sadic or useless NPR ship

[Triato (OP)]

To get to the point jump to the second parragraph About 20 game years ago I found an NPR race who used box launcher FACs to kill a pair of comercial freighters and a beam battleship on a system next to sol.  Becouse of my scientists I had developed a beam based fleet and box launchers were perfect against me, so I dedicated myself to prevent the enemy from finding sol and hunted their explorers everyhere I could.  I also concentrated on finding their home system, when I finally did, 2 heroic scouts sacrificed themselves to obtain data on thier ships.

Thats when I met the deaththrower, a 8700 ton ship capable of detecting my fighter active scouts before they detected them, they killed my scouts with missiles, best speed is over 8000.  So I spent 2 decades adapting my fleet and strategy to them.  I finally decide to asault the system and sent several active and pasive fighter scouts first, I detected thembut due to a mistake they detect one of my slow obsolete scouts and chase it.  They get into their missile range but they launch no missiles, I thod they may carry beam weapons and not wanting to spend ammo continue the chase, but then they get to point blank range and don´t fire!, after that they follow my scout spaming me with thermal contact interrupts.

The thing is, that now I am disapointed becouse of all the fear I had and all the preparation for battle only to find an incompetent enemy.  Maybe they use box launchers and are out of missiles? that would be strange since they were orbiting a large colony (maybe homeworld) when my passives detected the fleet.  Maybe they can but don´t want to launch and are only baiting the rest of my fleet?

They also have no missile defence.

Can anyone explain this? Can I edit my enemy somehow if it is the case they are useless ships as I presume?

Also, for future experimentation purpouses I´d like to know how to duplicate save files in the future, I don´t plan on cheating since I like the fear it causes me to not be able to save, but in this game I´d like to in order to have a more interesting battle in the case that this one is to easy.

Sorry about the text wall, english is no my mother languaje bla bla bla.

[Alfapiomega]

First thing - you can save the game by making a copy of the file called strevefire.mbd that is located in the main folder of the game. This file holds all the data of the game and when you replace the file with an older version you basically make a rollback.

Second - the AI is a bit basic in the game but you can help it through SM mode or designer mode. I for one found a very experienced player here who modifies my game and thus helps the AI. The good news is though that Steve is upgrading the AI as we speak so next version should have AI that is much more capable.

[boggo2300]

The simplest explanation is that the NPR ships are out of missiles, and don't have a way of restocking them.

Matt

[Steve Walmsley]

The simplest explanation is that the NPR ships are out of missiles, and don't have a way of restocking them.

Matt

Or could be an unarmed scout

[Triato (OP)]

Thanks for the replies, Ill look into SM, I didn´t knew about Designer mode, how do I acces it?

I don´t think they are scouts becouse there are 37 ships of the class in the same spot.

As for the battle dificulty, it just got very interesting, I had set a blockade to the NPC other system and used a pasive scout (thermal and EM) becouse I didn´t wanted them to detect my emisions.  But a fleet jumped in and closed on my main fleet without me detecting it, my scout sensor strenght is ok, i think a single interval was large enough for the fleet to pass, they didn´t turned active sensors on untill they were far away.  Now my fleet is divided and they have big reinforcements wich I may not be able to takeout, I am thinking about escaping to their other system and attacking populations there.

Should I allways use actives for jump blockades?

[Sematary]

How long was your turn interval? Not that it should matter, you should have gotten an interrupt the moment your ships detected theirs.

[Triato (OP)]

The interval was on automatic.  My intelligence was that the new fleet was on the other system, but maybe they were here and not detected.  on the other hand those were big ships with hi thermal sig and the line they followed passed close to my therma scout.