The Galactic Invasion 2: Replacement Player Needed

[CovertJaguar]

Ever want to join with all the races of the Galaxy to do battle against an invasion of space monsters? This is the game for you then. The game will feature Fyron's Adamant mod. There will be two human controled monsters against 10 regular races. We have five players already, two monsters and 3 regular races. You may remember the first "The Galactic Invasion" game from a few months ago, well we took what we learned from that game and we are applying it to this one. Come join the Galactic Council and free the galaxy from the clutches of the ravaging monsters. Roleplaying is very strongly encouraged. Make history along side of the Council or forge your own future. We would love to have you.

Game Name: The Galactic Invasion 2
Starting resources: 100000
Starting planets: 3
Home planet value: Good
Score display: Ally
Technology level: Low
Racial points: 5000
Quadrant size: Large
Event frequency: Medium
Event severity: Catastrophic
Technology cost: Medium
Victory conditions: Join with the Galactic Council and restore peace in the galaxy, or forge your own version of "galactic peace"!
Maximum units: Max
Maximum ships: Max
Computer players: Low
Computer difficulty: High
Computer player bonus: High
Neutral empires: No
Other game settings: There will be two space monster races the players need to defeat. The game may continue after that, until galactic peace is restored.

[CovertJaguar]

[BUMP]

[douglas]

Come on, people, we need more players! Join up! No previous experience with Adamant Mod required, we'll be happy to answer questions and requests for advice once the game starts.

[Ragnarok-X]

Oh well, no need to hurry. We can wait a few days, maybe people are busy because of eastern ? Is it called so anyways ?!

[Fyron]

Easter.

[Sivran]

Hmmm last time I installed Adamant it crashed me O.o

[Fyron]

The wacky bitmap header problem should be gone... SE4 should be fine now. If not, let me know. Easy to fix, just run a batch conversion of bitmaps to bitmaps on the Adamant folder with a program like IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/).

[Ron_Lugge]

<sigh>

I'd love to play, but my net access won't allow it...

*crys*

Well, one more reason to be impatient to get home internet access.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

F%$#@$^&*(^@**king h*ll..... I hate that too. I have Internet at home, but not on my own PC - have to use someone else's computer for that, and can't install SEIV there.....

but if I manage to get internet on my own PC or get permission to install SEIV on the other PC, I'll join.

[douglas]

The turn files are small enough you should be able to transfer them between the computer with internet and your computer with SEIV on a floppy disk. I doubt very much that the zipped turn files will ever get over 1.44 MB, and .plr files are always tiny.

[Ragnarok-X]

Right, most early game turn files tend to be between 200-450 kb in size, im thinking about games with 12+ players here. In a late game star trek mod game im playing (20 players huge sized galaxy etc) the turn files are 1.1mb, but i doubt our game will get that big. 400-500kb is my guess, the as douglas mentioned, the .plr files are really tiny, if i remember right only a few kb (?)

[CovertJaguar]

[BUMP]

[douglas]

I wonder if explicitly saying "new game" in the thread title would help. It's worth a try anyway.

[CovertJaguar]

That was the first thing I tried. I got more responses from "The Monster are Invading." But I'll give it a try anyway.

[TurinTurambar]

I keep thinking about it but changing my mind back again. I've got 3 lousy games on PBW going right now that I occasionally miss turns on as it is, I'm in the middle of an IRS audit for my business, and I'm flat broke so I have to work 10 hour days 5 or 6 days a week.

Ee-gad I hate being a grownup.

turin

[douglas]

*BUMP*

Just four more players, and we can start! Come on people, join up.

[mastermindkar]

If you guys are desperate for membership I would like to join the game. However, I do have some fairly serious problems you would have to put up with:
Namely, I just got the game today, I don't have any mods and I've never played an online game or simultaneous game before. I have been playing the demo religiously for the past two weeks and I studied the FAQs for Newbies thread, so I understand the game, but I have no real experience.

In the very least I imagine I could be either the hapless the empire that gets wiped out in the opening of the invasion, thus increasing the severity and histeria of the situation or the wimpy guy everyone forgets about who shows up at a critical juncture to save the day (maybe).

