[Getter Robo G]

Hey guys,

   I rediscovered an old empire building game called Space Empires IV. I had the demo long ago but kinda forgot about it till recently when I inherited a comp that had it installed. On second time through I recognized that it was as intense and entertaining as my all time favorite RTS (Birth of the Federation). I decided to do some research and found out they have TONS of mods for it (though some work better than others). and not only that someone had already done the VASUDANS!

   I did some more searching and have not found any Shivans or GTA/GTVA yet so I am planning on doing so myself. I will try to contact the original Vasudan mod maker to let him/her know that I want to give that shipset a face lift...

  Just throwing it out there, but if I do finish this someday would it be okay to use pics of the new SCP/HTL ships and make this mod availlable to the public? Otherwise I will just do this for me.

All you need to mod this game is wordpad (notepad not recommended), and PICTURES (128x128 and 36x36's).

Here is a test I did for The Invid.. I used an existing Zentradi mod for a test so ignore the fighter group pic. The 128x128 shows you the unit about to be constructed and the 36x36 icon is the battle one for combat.





Thoughts?

[wgemini]

Yeah, I thought about the same thing. I don't like SE4 that much though because

1. SE4's economical model (at least the default one) favours huge fleets. I once had hundreds of dreadnoughts fighting each other. The tacnical engagement is just so too overwhelming.

2. It doesn't pay to have smaller ships in SE4. Agility is not that a big deal since all their ships can fire in all directions. Fighters are quite powerless as missiles are much cheaper (well free actually).

It might be fixed by modding. I would prefer an open source game instead, but I haven't found an equivalent one.

I am actually thinking about doing the opposite thing. Add a strategic model on top of FS2. It's basically a mini game played completely by AIs and serve as a random scenario generator.

[Getter Robo G]

  In regards to the issues you mentioned, hopefully modding the values will make fighters better (I have yet to learn).

Latest screen I decided to call the file GTA although Terran ships made only after formation of GTVA will be unlocked later. Initial fighters are Valkyrie, Apollo, and Herc. Later you get Perseus, Myr, adn Herc II.. Am toying with the idea of unlocking user made ships/stations...

Those icons on the left are what you see move in map and for combat the pic to the right is for selection and descriptions. Not much flash, but it is a decent empire building game in my opinion. So far I think I am about 1/2 done with normal modding fo shipimages but with normal game play.  MUCH later on after I get the Robotech mod and also the Shivans done (and possibly a Vasudan facelift), will I worry about custom tech trees ect... For now it works and that's what is most important to me.

[Mav]

Hmm, nice. Always liked that genre. Just downloaded the SE4 demo a few days ago, as I never saw it in stores. Hope it'll be a worthy successor of Master of Orion 2 (hell, at least it's modable ). Of course, if I like it, I'll later look into this mod, too (would then first have to buy the game, however... or does the demo support modding, too?) .

[Getter Robo G]

Good question. My boss gave me a comp so I just inherited ths game.

SE5 is still in development but it look decent enough to wait for. I just bought MOO3 and although that is a VERY beautiful graphic/visual game I found the combat or rather fleet management counter productive.. In all other ways it is very similar to SE4 but I prefer to learn to mod SE4 for now. Hopefully what I learn can carry over to SE5...

[NGTM-1R]

I rather liked MOO3, actually, but the problem with it is that planetary defenses in that game are outright nuts.

When you throw 20 battleships and 10 Dreadnaughts at a small-population world with only ground-based defense, and lose everything while inflicting no significant damage, something is very, very wrong.