CeruleanDragon

Join Date 07/2007

Disabling Spore Ships?

Does anyone know how to disable Spore Ships? I haven't seen an option during game creation, but I might've missed it. A hack or patch to disable them would be awesome.

I think they're one of the worst ideas in 4X game I've seen in a long time. I lost 12 planets in a single turn thanks to them, the next turn another 8, and I've been losing 2-4 per turn since. Of course the fleets of ships with 500+ attack wiping out my defenders opening up planets for sporing doesn't help... I guess I wasted a lot of time/money on researching planetary defenses for nothing. I thought I was pretty much on a par with the other factions, pretty close in tech, owned planets, and military, but then the Korath, Krynn, and Dread Lords declared war in 4 turns. This is the 5th game that's been ruined by these stupid ships. As soon as I start losing half my empire to them, I just quit the game, delete the saved games, and try again. The last game I didn't even last out a couple hours. I only had 15 or so planets and I lost 4 to Spore Ships pretty shortly into the game. I quit and now I'm on this one.

It doesn't help that they only seem to show up on the map about 20% of the time. Usually a planet getting spored comes as a complete surprise.

Are Korath the only ones that use them? If I can't remove the Spore Ships, can I remove specific races from the game? I like to have random maps, but if I could set it to say, "Any race EXCEPT Korath (or any other race that uses Spore Ships)" that would be awesome.

I've read some posts where people use them as part of their strategy. I think I'd just as soon go find some cheat codes as use them.

Game balance is neat.

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I know, you can turn off Super Abilities, but I like my Super Breeder.

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play it on normal levels, i think that might resolve your problems. If you try Twilight of the Arnor, the Kyrnn is more annoying with their planet flipping.

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You may mod the technology tree too.

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The Korath are the only civ with the spore ships. It is, in fact, their super ability: the ability to take planets relatively painlessly.

I can understand why it's frustrating, but have you tried countering it? Spore ships are usually easy to take out if you have interceptors and/or sensor filled ships to catch them, and they can't do anything at all if your planets have a ship in orbit. Just put a ship in orbit of every planet you own, and they cannot invade or spore you without first bringing in combat ships. Hell, you can do the job with unarmed, tiny hulled SCOUTS, so there's not excuse not to!

...also, if you're getting mobbed by 5 civs at once, you're doing something else wrong. If you aren't maintaining a competitive military, they'll pounce on that. If you're constantly conquering people, they'll view you as a threat and gang up on you. If you're going for an ascension crystal, they won't tolerate it. If your diplomacy ability is crappy, that doesn't help either. There's all sorts of things that could be going on... the best thing to do is just keep an eye on your foreign relations screen and check to see when relations are going south with a race so you can be prepared to tangle with them. Use the "report" section of the foreign relations screen to get a detailed breakdown of why they don't like you.

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I know, you can turn off Super Abilities, but I like my Super Breeder.

Can't have one without the other. If you want your people to screw like bunnies, you'll have to defend from the spore ships.

And besides - you might think it's unbalancing to have that ability, but once you play as the Korath, you realize how tough it is to use those fancy new planets and how fast your economy TANKS because they have NO population whatsoever.

So, in reality, the spore ships have their ups and downs, and are really quite balanced - and easy enough to avoid.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I'm beginning to appreciate why some folks think the "balance" discussions are a waste of time, or at least a rhetorical distraction from what most balance complaints seem to be really about: the feel of the game and the challenges it presents.

I've certainly had some bad times along the lines the OP describes, and ditched rather a few games on that account. But one time I just got so ticked at the swarm o' spores that I dug in my heels, and lo and behold I saw the results of what SanChonino mentions.

I play on Tough, so the Korath were doing their "best" job at using their Super Ability, and as of about DA 1.8 or so that wasn't such a great job. True, the worlds they seized were suddenly Toxic, but they were indeed severely underpopulated and the massive new maintenance costs clearly reduced the Korath ability to keep fleets coming to follow up on their initial attack. It was messy, and took quite a while, but I got all my worlds back and the Korath became easy meat for a couple of other civs they'd rashly attacked.

Mind you, if I pick the civs for a game, I pretty much always leave the Korath (and the Drath) out of it on account of wanting my super ability and not wanting theirs. This might change for me in TA depedending on how the Thalan tree and Super Hive settle out. Unless things change pretty substantially, I might be quite happy to turn off super abilities when I play as TA Thalans.

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It was messy, and took quite a while, but I got all my worlds back and the Korath became easy meat for a couple of other civs they'd rashly attacked.

Yeah, things can often seem quite grim, but its important to remember that AI sometimes overextends itself. If you can hold out you can often come out on top while they recover.

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This might change for me in TA depending on how the Thalan tree and Super Hive settle out. Unless things change pretty substantially, I might be quite happy to turn off super abilities when I play as TA Thalans.

Why so? Is it because they don't get their factories (and thus the ability to USE their SA) until about mid-way to the end of the first year? I need to re-look into how the F the AI Thalans are being played now after the AI tweaks Brad did, but they are still doing quite well on Tough on both Medium and Large maps.

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They seem to do well, they don't get social projects for a while so they just tend to crank out ships. With their rather substantial innate bonus and powerful unique buildings they can grab colonies pretty fast. There was a recent thread on here about the Thalans frequently grabbing large portions of the galaxy and just badassing their way to industrial supremacy.

I would like to see how the AI handles their economy, due to their ridiculous maintenance costs I bet you'd see a lot of unused tiles or at least a lot of econ buildings.

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I always left out the Korath because I thought their AI was buggy, I suppose I should include them in my next game to see if they've improved.

But really, as the others said, simply removing the Korath from your game will remove sporeships. I always thought they were way unbalanced if in the hands of a player (who cares if they start at 1 pop, just bring a colony or transport along after it).
Also the immense exploit of having high speed ships flying past their defenses and taking out the worlds the AI thinks is safe...

I like for the AI to have some advantages though, if I don't come close to losing at some point it gets boring...

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