[douglas]

Come on in! New players are just as welcome as experienced ones here. The game is strictly for fun, and one of my ideas for roleplaying my monster race is to want at least some challenge from my "prey", so if I start steamrolling over you at any point, my monsters are likely to turn around and seek someone else that can actually put up a fight. Also, with the time it takes to research the first monster ships, plus the time I plan to spend building a home garrison, it'll be 22 turns before my first space monster even sets out.

If you need any help setting up the mod, feel free to ask. For your racial setup, make sure you don't forget to take the advanced traits Imperial Aspirations, a Race Paradigm trait (physical, organic, or magical), a Race Type trait (Normal, Nomadic, Pirate), and (if Normal race, highly recommended for new players) a colony type matching your home planet type. Without those picks, you'll have hardly anything in your tech tree.

[mastermindkar]

Sounds good. Merciful monsters or not, I suspect my self-esteem is gonna take a beating.
I have the first of what will doubtless be many questions:
Which mods do I need for the game? Just the Adamant mod?
Which mods improve the game the most in general?
When I was setting an empire, the "Hardy Industrialists" trait offers a 25% construction bonus for 1000 points, but increasing your construction aptitude to 125% also costs 1000 points. Do they do the same thing?

[luke_slovakian]

Hey i'll join i never played adamant mod but guessing it will be fun:-p. Hey btw welcome to the threads mastermindkar. Hope u like the gmae

[mastermindkar]

Thanks luke-slovakian. I love this game, Its like a David Weber novel in game form.

[Fyron]

Make sure to browse the help files for the mod. There are some very startling changes from the stock game. Pay particular attention to the Empire Setup help file.

http://adamant.spaceempires.net/help/

[mastermindkar]

I only need the adamant mod, right? Would it cause problems if I downloaded any others?

[douglas]

mastermindkar said:
I only need the adamant mod, right? Would it cause problems if I downloaded any others?


You need the ImageMod (http://imagemod.spaceempires.net/) as well. Install the ImageMod in the appropriate places in the stock pictures directory. Many mods use it for extra artwork, but you only need one copy regardless of how many mods you have installed.

As long as you install mods properly, they won't conflict. Never ever overwrite the stock datafiles with a mod, excepting only the ImageMod. Install each mod in its own folder within the Space Empires folder. You don't have to worry about this with the Adamant Mod installers, however, as they automatically put everything in a new subfolder of wherever you point them to. When installing the Adamant Mod, you can just give it the root SEIV directory and it will take care of the rest. For other mods, it depends on the mod and the method of installation, but each mod should end up in a separate folder. To play a mod, you can either edit path.txt manually or use the Mod Launcher program, which I believe comes on the SEIV Gold CD.

[mastermindkar]

Sounds simple. On the other hand, you're talking to the man who once accidently deleted his own commmand prompt file.

[douglas]

mastermindkar said:
Sounds good. Merciful monsters or not, I suspect my self-esteem is gonna take a beating.
I have the first of what will doubtless be many questions:
Which mods do I need for the game? Just the Adamant mod?
Which mods improve the game the most in general?
When I was setting an empire, the "Hardy Industrialists" trait offers a 25% construction bonus for 1000 points, but increasing your construction aptitude to 125% also costs 1000 points. Do they do the same thing?


There are tons of mods out there that modify gameplay in many different ways. Which one is "best" depends entirely on your individual opinion. IMO Adamant is a very good one, but it's also very large and I don't think much effort has been put into making the AI very good for single player. TDM Modpack is an essential for the stock game, as it makes no changes to gameplay but greatly improves the AI. For others, search the lists at Malfador (www.malfador.com) and Spaceempires.net (http://spaceempires.net) and read the descriptions.

Regarding Hardy Industrialist, it depends on the mod. In stock, Hardy Industrialist is exactly equivalent to 125% construction aptitude for planetary space yards but has no effect on ship and base space yards. It's only value is that it isn't affected by the increased cost of construction aptitude at 120%, which allows you to get up to 145% planetary construction rates for a lot cheaper. In Adamant Mod, the trait is actually a special racial tech that gives you a special version of each planetary space yard that has a higher base rate. The fact that it directly modifies the base rate means that construction aptitude and population bonuses actually multiply with it rather than adding, so Hardy Industrialist + 120% construction aptitude = 1.25 * 1.2 = +50% construction rate, plus population has 25% more effect on construction rate.

