Bromley

Just had a thought. Is there a way to disable people/spec forces being allowed onto ships? At least you're levelling the playing field then. Plus you can't orbit and launch loads of sab missions one after another. The loss of Admiral as a useful rank would be irritating, but I could live with that.

I was surprised that there were no Improved Gameplay mods here. I think that you'll find that most of the effort directed at the game by people here is aimed at modding the game so that it looks different rather than understanding and tweaking the game so that it plays better. I suspect that if you were to accept the limitations of the game and try to mod it so that the computer played better, the thing to do would be to play as the Rebs and use Reb Ed (really simple to use) to up the detection values for Imperial troops and ships and to create a decent production centre at Coruscant. You could also reduce the cost of Imperial ships to represent their modular nature (hey, I'm making it up, but you know what I mean). Of course, I like playing the Empire so I find it difficult to justify these sorts of changes to the Rebs. It's a shame that we can't force the allocation of planets to one side.

1. Yep. Per my post of Wed Nov 12, 2003 6:56 pm, there appears to be just one recharge. Removing the lasers but leaving the recharge meant that the TL fired much faster. I'm not certain, but it is possible that lasers recharge faster than TL & ions and that's why recharge on laser ships is 2/3*lasers/10, rather than the customary weapons/10. 2. Good question. Instinctively I'd say yes, recharging weapons on a now non-facing arc would slow down recharging of weapons on the facing arc, but I've no proof for that.

Wow - where did you get those figures from? I was going to ask you if you're mixing up Tractor Beams and Gravity Wells, but the best tractor is 6/20 so you're obviously not. 4/100 looks a lot like a power/range stat (100 being the max range for TL as far as I can see). 4 is unlikely to be a power rating, as a well is a well. Perhaps it's a hidden system stat and could be compared with shield and weapon recharge? Has anyone ever had a well put out of action before the ship was destroyed?

No ideas, but can someone post the link for the Civ 2 scenario that you've been talking about? I checked out Babylon at Apolyton but didn't see it, so I take it that it's not a ToT scenario?

Yep, recharge definitely affects the speed of fire. Two tests. (1) Two SDs configured with 50 TL each. Recharge of 1 on A and 100 on B (normal recharge for this many TL would be 5). RESULT: A fired 6 shots, B fired 26. (2) Two SDs, C configured with 50 @ recharge of 10 and D configured with 100 @ 5. C would normally have 5 and D normally 10, so C is operating at twice normal recharge, whilst D is at only 1/2. RESULT: C fired 25 shots, D fired 14. Not sure why E3 didn't experience this sort of thing, but maybe he increased the TL/IC numbers, making any small change to recharge less effective, or just didn't test the extremes? Note that, based on test (2), it doesn't look like recharge is linear down to zero. So it's likely that setting recharge to 5x usual will not greatly increase the number of shots fired over setting it to 2x. Either that or recharge is linear but doesn't intersect the origin and we just don't notice normally because the ships weapons are destroyed in a similar ratio to the recharge, meaning that when we reach zero recharge we have zero weapons. To test this: (3) Two SDs and a Carrack. All with 50 TL, E with 0 recharge, F with 5 and G with 20 (G was the Carrack, but that shouldn't matter). Expect recharge is 5, so G is 4x recharge and F is expected. RESULT: E fired 3 (at the beginning), F fired 29 and G fired 41. That confirms that weapons are already loaded when battle commences as after the first minute E didn't fire again. It also suggests that you get a decreasing return to scale. So if you assign a recharge of 100 to a ship that only has 100 TL, you'll increase the rate of fire over that of a ship with the standard 10 recharge rate, but by say x2 rather than by x10.

Just tried a test. I took out the lasers and added a gravity well to the Carrack. Here's the thing. Despite being attacked by a corvette and a Y-Wing, I managed to cut the corvette's shield recharge down to 2 rings before they'd even noticably damaged mine. You know how the first few seconds of combat seem to have higher rates of fire than later? Well, even after that, I was getting ~2 shots off for every 1 the corvette made. When I reset and tested a normal Carrack with a gravity well, after the initial flurry of multiple shots, it settled down to ~1 for every corvette shot. This would seem to indicate that if you reduce the 10:1 TL:recharge ratio then you increase the rate at which it recharges. In this case it was 15:6 or 2.5:1, due to the removal of the lasers, although it would have been even higher if the Carrack's weapon recharge had followed the usual pattern. Presumably the initial high rate of fire occurs because you go into battle with all weapons charged. That might sound obvious, but I assumed that E3's testing indicated that recharge points were only important for damage purposes in determining a % of damage to recharge. I'll have a go at testing with a couple of similar ships but hugely different recharges.

