Carrier Battles Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Carrier Battles #7 is looking for a replacement player.

Turn #11;
- Probably a Berzerker empire, and from the stats, it appears to be expanding well.

The player controlling this empire dissapeared from the net just over a week ago, but the empire is doing just fine.

[Atrocities]

Phantom players!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Phantom of the Empire!

[Suicide Junkie]

The position has been filled. Thank you.

Also, an update to the CBmod School of Design.
Weapons 101 is now posted, with two classes available.

The 2pm class with Ekolis, and the 8:30am class with SJ http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

As suggested by Mac on IRC, and probably others too, I've gone and come up with a new type of missile system.
The general idea is that you get to choose what to put on your missiles.

A such, I've come up with a 3x3 grid that I like. You get to choose from 3 levels of armoring (none=5hp, light=15hp & heavy =35hp), and three levels of warhead (none=AM/AF, explosive AF/AS, nuclear AF/AS)

Each level up in one of those categories slows down the missile, improves its damage and/or damage resistance, increases cost, supply use, and more as applicable.

I've also mananged to make the anti-missile, anti-fighter and anti-ship damage blend nicely, so the AF and AM missiles don't need to be distinct. In fact, the unarmored explosive missile is right in the middle range where it could reasonably be used against heavy missiles and lightly shielded ships.
I have limited the missiles to the most sensible target types, so you can't fire the slow nukes at missiles(too slow to catch 'em), and you can't fire the wimpy AM missiles at ships (No damage past leaky shields).

Still testing, but quite nifty so far!

[Ed Kolis]

Sweet! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
Presumably the bigger, fancier missiles don't actually obsolete the lighter, quicker missiles? That would be a pain... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
/me mounts a nuclear missile on a fighter and launches it at the slightly exposed reactor of a battlemoon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Indeed.
It will be 9 separate families of missile, and research will be available to improve them all (not nessesarily all 9 at once, or just 1 at a time).

[Kana]

Suicide Junkie said:
A such, I've come up with a 3x3 grid that I like. You get to choose from 3 levels of armoring (none=5hp, light=15hp & heavy =35hp), and three levels of warhead (none=AM/AF, explosive AF/AS, nuclear AF/AS)

Each level up in one of those categories slows down the missile, improves its damage and/or damage resistance, increases cost, supply use, and more as applicable.

I've also mananged to make the anti-missile, anti-fighter and anti-ship damage blend nicely, so the AF and AM missiles don't need to be distinct. In fact, the unarmored explosive missile is right in the middle range where it could reasonably be used against heavy missiles and lightly shielded ships.
I have limited the missiles to the most sensible target types, so you can't fire the slow nukes at missiles(too slow to catch 'em), and you can't fire the wimpy AM missiles at ships (No damage past leaky shields).

Still testing, but quite nifty so far!



I had ideas very similar to this for my Star Fleet Battles mod and the different Drones/Missiles that SFB has...

Very Cool...can't wait...

Kana

[TurinTurambar]

So how many games have you guys run with this mod? Still tweaking it? Happy with it? What?

T

[Suicide Junkie]

I have 6 running games in my PBW list, plus another being run by someone else that I know of.

There two more that are waiting for CBdeluxe before they start.
And at least three have finished already.

The basic idea of the mod is solid, but there are balance tweaks and new features still being playtested in v1.3 version games.

[Kana]

What are the chances that some of the games are going to be upgraded to deluxe?

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

CB#7 and #8 will be, since they are still early, and antimissile missiles will be great fun to use.

I'll have to look at CB#6, as I'm not sure how far along it is.

The new games wil be pure deluxe, and will be using the new missile system.

[Emperor's Child]

I'd recommend with CB#8 that you make the change soon, In my case I'd not like to be surprised with chages to the assumptions and analysis that have lead me to my investment decisions for ship construction and R&D efforts.

[Suicide Junkie]

Switching to deluxe would not affect your research or ship designs much.
I can't switch the missile system, for example.

However I can enable the anti-missile missile components that have been sitting in components.txt for about 3 months now, just waiting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Emperor's Child]

I've been wondering when those would be made active.

[Ed Kolis]

Three of the School of CBmod courses have been converted to interactive media format! I'd do more of them but I don't have time to do them at school this quarter and I don't have the software I need at home... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
http://kolis.dyndns.org/ed/se/se4/project2.exe

[Suicide Junkie]

Hmm. It runs horridly slow on my PC... 2 seconds per frame.
Is there anything I can tweak to speed it up?

[Ed Kolis]

I dunno... it's only my second time using Macromedia Director, so I really don't know all the ins and outs of it... maybe I can ask my professor if he knows ways to make it run faster on slow PC's...

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, for those who wonder why I would add a masochistic happiness type to CBmod:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/BattleOfTudran1.jpg

[Puke]

ooo, that looks like the Heap. Give those masochists something to celebrate!

[Puke]

so SJ... I'm thinking of porting this mod idea over to Wierd Worlds...

[Suicide Junkie]

Could be good!

All the hull damage from battles might be a bit rough on your fleet, but the more ships the merrier http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[CovertJaguar]

Hehe...I almost...almost, feel sorry for that planet I glassed. It was a very impressive battle. Not a very definitive win or loss for either side, but still impressive.

[Suicide Junkie]

We have an opening in CB#7

The empire seems to be doing reasonably well so far. Applicants should not be afraid of border skirmishes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Edit:
Not anymore. Slot filled.

[Suicide Junkie]

Carrier Battles v1.4 is ready for public viewing!
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CarrierBattlesv1.4.zip

[Ed Kolis]

Kewl http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
One small bug though... shouldn't the Kinetic Missiles be Light Kinetic Missiles to be consistent with the other missiles? And they're the same cost as the heavy ones...
Another bug... satellite command computers can be installed on ships and bases, but not satellites???

[Suicide Junkie]

Its not a bug per se... but I can improve that description with the overrides.

Basically, it only fits on satellites (with mounts). And sats are technically "ships" in the code.
Description and allowed placement line updated.

[Intimidator]

Hi,

Is there a game planned to start with this mod in the near future..........
If not, are there people interested in a new PBW game??

Inti,

[Suicide Junkie]

Carrier Battles Deluxe #1
and Carrier Battles Newbie Game #3
are both going to be started using this in the near future.

[Intimidator]

Thanks,

I just joined the Carrier Battles Deluxe #1, please accept me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Inti,

[Ed Kolis]

I have joined too-goro! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
(Yeah, can't get enough of those stupid Zelda games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)

[Suicide Junkie]

Acceptances!

Also, from IRC chat with Eorg, I'll be dropping the crew quarters requirement from the scout hull. This makes it a bit more flexible and useful.

Also, there will be an adjustment of the happiness types to make them more forgiving.
An empire shutting down due to riots isn't fun. But there will still be the unique ways to get the jubilant population bonuses.

[Captain Kwok]

Why not give rioting planets some production capability as Fyron has in Adamant mod?

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, mostly because it dosen't seem to work.
As far as I can tell, rioting is hardcoded to give zeros across the board.

[Intimidator]

Hi,

got some bug (I think),

The Deep Space Weapon Platform doesn't need an lifesupport or crew quarters!!?? Don't know if this is ment to be or some small bug?

Inti,

[Suicide Junkie]

Right. Its unmanned.

[Intimidator]

Okay,

[Suicide Junkie]

We have an opening in CarrierBattles#6!

Player had to leave due to that nasty RL thing.
The empire looks to be in a solid middle ranking, but the galaxy is pretty evenly divided as far as I can tell.

[Emperor's Child]

Suicide Junkie said:
.. due to that nasty RL thing.



What does "RL" stand for? I Don't follow.

[edit: Duh... Real Life.. Got it]

[Suicide Junkie]

Fyron came up with the genious idea of point defense tractor beams.
It sounds kind of silly at first, but think about it... the awesomness will come to you.

I do need to come up with a sensible description of how the device will work (and what it should be called). Its gotta be somewhat gritty tech.
Any suggestions?

[Ed Kolis]

Grapple Beam - Grappling hook attached by a monofilament cord which is manipulated magnetically to ensnare fleeing fighters.

Or alternatively...

Magna Rod - Rod which is extended from a ship and then magnetized; the magnetic field will slow down fleeing fighters or pull in long-range bombers.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Awesome, alright.

[Phoenix-D]

Point defense tractor beams?

Sounds like it'd work great unless you accidentally grabbed the missile aimed at YOU instead of the one aimed at another ship. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fyron]

There is a "seekers targeted at us" firing type for strategies. Maybe it will help with that issue?

[Suicide Junkie]

Indeed.
Hopefully the description would keep in mind the use against missiles too.

Magnetic grapples sound good, but will only fit the in-game effect if a single hit pulls the missile/fighter all the way in.

[Suicide Junkie]

Real life issues have claimed another player in their deathly grasp.
So, We have an opening in Carrier Battles #8.

Imperial Starwars shipset (an excellent choice for the mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif)
Allied with me, no wars that I know of, and doing pretty good as far as I can tell.

[Kana]

Suicide Junkie said:
Fyron came up with the genious idea of point defense tractor beams.




This has been done for years (over 20 in fact) in Star Fleet Battles...tractoring Ships, Fighters, and especially Missiles...one of the things that was going to go into my SFB mod which is postponed until SEV...but yes still a great idea...

As for what to call/describe it...I guess it depends on the mechanics of the item...the tractor pulls objects...the pressor pushes objects...unfortunately neither holds and object in place...I'm hoping that this will be possible in SEV...

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

Ok, well, he posted it where I could see it, at least.

Wanna join CB#8?

[LordAxel]

Carrier battles 8
quick update the imperials are in one war with my empire. Very limited scale over a border system that has since ended. But the war hasnt been ceased with no real further battle

[Suicide Junkie]

That sounds like a good thing for your empires.

A sparring partner to test out your designs and strategies on http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm thinking of starting a long turn-time CBmod game for those who want to try the game, but don't have reliable access or time to play.

Probably a weekly turn limit.
To speed things up, I'll make it a small map and a 5 or 10 planet start.

How many people would be interested?

[kerensky]

I'd be interested.

[Will]

I would probably sign up for it, too... I'm already playing in CB#2, but I just took over from puke, and am most likely just riding on his momentum right now. It would be nice to have a good slow game so I can figure out the beginning of the mod, rather than slogging through the late-mid game with all the preliminary bits taken care of. Plus I want to get a closer look at the different cultures. I think I'm familiar with Disposable Society (puke's empire), and somewhat with Berserker (everyone else in CB#2). I see the data files for the other cultures, but you can't really get the feel for it until you see it in-game.

[Suicide Junkie]

"Carrier Battles Weekly #1"
Is now open to join.

[Captain Kwok]

I'll give it a shot, I'm also envious of these large fleet actions that SJ posts.

I signed up as the Azorani Alliance, using Alpha Kodiak's Azorani race style.

[Suicide Junkie]

Extended from SE vs Galciv thread.
----------------------------------

Atrocities said:

Suicide Junkie said:
Personally, I'm hoping that GritEcon + CarrierBattles + SE5 + Beta influence = Mindblowing Game

Gotta crack the whip and get working, tho...



Let us know what we can do to help.


----

Graphics, and AI are my weak points.

What I suppose I need *most* is AI guys, but that is naturally a beta-only thing. Second to that would be a hearty set of LOW POLY shipsets which have nice fighter and troop models.

Also handy, and much more generally accessible would be some weapon animations / effects that look cool in bulk (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/BattleOfTudran1/BattleOfTudran1_turn06.jpg). Samples can be run through starfury to get an idea of how they'll look. I can take screenshots of them in action if you don't have starfury. Real rendered missile animations would be supersweet, although they will need to lack any sort of directional external lighting.
For example; having a flickering engine glint off the metal is great. But you can't have a sunny/shady side, since the missile will be rotating in flight, and missiles flying in different directions would look stupid.
For reference, the CB weapons are DUCs, Plasma Bolts, Laser beams and Torpedoes. Plus about 7-9 varieties of missile, which come in light and heavy versions of the kinetic/explosive/nuclear warhead types. Plus planetary bombardment missiles.

I should be able to scale the animations to match the mount size myself, but if you want to make separate animations for each, that's good too.


Some custom component portraits would help as well. A little grittiness is great, but they should preferably remain unique, colourful and iconic like the stock SE4 stuff.
Carrier Battles dosen't have too many components, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a full collection. In fact, if there are multiple full sets, then I will probably give you the option to choose between the image collections as a racial trait.