[luke_slovakian]

HAHA i once deleted my windows file and now my comp is all microsofty:-p...so i would play on my family machine ahah

[mastermindkar]

Okay, I downloaded the image mod into my space empires IV folder, and then I downloaded the adamant mod in to the SE IV folder too. I know the image mod is working because the start-up screen has a new cooler picture. How do I use the adamant (and other) mods?

[Fyron]

The image mod does not include a startup screen. Are you sure you placed the Adamant Mod into its own folder? There should be an Adamant folder in the SEIV folder.

The best way to load mods is to use the Mod Launcher (http://www.spaceempires.net/home/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetail s&lid=14&ttitle=SE4_Mod_Launcher#dldetails). Place it in the SEIV folder and load it instead of SE4 directly.

[mastermindkar]

Okay, I can now play the Adamant mod, thankyou for your help. Btw, are you going to be on my team Imperator?

[Fyron]

I don't have the time for PBW games right now, so I wasn't planning on joining this game.

[mastermindkar]

Let me add the qualifier: "I can now play the Adamant mod, but some of the pictures do not work."
I downloaded the FQM version of Adamant, and I have the image mod torrent file in my pictures file. What have I done wrong?

[Fyron]

Did you point the Image Mod torrent to the SEIV folder or to the Pictures folder? It is designed to be pointed directly at the SEIV folder itself.

You should have files named up to Comp_1837.bmp in the SEIV\Pictures\Components folder. If not, something went wrong. Also, check to make sure there is no Pictures folder inside the SEIV\Pictures folder.

If that isn't the problem, open SEIV\Pictures\Components\Components.bmp and see if you have a blue strip on the right side with light blue/cyan numbers. It should go up to 1872 for the last row. This file should be about 7 MBs.

If that is ok too, we will need more specific information on which pictures do not work.

[Ragnarok-X]

Must be a problem with the imagemod. Which ones are missing ? Component pictures or facility pictures ?

[mastermindkar]

I got it working by manually pasting the files from the image mod into their corresponding files in the picture file. Everything looks ok now.

[douglas]

Good. Now head on over to PBW (http://seiv.pbw.cc), register, find the game "The Galactic Invasion 2" in the list and apply to join. This goes for you too, luke_slovakian. Neither of you has applied for the game yet.

Then you'll have to wait for Covertjaguar to approve you, and then you'll be able to upload your empire files. Once that's all done, we either need to wait for two more players, or we could decide that four normal races per monster race is enough.

[Fyron]

Could you please answer this question? I need to know if there is an issue with how I have set up the image mod torrent, or if it was just a case of choosing the wrong destination folder. Thanks.

"Did you point the Image Mod torrent to the SEIV folder or to the Pictures folder?"

[mastermindkar]

Ok, I registerd at PBW and applied for the game. Imperator, I don't know yet. You see, I orginally downloaded the BitTorrent file without the program to operate it. Then I downloaded all the packs indivually and pasted them into the pictures file. However, a few of the pictures are still missing, so I'm running the BitTorrent program now. It should be done in six hours, so I'll let you know what happens then.

[CovertJaguar]

Welcome to the game.

[mastermindkar]

Happy to be aboard. Imperator, the image mod torrent worked perfectly.

[douglas]

luke_slovakian said:
Hey i'll join i never played adamant mod but guessing it will be fun:-p. Hey btw welcome to the threads mastermindkar. Hope u like the gmae


Just one spot left, and you still haven't signed up on PBW. Hurry up. It's "The Galactic Invasion 2", alphabetized by "The" on PBW (http://seiv.pbw.cc). Once you join and everyone uploads their empires, we can start.

[mastermindkar]

PBWs on the fritz. But for when its working, how do you upload an empire?

Also, Are the forced proceation facilities really supposed to cause 16% unhappiness per turn? You'd think they could find volunteers for that sort of thing...

[mastermindkar]

P.S. Does storage specialists still increaes the number of facilities per planet?

[douglas]

For uploading an empire, go to the new game screen in the appropriate mod, set the racial points limit to the correct value, and create your empire. Make sure your empire is selected and click "Save to File". Create a new empire file and name it whatever you like. Then, close SEIV and go to PBW. Go to the specific game screen and click the "Send Empire File" button at the top (it looks like the Load Cargo button in SEIV). Where it asks for the empire file, browse to the Empires directory within the mod folder and look for something with the name you specified with .emp tacked on. The empire password field is strictly for PBW's records and will only be divulged to a replacement player if you happen to quit. The Shipset used entry is to help other players find your shipset if you're not using a stock one, and to help prevent duplicate shipsets by letting players check what shipsets are already claimed.