Well, it's difficult to test. Put it this way, with one TL, 300 IC and 1400 lasers I was hitting the enemy ships with a blue effect and a green effect. Both did about the same damage. So my contention is that any sound effects are just that - the ship still fires at least it's two best weapons. Given that fighters fire up to three weapons, I suspect that the game fires all three for cap ships but clups the lasers and TL together. Still, that's the hard part to test . btw, TL do target fighters, just not very well. I haven't seen a blue effect hitting a fighter, so I think that we can assume that IC don't target them.

Just did some testing. My ISD with 1 TL, 1 IC and 1000 lasers took out a Y-Wing in 2 shots, so I think they work regardless of the actual sound file used . EDIT: hehe, I could have just used my brain instead. The Carrack and others work fine, so TL & lasers are obviously okay together. The lasers obviously work because the Carrack can kill fighters and The TL obviously work because the Carrack can kill Covettes.

hehe. It's to stop *me* from abusing gravity wells, not the AI. As you say, if I need to get away then I'm bright enough to target them, but as I play the Empire most often the Rebs really need to be able to save their fleets more often .

That doesn't sound correct for two reasons: 1. Upgraded ships have higher recharges (i.e. 40 vs. 20 for Imp SD II vs. I) 2. Damaged ships have lower recharges (i.e. 20:40 for a damaged Imp II SD). I've seen someone post on Usenet that they thought it was a % of weapons that can be brought to bear, but I don't think that that's strictly accurate. According to a strict interpretation of this, An Imp II SD could bring to bear 40% of 400 weapons, whilst an Imp I SD only 20% of 200 weapons. That just doesn't sound right to me. One thing that I've noticed is that all the capital ships (Dread and above, including the DS) have a 10:1 ratio of recharge to best weapon facing (i.e. SSD 500 TL + 200 IC = 700, weapon recharge 70). The other ships appear to have heavies/10 + 2/3*laser/10, although the Carrack and Star Galleon are insistant on buggering that up . I suspect that the TL on the Carrack were a late addition and the recharge wasn't adjusted to reflect them and that the Star Galleon was just a typo of 1 instead of 2. You'll note that, assuming that points damage to recharge does not involve some hidden variable, 1 point of damage to weapons recharge will affect laser carrying ships more than TL/IC ones as lasers only get 2/3 of the recharge points that TL/IC ones do. Not really sure if that's important, but Coolhand obviously thought it was important enough to impliment the 2/3 rule rather than just treating lasers like TL/IC. This formulaic approach seems to fit with what I've seen of the character stats. Coolhand put little effort into determining the "correct" stats of people and they've done the same here. Not that that's a bad thing really, just an observation. Which brings us back to that Usenet post. When you are damaged and your recharge rate drops to 0:20, your weapons don't fire in tactical. So he may be right in that, if you are at 10:20 then 50% of your weapons on any facing will fire. Given the name (Weapons Recharge ) it seems more likely though that it just takes your weapons twice as long to recharge, effectively meaning that only 50% fire in the time it would take 100% to if you were undamaged. This is a separate issue to the total number of weapons available to fire, which may be reduced by damage. It's further confused because there appears to be either a variable time to recharge or a variable time to acquiring a target after a weapon is recharged. Still, my best guess would be that it is better to have 100:100 than 10:10 as you can absorb more damage with a lower reduction in % firepower available (i.e. each point is only a 1% loss rather than a 10% loss). Regarding a relationship between recharge and actual weapons being damaged, it's not a direct relationship. I have an Imp I SD with 5:20 recharge but 17&17 on the front arc. If they were directly related then you'd expect to see 3:20 or 4:20 recharge. [/long uninformed response ]

Dammit - it isn't working. Labansat @ ~95/95 and 1 Imp commando decoy managed to destroy 2 Alliance Army units with 30 detection each. One thing I did notice. Elsewhere, 3 spec-ops characters (1 main, 2 decoy) were having trouble with an espionage mission being foiled at a planet that only had 1 Alliance Fleet regiment (35 detection). They failed 3 times and only when I took Vader and four others (2/3) in did I get my espionage mission. I was expecting Luke and a bunch of others to be there, but it was just the Fleet regiment. When I sent the original 3 (1/2) to sab the regiment, they did it first time. All this makes me think that maybe regiments have espionage & combat values of X hardcoded and they use this to resist sabotage. I'll have to test it some more (come here Alliance Army regiment, I promise I won't hurt you ).