Back to shipsets:
I want to have about the same number of ships & units as CBmod for se4, so there will likely end up being many hundreds of ships and many thousands of units in mid-to-late game battles.
That's why LOW POLY is a requirement http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif You should probably keep a high poly version as well, so that you can make beauty shots for giant portraits, and for a big intro battle scene. Glow points should probably be limited too, although creative use of one or two would be nifty... a doughnut topology ship with a ginormous glow point filling in the hole, for example.

For reference, there are in rough order of tech:
- Basic Fighters (Medium Fighter)
- Heavy Fighters (Large Fighter)
- Micro Fighters (Small Fighter)
- ER Fighters (ER Fighter, alt = Medium Fighter)
- Stealth Fighters (Stealth Fighter, alt = Small Fighter)
- Heavy ER Fighters (ER Fighter, alt = Large Fighter)

Ships will probably come in at least five generic hulls, possibly up to 10. Carriers will probably be +1 hull size bigger than the generic ships.
Use the se4 ship names for now, and start from the middle. The mod isn't going to need most of the ship hulls you'd expect of stock; colony ships would be made using the generic hulls, for example.

[Captain Kwok]

Do you think that Carrier Battles Weekly game will actually get enough players?

[Will]

It's going to be cool to one day be able to experience an epic battle with hundreds of ships, and thousands of fighters, in full 3D glory...

We gotta figure out a way to have the game force a 30fps render to a video file, because that will just be too much fun.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah. If there aren't any more players in the next few days, I'll join up myself and get it rolling. CB#1 was four players, and it was awesome.

[ZeroAdunn]

You in luck SJ, I a made a fighter with less than 20 polys yestearday, with SE5 CBM in mind. I think I will try for a full collection that just needs to be exported once SE5 comes out. I'll some images when I get it textured.

[Slick]

Suicide Junkie said:
I'm thinking of starting a long turn-time CBmod game for those who want to try the game, but don't have reliable access or time to play.

Probably a weekly turn limit.
To speed things up, I'll make it a small map and a 5 or 10 planet start.

How many people would be interested?




Ok, SJ sangged me. I'm gonna be a daddy again in a couple of weeks so I may miss some turns if that doesn't upset too many people.

I've read thru most of the courses (neat idea by the way) on this mod but I'll state right now that I will probably ask at least 1 Brazilian questions about the mechanics of this mod so be patient.

I'll join up in a day or two. I'm really to busy for this but, hey, who needs to sleep?

[Suicide Junkie]

ZA, sweet! Can we see it?

Slick; I reccommend asking this Canadian guy instead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Slick]

Ok, stupid question time:

#1) I'm downloading CB mod 1.4a. Do I need any other mods, like Imagemod and version? I have installed a kinda old Imagemod, not sure what version

edit: I'm getting an error on the Imagemod server. Unable to download 1.4a

edit2: nevermind, it's working now.

#2) anything special I need to know about creating an empire?
#3) What anything special I need to do before joining the game?

[Atrocities]

You should update your image mod to the latest version just to be up to date..

SJ has some good help info for the mod.

#3 - nodoze, alcohol, lots of it, vizine, a new mouse, food close at hand, and 1000 songs loaded and ready to play in your MP3 player.

Good luck.

[Suicide Junkie]

#2:
- Play test your empire in single player to make sure you know how it works, and that it isn't totally crippled in an unexpected area.

Remember to design a variety of ships. Consider the potential roles they can play in combat and optimize them for it. Pay attention to other players' designs and steal any good ideas.
A mixed fleet does better than a monolithic fleet! You'll need short range assault ships, PD ships, missile bombardment, interceptors, bombers and dogfighters. Even some thick hide cannon fodder fighters to clog up space and slow enemy movement in big battles.

Be careful with your culture selection. It will affect your whole race's outlook far more than any mere stock racial tech does. Try to pick one that matches your personal philosophy. They're all playable if you push hard on the advantages, and cover the weak spots as best you can.

Be *very* careful about your happiness type!
Peaceful hates fighing, but will let you build planetary defenses. !!!Not uber like in stock!!!
Bloodthirsty needs to fight, and will get mad about planetary defenses.
Masochistic is pretty funky; they get happy when bad things happen, and angry when good things happen. However, it does mean instant jubilant status if the enemy lands troops on your planets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Provincial is not-quite emotionless. They won't turn on you unless you screw up in their eyes repeatedly for a long time. They prefer a boring lifestyle.

[Will]

Just want to stress what SJ said about culture for this mod. I'm a Disposable Society in CB#2 (puke's empire) and it took me about 35 turns to realize that I need to ignore most of what is in SJ's CB School of Design. For everyone else in Carrier Battles, and in most other mods, you want to design ships that will fail gracefully, and still be able to fight with half damage. You can repair it later, and the more battles a ship fights in, the more experience bonus it gets. With Disposable Society, you want a ship to fight at full force for as long as possible, then die quickly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Disposable's strength is in spamming opponents with wave after wave of latest-tech ships. Unless a ship has taken very light damage (a few armour components, maybe a weapon lost), it's better to leave them behind, and find a way to destory them yourself, since it's expensive to maintain the ships. It's not worth it to train ships; in the several turns it takes to train, you've spent enough in maintainence to construct another two waves of throw-away ships. And since you construct at double the rate of anyone else, it's a lot easier to build a fleet quickly.

I'm sure I'll be learning even more about it soon... but I'll be learning a different style for the Weekly game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Kana]

This is actually an SEV question, but I do think it would be appropriate to CBM...

In SE3 you could launch, and recover fighters on your carrier. I haven't played SE3 in awhile and really don't remember how the AI handled that...In SE4 you can only launch with no recovery in combat. I feel that this should be an option in SE5. Do we think that the AI can handle this properly in combat? Do we know if this is being considered in SE5?

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

The AI didn't handle it in SE3.
Just launch, and fight to the death.

In CBmod, you get to recover the fighters after 30 turns of fighting, so you can reasonably land & relaunch them in a big battle.

SE5 will be fancier, so who knows.

[Slick]

Suicide Junkie said:
...so who knows.




I'm sure you do, but I understand... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Slick]

Ok I applied to join the CB weekly game. I installed the latest image mod. Somebody needs to make an installer for that beast. I started a test game at home and got some errors with randomly generated AI empires at game start. It appears like these errors won't be a problem, but some of the AI advanced traits, for example, were not recognized due to not being in CB mod. We'll see how bad this turns out to be...

Edit: I got lots of errors and the game crashed hard on the 2nd turn. How do I get the feel of the mod in a single player game?

[Will]

Well, CBMod isn't exactly AI-friendly anyway... even if you did mod the AIs to be technically compatible, I don't think they would do so well in the game.

[ZeroAdunn]

SEV is supposed to have some kind of AI scripting. So, maybe we will get lucky and be able to script it so when a fighter runs out of supplies it returns to the nearest carrier.

[Suicide Junkie]

Edit your settings.txt to make a maximum 10-system game or so (so it dosen't take too long).

Then add two human players, no AIs and play against yourself to get some design, colonization and a taste of combat.

[Slick]

Suicide Junkie said:
Edit your settings.txt to make a maximum 10-system game or so (so it dosen't take too long).

Then add two human players, no AIs and play against yourself to get some design, colonization and a taste of combat.



Rats. I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I was hoping to see some AI designs.

Here's what I have gathered so far:

- Read thru the courses again.
- Scanned the data files
---- you musta used your gridder program on the missiles. sheez. Yup, there are enough flavors.
---- many facilities cause pollution, need to worry about planet conditions
---- mounts are very important, even on units
- QNP propulsion... not very experienced with that. gonna be building some less-than-optimized designs
- leaky shields and armor, same as above.
- found "important!readme.txt" quite by accident, and as the name implies...
- I'll need to start a high tech game to check everything out in-game.
- Counter-Intel = offensive project. Hmmm. I hope intel won't overwhelm game.
- Plagues seem to be likely in this mod.
- Looks like ship repair is to be taken seriously. Looks like reduced repair abilities and large numbers of damaged components (due to leaky armor and shields) requires serious repair planning.
- no quantum reactors; supply will always be an issue.


and now some questions:
- SJ, would it be a breach of your security to post an empire (with saved designs) for newbies to look at? You could make one with just some intermediate level designs and keep your killer designs secret.

- What's a good ratio of minerals:organics:radioactives to shoot for in this mod? early game especially.

- Looks to me like a stock shipset works even with modified vehiclesize.txt. Any problems using a stock shipset?

- By reading components.txt, I don't quite get the colony idea. Please explain the differences between Rock Colony, Primitive Rock Colony and Advanced Rock Colony

[Suicide Junkie]

Questions:
- Well, possibly... But all the in-progress games are under significantly different versions of the mod.
The school of design gives you a mostly formulaic scheme for the units, and runs through the core of the ship design.
***See below for comments which delve into design issues.

- The resource ratio is hard to say... Early on your ships will cost about 4:1:2. However your facility build costs are all organics, so they are about as important as minerals.
Mid game, your rads cost will start to rocket upwards as your technology pushes into the high energy magic range, and they will become your limiting factor.

- CBmod has fewer hulls than stock, but even if it had more, there would be no problem.

- The normal colony module is available to races with the corresponding "Natives" trait. It is decent.
The Primitive colony module is available to anyone at tech level 2. It sucks bad, but will make a colony if you get it there.
The advanced colony is available at level 2 to the "Native" race. It is cheaper, smaller, better.


Comments:
- "Show only latest" is the key here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif There are really only a handful of missile types, ranging from anti-missile to anti-fighter to anti-ship and anti-planet. Right-click to see the target types and description in game; it should be obvious from that what the purpose of the missile is.
- Note that conditions won't actually decrease due to facilities... but excessive pollution will make random and attack damage very hard to undo.
- Indeed. Mounts are critical on every weapon (20cm...100cm), even missiles (tube/rack). And armor(20cm-60cm+).

- QNP... not really. Its more like anti-QNP. The school of design lays the propulsion angle out very nicely. Add a drive reactor, and enough engine ports to go speed 1. Then add backup ports. Try to have 5-10 engine ports, so you don't lose everything to one unlucky hit.

- Don't worry too much about shields. They are a finesse thing. Bulking up on armor for hitpoints will keep you going in a slugfest. One shield generator is probably plenty for most ships. Standoff bombardment craft don't need any, and close-attack anti-fighter ships may need two or three. But without armor, shields are useless.

- Check the game settings, to see if intel is enabled.
Also, note that there are beneficial intel projects too. The under-the-table resource gift, the exchange officers, etc.

- Plagues aren't actually that common. They're quite expensive to throw, and once the enemy has a system medical facility, new plagues last less than one turn (they kill a few people, but are cured right away).
The trick is using them if the enemy has no medicine... or to force them to divert resources towards medicine instead of the war effort.

- Oh, certainly. Unless you are a Disposable society or a preservationist, salvage and repairs will be a big part of the war. (Disposables *can't* repair, and preservationists get double-repair)
You will definitely need to build repair yards, and repair priorities are important. You do *NOT* want to waste your precious repair points fixing 20% damage to armor, if you could just hammer the engine ports back into shape and send the ship back into battle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Oh, and don't be surprised if you end up with 30% of your navy queued up in spacedock for repairs after a series of skirmishes. You should basically consider those repair yards as being a second spaceyard, which produces experienced ships instead of green ones http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

- Supply is definitely an issue. Take note of the fact that the energy weapons use ZERO supplies, but cost lots of radioactives. The projectile weapons are dirt cheap, but use supply, and the missiles are even more so.

[Kana]

Suicide Junkie said:
- Indeed. Mounts are critical on every weapon (20cm...100cm), even missiles (tube/rack). And armor(20cm-60cm+).



Mounts on missles are screwed, unless they have been fixed in Deluxe?

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

Mounts affect the component, not the seeker that a missile weapon produces.
I have taken that into account.

[Kana]

I was just wondering if it was fixed...

Kana

[Slick]

My monitor is just about dead. I have another one on the way. Should be here in 3-4 days worst case. I may go MIA temporarily if it dies altogether.

