Topic: New player....with a few rants...(sfc:op)

[tallguy2241]

I've had OP for a couple of months now. I love the game, but I do have a few gripes that hopefully, maybe, you super bright intelligent people have a solution for:

1. I've been playing a campaign as the Roms (always my favorite race, both on the show, and in SFB), and the map is about 2/3 of a nice Rom shade of green (no more feds, gorns, kzin...er, miraks). But of course, this sin't good enough. I've tried patrolling in Klingon space, but all I get are Hydran opponents. How do I turn the Klingons (and Lyrans ) into something other than "long term partner"?

2. What I call the "spontaneous combustion" syndrome... I've seen many times, when an enemy ship blows up, a PERFECTLY HEALTHY friendly ship, not necessarily in explosion range, also explodes! Why? And on rare occassions, I've had a ship blow up at the very begining, before I've had a chance to even hit red alert! Again,why? (and most important, is their a fix?)

3. The "civil war" syndrome....when doing a "major assault" (planetary or shipyard), it is very common for the program to randomly assign me allies....but the ships are from the same race I'm attacking! The worst case was when I was flying 2 ISC ships, and their were 4 Gorns on my side, and 4 on theirs! One of the enemies fired a plasma volley, and because I wasn't sure if it was friend or foe, there was just enough hesitation on the WW to create one mucked up ISC ship! Is theer a fix for this?

4. I've noticed that when you start in the Early era, enemy drones and fighters seem to get stuck in that era, even when campaign time has passed well into the advanced time frame.

The only other gripe I have is the appearance of X ships comes way too soon, but I think I can fix that easily enough on the ship list.

I have the latest official patch (2.5.5.2 I believe), and Firesoul's shiplist (which is awesome!).

Thanks in advance if any help can be provided ( even if it's only commiseration)   

Rob

[Indigo_Falcon]

I am no expert, but until they chime in, here is what I know.

1.  Changing racial relationships.  The initial relationship between races is set up in the campaign definition file which also spells out which missions are available and other rules for the campaign.  You can fairly easily make everyone your enemy if you want.  Once you start a campaign, however, my recollection is that changes won't stay.  I think you have to start over with a properly defined campaign file.

2.  spontaneous combustion.  It's a bug.  If it is any comfort, it even has a name, the "Hand of Bethke".  It is a karmic penalty for missing promised deadlines.

3.  civil war.  This one depends on whose mission set you are playing.  This never happened to me using stock missions, so I think this is built into the one of the custom mission sets.  I personally like when this happens.  It is a bit frustrating, but for me it is a refreshing new dimension that requires you to pay more attention.  In any case, it is built into the mission scripting.

4.  drones type.  Drone types are determined by the mission scripts.  Stock missions use slow drones for virtually everyone (except pirates, I think).  The custom missions take a different approach.  Again, this is built into the mission scripts.

X-ships are indeed a shiplist issue.  I deleted all X-ships from my personal shiplist.  I like stately battles  with BBs and DNs.  X-ships are for sissies.

[tallguy2241]

Thanks for your response, Indigo.

The "civil war" issue happened to me with the stock missions...the example I gave with the ISC was only the worst of many (it was during a planetary assault). Other than the pirate ones, I don't think I have any "custom" missions.

As far as making everyone an enemy....In my Romulan game, I was initially enemies with the ISC...but at some point (when they were down to 2 planet hexes) , I found my relations with them was now "friendly". Perhaps this represented a surrender on their part, but I really wanted those planets! I could, with a little patience, pry away normal hexes, but not the planet ones.

Thanks again for your input.

Rob

[Tus-XC]

Hey look anothe Rob

What patch are you running?  my first guess is that most of ur problems could be solved by patchin up ur game (however it won't patch any campaign ur in).  as for balancing issues look in this section of the forum http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/board,3258.0.html .  There are alot of player made updates that attempt to balance the game out (i wouldn't know, i run stock)

[tallguy2241]

I'm running, I believe, the latest patch (2.5.5.2)

I've looked on that page (heck, I've looked on just about every page on this site), and can't seem to find anything that really addresses these issues. But thanks for your input.