use them, and they even have a natural counter.

However, I do agree that scanners shouldn't reveal orders. Additionally, there should be a component dedicated to doing so, such as a hacking component, or a listening device.

Being able to see an enemy's orders with a specific component available to everyone is not cheating, and should be available by some method even after the scanner loses this ability, I think.

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For studying what the AI is doing, it's better to use the password "master" and change sides. You don't even need to cheat to do this because you can set aside saves at various points in the game and then go back and peek later on.

Well, it's not exactly 'available to everyone', since the AI doesn't have any way to process and act on the information revealed.

HOW do I get my hands on it? Do I need to buy it on steam? I know some companies (galciv2) only release their betas on the online retailer. If you have the CD version you need to wait for the final patch (and those take FOREVER, thank god for v1.44 finally arriving). If thats what it takes I would buy it... do I need to sacrifice a goat? give me a hint here.

I do not have a Superman complex; for I am God, not Superman!

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What manner of game are you playing? You post all this, but you start a thread which complains about the game, and you specifically claim to have played under 1.33.

http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/4109

If you don't have the game, how are you patching and playing it? And if you've been around this long, how can you be unaware of how off-topic your post is?

Not complaining, asking for HELP... The balance mod is a real godsend in the regard.

Anyways, malfador.com clearly lists the current patch as 1.44, the previous one as 1.35, and the one before it as 1.33
I played v1.33 and decided to stick to the more polished SE4... I recently checked on SE5 again and lo and behold, 1.44 has come out while I wasn't looking... I fired it up but it could still use some more... and here I see that the beta is already at 1.51, or they have a feature list for v1.51 because they finish v1.50, thats still 6 builds higher then what I have... 1.44 introduced over 80 total fixes... I would rather get those precious fixes now. So rather then... um, were you insulting me? i am not even sure!. Rather then doing that, please tell me if there is a way to get a hold of the patch... I was stating that buying it AGAIN in a different format is acceptable for such a treat. Not saying that I don't have the game (otherwise how could i be playing it, eh? I think that was the source of the confusion).

I do not have a Superman complex; for I am God, not Superman!

No you cannot have the beta patch...

We are all waiting anxiously for the release patch.

I could give the beta patch, but then I'd have to kill you.

Javaslinger

As always, the same answer: Beta patches are for beta testers. The public patch will be released when Malfador decides it is stable enough to do so.

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Ah... pronoun problem. I thought you were asking how to get SEV, and that made no sense at all.

Sorry.

You know where the ability to see the opposing ship's orders and crew experience belongs? In the Psychic technology tree. Then it's fair, because you had to give up something to get it. If you want to see what the AI is thinking, play Psychic. These Psychic Scanners should also get the ability to detect a planet's mood so you can tell if it is close to rioting.

I think the frustration is their are some really nice fixes on the last 6 fixes but us peons just get to watch changelog after changelog not very exciting or rewarding.
Oh well back to moo3 for now..

Groovy Baby Yeah!

Noumenon;

Actually, that just makes it even worse, more gamey.

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Whoa, thats a slap in the face. Like breaking up with Heidi Klum to go back to Rosanne Barr *shudder*

I dont want to get into a which game is better blastwar. Moo3 was terrible at release and after several years it became quite playable thanks to the modding community. The same will probably be true for Space Empires 5. Right now its not very good but will someday because of the community be quite good. My point I was trying to make is that watching all the change logs with no patch isn't very exciting. Thats all

Groovy Baby Yeah!

As bad as Master of Orion 3 was on the day of release, I would argue that SE5 was, if anything, much worse.

I have to disagree....

Right now SEV is pretty awesome...

At release it was pretty bad....

In the future, it will be freakin' awesome....

Javaslinger

At least release day SE5 let you play the game, and its AI routines didn't undo all of your actions.

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Haha, well it might have let you play the game, but I'm pretty sure there was more features that were *not* working than the other way around. The post-release support of SEV is second to none, though, even if it's somewhat slow in the coming.

It is only slow for non beta testers, as beta testers get a new patch each week

Also I personally like MoO3, especially with those Mods and fixes by bhruic.