[Emperor's Child]

Why have the carriers become so much smaller in this newer game? I must admit I like the balance of earlier versions... In my other games the feel seems to be just about the right size for fighters per carrier hull and capability of supporting ships. Under this new game the carriers will be significantly smaller, and presumably fighters much less important as a main fleet strategy... Just curious.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, in the old versions the carriers had to have a big maintenance penalty in order to keep them fair.
It was also a bit odd with the small-ship reactor mounts and the fact that fighter bays were only usable on carriers.

Now, carriers are regular ships, with a modest size bonus in exchange for the dedicated fighter/cargo stuff. The physics are now consistent, and it is even possible to put small fighter bays on all your warships, B5 style.

Theoretically, its an improvement. It is certainly a change in the atmosphere. Whether it is a practical improvement or not will be determined by the newly started PBW games.

---

As to the fighters, they have not changed in utility... the difference is in how you get them to combat in deep space.
The carriers are certainly smaller... but with the lower maintenance, you should actually be able to afford to bring more fighters into battle...

Plus, there is the ability to build fighter bays into your orbital platforms, and perhaps even a small set of fighters in your heavy satellites.
Fighters will be able to pop up everywhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

We have a couple of open slots in various games.

First come first served. There are two empires in great position just waiting for you.

[Suicide Junkie]

In an amazing feat, Rollo has written up some AIs for Carrier Battles Mod!

[Will]

Sweet, finally get to test it out!

I'll try out a game later tonight and post the results. Hopefully I can offer some suggestions, but from what Rollo has been saying, the AI is already scary good.

[Suicide Junkie]

Updated, with improved troop usage by Rollo.

[Captain Kwok]

Since your mod has its own pictures/game/dialogs folder, you'll need to add a startmenu.bmp file (736x536, but can be narrower).

[Rollo]

Thank you for your kindness, but 'amazing feat' and 'scary good'? Let's just hold our horses for now =).
This is just a 4-day hack to get the ball rolling. I am sure there are many ways to improvement. I have only just recently (last week) found out about CB mod, so I am a total noob to the mechanics and since there was no AI for target practice, I decided to whip up something real quick. So credit goes to all, who advised me what to build =).

This is still step 1 of making the CB mod AI and is a work in progress. So if you have any suggestions for improvement, kindly post them here. We are looking for odd behavior concerning strategies, flaws in designs, and general good old bugginess.

Here are a few hints to playing with/testing the AI:
I'd recommend a low tech, one planet start, with no or low AI bonus, and low or medium random AIs + (optional) Neutrals. The AI script does not include the full tech tree and all design sizes, yet, but should be good for about 150 turns or so. .emp files don't exsist, so you have your races added randomly. The Phong.emps that are in the /empires folder are leftover from development and should _not_ be used, since they contain a faulty strategy.

That's all I can think off for now. I am going to be away for 10 days, leaving tomorrow, and looking forward to your suggestions, bug reports, and after action reports. So can implement them when I get back and continue to improve the AI. Top of the list is getting research and designs done for the full tech tree, of course. Have fun! =)

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, here's the first report:
- Medium tech start. No bonus.
- about 25 turns in.

Ukra Tal Heavy Fighter
Design:
Cockpit with extension
Speed 3 engine
Level 2 Shield
Level 3 Supply Pod x5
Level 3 Maser (20mm) x3
Level 6 Light Kinetic Missile (external mount)

This fighter appears to be on point defense duty, as its missile would imply it should be.
However, the three 20mm lasers are bad design. One laser is all that is needed to kill light missiles, since the fighters stack up their shots. The lasers also drive the radioactives cost way way up, which is bad for build rate.
Supply amount is good; ~16 missile shots.

Fighter never gets close enough to use its lasers, and instead, retreats to maximum range of its missiles (since they have a reload rate of 1).

Reccommended;
1) Replace two lasers with one 20mm torpedo (or a 40mm DUC).
2) Set movement optimal or short.


Combat notes:
Ukra tal planet was recently colonized, and I sent a whole carrier against it. They didn't stand a chance, but their 4 laser attack fighters killed 1 of my 30 fighters, and I landed a couple troops.

[Suicide Junkie]

Possible high-level strategy issue:
Ukra tal have countered my invasion of their colony with a huge attack from the other side of the empire.

Three carriers and two destroyers.
However, the weapons being carried are 100% explosive missiles. An ungodly wave of missiles wiped out all my defenders, but the Ukra were unable to attack my colony itself.
I suppose I should expect a troop invasion soon.

[Will]

Quick note regarding Intel with AIs. In a low-tech start, one homeworld game, the Phong and Terrans researched Intel around turn 70. Only problem is, with such a low number of points, they began using the cheapest operations: Resource Gift. Not a very good op to use against your enemy, since it depletes your resources and gives it to the hated ones http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I was getting used to the changes between 1.0 and 1.4 for that test game, so I don't have much to offer on AI strategies or designs; except I have noticed a general lack of repair and supply capacity in AI fleets. It's hard to do repair in CB, but the AIs could have saved a few fleets by having repair priorities set to Drive Reactors and Engine Ports (only) and having a small amount of repair capacity and a supply tanker or two. It's a lot easier to get a speed 5 fleet to safety than it is to get a speed 1 or speed 0 fleet to safety.

[Captain Kwok]

There should be a tech area with the beneficial gifts and other positive items that the AI doesn't research, since it doesn't understand them.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah. That is definitely gonna be done.
Perhaps as a racial tech "Good Samaritans: Allows access to helpful intel projects"

The main problem with getting the AI repair ships as I understand it, is that it would use up one of the warship design types. And the AI can't really afford to lose one.

Putting one of the small, high tech repair bays onto larger carriers could be a good solution.


An interesting political setup has appeared in my game:
- The drushocka are offering treaties, while everybody else is getting quite grouchy.
Since the druk are Neutral culture that might make some sense. Although Traders and Pacifists are the ones that really benefit from treaties.

[Suicide Junkie]

An interesting thing here on the comparisons chart:
After 40 turns on medium tech start. 7 races, 3 neutrals...

The Eee appear to have lost their homeworld on turn 35.
The Drushocka had their homeworld blockaded on turn 38, but liberated it on the next turn.
The Ukra Tal had their homeworld blockaded on turn 20, liberated it on the next turn. It was down to 50% production, so it took some damage. Then on turn 26, it was hit again. This time it only lost a little bit more, to maybe 40%. They are slowly rebuilding.
The Terrans had their homeworld blockaded on turn 35, and it only came back to 50% as well.


Half the AI races have had major attacks on their homeworlds by other AIs.
Some defense bases may be in order.

[Captain Kwok]

You can use one of the other design type designations (like attack base etc) for a repair ship design.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, having played a couple of decent battles, I think I need to do some work on the missiles. They're really dominating in combat, especially the light explosives, which pack enough firepower to hurt ships, but are also really fast.

Missile speeds will definitely be adjusted downwards. That may be enough.

I believe Rollo is already using all the available designs.
The nature of CB is that you need a wide variety in ships to field, and we picked the X most important types I could think of, where X was the number of available AI design slots, including attack base.

[Will]

Hmm, wasn't aware of a hard-code limit to the number of designs an AI can have. Pity, since CB basically encourages using as many designs as possible.

Also, a suggestion for a sort of tweak to the mod overall; is there a setting for Combat To Hit Defense for planets? I know it's normally an obscenely big penalty, but how about changing it to a really big bonus? Explain it away as atmospheric interference, or difficulty targeting a specific spot on a constantly rotating sphere, whatever; but the result is, a lot of the damage to planets caused by direct-fire weapons is nullified, and you really would have to use Planetary Bombardment Missiles to glass a planet, or capture it with troops. Or just spend a really long time bombarding it with "conventional" weapons.

[Ed Kolis]

Yes, there is a setting in Settings.txt; I think it's called "Planet Defense Modifier" or somesuch...

[Suicide Junkie]

That is an interesting idea.

It should be noted that tiny planets can easily have hundreds of thousands of hitpoints already, due to troops acting as planetary armor.

1% hit rates would require tens of millions of damage points to be thrown at the planet in order to clear it. Not a bad proposition, actually. Rollo's AIs seem to be fairly good at dropping troops, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem for them.

[Will]

It would also have the effect of drawing out battles more. I see a huge parallel between the inspiration between Carrier Battles and WWII Pacific theatre. Battles over tiny islands would go on for months at a time, and it wasn't really an option to just bring a few warships alongside the island and shell it until all the enemy resistence suddenly stopped. It was necessary to send troops ashore, and systematically root out all enemy strongholds, which still took a long time, but was generally faster than trying to pick them off at a distance http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Then, Planetary Bombardment Missiles become the equivalent of nukes, ICBMs. No precision necessary, just fling it in the general direction of those English pig dogs, and let the massive taunt defeat them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

A refresh of the download link for those who want to try this out:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/download.php?Number=408927


Hmm... Nukes & ICBMs?
PBMs are very very slow, easy to pick off if you have air defenses still. And they'll only kill a couple turns worth of infantry or tent to twenty tanks each.


Game Update
-----------
Turn 55.
The Terrans and Ukra-Tal have lost their homeworlds permanently.
The CueCappa and the Vikings have stagnated, and there aare now six races that are about 50% higher score than them.
The CueCappa have lost a lot of ships recently... A small attack on my borders, followed by a huge attack that wiped out most of my assault fleet that was gathering. Unfortunately attrition is not going their way, since they are not building new ships very fast at all.

I think the EEE homeworld may have been infected with a plague... their population is dropping steadily for the last 20 turns. I suppose it wasn't glassed, but is merely rioting.

[mac5732]

for the AI mod, where can i find delux v1.94, for the mod?

[Fyron]

http://www.spaceempires.net/home/downloads-cat-10.html

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, this was embarrasing. I sent Alpha fleet to attack a combined CueCappa and Viking fleet massing beside a fresh military base in Cue space.

All I got was one measly Cue carrier.
The vikings had made an end run around my forces, smashed my entire anti-Cue defense net with only a single fighter casualty, and were charging drunkenly through my system.

I initially thought they might attack my thinly populated military base in the system, and gathered all my damaged ships to it.
However, instead they went to liberate the old viking colony that I had captured earlier.

The Vikings were back to claim their own, and the Cue were still a threat in the outer system. Most of my attack fleet was chasing down the vikings, and I scraped every ship in the system together to make a two pronged assault force.

The vikings arrived on day 12, swept away the defenses easily, and landed 180 stormtroopers.
Very very fortunately, I had troops left over there, since my assault transports were heavily damaged in their next operation, before they had a chance to remove all the troops. The ground combat stalemated.

My two fleets arrived on day 30, and it was a quite the battle. Viscious exchange of missiles, and my skirmishers took a solid beating holding back most of the viking horde.

One problem noted: The vikings have a destroyer with 40mm DUCs and 20MM torpedoes, that repeatedly attacked one of my shielded skirmishing cruisers, doing minimal to no damage.

The viking dogfighters did get through on my flank, and chewed up my guys pretty good.

In the end, I defeated them with relatively little losses.
We had equal numbers of carriers, but I had 20 more support ships. The extra point defense, assault guns and cannon-fodder-ism pushed the battle through to a solid victory.

Suggestion summary:
- Design/strategy fix on the 40mmDUC / 20mm Torp destroyer
- Try to increase the number of support ships in the fleets. Or, increase the number of DF attack fighters. They did good. Reduce the point defense missile fighters they don't seem to have much effect.

However:
- I think I will increase the point defense missile speeds. Right now they are weak.
- I will reduce the hitpoints of said missiles, to aid in targetting priorities against them.
- Offensive missiles will be made slower. They seem to be a bit too powerful.

This may make those defense missiles more useful, but I would still reccommend installing them on ships instead of fighters. Ships can fire one missile at each incoming target, whereas fighters fire the whole stack at once.

[Ed Kolis]

You're going to make offensive missiles slower? Wow, I thought speed 2 for heavy nukes was slow enough already... that's already slower than many ships! Are you trying to return to the days of SE2 where missiles moved at speed 1 and ships could easily outrun them in tactical combat? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

No, mostly the explosive missiles.
I'm leaning towards:
Antiplanet 1, Nukes 2, Explosive 3, Heavy kinetic 5, light kinetic (antimissile) 10

[Rollo]

Thanks for the feedback, some very valueable hints.
Here are some comments in chronological order:

I have noticed the same thing about the Laser/Missile heavy Interceptor, and changed the design and strategy as recommended. Added AI Tags for the Kinetic Missiles and the fighter now carries 3 weapons and fullfills a role as a interceptor/space superiority hybrid.