Don't know if this is what you want, but open Windows Explorer, Tools/Folder Options menu. Then the View tab and open the Hidden Files folder, select "Show all files".

Nice - thanks guys. I like the multi-purpose fortress planet for researching. I also like the thought of all those fighters, as they'd provide a reserve and stand a chance of killing raiding ships. I was reading though some of the Usenet posts on Rebellion and someone actually costed this out. I'd never thought of it this way, but of course two GenCores cost 24 maint plus the 50 in lost mine/refinery pairing. 74 maint gives me 24 Imperial fighters or 18 Reb fighters. My average defences were 3 per planet, so that's 106 maint. That's 35 Imperial or 26 Rebel fighters. Of course, the problem is producing them fast enough .

Thanks - that's pretty much what I feared. The problem is that if I raise the detection rating of a regiment, I bet that foils most of the other missions just as effectively as it foils troop sabotage. I think you're right though. I'll: 1) Increase troop detection ratings: ALL.........IMP AF...35.....IF...40 AA...30.....IA...35 SR...35.....ST..50 MC..50....WD..15 WR..20....DT..60 2) Set all characters back to 100% of their combat stats (previously @50%). 3) Then set my command characters to 25% of combat and espionage stats. This will make them very vulnerable if not supported by troops and will reduce the number of characters moving around the galaxy sabbing stuff. 4) Maybe increase spec ops troops const & maint by x3 and maybe improve their stats by 50-100%. Fewer running around but at least they'll have a better chance with the new detection ratings than otherwise. It's a shame really. None of this would be necessary (for me ) if you had to launch spec-ops actions from a planet rather than being able to park everyone in orbit and do it from there, or if sabotage missions took a lot longer than they do.

As part of my drive to remove some of the worst excesses of uber-sabotage, I want to make troops effectively immune without preventing sabotage ops against GenCores etc. and characters. The theory here is that it's one thing to destroy a facility, capture an individual or even sabotage a ship, but entirely another for a couple of people to manage to kill tens of thousands of troops. So, does anyone understand how sabotage works? My reading of the lucararts Gameplay Hints on the official site is that all unfoiled actions take your_stats - enemy_stats and then compare that to some sort of hardcoded success table. The key question then is what genetrates the enemy_stats for the enemy troops? I have a sneaking suspicion that that is hardcoded as well, although I'm hoping it's related to Defence Rating or Bomb Defence.

I love the Seat of Power bonus - a great mechanism to make an Imperial side decide between diplomacy and leadership. However, I was thinking of tweaking it. As I assume that the 50% bonus is hardcoded, that means playing around with the command characters' leadership. The average command character on either side will have 80+20. This means that an average Rebel commander will be 80-100, whilst an Imperial will be 120-150 with the Seat of Power. I like to think of the Imperial structure as being very like the Nazi's. So if Rommel wants to move those panzers in Normandy to counter D-Day, you'd better hope that Hitler is awake . Given this, I'd like to see the Imperials as still better if the Emperor is in place, but on average worse if he's not. So I was thinking of changing their leadership to 70+10. The reduction in the variance from normal also more accurately reflects my perception of the difference between a regimented professional army and an irregular rebel one. So that gives the Imperials an average of 75 or 112.5 vs. the rebel average of 90. Is this going to kick up some problems that I haven't thought about? To be fair to my professional vs. irregular perception, would it be fairer to also rejig the rebel's leadership to something like 60+50, which lowers their average a bit to 85 but allows their less formal command structure to produce some real gems (and some real dogs )? EDITED to cover up my stupidity . It's a 50% bonus for SoP, not 50 points.

