Space Empires IV Committee Game

[Suicide Junkie]

Is there anyone here who owns SE4, and would be interested in a committee game?

Jobs available:
- System Lord : Governs planets, controls most of the cash flow (minus federal taxes). Keep what you make in your own storage facilities. System lords are limited to point defense weapons only, aside from their personal flagship and up to three escorts.

- Military : Either working for the navy, or working independent as a mercenary. Funded by system lords to protect their stuff from the aliens. Military players are not allowed to govern planets.

- Civilian : Anybody is allowed to run cargo hauling operations, and resource trading or banking operations, and other profitable enterprises that do not conflict with their System Lord / Military restrictions.

Note: The Military and System Lord restrictions are there so that players have to interact, buying ships, hiring defenders, and generally making it an interactive game.


Schedule:
- Turns are weekly, processing on Monday/Tuesday, to allow for negotiations and planning, and prevent host overload/burnout.


Technical:
- Orders for each players' ships and planets get sent to the host for entry into SE4.
- Once the orders are in, financial calculations are completed, and the turn is processed, the savegame file is posted online for all the players to download and see the state of the universe.
- HTML budgets provide an accounting of resources for each player to know their profit/loss and bank balance for the turn.


Game Info
- Currently it is close to 2416 (turn ~160). A good quarter of the galaxy has been claimed, but the enemy is out in force with large fleets, and warship construction has not been a priority lately.
Note: the committee was started in 2405 after 50 turns of colony rushing, so it has been running for two years straight now.
- A handful of outer colonies have fallen to ground troops recently, although we have captured our fair share in return.
- Enemy fleets are larger and more powerful than what we have left, but they are commanded by AIs, so there is always room for creative fighting and strategic outmaneuvering.
- Defense spending has been lacking; it is mostly a matter of convincing the System Lords to open their pocketbooks.
- The datafiles are based on Carrier Battles mod, with additional tweaks for avatars and big flagships. (AI is actually dangerous!)
- No AI bonus, however the AIs are allied against the committee due to our worryingly large size.

[Artanis]

By allied against the committee, do you mean actually allied, or do you just mean you've triggered MEE?

[Suicide Junkie]

MEE, rather than team mode.
There are still some skirmishes going on between the AIs.

We are big enough that there is no imminent danger of being wiped out, but we're not dominating the quadrant.

We have been making some small attacks to expand territory and capture aliens, mostly in the northeast where the SLs have been spending on military equipment.
In the west, we are on the defensive, with a decent naval fleet, but some dangerously large AI fleets wandering around.


Appended:
Here is a shot of the western front.
A navy fleet has just recently captured the planet, but it looks like the enemy will drive us back to the defenses on the far side of the warppoint.

In this mod, troops can hold a planet for quite a while against orbital bombardment, so we won't lose the planet if we can break the siege within a reasonable number of turns.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/committeeIV/PBC4_Sundry.JPG

[Artanis]

Good God, after following Maxymiuk's LP, that galaxy sure looks like one hell of a mess :smalltongue:

Do you have a link to a thread or something where it's taking place? I'd like to see what it looks like in action, if possible.

[Suicide Junkie]

Links:
- Base mod CB v1.7 (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CarrierBattlesv1.7.rar)
- Committee Mod Tweaks (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/committeeIV/24139_Data.zip) (Replace the CBv1.7\data folder with this)
- Savegame for 2415.8 (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/committeeIV/Savegame24158.zip)
- Imagemod packs: (If you've used any mods before you will probably have this already) Bittorrent (http://bt.spaceempires.net/torrents-details.php?id=63&hit=1) or HTTP (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/imagemod/)

- The Budget and Market server: Guest visible pages include: Resource Exchange (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu:65500/?login=guest&passwd=&gotopage=market) and Navy Budget (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu:65500/?login=guest&passwd=&gotopage=FWSN+Budget)
- The forum (http://home.spaceempires.net/forum-c13.html)
Note: Some of the chatter and negotiations between players happens through IRC and private channels.


PS:
The orders themselves are posted to a write-only thread, so you can't see what other people are planning until it happens.
The secret orders are basically SE4 commands (move this ship here, attack that thing there, queue a widget on planet X).

[Artanis]

That's....

I'm gonna have to follow it for a while to figure out what the hell is going on before I can decide whether to join :smallfrown:

[Aragehaor]

PS:
The orders themselves are posted to a write-only thread, so you can't see what other people are planning until it happens.
The secret orders are basically SE4 commands (move this ship here, attack that thing there, queue a widget on planet X).

Uhm Ill Join, im still not exactly sure how it works,( i mean, i have played enough space empires IV to Understand the game.... Probably :smallamused:)

but it Sounds fun.(also, How many openings are there for each position?)


Also, if i can join ill be a system lord, but i would like a little more Explanation on how it works (Of course, you may have explained it prefectly and me, being a idiot missed it.:smalltongue: )

[Suicide Junkie]

As a system lord, all the planets in your dominion are directly under your control.
You can set the build queues, and shuffle the cargo around.

All of the resources produced by facilities on your planets goes into your storage facilities, minus a 35% federal income tax.
Storage facilities are yours to store resources in, minus a 5% share which is used to give non-SL players a place to store their own money.

If you save up more resources than you can store, they spoil and are lost.
However, you can trade them away for the resources you do need on the market, or talk to Dumbluck (running Fortuitous Investments Inc) about giving him the money to invest in the resource market. Spending the excess on projects or mercenaries is also a good way to go.

If all else fails, you can always buy science points with your cash. In a split from the game mechanics, they don't spoil at all. You can save them up indefinitely until you can afford to buy a tech level.
Purchased tech levels are added to the research queue and completed over time.


System lords have it fairly easy; build economy, and throw money around to buy whatever strikes your fancy.
The main catch is that you are not allowed to command more than your flagship and 3 escorts with military grade weapons (aka bigger than point defense guns). Note: you can own as many military grade ships as you like, you just can't fly them around and into combat.

Therefore you will want to spend the majority of your free cash hiring mercenaries and building units for defense.