A fleet with only explosive missiles can happen. The AI does use a lot of different designs to get a decent mix, but the composition of fleets cannot be controlled.

As SJ already said the beneficial Intel will be dealt with. Not an AI thing really, but a mod /data thing.

Repair bays are indeed hard to fit in, the AI already uses all design classes that will join attack fleets (Attack Ship, Kamikaze Attack Ship, and Boarding Ship) as well as Troop Transports and Carriers. Right now I see 3 possibilities how to fit them in: 1)use late-game Carriers, 2)use mid to late game Troop Transports, 3)use one of the 3 warship classes, add a repair design for one class, and use construction calls by designname, rather than designclass. I tend to avoid this, since construction calls by designname isn't really working as intended and can get hard to control. In either case, the AI won't use repair bays until it has reached a certain and yet to be determined treshhold of repair tech. And keep in mind that the AI is bad at strategy, so the repair ships wil be added to fleets randomly and if the fleet gets damaged heavily, it may disband anyway regardless of repair present. Certainly don't expect the AI to send out repair ships to rescue damaged and stranded fleets/ships. Although I may have yet another try to use the SYS design class, and see how the AI uses them on a strategic level.

Politics and Anger are mostly just copies of the stock files, except for a few changes. They may be changed later to make more sense for the CB mod cultures. But that's easy to do. I am more concerned with research, design, strategies, and construction at this point.

Yeah, lighty defended HWs are an issue. I have changed the unit_construction a bit and hope it helps. Defense bases, as dicussed in IRC, are an issue for themselves. I have added them now and going to monitor their build locations. But since the locations are erratic and bases don't have a maintenance bonus, I think mobile defenses are the way to go for the AI. I will certainly leave the bases in for flavour, but don't expect them to have a major impact.

Attack Bases don't join fleets and thus cannot be used as repair ships. They are best used for scout designs. As mentioned above, all other design classes that join fleets are already taken to get a mix of warships.

Thanks for the AAR on the CueCappa-Viking front:
the 40mmDUC/20mmTorp DD is a troop transport. I wasn't really concerned with its strategy besides dropping troops and stuck in some weapons to clear the way. I'll have a look at the strategy of the TTs. As mentioned above, I may add repair bays to them.
More support ships? Like what? Missile, PD or Close Combat? All them them? Is the AI using too many carriers?
Fighter mix is a bit hard to control, since they all use the same designclass and are being called for construction by designname, but I'll see what I can do to get less Interceptors and more Bombers and Jaegers. The laser/missile interceptor has been fixed and behaves nicely now, I think.


Phew, that's all for now. Sorry if I missed something. Keep the reports coming, please =).

[Suicide Junkie]

As a troop transport, the best targetting priorities would probably be Seekers(on us), and fighters.

As to ships vs fighters, I've been seeing carriers comprising more than half the fleet sometimes.
With the limited fighter control, having more support ships to ensure the combat roles are all covered is probably a good thing.

[Rollo]

Yes, I agree with the targetting for the TT. Done.

Yep, I have been aiming for about 50% carriers in fleets. And I am seeing the AI going wild on unit construction in my current test game (homeworlds with 11000 to 17000kt of units and colonies filled to various degrees with about 1000 to 3000kt). I'll tweak the construction file for more support ships. But mind you, fleets with missiles only are still possible =P.

[Suicide Junkie]

And, now, here we have an update!

Download, play, and let me know if there are any small bugs before I upload it to PBW and start the CB AI Safari game.

[Suicide Junkie]

Oops.

THIS version has been whacked with the shovel of QA.
(And is now obsolete)

[Suicide Junkie]

A finalized version is now up!
Get it here:

http://pbw.cc/Download/filelib/1315/CarrierBattles1.5.zip
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/

[Suicide Junkie]

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/download.php?Number=434007

It has been a while, but v1.6 is now ready for PBW games.

It features:
- Support for JunkyardWars style games (No research, lots of normal tech ruins)
- Unique ruins tech to discover.
- Allows ring and sphereworlds to be placed using the map editor.
- Allows more flexible tech disabling, including separate toggles for Plague Intel and Sabotage intel (as separate from the information gathering)
- Efficient workers tweaked; -50% to research
- Explosive/Nuclear missile reload rates increased to balance damage factor.
- Planetary Bombardment missile damage reduced drastically.
- New intro screen

[Yimboli]

Awesome SJ - I've thoroughly enjoyed CBMod. It has renewed my se4 lust. It withered for a while when JLS disappeared and AIC updates stopped... mainly because vanilla AI is just horrible.

So... thanks for the next installment!

[Ed Kolis]

Hmm... those first 2 options make me wonder, should I not have picked the two scavenger traits in the LOTR game?

[Suicide Junkie]

Yes and no...

If you choose the major trait, the minor one is redundant and a waste of points.

No traits gets you nerfed versions of the ruins tech when you colonize the ruins.
Scavengers gets you regular ruins tech.
Xenoachaeologists gets you beefy versions of the ruins tech.

[Ed Kolis]

Oh, OK... I'll redo my empire file taking only one of the traits then! Thanks! Though perhaps you should clarify that in future versions / to the other players...

[Suicide Junkie]

Here is an update for you, Ed.

The new v1.6, with some tweaked descriptions. (4 megs)

[Atrocities]

SJ I am getting a lot AI_General, and Research errors popping up in v1.6.

When you changed the Racial Traits and tech area files you might have caused some collateral damage to the AI files. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Also do you mind if I work on a modified version of your mod? Just something that I wanted to play around with and if I can get it too work I would like to post it, with your permission.

[Atrocities]

I also found a spacing error in the components file right above Steel Armor Plating.

The missing Tech Area tech is Solid Shields.

The missing Racial Trait is Hardy Industrialists.

[Atrocities]

I wanted to try out that Subspace idea I had and your mod seemed like the best way to go.

This is what I have done. (I have not updated the research file yet, but I will)

Added Two New Racial Traits:
Subspace Warfare Tech Area 100
Description: Technology that allows ships to slip into subspace thus rendering them nearly invisible.

Electronic Warfare Tech Area 101
Description: Gives technology that can detect ships hidding in subspace.

Added Two New Technologies
Subspace Warfare Max Lv 3

Electronic Warfare Max Lv 3 (Requires Automation Lv 6)

Added Three New Hulls
Subspace Attack Ship
Description: Fast attack subspace ship.

Subspace ISBM Carrier
Description: Slower moving ship that can carry Inter-Stellar Ballistic Missile

ISBM
Description: Inter-Stellar Ballistic Missile

Added New Components:
Phalanx Torpedo I - III Skips Shields and Armor
Description: A devastating powerful torpedo used by subspace ships against other ships.
NOTE: Require a mount. Has a reload rate of 3, Restriction of 4 per ship, and is exclusive to the subspace ships

ISBM Launcher
Description: Launches ISBM's into space
NOTE: Cargo of 100kt (Enough for 1 ISBM)

ISBM Guidance System

ISBM Engine

ISBM Warhead I - III
Description: Large nuclear warhead which will cause massive damage when it hits an enemy planet.
NOTE: Dam 500, 700, 1000 at range 1 only
SUB NOTE: ISBM can only have one warhead.

Electronic Sensors
Description: Advanced sensors which scans all electro-magnetic bands to detect ships hidden ships in subspace.
NOTE: Requires mount. Only a Destroyer can use it. Can detect Lv 6 EM.

Subspace Charge I - III Skips Armor
Description: Subspace charges are used against ships hidden in subspace. They can also damage ships in normal space.
NOTE: Reload rate 2, damage 25,25,25 - 25,25,25,25 - 25,25,25,25,25, Requires Mount and can only be mounted on a Destroyer

Added New Mounts:
Phalanx Torpedo Mount
Description: Mount scales Phalanx Torpedo for use with Subspace Attach Ship

Phalanx Torpedo Mount
Description: Mount scales Phalanx Torpedo for use with Subspace ISBM Carrier

ISBM Launcher Mount
Description: Mount scales ISBM Launcher to fit on Subspace ISBM Carrier.

Electronic Sensors Mount
Description: Mount scales Electronic Sensors component to fit onto a Destroyer hull.

Subspace Charge Mount
Description: Mount scales Subspace Charge to fit onto a Destroyer hull.

[Suicide Junkie]

1) Yeah, that's why I updated the links, and solid shields were intentionally removed.

2) Since you're gonna have the ISBMs, you should probably remove the PBMs, or change them into warheads for the ISBMs.

3) Armor skipping weapons won't do much. They act more like shield skipping weapons, since the mod uses leaky shields and armor.

4) Once you've got the basics working, I suggest cranking the number of stealth/scanner levels up to 50 or so, to prevent the arms race from fizzling out in the early turns of a game.

[Atrocities]

1. What links were updated? I only downloaded this yestarday. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

2. PBMS - ?

3 - thats fine, just gives the subs their own weapon.
4 - ? The cloaking ability is built into the hulls.. can you give more advise on this.

Thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Ed Kolis]

2. Planetary Bombardment Missiles

[Urendi Maleldil]

The Subspace ships sound pretty cool. How are you going to restrict components to the subspace hulls? Mounts?

[Atrocities]

yes mounts and racial trait.

[sachmo]

Question:

Why are satellites considered ships in this mod? Was the intention to make them only able to be constructed one at a time?

[Suicide Junkie]

The one at a time building is an unavoidable side effect.

The intention is to make them require resupply and repairs after combat.
To make them spread out, and allow formations.

Generally, it was done to avoid the lame satellite stacking you see in stock, and to make them detailed and useful combat units.

[Atrocities]

Now that is NOT a bad idea. Mind if I use it?

[Dizzy]

Suicide Junkie said:
The one at a time building is an unavoidable side effect.



Ahh, well, if you want one satellite to represent more than one, then make a satellite mount that reduces the weapon tonnage.

I'm not sure how the building shipyards go in CBmod, but my shipyards allow me to spend about 3000 minerals per turn. So if I want one satellite built per turn
so it acts as a ship, can be deployed in formations, and be repaired and all that jazz, but want to represent that each satellite is actually 4, then a general weapon mount for satellites would be made at 25% of tonnage cost. So you'd have one satellite, just with 4x the weaponry on it as an example.

[Suicide Junkie]

Go ahead, Atro.

Dizzy, that's not an issue.
Just use BSYs or SYSs to build the satellites.

Besides, sats in CB are quite strong compared to stock... each one is already big enough to rival a frigate since the sat dosen't use engines or crew.

[Dizzy]

Like I said... I dont know how yours works, but CBmod is the next one Im trying.

Instead of calling it a satellite... you could call it a satellite group, not for you SJ, but this was my reply to the others discussing yours.

[sachmo]

Atrocities said:
Now that is NOT a bad idea. Mind if I use it?



And fighters work the same way? (im running on memory here since I'm at work!)

It just seems like it will take forever to get a large fighter force up and running when building them one at a time.

[Ed Kolis]

No, fighters in CBmod are still fighters - else they would not be loadable on ships http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[sachmo]

Thanks, Ed Kolis. I'll check it out tonight some more.

[Suicide Junkie]

Fighters have a similar end result, although the causes/reasons are different.

Launching fighters in groups of, say 25, will get your navy slaughtered. Covert Jaguar had to learn this the hard way http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Launching fighters in groups of three (the default), will keep you competitive in battles. For particularily large fleets (300+), where there simply aren't enough combat squares to launch in groups of three, fives or eights can be useful.

[sachmo]

Has anyone noticed that with fighters in the simulator, if you have more than one fighter in a group, the second fighter won't have any supplies? Anyone know a way around that?

Also...shouldn't external racks be a one shot deal?

[sachmo]

DUR

[Suicide Junkie]

You should always have your fighters launch from a carrier or a planet.
After all, how else are they going to get into the combat? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

It is a wide rack http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Better for gameplay using a mount, just don't pay too much attention to the description details here.

Oh, and population grows every year, rather than every month now.

[sachmo]

Suicide Junkie said:
You should always have your fighters launch from a carrier or a planet.
After all, how else are they going to get into the combat? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

It is a wide rack http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Better for gameplay using a mount, just don't pay too much attention to the description details here.

Oh, and population grows every year, rather than every month now.



Thanks for the first part, and I FINALLY figured out the second part. Combat begins soon...YAY! I built an early mini-carrier; can't wait to get it into the fray!

