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It is a limiter on how many players can win an FFA game as allied victors. It was asked for by the multiplayer folks who shied away from playing MP FFAs because you could have a premade group of 6 people ganging up on only 4 who weren't even together, for example. With this limiter, only a certain number of people can win when allied, encouraging more fair FFA play in multiplayer - hopefully. The setting is fairly meaningless in single player, unless you care to limit your AI alliances.

It's in the entity files, so of course it's moddable. It's just research files for pirates, same way as players have them.

There is a limit on pirate upgrades, but it's way high. Here are the numbers: Pirates buy 2 upgrades before each raid, each of the following upgrades has 20 ranks: Armor: +2 armor. HP: +20% hp. Regeneration: +45% hp regen. Weapon damage: +20% damage, +5% range. Weapon cooldown: -7% autocannon/laser cooldown. So, basically, you have pirates running around with +40 armor, +400% hp, doing +400% damage with double the range and virtually no cooldown and

Well, technically, if you go Rambo successfully then you kill everything before it can win :D

That's similar to the costume Josie wore to PAX the previous year. It looks awesome.

During a large portion of the original Sins beta, resources were finite and it didn't work well. Games are not very predictable in length, and when resources ran out everything just stopped. At this point, the whole economic system and fleet supply system would need to be redesigned to accomodate finite resources. It's also not possible to do it in a mod, the code base for finite resources is long since gone.

[quote]But seriously, why do I love other players just because they are comps?[/quote] The AIs use this bonus to be able to work within the context of the new relationship system. It changed pretty dramatically under the hood, and since AI can't raise relations with players as a human can, it needs this bonus to be able to function with envoys and especially locked team settings. There are 2 major reasons for why this bonus exists: 1) Pacts. Since all pacts need betwee

All AIs get the +10 bonus to allow them to work with the current system and be able to offer pacts. Since pacts need 11.5 and up in relations, AIs start with 10 so to simulate all the missions/research bonus/etc that a player would have with an AI. It's not specific to the Diplomatic Victory condition, however if that bonus didn't exist, winning it would be even easier than it is now and a bunch of other things would be broken.

I believe they have to research the techs also.

There is no patch file. Impulse just does a comparison between your files and the server's files and downloads/replaced what needs changing. If you want to keep an offline archive, you can download the full up-to-date build from http://anywhere.impulsedriven.com and save it on a disc or flash drive. That way you can re-install from the archive without having to re-download, and will have the latest version right away. This archive will not requi

Sure, just grab Diplomacy for $10 and you'll have your Trinity :P It's the same thing and fully compatible.

Beat them to it, screw with their envoys to deny them a pretty large positive boost.

The line is accurate, but confusing. The number of points is the same across the board, 75 * number of players, but lower-difficulty AIs have slower rates of accumulation. Unfair and up don't get a cheat, so they stay at 1x multipiler. It's the lower AIs that go slow. As for negative points, it's just a display issue. All the math works with the negatives as you describe, so if you have -3 from missions and -1 from military and -1 from race relations, you do need +5 to get to the actu

Not so much, unfortunately. From the Readme: "A new victory condition has been added to the Game Options to enable diplomatic victories. When enabled, players can win the game by accumulating diplomatic points, which are gained by maintaining positive relations with others. The number of points needed to win and the speed at which they accumulate is based both on the number of living players and the difficulty level (for AI players). " :P

Diplomacy points are gained when a player's total positive relation bonuses with all other players are greater than the penalties. So, say, if in a 4 player game you have a total of 23 positive points and 18 negative, you'll be gaining points. The greater the difference, the faster the rate of gain. So if you get it to 30 positive and 11 negative, you'll gain points faster. You can hover your mouse over the current point display to see your overall relations status (positive or negati

Don't worry about the AI relation bonus. It's just a helper bonus for AIs only to work with the new relationship system. [quote]5. What is the difference between relation rate with and without envoys? By the former the max is 10 while a value of 20 belongs to the latter.[/quote] Yes, without envoys you can only have a max of 10. Envoys allow you to go beyond that to 20. [quote]6. I researched trade and metal pacts, I have a rival who I have a 9.24 relation with bu

Strictly speaking, it hasn't been. But since Walmart broke street date, they re-enabled Diplomacy for those who already had the beta and patched it to the release version. It officially goes on sale on Tuesday, still.

Every track is played somewhere. They did change the menu music to a track (tec3.ogg I think?) that was only played during the tutorial, in order to use it in a nicer spot.. plus it fits better on the menu than the old track. Everything else I believe is played during games. :x

Yes, Diplomacy requires and builds on Entrenchment, so all the features will be present.

Yep, if you play Diplomacy you're playing the total package with *everything*.

[quote]but al i hear is a culture cursier that seem expensive and useless in most situations[/quote] Quite the opposite. First, it's not a culture cruiser, second it's very cheap. It buffs your ally's planets, and though some buffs are more useful than others in an MP game, some are guite good: Vasari envoy increases resource gain at the planet by 100% - so double - for 60 seconds every 3 minutes, TEC envoy increases trade income, and can also make money for the owner of the envoy.

They will. At the moment everyone's just trying their first couple games and turning it on before figuring out how it works. ;)

[quote]Wiping out the pirate base in the late game should be a viable strategic option, in my opinion. [/quote] Which it is, and is still a bit too easy. For all their buffs, the only way they end up with more ships at their base is returning successful raids. Even though their base gauss turrets got buffed, they still won't hold up to a mid/late-game fleet, especially since there will most always be very few ships to kill in their grav well.

[quote]What's a Diplomatic Victory?! I turned it on in the Game Options hoping it would be made clear while playing. Still have no idea and I got it. I would have thought it meant I would win WITH my allies if we were the last ones left but there was an option for how many people can win when allied so I figured it can't be that.[/quote] Diplomatic Victory is mostly meant as an alternative way to play FFA games. When you turn it on, the goal becomes to earn a certain number of vict

I'm not sure there's a way for diplomatic victory to play well in locked teams. The way it's designed is to get the player to continually strive to improve relations with all other players to maximize the victory point gain and beat the other players to it. In locked teams everyone starts at the same "level" and most diplomacy is disabled, but the various bonuses and penalties are still in effect without you being able to do much about them, which will mostly-randomly affect rates of gain.</p