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Space Empires IV
By James SterrettFleets
A typical mid to late game fleet of mine often has, at minimum, the following: a backbone of ship killers, the majority of the fleet; at least one point defense ship (the ship killers probably have a Point Defense cannon each; these cruisers have 15 and can mow down the incoming fighters/missiles); a dedicated minesweeper; a cheap frigate to send through warp points first and see if the other end is too heavily defended; a supply ship (equipped with supply storage and lots of solar panels, to resupply the fleet); and a repair ship, chock full of equipment to patch the fleet up after each fight. I often have transports full of troops - whose battlesuits you also design. I might add in a space yard ship, to crank out fighters, mines, satellites, ships, or even battlestations at need. If I can afford them, ships to open and close warp points add a lot to my options.
Battlesuit Design
Moreover, the balance of these will shift depending on the enemy you face. In my last game, I had three distinctly different types of fleets on three different "fronts": one enemy loved fighters, so on that front my fleets had to be 50% AAA cruisers. Another loved mine warfare, so those fleets needed heavy minesweeper support (and extra sacrificial frigates). Finally, the third was a straight up ship-to-ship fighter, so the preponderance in those fleets was shipkillers. Different designs will be "best" against different enemy designs, and the more specialized a design is in defeating a given combination of design and technology, the more likely it is to fare poorly against some other combination of design and technology.
Sending in the Poor Bloody Infantry
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is extensively modeled, with nearly a dozen different treaty types and an extensive trading/threatening/demanding/giving system. Mostly, it works, but there's a setting in one of the .ini files, defaulted to ON, that turns all the AIs against you once you have both a certain score and a certain percentage advantage over the race in second place. It isn't a bad idea (it lets the AI recognize that you're on the way to slaughtering it if the various AI empires don't band together against you), but it sometimes seems to cut in a bit soon, and it's annoying to have a whole bunch of carefully crafted alliances suddenly go up in smoke. On the plus side, you can tweak the settings for it. (In fact, you can in theory tweak most everything in the game. SEIV is very modification-friendly if you figure out the data formats for its text files.)
Let's Make a Deal
Intelligence is similarly detailed, with three dozen different intelligence operations you can attempt! Intelligence allows all manner of stuff, including the takeover of planets & the misdirection of another empire's diplomatic communications. One of my favorite options is "crew insurrection", which induces an enemy ship to become yours.
Stealing Ships For Fun and Profit!
Race Relations
Moreover, while the game comes with preset races, there is a very extensive set of options for custom races. In addition to picking names and art styles, you can opt to spend (or gain) points on increasing (or decreasing) your abilities in all manner of endeavors, from research to maintenance. A variety of special bonuses wag their tails and beg for your race points, ranging from reduced supply consumption to having your choice of one of five private tech trees. These special tech trees (psychic, temporal, religious, crystalline, and organic technologies) can only be used by races which bought the appropriate racial trait; you cannot beg, borrow, or steal the toys that come from them, and many of those toys are very cool. How is this balanced? Well, I didn't say that having your own private tech tree came cheap....
Multiplay . . . sort of
Space Empires IV supports play-by-email, though there is not any direct support for play over a LAN. Finding email opponents ought not be too difficult, since the game appears to have a large PBEM fan-base from its predecessors in the series.