[Suicide Junkie]

Excellent!

You will probably find that early on, with small fleets, missiles are king.
As the fleets get larger, point defense ships show up, and pave the way for assault ships.

That's when things get really interesting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
The big, beefy warships with huge guns are always fun...

[sachmo]

Suicide Junkie said:
Excellent!

You will probably find that early on, with small fleets, missiles are king.
As the fleets get larger, point defense ships show up, and pave the way for assault ships.

That's when things get really interesting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
The big, beefy warships with huge guns are always fun...



Seems that my enemies already have your strategy figured out! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The good thing for me is that I have a propulsion advantage, so I can try to bait him...until my own missile ships roll off the line. And my carrier should make his life hard as well.

[scJazz]

I'm getting an error when trying to start a new game.

Unable to load empire XXXXXXX

Where XXXXXXX is the path to a race file like Fazrah.emp

I've never used this mod before.

I loaded original SE4 v 1.60 GOLD. Updated it to 1.94. Installed ImageMod newest version. Installed 1.6 Carrier Battles.

Theoretically this is as clean as it gets!

Please help!

[Suicide Junkie]

You can't load stock empires. All the racial stuff is different!

Just create a new empire for yourself, and let the game choose random AIs for you.
Easy as that.

If you want to be able to select a shipset that is not in CB by default, go into se4\CB\races and create a new, empty folder with the shipset name.
The game will use the pictures from your root races folder automatically.

[scJazz]

AHA! Naturally I wanted to start with my race as a base and tweak it for the CB Mod! Thank you!

[dumbluck]

I, too, am getting lots of error messages for the missing solid shields research...


Atrocities said:
SJ I am getting a lot AI_General, and Research errors popping up in v1.6.

When you changed the Racial Traits and tech area files you might have caused some collateral damage to the AI files. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Also do you mind if I work on a modified version of your mod? Just something that I wanted to play around with and if I can get it too work I would like to post it, with your permission.

[Black_Knyght]

dumbluck said:
I, too, am getting lots of error messages for the missing solid shields research...


Atrocities said:
SJ I am getting a lot AI_General, and Research errors popping up in v1.6.

When you changed the Racial Traits and tech area files you might have caused some collateral damage to the AI files. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Also do you mind if I work on a modified version of your mod? Just something that I wanted to play around with and if I can get it too work I would like to post it, with your permission.






Grrrrrrrrrrr............

Me three

[Suicide Junkie]

Do you mean Atrocities' races?

If so, I posted this link (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/download.php?Number=434005) in his thread, including the mod, the AIs, and the nessesary tweaks.

[Black_Knyght]

Not with just <font color="red">AT</font>'s races, but some of the others too.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, can you guys be more specific about what it is complaining about?

[dumbluck]

During the turn execution, I get this error message twice, each time I run a turn. I have gotten this message since turn one of a low starting tech game. I am running the most recent version (with Atrocities races added into the download)

===Quote===

Error in AI Research (gives file location)

*Unknown value "Solid Shields" for Tech Area Name in record "Solid Shields"

===Quote===

There are 10 neutrals and the following Empires in this game (I don't know who the offenders are, but I doubt that they are the neutrals)
EEE
Phong
Terran
Executive Collegium
Caspian Empire
Space Vikings
Norak Continuum
Drushoka Empire

[Atrocities]

Hopefully this bug will soon be fixed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Easy enough, now.
All you've gotta do is delete the solid shield research call in Atro's AIs.

[sachmo]

How do the kenetic missiles work? I have a ship with two sets of light kenetic missiles, one internal and one external rack. I also have gun crews on these ships. However, I can't target enemy missiles. It appears that i have enough supply as well.

Also, can I not shoot down missiles with guns?

[Captain Kwok]

I believe seeker-targetting weapons only work in strategic combat.

[sachmo]

Ok then...how do you defend your ships in from missiles in this mod?

[Ed Kolis]

Not simulated... AI-controlled (strategic) combat.

[Suicide Junkie]

The SE4 user interface does not provide a way to manually fire weapons at missiles.

Thus strategic or Auto-tactical are the only options if you want to survive.

I suggest going full out, simultaneous game mode; that keeps you sharp for PBW games.

[sachmo]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Its better using strategic, really. (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/Tudran2_02.jpg)

[dumbluck]

Here's another bug from Atro's files.

AI General Settings Errors
*Unknown value "Hardy Industrialists" for Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 4 in record "Alliance to restore the Republic"
*Unknown value "Hardy Industrialists" for Race Opt 2 Adv Trait 4 in record "Alliance to restore the Republic"
*Unknown value "Hardy Industrialists" for Race Opt 3 Adv Trait 4 in record "Alliance to restore the Republic"
*Unknown value "Warriors" for "Galactic Empire"

Suicide Junkie said:
Easy enough, now.
All you've gotta do is delete the solid shield research call in Atro's AIs.

See attachment for update to the CB1.6+Atro files

[scJazz]

Played CB for the first time over the last few days. To avoid the errors that dumbluck and others mention you have to delete the AI files in \pictures\races. There is also a bug in the Troop Logo component. It has 0 structure and the AI WILL design a troop that has Troop Logo, Laser Rifle, Laser Rifle, Laser Pistol. Since all of these components have 0 structure the AI can build a Troop with 0 hit points. Naturally when this troop gets used you get DIVIDE BY ZERO errors and the game crashes. Edit Components to give Troop Logo 50 structure as a work around.

[Suicide Junkie]

Odd, I was sure I'd fixed the rebels already.

See attachment for update to the CB1.6+Atro files

SCJazz:
You should have realized that was the wrong way to do it when the AIs started making illegal designs instead of just making an empire that was missing a non-critical racial trait.

The fix is simply to change the "Hardy Industrialists" call in AI_General to "Natural Builders"

[scJazz]

Just call me impatient! Wasn't sure what was hosing it up easier to just blow the whole thing away and force Neutral. By the way...

OMIGOD U R FRICKIN AWESOME!!! 6 years of playing and this CB thing is GREAT! Totally different. Challenging. At times seriously ticking me off. I'm on turn 114 of a 7 player slugfest and at work now and all I can think of is getting back to the game!

[Suicide Junkie]

Thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Are you playing against coworkers? That would be sweet, just try not to glass your boss' homeworld http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[scJazz]

I wish I were playing. I'm monitoring Pfizer's Global Data Centers right now. Which on a Sunday means I'm waiting for something to break and otherwise I'm bored and reading forums. Only 8 hours left until I can start playing again.

[Suicide Junkie]

SE4 fits on a CD-RW, and even USB keys these days http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Works best if you have a dual monitor setup, so SE4 takes up the primary, and you can put all your status monitor stuff up on the secondary to glance at as you go.

[sachmo]

Well, I tried auto-combat, which seems to work best for me. Now if I can just figure out the strategies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[scJazz]

Suicide,
After about 30 minutes of tweaking this that and the other thing I got CB 1.6 working with AIs. However I'm not entirely certain that I have everything setup the way you would. In one of the 1.6 downloads I found 8 AI races. In another 1.6 download I found like 17 races (TDM + extras). At the risk of sounding ungracious would it be possible for you to release a 1.7 version with instructions on things like empty out the AI directory?

Setting up your mod required...

1) Install and update to version 1.94 of a clean SEIV
2) Install of ImageMod
3) Overlay of SB 1.6
4) Removal of extra Races in /Pictures/Races after I noticed that not all were included in 1.6.
5) Re-Install of ImageMod because I thought that would help fix an error referencing /Pictures/Combat
6) A bit more tweaking that I don't quite remember right now.
7) Another overlay of SB 1.6 /Pictures/Races

Was ALL of this necessary? Probably not...

Would it work flawlessly if I just installed ImageMod on a fresh 1.94 installation and dropped your 1.6 zip in? No certainly not.

[Puke]

actually, yes. yes it should, and it does for me.

I'm running a clean copy of the latest version of the game. I have the image mod installed directly on top of SE4 (as its non-destructive and does not hamper stock game play). Then I have CB installed into a specific mod directory, and I use the Mod Launcher to call it.

so, essentially:
- clean, latest, se4 install
- image pack
- mod

not sure what youre doing wrong. try again slowly and carefully.

[scJazz]

what I'm doing wrong is not using Mod Launcher cuz I'm just getting into this whole Mod thing and haven't downloaded it yet.

[Suicide Junkie]

Woah, woah, woah!!!
3) Overlay of CB

That's your problem right there.
Never ***EVER*** overwrite your stock files with mods. (Only the imagepacks, since they are fully backwards compatible with savegames and PBW.)

You can add races to your stock se4\pictures\races folder no problem too, just don't overwrite stuff or put modded AI files into the stock folder. Modded AI files need to go in the se4\modname\pictures\races folders.


(Note: first, you'll probably want to restore your stock files from CD)
Here is how to install and play CB:
Step 1) Extract the zip to your SE4 folder (it will create a CB1.6 folder)
Step 2) Edit path.txt. Change the "path:=none" to "path:=CarrierBattlesV1.6"
Step 3) Run SE4.exe

These same steps apply to 99% of mods out there. Some have wacky directory structures in their zips, but all the major ones will work right.

To change mods, just change the path.txt, and run Se4.exe.

PS:
The mod launcher is overrated. Editing the path.txt yourself builds character http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[scJazz]

AHA! My excessive lvl of geekdom forced me by habit into tweaking the $^(% out of the files themselves!

OK doesn't change the fact that one of the 1.6 downloads has 8 races and another has 17 or so.

I'd like you to consider changing the range of the PBMs to something reasonable like 10. It does a couple of things first it allows the firing ships to not waste supplies by firing a second salvo at range 20 (if they are set to long range bombardment). Currently they fire a round at range 20 which finally hits the target at turn 25 or so and then they lob a second missile that can't possibly make it to the target before turn 30. This change would also have the effect of forcing a PBM armed Bombardment Ship into closer range making it more vulnerable. Alternatively change the reload time to 30 they won't fire a second round. Right now I've changed the range of PBMs to 10 (simulating direct orders to all ship captains not to fire a PBM beyond this range).

What is the point of plasma weapons? Less damage, pathetic range when compared to a Laser Cannon for the same weight. Uptweak them please. Seems their only purpose right now would be to nerf an AI race that was using them.

[Captain Kwok]

The one download is the original 8-races included with the mod, while the second download inclues the 9 races that Atrocities re-worked to be compatible with the CBmod (total of 17).

I'll leave it up to SJ to explain the weapon choices. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Phoenix-D]

scJazz said:
What is the point of plasma weapons? Less damage, pathetic range when compared to a Laser Cannon for the same weight. Uptweak them please. Seems their only purpose right now would be to nerf an AI race that was using them.



The plasma weapons are cheaper and fire twice as fast. So, where a laser cannon 1 does 340 damage (sans mount) the Plasma Cannon I does 400 damage (sans mount) in the same time period.

[scJazz]

OK but when I evaluate the lethality of a weapon I always use the formula...

Range1 + Range2 + Range3 ... /Weight/ROF = WeaponLethality

If I'm resource pour at that point I scale it for resource costs as well. Some variation of this formula always works for every game I've ever played. Hence the APB is the best weapon in unModded SEIV.

[Captain Kwok]

Keep in mind with longer range comes decreased accuracy. The figure is -6% to hit per square in CBmod (10% in stock) so your formula might give too much weight to range.

[Phoenix-D]

Definitely over-valuing range there.

[Suicide Junkie]

Plasma weapons are indeed weak in the early game.

However, later on, they can be quite nice.
My plasma battleships came in extremely handy in this battle:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/Tudran2_02.jpg
As a rough count, my (nausea heap) forces numbered approximately 300, while the Pandorans (bluish shiny metal ships) numbered 400 plus significant numbers of fighters.

On the third day of combat that month, the fighter squadrons had long since been wiped out, the missile tubes were completely dry, and only the torpedo boats with damaged engines still had ammo left (since they couldn't get into range and fire)
As the ragged, starving ships flew past the warppoint on yet another attack run, only my Plasmatica class ships were still doing significant damage.
In the end, my Plasma battleships turned a stalemate into a resounding victory.

The optimum range for Heavy Lasers early in the combat is medium to long range, so they stay out of the way of DUC/Plasma ships from both sides. Late in a multi-turn campaign it may better to close in to maximize your damage output since the ammo-using enemy guns will have fallen silent, but if there are any still-live short range DF guns, they will tear you apart.