In Adamant, Advanced Storage Techniques is actually a special racial tech that gives you 25% better cargo facilities and cargo bays. The Subterranean trait is what gives you more facility space.

[mastermindkar]

I finally understand what those "ast" cargo bays I have are. Thanks Douglas.

[douglas]

There are a fair number of components and facilities that are improved versions of the normal kind and require a racial tech trait. All of them have an abbreviation for the racial trait in parentheses after the component/facility name. One thing I really like is how Adamant does Propulsion Experts - it uses a Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion system, and the PE version of each engine has one more standard movement point; this translates into a 100% (very early game) to 16% (extreme late game) overall speed boost rather than a constant +1 movement point, though you can get the stock Propulsion Experts effect too, with Transdimensional.

[mastermindkar]

One final question before I make my empire. If you lower your trade attribute, does this lower the quantity of research points you receive from trade, or just resources?

[douglas]

Political Savvy affects resources, research, and intelligence income from treaties. This isn't as much of a concern in Adamant as in stock, however, as Adamant limits trade income to 10% rather than 20%. On the other hand, the threshold cost of reducing PS below 80% is a pathetic 5 racial points and may not be worth it. With 9 other races, all of which are teamed with you and will likely establish permanent partnerships on first contact, it might actually be worth raising PS.

[mastermindkar]

I'm good to go.

Thanks alot Douglas, you've given me all the tools I need to lose horribly to you. Should be fun though.

[douglas]

You're welcome. Don't worry too much, you can always retreat to your 3 homeworlds and their 100000 or so shields if you have to. It'll be a while before either monster race is able to beat those, and I'm not going to just sit in orbit blockading. My monsters like quick resolutions of battles. Plus, we monsters are outnumbered 5 to 1, and we don't get to expand.

[luke_slovakian]

Hey sorry my int had problems last couple days so i joining now and had project too:-(. WEll in the clear now sorry for delay

[luke_slovakian]

Oh btw my pbw name is boarder22lb just so u don't get confuzed

[CovertJaguar]

The game is now full. Get those empires uploaded.

[douglas]

The Ironseed Ascendancy is ready to hunt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif.

A few highlights of my empire design:
As required, Intelligence is 50% and I took Naturalists.
Berzerkers culture, of course, along with max aggressiveness/defensiveness
Max Political Savvy (for when the monsters meet)
Max Construction Aptitude

Natural Merchants (with no expansion, every facility counts)
Trans-Dimensional
Mechanoids, Psionic Clairsentience, and all Religious Ethos (I did some testing, these are the only racial techs that work at all with monsters. I will not research them unless it turns out the monsters need toughening)

For points to pay for all those racial tech traits:
Minimum Mining, Farming, and Refining Aptitudes (resources are never a problem for monsters)
Minimum Maintenance Aptitude (even more negative maintenance, plus some points to keep more options for toughening the monsters open)
Endemic Wastefulness (with quantum reactors inherent in the hulls, who cares?)

Choleric happiness type because it looked very good by the numbers (including reaction to wars), though I'm not quite sure how a positive natural decrease works (become more angry or more jubilant, depending?), but it should be overwhelmed by the 22 bases + ships I'll have over every planet anyway.

[CovertJaguar]

Looks good, Douglas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

EDIT: Should we ask Fyron for a forum on SpaceEmpires.net? The PBW forum leaves much to be desired. I'm sure he'd give us one if we asked. The Galactic Council should have somewhere to meet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

[douglas]

BTW, I'm not going to make it easy for everyone to identify exactly where my home systems are. I'll be unclaiming them on turn one at the same time as I build my sector cloaking bases. You'll have to infer where my monsters come from by where they're encountered and, if you're lucky enough to be able to observe it, when you spot a ship just appearing out of nowhere as it leaves a sector in the movement log.

[CovertJaguar]

...or unlucky enough fly a fleet over it. I did that in the last game. Lost the entire fleet, but I knew where the monster homeworld was after that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif But then I don't suppose you'd let one of our fleets just randomly stumble through one of your systems unharassed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif What it is they say about wild animals? That they will defend their nests to the death? Though I suppose it is more likely to be our deaths than yours. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Injured.gif

[douglas]

If somebody manages to get a fleet that close to one of my homeworlds, either I'm already losing or I made a big mistake.

