I don't want to bend down infront of them. That's also how I act in alpha centauri. I want to find a way to block their death knights without having to sacrifice everyting like social projects and medical research. So far I only have battle hammers and they can't seem to stand up to the death knight. Is the death knight a evil ship? And If you were good and researched the good technologies, what if you turned evil? do you lose them? And I built a manufacturing capital on one of the planets and then disbanded it. How come I can't build another one?
End of quote
Oh! OK! I hear you loud and clear! Hey, I hated when they seem to get to battleship technology unrealisticly too fast; and then pester the player with Battleship or Death Knights, as you say. That makes the smaller ships about useless, because there in no real time for interacting on a grand scale with other players if it becomes more desirable to simply develope Battleship technology, given it really isn't too expensive. It also pissed me off when a defensive/offense complex (StarBase) could be destroyed easily by a wimpy ship or destroyed by a single Battleship or Death Knight. Solutions? Listen to the suggestions being given... or.... mods or minor changes.
Try this to simple keep those pesky Battleships and Death Knights away for a while:
Enter the GCTech.tech file with Note Pad and edit the developement cost up by a factor of 4 times (or as you desire). Warning: if the tech developement cost is high enough, the AI players will in fact use smaller ships much more and they'll be all over the place! If that is too insane, then enter the ship files and increase the cost of maintenace by a factor 2 (double). The result is more time for early contact and basic warfare with other races without bigger high tech ships around in the game... for a little while. If you do this sort of editing, don't edit your original files; instead, first place copies of the involved tech and ship files into the Mods Data folder, then edit them there, then be sure the Mods option is turned on in the pre-game configuration menus. If an AI acquires a Battleship or Death Knight by other means (random events)... hmm, heh, then go buy it from him.
And/Or make an armored "Enplacement" ship which the Battleship or Death Knight will suffer damage from or be destroyed if either attack the emplacement. I find the "Defender" class ship perfect for this. Saddly this "fix" doesn't work as well as it could. The battle algorithm is not that good in this game. Usually ships fight to the end as destruction rather than ending a turn with both having some damage as a funtion of hit points. A high hit point ship should take some time to destroy (all things being fairly close), but giving it some damage aught to be possible more often than it is from smaller less powerful weopons when defense is low; but not total destruction immediately... the result is the "Defender" may seem too powerful as a defensive emplacement of floating armor in space, so you can adjust the numbers to your taste. This solution still results in the Defender being able to move. I could not find a way to prevent this problem and have the Defender act as a true planetary defensive emplacement in my fix. My solution:
Modify the "CoreShips.ships" data file as follows (//XX is the orginal StarDock value):
//------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHIP Defender
//------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name "Defender"
Model "Ship09"
Description "Perfect for home defenses, these armored emplacements can withstand quite a beating, but have high maintenance costs."
HitPoints 2000 //25
Attack 0 //1
Defense 5 //3
Speed 0 //Darn shame this really isn't zero speed forever
Cost 40
SensorRange 1
Tech_Requirement "Deflectors"
Maintenance 25 //1
Range 0
ENDSHIP
And StarBases getting toasted so easily by pip-squeak little ships or by single large ships? I have always felt this should require a fleet effort and/or be accomplished only by a very strong ship or several strong ships. In my case, I made a few simple adjustments to the Starbase.ship and CoreModules.SBmodules files I changed a few of the basic defenses higher and raised the StarBase hit points. That solved the issue.
These changes alone will improve the game greatly, as I see it anyway, without the game losing it's original basic flavor, so to speak. If you'd like me to paste the StarBase ship file and Starbase Coremodule files here, I can. I only mention the issue as a side-bar to your orginal remarks.
[Message Edited For Typos]
[Message Edited]