Overall, heavy lasers are not that great a weapon in most cases. The Plasma shreds ships faster at close range, and Torpedoes deal more damage at long range. If you can afford to specialize your ships, do so.
Heavy lasers are better earlier on with smaller fleets... when optimal range means you can both get in close and demolish a torpedo boat, and stay far away from plasma ships to pick them apart. But if both torpedoes and plasma are present, then heavy lasers don't work so well.
Light laser cannons are always good as point defense however.

The value of lasers is certainly not the sum of damage at each range... after all, you don't get to fire that gun at all ranges each shot. You should consider just one damage value, at the typical range you hope to use it at, to be optimistic.

Using the Laser 1 - Unmounted as in the previous example, that is something lower than 300, every two turns.
A comparable tech level plasma cannon deals 50% more damage while taking the same space. (230 per turn)
So, if you can keep your distance, the laser might win taking no damage. But if you ever get into plasma range, you get roasted alive.

In small, early game combats, the laser ships have plenty of room to move around and avoid getting trapped. As the battles get bigger, weapon range means less and less, until plasma and DUCs become king.
At that point, the only benefit to the long ranged weapons is the fact that you can only fit 50 ships into combat squares right next to enemies... so the number of effective SR ships is limited.

This naturally leads to the re-introduction of good old military manouvers. Pincer attacks, crossing the T, such become quite useful.
After all, if you have surrounded the enemy, then you not only can fit more SR warships on your side of the (circular) front line than the enemy's side... but you also, by default, get to score some easy kills with SR ships vs the lightly armored missile boats typically found in the enemy's rear.

...

So, as for missiles. All missiles have infinite range in CBmod. They can only be locked and launched from range 20 due to vagaries of the SE4 hardcode.

If you wish for your antiplanet ships to hit twice, then you could order them to rush in. Most of the time, you should have warships cleaning up the resistance before your glassers do their work, so there will be little return fire.

...

PS:
The main failing of your formula is that it overvalues range, particularily when the ranges are short, as in CB. A range 2 vs a range 1 weapon is certainly not twice as powerful.
In one-on-one combat, a range 2 vs range 1 battle is mostly equivalent to a range 8 vs range 7.

The size of a battle is also a huge factor in deciding what weapons are best.
For example;
- If you are fighting with just two or three ships per battle, then long range weapons are the best. Cripple them before they get close, then kill at your leisure.
- If you are fighting with just two or three hundred ships per battle, then short range weapons are king. The enemy can't stay out of range, and short range guns deal far more damage. The short range guns shred the enemy before the long range guns can do very much damage.

[Will]

Probably a better formula for weapon strength would be:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>((Range_x*(x*Dist_Accuracy_Penalty))/MaxRange) / (Tonnage * RateOfFire)</pre><hr /> It's not entirely accurate, but it gets closer to what weapon strengths actually are. My personal preference from CB v.1.0 is ships armed mainly with missiles and torpedos, with a few ships using heavy mount DUCs; and my fighters have mixed arms, with a mix of torpedos and lasers for anti-missile duty, and DUCs and torpedos for anti-fighter and some anti-ship support. The anti-missile fighters tend to be launched in groups of 3 with light weapons (has about the firepower to take out one or two missiles per volley), while the anti-fighter/anti-ship tend to be launched in groups of 8 or 10 with heavy weapons (has about the firepower to take out smaller stacks of fighters and do minor damage to ships per volley). Plasma tended to be left out in order to balance costs between minerals and radioactives; enough rads were already going to shields and engines, so the more mineral-heavy DUC, torp, and missile weapons gained dominance, and lasers were left in their cheaper, light forms. I might have opted for light plasma weapons for anti-missile duty, but light lasers offer more versatility, since I have fighters act as a screen, with strategies set to target the farthest missiles targeted on other friendlies, allowing for a wider range of coverage, at the cost of accuracy penalties (I think this is made up for by having a large screen, so what the front misses, the back has a chance to clean up on).

I still need to look more into the balance between weapons in versions 1.4-1.6, see if things are different, but I would imagine I would use Plasma a little in the early game when there isn't as much a drain on radioactives, but switch back to the Missile-Torpedo-DUC triumverate in the mid- to late-game.

[Suicide Junkie]

I know what you mean... It is fairly hard to justify the resources to build plasma weapons in bulk.

My ships tend to be really heavily armored, at the expense of everything else, and I build a lot of radioactives extractors, since I know I'll need them... that gives me more wiggle room for installing the high energy toys. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And of course, you can't have your entire fleet be made up of plasma battleships. I had only about 15-20 of them in a fleet of 300. But despite their small numbers, they really cleaned up, scoring at least half the kills in that battle.

[Suicide Junkie]

Here is the updated basic version (4.5mb)

[Suicide Junkie]

An update; default events were a little too extreme.
This is the full atrocities version (8mb)

[scJazz]

OK my comments regarding long range weapons and plasma weapons being nerf magnets sure as hell didn't even contemplate situations where 300 ships engage. However I'm going to revisit this subject after some more review.

[Jake Monroe]

Yeah, SJ and them get some insane battle going in pbw. All weapons in CB have their uses, and that's part of what makes it so awesome.

[dumbluck]

I'm getting an invalid culture error for the Imperials. they're warriors instead of berserkers.

[Suicide Junkie]

Easy enough to fix when I get back from the cottage.

[Black_Knyght]

I downloaded Carrier Battles v1.6a, started a game, and so far it's an exercise in frustration: fighters WON'T load onto my carriers, Kinetic Missiles won't target seekers, and my ships all run out of supplies BEFORE they even leave the system.

What is the point of THIS???

[dumbluck]

Make sure you're putting supply pods on your ships. you NEED them.

The Anti-missle missles only work in strategic combat, not tactical.

The Fighter bays have no cargo capacity in and of themselves. But you are forced to add cargo bays, too, so I don't know why the fighters wouldn't be loading...

[Suicide Junkie]

Dumbluck has most of the answers covered.

The SE4 UI does not support targetting seekers; use AUTO tactical, or strategic. Preferably simultaneous turns.

Might you be designing a carrier using a warship hull? That would allow you to put a fighter bay, but no cargo bays.

[Black_Knyght]

I built Carriers on designated Carrier hulls, complete with cargo storage, then built fighters. Once the fighters were built I couldn't load them on the carrier. They also could not move within the system they were in. They were stuck, frackin' useless, on they planet they were built.

I tried the Kinetic Missiles in Non-auto tactical combat, and nothing happened. It wouldn't target or fire at any seekers fired at my ship. I was fully equipped to handle incoming missiles and got hammered because not a single frackin' thing worked like it said it would.

[Captain Kwok]

As it was mentioned by others, the kinetic missiles only work when they can be auto-fired. SJ really intends the mod to be used with either auto-resolved combat or strategic combat.

What was the displayed cargo storage of the carrier? What was the tonnage of the fighters being added? Are you using the transfer cargo window? If your carrier has cargo space, there should be no reason why the fighters won't load.

Lastly, remember that you need to two types of components for movement. You'll need the reactors (for supplies) and drive thingies for actual movement points.

[Suicide Junkie]

Tactical just won't work, because the SE4 UI does not support clicking on missiles.

Fighters are intended to not be able to fly through space on their own. They must be delivered to the combat area via carriers, or have the combat come to them, ala planetary defense.

Not being able to load cargo is bizarre; I presume you are familiar with the standard SE4 interface. Perhaps a screenshot would shed some light on your situation.
A savegame would let us try it ourselves too.

[scJazz]

Black_Knyght said:
&lt;SNIP&gt;got hammered because not a single frackin' thing worked like it said it would.



One of the BEST things about this Mod IS the fact that NOTHING works the way it does in straight SEIV. That is the whole point, well not really the whole point but a major side-effect. I've spent 3 or 4 weeks now re-learning everything I knew about tactics, design, research, etc. It is frickin great!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gifExcept the part about Plasma Weapons being totally useless nerf material which I still standby! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Violist]

Plasma weapons are perfectly useful, just as the other weapons in CBmod are, but they're less immediately apparent.

1) They use no supply whatsoever.
2) They fire every turn.
3) Their costs make them extremely useful for balancing costs in large fleets, reducing build time and maintenance.
4) They have a large 'punch'.

The first point is fairly obvious in its meaning and benefits. Ships with energy weapons can continue fighting long past the limits of kinetic-armed ships, and they can devote all of their supply storage to engines. They have longer operational range and time than their kinetic kin. Especially if you plan to share supplies between ships and you have missile ships (which chew up supplies like there's no tomorrow), this is an important aspect to pay attention to.

Firing every turn is an enormous benefit in close-quarters combat and in large-scale operations. Ships on the front line will take lots of damage and they can't move around much, so they have to shoot at point-blank range into the enemy right next to them. You might find it interesting to put ships like this (http://oregonstate.edu/~leungau/antheilDesignWindow.jpg) one in your simulator and watch how efficiently those twin cannon chew up ships. Short-range DF weapons are far superior to long-range DF weapons for massive battles.

Point 3 is extremely important to note. Everyone knows how horrible Stock SE4 is on this subject - everything is minerals. Life is minerals. If you are unlucky enough to start in an area without many minerals, you're going to die. Ships cost ridiculously high quantities of minerals to build and maintain. Energy weapons require radioactives almost exclusively, making them very useful for balancing firepower and cost from the scale of the individual ship to the scale of the 500-ship fleet. You won't be able to build as many as you can if the kinetics, but they'll keep your minerals cost down and make sure you can use your spaceyards with a lot more efficiency. Stock shipyards spend about 80% or more of their time sucking up minerals but they often build the orgs and rads in the first turn of construction. Keeping ship costs balanced means you can make better use of your colonies' resource amounts, can maintain your ships more effectively, and perhaps most importantly, build very powerful ships much faster.

This brings us to perhaps the deciding factor - damage. Leaky shields are very interesting in their effect of draining damage from each shot. I'm sure you're all aware of how futile it is to launch 50 20mm DUC shells at a ship with even 20 shield points. You're going to get 2 shots through to the hull. As the damage absorbtion on the target increases, so does the amount of 'punch' (damage per shot) required to break through the shielding and inflict damage that can be felt to the underlying hull. Let's examine the options...

<font color="red">Torpedo weapons</font> - long range, massive damage that *increases* as range increases, long reload time (3). These weapons are the heaviest guns you can find, easily. But... they have hefty size requirements, and even their longer range won't be useful when the entire battle map is clogged up with 400 combat ships and literally thousands of fighters. Plus, they fire once and then they're useless for 3 turns. On the plus side, you can't put enough shields on a ship to protect it from a torpedo hit.

<font color="red">Beam weapons</font> - long range, very high damage that trails off as range increases, medium reload time (2). Masers, Lasers, X-Ray lasers, GRasers, these guns do huge amounts of damage when they hit, and even the heaviest of shielding is well-nigh useless against them. However, they have an incredibly high cost in Rads, and they suffer from the same reload time problem that torpedo ships suffer from.

<font color="red">Projectile weapons</font> - short range, good damage, negligible reload time. Projectile weapons have the best damage/turn/kt ratio of all the weapons in CBmod, and if they can get within range of the enemy, they'll slice through enemy ships like a tablesaw through... well, anything, really... the main disadvantage of projectile weapons is against ships with very heavy leaky shielding. Since even the 100mm ones do ~120-150 (not sure of the actual entire range here) per hit, if a high-tech ship with around 60-80 points of shielding goes up against a DUC ship, the armor will not have to absorb much damage to keep the ship fighting and alive.

<font color="red">Plasma weapons</font> - the focus of this article. Plasma weapons are *almost* twice the damage of projectile, twice the size, and have slightly less cost than the beam weapons. It is important to note that on their own they are a very good mix of beam and projectile weapons. However, the trick here is the punch - while the extremely important ratio of (damage / turn / kT) isn't quite as good as the projectile weapons, they do a lot more damage *per shot*. This is important:

Consider a ship with 80 points of leaky shielding. We'll pit it against two potential designs in the safety of our minds. Each ship will spend 50 kT on weapons.