From when I played this before, I remembered that you need lots of Shipyards on the same planet to crank out capital ships in a reasonable period of time. However, I think I made a mistake in my last game by applying the same philosophy to Construction and Training facilities. I've got a couple of questions. Bear in mind that this is for single player only, so you don't have to worry as much about intelligent enemies . 1. My perfect Shipyard planet has two GenCores, one LNR and an Ion cannon, then 10 yards and I try to build one per sector. Any comments Should it be 12 & 2 defences or even 14 and a load of fighters/troops? 2. Assuming not, should I ditch the Ion cannon for another LNR/GenCore and does the Ion cannon allow the yards to continue manufacturing even if blockaded? What about missions like Research & Jedi - are they uninterupted if an Ion cannon is there? I use the same 4 defence structures on all of my production planets. Also, I build 2 GenCores per non-production planet and, for the Core non-production only, a LNR. Does all this sound about right? 3. What's the ideal number of Training and Construction facilities per planet and per sector. As I said, I've probably been overbuilding as I've been building the same set-up as for the SY planets - one per sector at 10,2,1,1. I think that 6 might be best, but I've done no testing on that. 4. There appears to be a minimum time to build the first of a building/troop/ship order and subsequent ones are then cheaper if you have enough facilities. I don't notice this for capital ships, as they're so expensive, but I do for troops and buildings. With reference to your preference in (3), do you build your production planets to take advantage of this or do you just build them to the level that gives you the minimum time on the first build in a queue? 5. I seem to be running out of manufacturing ability well before I run out of maintenance, thus slowing my projects down. Is this normal? How do you avoid it? I'd assume that you build less and try to expand your mines/refineries, trying to maintain a 1:1 ratio. Also, I often scrap mines/refineries to make way for my main production planets. Is it this clearing out of 3 of the largest (13-14 each) planets in each sector that's creating the problem?

Well, the 50% Combat (not Espionage) seemed to work nicely for me as the Empire. I did a little sabotaging, but only enough to kill that second GenCore where necessary. One unexpected side effect (for me) was that people seemed to be getting injured far more often when captured. I suppose that his makes sense as Combat is apparently used to help you escape. Actually, I preferred it this way as escape attempts went right down. I'm going to play an Alliance game now to see whether it screws them up or not. I suspect that at a minimum it'll force me to send more decoys and to be *far* more careful when playing around in a fortress system.

Winning bid was £19! .

It's one of those things that happens in spurts. I've been lucky recently, so few reloads. If I hit another bad patch I'll mess around with my display settings, as I've noticed a few times when I quit normally that the desktop doesn't resize back to 1024*768 and the colours remain at 256. The main problem I have with the lack of autosave, apart from the sinking feeling when I lose all that work, is that I'm too weak willed. If I'm saving all the time, I find it very tempting to reload if I bombard, destroy a mine and lose the entire sector in the ensuing Domino Effect. For some reason that temptation tends to be lower if it's the game doing the saving .

According to Rogue at Gamefaqs, the way it works is: 1. Espionage mission discovers presence of enemy agents. The implication is that this does not increase the chance of failure. 2. You target a sabotage/abduction mission at one of the main agents (i.e. not a decoy). 3. He's not precise on how it works after that, saying only "effectively foiling it". However, I believe that the sab/abduction would have to be successful to foil the enemy mission.

@s985. If I get the thrust of your question, your asking should you send characters/spec-ops separately or as a group. If as a group, should they all participate or should some decoy. I was just looking this up myself, so I'll post what I found out (or think I found out - please correct me if I'm wrong ). Check out Rogue's guide at gamefaqs. 1. Leadership, naturally. However Espionage is useful for remaining undetected. I believe that Combat is useful for aiding your escape if detected. 2. The loyalty of the other side is important. So you will have more successes the more they like you. Note that this is different to saying that you're nearer to 50% when you're at 60% than 70%. What I'm saying here is that the time it takes to move between 70% and 60% should be, on average, longer than 60% to 50%, despite the interval being the same. 3. Your decoys need to be able to perform the mission, so you can't use Death Commandos to decoy an Incite. However, with characters, it doesn't matter if the decoys have high Leadership or not. What matters is the Espionage rating for decoys. I'm not sure if a good Combat rating will help them escape if the mission is foiled though, but they are in no danger even if detected as long as the main mission characters are not (whether they actually succeed or not in their efforts is not important to this). As a general rule for all missions, Rogue recommends 1-3 decoys if there are some enemy detectors present. 4. How many to take on the main mission? I'll just quote him: 5. Note that you're not informed of success at this mission like you are with Diplomacy. So you just have to check to see if it looks like it's working.

Well, personally, I'd limit the license to purchase for single use only. I know you'd be cutting down your sales to rental channels, but it's the principle of the thing. I mean it's one thing to know that there's piracy occurring at the unnamed and individual level, it's quite another to know that your local Blockbuster is contributing to it.

Thanks guys. It's nice to know that I could listen to the music, although I'll own up now and admit that I'm probably far too lazy to do that . Anyway, if the game is unstable for me now, I wonder what it would be like with another program in the background. @the_mask. Thanks. I'd seen that post about textures but, even though I have used Reb Ed now, the crashing occurred before that and I have never knowingly changed a texture. From a quick look at RebEd, I don't think that you can use that to play with textures anyway, so I definitely haven't done it. It wouldn't matter if there was an autosave. Oh well, I'll keep manually saving and hoping .