New SJ mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Fyron, you make it sound like reducing racial characteristics is impossible.
Heaven forbid that people would ever reduce an important characteristic or take a penalty trait in order to buy something else!

Taking Naturalists in order to buy another colony tech is quite reasonable, for example.
You double your colonizable worlds, and using 60% of them gives you 20% more facility slots, 500 racial points, a weaker homeworld and you spend twice as much on colony ships.

BTW:
I'm not too worried about things like "everybody chose rock".
Empires typically put their borders at the system level, and that one player that chose gas isn't going to be welcome in most systems. You'll still have to fight for the territory before you can colonize it.

[ January 04, 2004, 20:15: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Mixing up weapons is also a known way to weaken shields.
Alternating size and damage types can reduce the effectiveness of shielding. Only during repeated hits from the same weapon will a shield reach its theoretical potential.

Where in the heck did you get that from? If you can explain that then you must really know more about SE4 than even Aaron does!

[Suicide Junkie]

Not regular shields, but the leaky shields.

Since each hit generates shield points, you'll want to alternate your fire with a heavy hull hitter, then a smaller shield sapper to clear the way for the next hull hitter.

Hrm... mixing large and small wouldn't really work, except for the partial damage effect.
If you have a low-efficiency heavy weapon, and a high efficiency small weapon, it might work...

60 hitpoint armor...
90 damage Heavy weapon... size x
4x30 damage light weapon... size x total

Alone, the light weapons can't hurt the armor.
1) 30 hull damage, 30 shields
2) ditto
3) ditto
...
Total, 30 partial damage, 30 shields, enemy never dies.
ZERO damage per x Kt

With all heavies, you get
1) 30 hull, 90 shields, 1 armor destroyed
2) 30 hull, 30 shields
3) 0 hull, 90 shields, 1 armor destroyed
4) 0 hull, 0 shields
Total, 120 hull damage, per 4 tonnage x's
30 damage per x Kt

With alternating, you get...
Two heavies, and 4 light for total 3x's of tonnage.
1H) 30 hull, +90 shields, 1 armor destroyed
2L) 0 hull, 30 shields
3L) 0, 0
4H) 30 hull, +90 shields, 1 armor destroyed
5L) 0 hull, 30 shields
6L) 0, 0
Total, 120 Hull damage, per 3 tonnage x's
40 damage per x Kt

[ January 28, 2004, 23:17: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Fyron, you make it sound like reducing racial characteristics is impossible.
Heaven forbid that people would ever reduce an important characteristic or take a penalty trait in order to buy something else!

No I don't... not everyone enjoys min-maxing though. Additionally, the fewer points available, the more similar empires will be forced to be, as there is less room for "optional" picks. 2500 points down the drain just for your colony tech reduces the amount of options you have available.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Additionally, the fewer points available, the more similar empires will be forced to be, as there is less room for "optional" picks. 2500 points down the drain just for your colony tech reduces the amount of options you have available.

This is what I was sort of getting at. Make the first Colony Tech free by providing a "Take Me" Advanced Trait that cost -2500 points and does nothing for you. Then if someone wants to invest in another colonization tech, they can. Which is a really cool idea, btw. Following that idea, maybe you should make more research-based racial traits. Stellar Manipulators could start out with some Stellar Manip tech, etc etc.

[Suicide Junkie]

Other than Psychologically, how is picking characteristics to increase any different from picking traits to decrease (or not decrease)

If the game started with all the characteristics at 80%, and you had a pile of racial points which could just barely bring them all up to 100%, would it be any different?

[Fyron]

Decreasing a few traits is not at all the same as min-maxing.