Design 1 features twin 100mm Depleted Uranium Cannon IIIs (114 damage each, up to 3 range). It will do 228 damage each turn to the enemy. However, due to the way leaky shielding works, each shot will lose 80 points of damage, thus, we'll get each shot doing 34 damage on average, for a turn total of 68. A lot worse than 228, no? Also, this will use up 100 supplies a turn...
Weapons cost: 1500, 0, 250
Damage lost to shielding: 70%

Design 2 features a single 100mm Plasma Cannon III, doing 209 damage to 3 range. It will similarly lose 80 points of damage per shot to the shields, but, since the damage is so much higher, it will be doing 129 damage a turn average.
Weapons cost: 250, 0, 4800
Damage lost to shielding: 38%

There is no denying that the plasma cannon is significantly more expensive, but note the difference in combat prowess. Design 1 has to make 4 times the number of shots in twice as many turns to pull off the same amount of damage to the hull as Design 2. In this time, enemy ships will be shooting at it, it might miss, it is blocking space that other ships need for moving around in...

Just imagine that the shielded target has some armor. 34 damage a shot is just enough to take out a single 20cm armor component of Tritanium. Another tech level up, and your projectile cannon can't even knock out 20cm armor. The only way it could do much damage would be to score a very low-probability lucky hit against a shield generator and reduce the shielding, whereas the plasma ship will be slicing out chunks of the hull with a vengeance.

Against heavily shielded enemies, plasma is clearly superior. Against enemies without much shielding - and for general purpose construction, due to cost - projectile is clearly superior. This is the beauty of CarrierBattles Mod. Everything is balanced very, very well.

Hope this helps http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

It should be noted that in that particular example you used, the 100mm DUCs would be dealing 34 more damage than the shields can handle, and that damage adds up each turn.

Although it would take more than one round worth of hits, the higher tech armor would slowly crack.

[Violist]

Good to note, yes. Still, one round is a lot of time.

[Jake Monroe]

nice little splurge there Vio. Very usefull. A+

[scJazz]

OK so I finished my first full CB game. I've played 2. The first one I quit around turn 120. I was just learning the ropes. I thought I'd provide some feedback from the viewpoint of first time player. This is not meant to be a list of suggestions or complaints. It is simply what I think after having played one game and some of the experiences I had while playing it.

My playing style: Always research intensive, always try upgrading ships, always get the Propulsion Expert trait!

First and foremost I enjoyed the experience!!! So whatever else I say in this post should be viewed through this lens.

1) The game lasted until roughly turn 210. This is about twice as long as a stock or TDM game. TDM is the only other mod I've ever played. I was playing against high number of high difficulty AIs with no bonus as suggested in the docs. My feeling is that the game took so long because of the very large number of ships involved, the difficulty/inability to easily destroy planetary defenses, and the overall requirement to basically capture every enemy planet. Adding to this is the relatively slow speed of the ships. I was using basically speed 6 for nearly every design up to the very end. Around turn 170 I started mass producing a speed 8 destroyer design. Normally, at the end of a game I'd be using speed 13 battlecruisers and just glassing every world I came across.

2) I liked the QNP. I hated the fact that the larger exhaust ports were basically unusable because of the loss of efficiency. So I was forced into using warship designs with rediculous numbers of small ports. The only designs I used the larger ports on were non-combatant support ships like the fighter ferry/transports. I would have used larger ports but I felt that the inefficiencies of thrust vs weight basically were too high and would put my combatants at too high a risk of losing full speed due to battle damage.

3) The leaky designs were really freakin cool!

4) It was a complete pain to repair my fleet escorts! The whole repair bay/repair facility thing was pretty annoying and time consuming. I appreciated the whole concept of having to really setup fleet repair facilities and dedicating entire planets to the task with years of setup required. Still the large number of very small easily damaged components left me with a significant management task of constant repairs throughout the game. This got a bit old. I've started my second game and after the initial push I'm considering using the small number of very large components approach. Minimal use of 20mm mounts, larger engine ports, minimal use of 20cm armor. Perhaps this will work out and I won't feel the loss of efficiency too much though even writing the last two sentences irked me.

5) Missiles are just too damn slow. OK this part is a gripe. I had to use ship designs that were speed 6 because otherwise I was going to get jammed up with the whole fleet-outruns-the-missile-bombardment problem. Toward the end of the game when I was using speed 4 and 5 fighters primarily I nearly stopped production of my A series fighter bombers because of this very problem. In the end I just suffered ludicrous losses to this fighter class. I'd like to see the missile speeds increased at higher levels to maintain some sort of parity with the possible combat speeds of ships. Some might comment along the lines of missile speeds are just fine for me because a) I use slow ship designs b) always use strategy X which is superior. Whatever your point of view missile speeds totally do not work for me because they are too slow and don't fit anything in the way of my design philosophy or combat strategy. Along the same lines I never used the nuclear missiles because it just made this problem worse. Then there is the whole multiple salvos chasing after the target because it is retreating. Sets up a situation where 4 to 6 salvos are fired on a target over around 15 turns, the first salvo finally hits the target around turn 16 when the map border stops the retreat. Naturally this wastes supplies and causes target saturation problems. Missiles should be faster than the ships that they are designed to kill. Reference US torpedo design after the release of the Soviet Alfa attack sub for an object example. Speed up the missiles... the end.

6) Plasma cannons are useless in AI games because the AIs never use 100cm armor. Actually never saw them use anything but 20cm armor. DUCs seemed more useful because of their weight and cost. I'm sure that in a PBW game plasma cannons become useful but not against the AI. I never play PBW so... plasma cannons are nerf toys. BTW I only saw 2 fighter designs by one race out of like 8 AIs that used plasma cannons at all.

7) I got the impression that the AIs weren't varied enough. One game isn't enough to tell but they all seemed to use the same ship designs.

8) AIs kept having a problem with what I think were their PD or anti-fighter designs. I killed hundreds of these ships in 1 on 1 engagements. They would not return fire on my ships even though in cases they had range advantages and more than enough of a chance to shoot. Would it be better to weight the AI designs toward generally useful designs rather than specialized to avoid situations where the AI sends out dozens of these essentially useless ships to get blasted. Mind you I'm not saying the designs are useless I'm just pointing out that a more generalized approach for the AIs might be better because they don't use the ships correctly. Alternatively AI strategies could perhaps be changed so that PD ships will fire on ships and fighters, etc.

9) Not one AI used a PBM against any of my planets. OK not like they had much of a chance but they seemed intent on wasting their time using DF weapons against a few planets in totally fruitless and repeated attacks. Not sure what can be done about this... perhaps an AI cruiser that uses a few DF weapons and PBMs get to a very generalized attack strategy.

10) The mount descriptions make to hit chances unreadable in Tactical Combat. Take note I'm not manually fighting ships in Tactical but I do use it to get a feel for planetary defenses (which you can't see in any form in Strategic) or Fleet make-up (same problem). I wanted to go in and edit the descriptions to read 2c, 2cm, or 20 but never did. I get the impression that Mount descriptions should only be 1 character because of this issue.

11) AIs should use more Training Facilities. I think.

OK that is enough... there is more but this is a good chunk.

Again... I enjoyed the overall experience and am already at turn 50 of my 2nd game. Thank you SJ and the entire modding community for making SE so playable for so very very very long!

(NOTE: This entire post was written using Writely another cool toy from Google. It is currently in Beta @ www.writely.com. (http://www.writely.com.) Check it out and help destroy the MEE known as M$!)

[Suicide Junkie]

Part of the overall AI weakness you are seeing is the fact that you are playing a sequential turn game.
AIs are hardcoded to treat it as simultaneous all the time.

---

The game is intended to involve trench warfare, but a fleet of Planetary Bombardment missile ships can either chew through it or soften the enemy up before your invasion.

About the size/number of components, I think you've got it.
#2 and #4 are your design tradeoffs. You can pack a bit more in, or you can make it easier to repair. And the large engines are much cheaper in resource cost too.

They are indeed pretty slow for open combat, but open combat is pretty hard on all the weapons.
Big densely packed fleets make all the weapons more effective; the targets won't be able to evade or run, and there will be a lots of targets to choose.
Choosing a strategy that spreads your fire around is also very important. Because of the leaky shields and armor, crippling an enemy is much easier than destroying them; 2 or 3 disabled enemy ships means less return fire than 1 vaporized ship. This is particularily so with missiles since they tend to overkill a ship.
I think I will increase the speeds by 1, however.

The size of the armor is not the important part of making plasma cannons more useful, but rather the shielding.
Strong shields can block most or all of a DUC shot, but plasma has almost double the punch.
Still, plasma is the least commonly used weapon. It does make an effective anti-planet gun; high power and no ammo means you can leave the ship in orbit to rain down death for as long as you need it to. The low accuracy is mitigated by the fact that there is no ammo needed and all the time in the world to blast away.

The AIs are indeed mostly the same. The only major differences are what culture they choose at the moment. Rollo should be around again this fall to finish up the AIs, I believe.

One on one engagements with a warship vs a PD ship are clearly one-sided. Even if they did fire, PD guns would bounce off your shields harmlessly and merely waste ammo.

I find that the AI tends to blockade a planet and send down suppressing fire while they bring in their troop transports. If you don't push them off fast enough, they'll eventually take the planet. And if the planet is undefended, they'll wipe it out with DF and move on. Not bad for an AI.

And as for training facilities, it is known that the AIs can't be made to use training except by blind luck. The training is quite slow and limited, which mitigates this somewhat.

--

Having defeated the AI, how do you feel about taking over an empty slot in a PBW game with real humans?

"Carrier Battles #8" and "Carrier Battles Deluxe #2b" both need one more player to replace Axel, who is doing well but got kicked in the head by real life.

It should be noted that these two games both are using older versions of the mod.
- CB8 uses v1.3e, which has oversized carriers (400-1000kt) and a different missile scheme, among other things.
- CBd2b uses v1.4a, which has a faster missile scheme and lacks some of the latest features such as AIs, logos and ruins.

Both games are at their peaks, with big empires, large navies and plenty of battles involving hundreds of ships.

PS:
I think the slow missiles in v1.6 may have been left over from when I was trying to fit a "missile propulsion" tech into the mod, which would increase their speed; 2 and 3 being the base low-tech speed.
I'll make a few more tweaks and release v1.6b soon.

[scJazz]

Violist said:
&lt;SNIP&gt;
You might find it interesting to put ships like this (http://oregonstate.edu/~leungau/antheilDesignWindow.jpg) one in your simulator and watch how efficiently those twin cannon chew up ships. Short-range DF weapons are far superior to long-range DF weapons for massive battles.
&lt;SNIP&gt;
Hope this helps http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



About 2/3rd through my first full game I started production of a similar design. It became the single most produced class of ships.

[scJazz]

Suicide Junkie said:
&lt;SNIP&gt;
They are indeed pretty slow for open combat, but open combat is pretty hard on all the weapons.
Big densely packed fleets make all the weapons more effective; the targets won't be able to evade or run, and there will be a lots of targets to choose.
Choosing a strategy that spreads your fire around is also very important. Because of the leaky shields and armor, crippling an enemy is much easier than destroying them; 2 or 3 disabled enemy ships means less return fire than 1 vaporized ship. This is particularily so with missiles since they tend to overkill a ship.
I think I will increase the speeds by 1, however.
&lt;SNIP&gt;




It is becoming hard not to notice how there is a constant reference to large fleet battle i.e. The Battle of Tudran. I don't know how many people play CB but I'd have to think that battles of that size are not the norm. They may be the norm for the CB PBW games but I doubt that they can be considered typical.

While I appreciate huge firefights with lots of explosions as much as the next guy battles of that size do not allow ships/fleets to show their designs/strategies exactly because of the dense packing.

If I may make a suggestion...
I think the missile speeds should track against Missile Manufacturing. The following suggestions are for late game X series missiles.

Heavy Kinetic Missile should end up with a max speed of 7 to 9 so that it is faster than a Propulsion VI fighter.

Explosive Missiles would be 5 to 7 in order to outrun late game destroyers which end up with a combat speed of 4 to 5.

Nuclear Missiles should be 4 to 6 reflecting their general targetting against slower battleships and dreadnoughts.

PBMs can stay right where they are since their target doesn't move. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[scJazz]

I'd love to substitute but I'm unable to right now due to the simple fact that I don't have an Internet connection at home right now. Something that will be fixed shortly with any luck.

Piece of advise... never give your roommate cash for phone bill without seeing receipt of payment!

[Suicide Junkie]

The battles in CB3 are a bit larger than typical due to the fact that it is in the endgame.

