Machine race

[HAL]

I would like opinions on what everyone thinks would be appropriate for a machine race. All the ships will have master computers, but what else should the race have?

Thanks.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[MoonDragn]

Temporal tech, robo miners, and robotic boarding crew to "assimilate" other races
they would have energy dampners to stop ships from firing and shield disrupters to take down shields so they can "assimilate"

[HAL]

Machine race != Borg. 8^)

I am thinking more about myself here. I did away with the evil biologicals that were threatening the mission. I was thinking more along the lines of the Battlestar Gallactica Cylons and Arnie's Terminators. The robotic extractors are good. Why temporal tech?

[Tampa_Gamer]

I like it! I have not had any luck yet getting the AI to group its boarding ships with attack fleets in my Darloks (ver 1.31). But I can see your machine race having a large group of such ships and using the defender's ships against them.

[MoonDragn]

Reason for temporal tech is that one of the temporal weapons can do 4x damage to shields, that helps in the boarding of the ship. 2nd reason is the temporal tech allows temporal space yards, which will increase the production rate and produce that hoard of ships.
Plus if you ever seen the daleks(not to be confused with darloks) which is where they were based off of, from Dr Who, they were a race of alien sentient robots who could at one point time travel.

[Daynarr]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tampa_Gamer:
I like it! I have not had any luck yet getting the AI to group its boarding ships with attack fleets in my Darloks (ver 1.31). But I can see your machine race having a large group of such ships and using the defender's ships against them.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I am right now heavily testing AI behavior in grouping fleets and have found some interesting discoveries that just might be the solution that you are looking for. As soon as I confirm those theories I will post them for all moders and also new Version of Sergetti mod will go out. Hold on tight. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Making AI use master computers can't be done at the moment. AI simply doesn't include them in the design even if he has the tech. Sorry HAL. I hope they will fix it in the next patch.

[HAL]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Daynarr:
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Making AI use master computers can't be done at the moment. AI simply doesn't include them in the design even if he has the tech. Sorry HAL. I hope they will fix it in the next patch.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

(sigh)
Tis to be expected when dealing with biologicals. I guess I will have to live with the idea that the life support module and quarters are actually power recharging modules or some such. Thanks for the info.



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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Sinapus]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by HAL:
(sigh)
Tis to be expected when dealing with biologicals. I guess I will have to live with the idea that the life support module and quarters are actually power recharging modules or some such. Thanks for the info.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

"I'm sorry, HAL. I'm afraid I can't do that." http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon12.gif

Okay, that was evil. You might want to include "Mechanoids" advanced trait since that makes them immune to plagues. Maybe lower the reproductive rate, if you want to make them a race whose members take a long time to build new ones. Or maybe not.

[Puke]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sinapus:
"I'm sorry, HAL. I'm afraid I can't do that." http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon12.gif

Okay, that was evil. You might want to include "Mechanoids" advanced trait since that makes them immune to plagues. Maybe lower the reproductive rate, if you want to make them a race whose members take a long time to build new ones. Or maybe not.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

i wish there was a 'breathe any atmosphere' trait for about 4000 points

[KiloOhm]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Puke:
i wish there was a 'breathe any atmosphere' trait for about 4000 points

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yep, the silicoids will not live in the SEIV universe...

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Regards,
KiloOhm

[HAL]

I played around with the concept some more Last night. I am using 2000pts for the race. I took the worker trait, figure it represents the specialized robots used for extraction. Thought about the engineering trait instead, but wasn't sure about it.

I bought emotionless, but had to sell off some stats to make up the point difference. I took happiness down by 50%, they shouldn't need it being emotionless. I then decreased trade to make up the rest of the difference.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Hydraa]

I was wondering what was worthwhile about emotionless the other day and did a little testing. The description is a slight misleading.
It says something like that your population will not get angry or happy. What it leaves out that I saw in my testing wasthat your population appears to always be 'Jubilant' so you get the highest production bonus out of them. Also I tested with 50% and 150% happiness trait and did not see that it made a difference. So you can reduce the cost a bit by going to 50% happiness

[HAL]

Isn't it cheating then to use a reduced happiness to pay for Emotionless? I may have to play around with some other values because it doesn't seem right.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[KiloOhm]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by HAL:
Isn't it cheating then to use a reduced happiness to pay for Emotionless? I may have to play around with some other values because it doesn't seem right.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's probably it's so darn expensive. I wouldn't consider using it otherwise. Reducing Happiness to 50% will probably only save you about 1000 points (you get diminishing returns every 10% or so. So the returns from reduction of 70% - 50% are probably only a few hundred points. Ill have to check out what the total cost of Emotionless is after a 50% reduction, if it's around 2500 or so, it's probably a trait that may be worth taking.


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Regards,
KiloOhm

[HAL]

I think reducing happiness to 50% gave me back 750pts. I made up whatever the rest was by reducing trade.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Nyx]

Does it impact enslaved races? It shouldn't, but you never know, it might.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com. (http://www.twingalaxies.com.)

[Hydraa]

I would guess at that it would. It seems that the only thing a enslaved race gets to keep is their breathing ability. Everything else seems to be changed into the conquering race abilities.

[HAL]

That is a very good question. I'll see if I can't setup a test condition this weekend, unless someone else already knows the answer.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[LintMan]

HAL, have you read any of the Berzerker series of books by Fred Saberhagen? They're about a human galactic civilization fighting desperately against relentless cunning genocidal machine intelligences called the Berzerkers which aim to destroy all life.

Worth a read for an aspiring homicidal AI such as yourself. :-)

[HAL]

Years ago. I haven't read any the recent stories. The first one I remember reading had something to do with playing chess to fool the Bezerker or something. I also remember reading Bezerker Man(?). I guess that was over 20 years ago now. Ack! Where has the time gone?

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Trachmyr]

HAL,

BTW you can create new cultures... just open up Cultures.txt in the DATA folder, and craft your own... If you plan to use this vs. other players (or be fair), then you'll need to balance the modifiers against the other cultures already there...

[Baron Munchausen]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Trachmyr:
HAL,

BTW you can create new cultures... just open up Cultures.txt in the DATA folder, and craft your own... If you plan to use this vs. other players (or be fair), then you'll need to balance the modifiers against the other cultures already there...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

(Waving slinky-covered arms...)
Warning! Warning! Danger, HAL! (And Trachmyr)
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon12.gif

The existing cultures are used by the default AI empires, don't rename or delete any of them unless you go back through the AI files and change those to suit your new arrangement.

[Trachmyr]

I didn't mean to change any of the ones already there... Just add new ones...

[HAL]

I am still tweaking things. However, I am heading off to a combo Model Train/Computer show and will not be getting back to it until later tonight. I appreciate the suggestions though.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.