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MoO3 has become a classic for me when it's patched and well-modded. Doubt it's ever gonna get rid of the 'How not to make a 4X game' reputation, though.

Even with those patches and mods, it still has a "how not to make a 4x game" feel to it, though...

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I think it's refreshing. It takes a very different approach to the genre, concentrating far more on macromanagement than micro, while also leaving most of the micromanagement options available. My only real gripe with the game is the rather poor combat.

I still don't get what these "macromanagement" features are supposed to be... Having AI ministers for planet development?

The fleet management thing is totally bogus... force me to build stupid ship designs just to send out a fleet, then delete the fleet if one of them dies and the slots aren't filled and wait X turns for the ships to be available. Is that supposed to be "macromanagement?" :-\

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It seems like you think knowing what the opponent is going to do is inherently cheating. Maybe I think differently because I play Magic: the Gathering. In that game there are cards that let you look at your opponent's hand, cards that look at the top of his deck to see what is coming up next, and even a card that lets you take control of his turn and play his cards for him. All of those cards break the rules of regular card games and even of Magic itself, but none of them are "cheating."

It's all about the intent of the designers, and the in-game costs. If they make a card that lets you search your deck, and they forget to write "shuffle your deck afterwards," then it would be cheating to use that card to stack your deck. It would also be kind of cheaty to play with a card that said, "You win the game before it starts" right on it. But there are actually several cards that say "You win the game" and don't feel like cheating, because their costs are high enough to make the effect fairly priced.

That's why I feel there's nothing inherent to seeing a ship's orders that make it cheating. Almost any ability can be fair if you find a way to offer it at a fair price. And we should, because it's a fun ability and it would make playing Psychic more fun.

Just because Fyron says MoO3 is not playable and fun at all, one does not need to agree with that

Anyway, let us hope for a new public patch soon, as the list of nice fixes got so big again.

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If you look at the last two public patches, they came out around May 15 and July 15, so I am hoping for this one to come out on September 15.

Even then I'll be afraid to download it for a week or so, while the "secondary beta testers" discover things like that militia bug...

Just because Sotho Tal Ker and Raapys say MOO3 is fun doesn't mean it is! Sorry, had to say it.

All of those cards in MTG that let you look in your opponents hand or in your deck are limited effects with sensible cost (well, some of them over the years have been too cheesy, but I digress). None of them were essentially a permanent effect (all LRS), or something as trivial as just playing with white magic in your deck (psychic LRS)...

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This will be a never ending argument, Fyron

Right now it seems I destroyed my moo3.exe with all those custom patches, heh!

Back to SEV!! =)

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I say MOO3 is fun, and that makes it so. I played it fully patched and unmodded, and was just fixin' to start a new game when I discovered SEV.

And both games are more fun than any Total War since Shogun/Warlord Edition.

It's not just about having AI ministers( like you do in Space Empires anyway ). It's about actually being able to influence those ministers( which you can't in Space Empires ). Space Empires is about going down to every single planet, building every single facility, researching every tech you want, moving every ship and unit, etc.

Master of Orion 3 is about allocating budgets for your empire, planets and research, then tweaking the Development Plans to get your Viceroys, the planet ministers, to act according to your desires( and it actually works too! ). That's what I mean about the macromanagement. In Space Empires you do everything yourself, in MoO3 you tell 'other people' what to do.

I agree with you on the fleet part; that was a rather bad design move. One gets the hang of it eventually, though. Say you want to build some Long Range Attack Armadas, simply set planets to build those ship with the correct ratio, like one PD ship for every 5 LR ships, etc. Whatever else, it makes combat quickly over with considering how many ships are usually involved.

All of that just seems really poorly done, shoe-horned op top of a regular micromanagement style game... it really needs to be one or the other; you set budgets, or you build the stuff yourself. Most of the time the AI tended to just reset the budgets I set on planets (military vs. economy sliders), which was really annoying. The main purpose just seemed to be to annoy the player.