Most of the serious fighting going on in PBW games involves fleets of approximately 100 ships for the midgame games.

[AngleWyrm]

On the missile speed-up thing, please do include Planetary Bombardment Missiles.

The reason is that there are only 30 turns of combat, and the ships must close to within range twenty to launch. The first shot will probably hit before the end. (I have seen engagements of a couple dozen ships, where the bombers couldn't get in range soon enough, due to the crowd). The second shot will definitely launch, but will probably go to waste due to the thirty-turn time limit. That's a very expensive waste, in terms of supply usage.

I have tried to use point-blank tactics, but my planetary bombardment ships take heavy damage when doing so. Seems artificial to force them into orbit just to avoid a timer wasting shots. Also rather crippling to reduce the entire fleet's strategic movement in order to slow down the bomber's approach.

So in closing, as far as I have seen thus far, it seems like a good idea to include PBMs if you increase the missile speeds.

-Jonathan

[Suicide Junkie]

Right.
Got those PBMs fixed now.

The 20 turn reload was OK when it was a 50 round combat. Not so anymore.

[scJazz]

Yippeeeeeee!

[AngleWyrm]

Wahoooo!

IwannadownloadIwannadownloadIwannadownload...Must remember to cut back on coffee...

[Suicide Junkie]

Post deleted by Suicide Junkie

[AngleWyrm]

Thanks!

Some quick early beta feedback on first game:
- Unknown trait "Warriors" for "Galactic Empire"

and for the AI files:
- Unknown value "Optimal Weapons Range:Anti-Ship/Fighter" in record "Combat Ship (B)" and record "Scout (C)"
- Unknown value "Point Blank Range:Anti-Missile/Fighter" (comes up three times each race)

Back to hunting Caspians...

[Suicide Junkie]

v1.6b attached.

[AngleWyrm]

That fixed it.
Wow that was fast!

[AngleWyrm]

Ground Combat: Liking it a lot!

Not sure if this is possible, but:
I made some 800 attack artillery units, but they have range-1, so...they have to be on the front row to fight? Putting that fella up against the Phong 101st rabble legion, I'de rather have some armored infantry on the front row.

Is the range band thingy just an illusion in SEIV ground combat, or can troops with range-2 fire from behind the front line?

[Phoenix-D]

Range doesn't do anything in SEIV ground combat.

[AngleWyrm]

ok, it looks like the first square is the one that takes all the damage.

Do all the squares get to fire, or is it just the first squares duking it out?

[Suicide Junkie]

Only the range-1 damage matters.
Stuff such as reload rate and range are ignored.

[scJazz]

Downloaded 1.6b v2... missiles are faster!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif Darnit! Missiles are still not fast enough! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif Late game fighters and escorts can still outrun the missiles they are firing or being targetted by! See previous post please.

[Suicide Junkie]

The missiles aren't going to get any faster...

Fast fighters are weak fighters, and in the late game you should be using more direct fire weapons.

In the late game missiles will still reach their targets despite the speed if you choose your strategies right (IE: missile ships should prioritize different targets than the DF ships, so the targets don't die before the missiles arrive)

[scJazz]

OK fine but I still think it is crazy to have missiles that can be outrun by the targets! Nevermind the insanity of firing a missile that is slower than the ship you are in.

[Will]

Missiles would only be out-run in small skirmishes involving ships on the order of 10s. Carrier Battles is centered on large fleet operations, fleets in the 100s, plus fighters, and in those battles, you cannot run away from missiles because there is nowhere to move.

I haven't downloaded this version, but last I checked, the only missiles that could really be out-run in any normal situation were the planetary and capship missiles... for the anti-planet missiles, this is meaningless since the planet cannot run, and for the anti-ship missiles, only ships with large space dedicated to movement would outrun missiles, and in CB, that means you skimped on defenses and/or weapons, and thus your design will be useless anyway. It doesn't matter if you can move faster than the missiles when they're coming from all sides and it only takes a hit or two to disable something critical, and you got a dead ship.

[Suicide Junkie]

Unlimited range + Slow provides gameplay improvement over short-range and fast.

Unlimited range + fast would be quite the munchkin missiles.

I could make some faster short range missiles, if torpedoes did not already fill the role.

[scJazz]

Will said:
Missiles would only be out-run in small skirmishes involving ships on the order of 10s. Carrier Battles is centered on large fleet operations, fleets in the 100s, plus fighters, and in those battles, you cannot run away from missiles because there is nowhere to move.
&lt;SNIP&gt;



You guys keep saying huge fleets, Battle of Tudran, no place to maneuver, etc. SJ has already said that he isn't making the missiles any faster. Fine. I will. Why?

Because I don't play setups where I have 50 turns without contact in an enormous galaxy with limited players allowing the time for huge fleet build up. I don't play setups where anyone has the luxury of creating multiple 100+ ship fleets guarding every warp point entrance to my space. I understand that it is what you guys playing CB PBW games seem to enjoy. I just don't like it. I'm rather confused by the fact that you all seem to want me to like it. You all seem to want me to like it because your always referring to having things set up a certain way to basically encourage it. Great... have fun! Me I'm editting CB 1.6 v2 to have faster missiles!

[Will]

Well, you could do that. But really, there are reasons why the missiles aren't any faster than they are already, which is what everyone else is trying to say. Missiles are king in the early game when everything else is slow anyway, but there's still room to move around in battles. Then toward the end game, you need a variety of weapons to win any battle. The focus of the game is how to keep your fleets as balanced as possible, but if you increase the power of missiles too much (by increasing speed), the game simply becomes "who can build more missile boats faster?" And there comes a point where if you increase the speed any more, missiles just become glorified, never-miss, direct fire weapons.

[AngleWyrm]

Submitted for your approval...

For the Battlestar Galactica race, a little image modification, to reflect the new series. The attachment has two bmps that go in the pictures/BSG folder.

http://home.comcast.net/~anglewyrm/Emblem.jpg

[Suicide Junkie]

SCjazz:

Lets hit this from a different angle...
Given the slow missile speed, are you making more use of direct fire weapons?
Are you completely ignoring missiles?
Is the enemy damaging/destroying your ships with missiles still?

[scJazz]

Suicide Junkie said:
SCjazz:

Lets hit this from a different angle...
Given the slow missile speed, are you making more use of direct fire weapons?
Are you completely ignoring missiles?
Is the enemy damaging/destroying your ships with missiles still?



1) My fleet escorts (not counting support ships like repair, supply, non-combatants, etc) are divided roughly along the lines of 1/3rd torpedo boats (Torps and DUC mix), 1/3rd Point Defense, 1/3rd Guided Missile ships. Similarly, Carrier fighter complements are 1/3rd Interceptors, 1/3rd Space Superiority, 1/3rd Attack Bombers. In the early game there is no problem at all.

2) During late-mid game and late game I strongly de-emphasize missiles on my fleet escorts because they are outrunning the missiles they fire or are being screened by. The recent addition of +1mp will push this back to a later point in time but it will still happen to my last generation fleet escorts. My A series fighter bombers get hammered for most of the game however because not having missiles is equally suicidal.

3) During the mid and late games. Basically, no. My ships are as fast as or faster than the missiles so when they are moving away from the enemy they have lots of time to shoot down the missiles with their PD lasers (Jazz design rule #439 all ships better at least be prepared to try and shoot down missiles aimed at them!). I've watched my escorts scream in to attack range, fire, and start withdrawing suffering minor damage (with exception of lucky hits that take out drives).

I'm not suggesting that all missiles at every point in tech get faster. I'm saying add a MP probably based on manufacturing (or something) so that L3 Manufacturing gets +1MP and like L5 manufacturing gets +1MP. Total max spd: 6 for the explosives, 5 for Nukes. Bump hvy kinetics 1MP on L3, L4 and L5 manufacturing in order to even try to keep up with fighters.

This doesn't turn them into super direct fire long range weapons. Torpedos and lasers are still longer ranged. Missiles still have to get launched and then move. Taking fire from Light Kinetics and PD lasers.

Best of all, and the part that really torques me, I don't have to watch my DDGs and CCGs dumping valuable supplies firing 3 to 5 waves of missiles at a target just to see the bogey get vaporized by one of my DUC PT boats right before the first wave makes it to the target. Or conversely watch my PT boat get vaporized because the missile screen that should have covered it is far behind!

[Suicide Junkie]

Strategies will help that last one a lot.

Set the firing options to 10% damage to targets, and do not target nearest. Instead, pick ones that are unlikely to target the same ship twice in a row... Has weapons, fastest, and least damaged are good ones. Farthest works too, since it will target the things that your PT boats will definitely not be shooting at.

You definitely don't want your whole fleet firing on the same ship.

[AngleWyrm]

Hey,

I've been trying to design a good PD Cruiser vs my current generation of missile fighters, but the PD ships can't seem to successfully shoot down missiles.

In Simulations, a wing of five missile fighters lauch five heavy explosive missile-IIs (seeker dmg resistance:24kT each). So it seems like the stack should have 24x5=120hp?

The PD ship is armed with 1x80mm Laser-III, 1x60mm Laser-III, and 3x40mm Laser-III. It also has Gun Crews-I. This should be a possible three missiles, and a possible two targets, right?

Edit:
But during combat, it fires on incoming missiles from range one to range four with almost no effect; During the course of the simulation, in thirty turns it might kill two missiles out of the twenty to twentyfive that are launched at it.

Am I missing something about damage allocation or to hit rolls or something?

For reference, The laser three damage tables:
(3x)40mm: 38, 36, 33, 30
(1x)60mm:103, 96, 89, 82
(1x)80mm:205, 205, 192, 178, 165

[Suicide Junkie]

As for damaging missiles:
Provided that you hit, damage only applies to one missile; any excess damage does not hit the second missile, but is lost.

With such firepower, the only way I can see you not killing missiles is due to missing.

Larger weapons have accuracy issues (+40, +20, 0, -10, -20), and missiles have a hefty evade bonus (60%)... Base accuracy is 70%, -6% per square.

20mm guns should get you a significantly higher hit rate.
Using a smaller hull will get you some hit bonus as well.

And, of course, if you chose the pacifist culture, they have -50% to accuracy off the top.
In that case, you need the antimissile missiles, since nothing else will hit (1% minimum hit chance for DF weapons).

[AngleWyrm]

That -50 has got to be it. After a little spreadsheeting, it does seem to add up. Then it's missiles for this game, and I'll try different next game.

On another oddity that's come up: I've tried building "Highly Industrialized Sector" on a couple of my larger worlds, a 2.5 year project. I came back to them several months later, and they were instead building "Legacy Infrastructure", a 10~12 year project! I had to cancel four months production, and restart them on "Industrialized" again.

[Suicide Junkie]

You must have clicked the "Upgrade All" button on the queues list. That's a fairly dangerous button in CBmod.

[AngleWyrm]

yep, did that; ok will avoid that.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Does CB have AI?

[Suicide Junkie]

It has Rollo AI!

They will likely work best under v1.5, since Rollo has not been around since I got to v1.6.

1.6 has lots of nice stuff for multiplayer, including some spiffy ruins tech, more control over intel, and support for JunkYardWars style play.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Thanks.

[scJazz]

OK so I didn't believe the whole... don't use low bonus or your gonna get trampelled into space dust advice.

Stupid me!

I've got a fight on my hands! I'm winning... sorta. Against one race (I control 2 of their homeworlds now). Of course it has taken half of my fleet warships (twice) to pull it off. And yah I do control one of their homeworlds... well the control thing is iffy with the 53 Eee warships orbitting above it (4000 hvy infantry, 600 lt infantry, and 44 basic fighters defending). Where is my fleet you ask? On the other side of the warp point licking its wounds and trying to get its act together after having all but 2 destroyer escorts, 3 CVs, and 4 LVs blasted into space dust.

Turn 74 and I've taken a whole 3 enemy worlds and I'm completely surrounded with no way to expand but conquest! Yah don't touch that button!

[scJazz]

SJ,
I'd like to suggest that you add the following to the ReadMe file...

Due to the lack of technology for opening warp points it is recommended that you remove the warp point closed event from Events.txt if you are playing on an AI Friendly Map.

*********************
Obviously I just got whammied by this event. Two occurences and I'm totally cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

[Suicide Junkie]

You could also just reduce the severity of events. Warppoint closings are high severity.