[luke_slovakian]

Hello this is me. I have some really bad new:-(. My parents machine is down, viruses and everything so i will not be able to play because my machine is messed up and i will not have time to fix it until next weekend. I really am sorry for flaking and playing later if i can join that would be kool but i do not think so. Once again i am sorry. If something than i will write and join again before u start if my father magicly fixes it. Sorry

[CovertJaguar]

Hmm.. well we are still waiting for everyone to upload their empires. We'll see how long that takes, if we only have to delay a couple of days I think we can handle that.

[Ragnarok-X]

Since today is father-day (?) i wont be able up my empire before evening, sry.

[Ragnarok-X]

Oh well im sorry, i wasnt able to up my empire today. Since i go to a lanparty tomorrow, i doubt i will be able to get it ready until saturday evening. Im -really- sorry.

[CovertJaguar]

Not a problem, maybe luke_slovakian can still join then.

[mastermindkar]

I could play twice. I figure two empires under my control are about equal to one competent empire.

[CovertJaguar]

No, no that's ok. The Galactic Council will look out for you. Just petition the council if you need help.

[Fyron]

CovertJaguar said:
EDIT: Should we ask Fyron for a forum on SpaceEmpires.net? The PBW forum leaves much to be desired. I'm sure he'd give us one if we asked. The Galactic Council should have somewhere to meet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

Erm... So are you requesting, or are you requesting to request? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif


CovertJaguar said:
...or unlucky enough fly a fleet over it. I did that in the last game. Lost the entire fleet, but I knew where the monster homeworld was after that.

Hmm... that shouldn't have happened if a sector cloak was active. The monsters shouldn't be able to see your ships in that sector either. Otherwise, it becomes quite possible to glass their HW, which is definitely not intended to be a possibility. Or did the monsters send something out to intercept your fleet?

[douglas]

Monster Sensors see through any cloak in the game, including Monster Cloaks. While glassing the homeworlds shouldn't be possible, I don't like the idea of those sectors becoming safe havens for everyone who can get to them. For human-played monsters, adding a meaningless cloaking ability to every monster hull, like psychic level 1 without any accompanying EM active or EM passive, would allow the player to choose whether to initiate combat in those sectors. Unfortunately the AI will never cloak bases, so AI controlled monsters either need an agreement by the players to not try glassing monster homeworlds or they need a better sector cloak.

[CovertJaguar]

Imperator Fyron said:

CovertJaguar said:
EDIT: Should we ask Fyron for a forum on SpaceEmpires.net? The PBW forum leaves much to be desired. I'm sure he'd give us one if we asked. The Galactic Council should have somewhere to meet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

Erm... So are you requesting, or are you requesting to request? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif


I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll make this the first motion placed before the council after the games starts. I'll get back to you with the answer.

[mastermindkar]

Do any of you guys know of a good cure for swarms of monster drones? I'm getting manhandled by the computer and its embarrasing.

I've tried everything I could think of. Its around turn 100 of my game and a swarm of 144 bee-shaped drones showed up at a warp point, kamikazed its way through 83 satellites (losing about 8 drones), then flew across the system into my home system in a single turn. Once there they shrugged off a 60 frigate fleet (equipped with temperal combat sensors 2 and a 5% fleet bonus) losing about 65 drones. Then they leveled one my colonies along with its 300 orbital figthers losing another 8 drones. Point defense guns can't target them, standard weapons can't hit them, and fighters are outrageously vulnerable to ramming. With a combat speed of 9 the drones can move from beyond my range (or so far away they are impossible to hit) and ram in a single turn. How can I deal with them?

[CovertJaguar]

If you read this Likev2k5, get your empire uploaded. We can start as soon as you do.

[CovertJaguar]

Very well, I'm kicking Lilkev2k5. Lilkev2k5 if you are going to play then rejoin and upload your empire, otherwise I'm opening the slot for someone else to join.

[CovertJaguar]

The game has started.

[CovertJaguar]

KrazyHorse/mayito7777 is having medical problems and is unable to play. If any one can find a replacement player or wishes to play that would be good.