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Mmm, but you could choose one or the other. If you deactivated the Viceroy you got to do everything at the planet yourself, without any AI interfering. As long as the Viceroy was activated however, the AI would, if you made any changes, slowly change things back to the way 'it' wanted it( except the build queues ), which was in turn heavily influenced by the macromanagement options( DEA plans, Empire budget, Empire/Sytem Taxes, the Policies you chose, etc. ).

So the way to get the Viceroy to do as you wanted was to change the Empire Budgets accordingly; wanted faster research, simply increase research spending in the budget( or up the priority of research DEAs in the development plans, although that's for long-term effects ), wanted them to build many military units/ships, allocate more money to Military spending, etc. Abstract, and with much more 'overhead' than the detailist-approach, but also a very realistic and fresh approach, I think; a leader wouldn't get anything done if he were to go into all the details of every single aspect of empire management.

Once you got the hang of making good DEA plans, finding the optimal policies and tax rates, good budget settings, etc., your Empire would flourish without you even needing to go into those details. Yet the option was there if you wanted, so you could go right ahead and create 'hand-made' colonies for specialized tasks like ship construction, etc. Or you could completely deactive the viceroys and develop every single colony from the ground-up yourself.

I think the colony development system is so advanced that it'd be unbearable to do that, though, especially once you had a few dozen colonies.

Anyway, seems like it's a love-hate game, most people being on the hate side. Although I never exactly hated the game myself, I thought it was a major disappointment from MoO2. But once I gave it a few more chances and got used to the different way of playing, I found that I rather enjoyed it, especially when the fans modded away much of the ridiculous amount of bugs.

Unfortunately, the interface for the DEA plan management stuff is very obtuse and seemed to require starting completely from scratch. If it was auto-filled with what the AI is set to do by default and you just tweaked it, it would have been much easier to use. :-\ Tell me I missed something there...

What is so advanced about the colony development? You have the same exact building system as in MOO2/Civ/etc. for the "special" buildings, where you just build one of each. The DEA system is is nice and all, but its really just forcing your hand in placing the same sort of buildings you'd build on the planet anyways. In other games you might have each planet more concentrated due to just one set of resource/food values; the only practical difference is a decrease in such concentration on a planet-by-planet basis.

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DEA plans can be saved and loaded to and from files, so you can basically download good DEA's from the web and such, or develop your own and save them for later games.

About the colony development, there's some pretty complicated background calculations going on, i.e. gravity is taken into account based on the occupying races' characteristics. Some work better in high g's, other better in low, etc. There's actually an Employed/Unemployed factor which counts in on things( and can be indirectly affected by your actions and events such as unrest, etc. ). Your buildings and DEAs require workers to operate, and can operate at different efficiencies depending on moral, tax, planet/region unrest level and whether it's got enough workers, etc.. All of the planet's regions have their own fertility levels, mineral values, population, unrest levels, potential native inhabitants, 'specials', etc., which, while not providing gigantic differences pratically, adds layers of depth, I'd say.

Then there's four different types of buildings. One is military buildings, like planetary shields, missile bases, and spaceyards required to build bigger ships. Another is 'social' buildings like universities, stock markets, spaceports, etc., buildings thta gives a wide range of bonuses and planet/system/empire-wide effects. Then there's the third kind of buildings which is General DEA buildings that can increase the Infrastructure, improve conditions, increase max population, decrease unrest, etc. of your DEA's when built in them. Then there's the 4th kind which is specific DEA improvements and which requires you to have already developed the DEA. Say you've a Industry DEA, then you can use these improvements, for instance Manufacturing Robots, Nanofactories, etc. to improve the efficiency of that specific DEA.

Then there's the DEAs themselves, which are like Space Empire's Mineral/organics/research facilities but regulated by far more factors.

In short, it has a far more 'complete' planetary system than any other 4x out there, and the beauty of it is that even as advanced/complicated/whatever as it is, the Development Plans, Empire Options and Budgets lets you guide it all with just a few macro-decisions.

Master of Orion 3 has many flaws, but they really hit the nail on the head with the empire/planet management part of it, I think.

Besides, it's got Space Monsters!