Adamant Mod Empire Setup Help Doc

This guide will outline the basics of setting up your empire in Adamant Mod. Most of empire setup is identical to that in unmodded Space Empires IV, except for a few (critical) areas. These will be outlined in this help document.

To go to a specific chapter, click on it in the Table of Contents. You can click on the Chapter Headers to return to the Table of Contents.

Table of Contents

1. Imperial Aspirations
2. Paradigm
3. Social Doctrine
4. Homeworld
5. Roleplay Elements
6. Numerous Traits
7. Psionics and Religious
8. Specialized Racial Traits
9. Racial Characteristics
10. Racial Trait Index

Chapter 1: Imperial Aspirations

The first thing you must do is to select the Imperial Aspirations trait. This trait gives you 30,000 racial points to spend. These points should be used to purchase one Paradigm trait, one Social Doctrine trait, and one Colony type trait (assuming you selected the Normal Social Doctrine). The purpose of this trait is to make it very difficult for unscrupulous players to select multiple conflicting traits (ie: all 5 paradigms).

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Chapter 2: Paradigm

Next, you must select one (and only one) of the following five traits:

Physical Race, Organic Race, Magic Race, Energy Race, Machine Race

These five traits define the basis of your empire. Failure to take one (and only one) will cause your empire to have almost no technologies available, resulting in very few facilities, ships, components, etc. being available. Physical races rely on technological advancement. Organic races evolve to meet their needs. Magic races delve into the arcane arts, and have primitive levels of technology. Do not let that fool you though, for they are quite potent. Energy races consist entirely of energy. Machine races are similar to Physical races, except that they have no biological organisms. Instead, their "people" are all artificial machines, robots, androids, etc.

Taking more than one of these 5 traits is most assuredly cheating, and is not recommended for PBW use.

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Chapter 3: Social Doctrine

Next, you must select one (and only one) of the following three traits:

Normal, Pirates, Nomads

These three traits define the "style" of your empire. Failure to take one (and only one) will cause your empire to be crippled. Normal empires are typical spacefaring empires. They must select a colonization trait. Pirate empires thrive on piracy. They do not produce much on their own, instead preferring to steal what others have created. Nomadic races live almost entirely in space, and do not colonize planets. Pirate and Nomadic races should not take a colonization trait, as it would be worthless.

Taking more than one of these 3 traits is most assuredly cheating, and is not recommended for PBW use.

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Chapter 4: Homeworld

The next step is to pick a homeworld type and atmosphere. If your race is a Pirate or Nomadic race, you should not select a colonization racial trait. If your race is a Normal race, you must select one of these three traits (and only one), corresponding to your choice of homeworld:

Rock World Natives, Ice World Natives, Gas World Natives

These racial traits are used to prevent races from being able to trade away their starting homeworld technologies. You can trade researched or discovered colony technologies with races that share your homeworld type, but not others. Failure to select one of these traits will result in having no ability to colonize any planets whatsoever.

Taking more than one of these 3 traits is most assuredly cheating, and is not recommended for PBW use.

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Chapter 5: Roleplay Elements

This is a special trait designed to add more flavor for use in roleplaying games only. Only select it if the game is designed as a roleplaying game and the game host has allowed it to be selected. It should be considered cheating to use it in a multiplayer game that is not designed as a roleplaying game. See the help section on Roleplay Elements for further information.

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Chapter 6: Numerous Traits

Adamant Mod has a lot more advanced racial traits than unmodded Space Empires IV, and it is designed for you to be able to select a lot of them. This leads to some problems though. In the game, when looking at a race description, you can only see two lines of racial traits. So, it is common for races with a lot of traits to not have them visible. So, it is a very good idea (and should be a requirement for all PBW games using Adamant) that you list the racial traits you picked in your Empire description, preferably in the Biological Description section.

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Chapter 7: Specialized Racial Traits

There are a number of racial traits that only work with certain race types. This is because they are specialized versions of the basic race type, and the trait makes no sense for other types. For example, Inherent Regeneration gives Organic races some Homeostasis Organs that repair one component per turn. This trait does not apply to a Physical or Magical race. Even though they could take it, it is a very bad idea for them to do so, as it is a waste of racial points; there are no effects for them. All such traits list what race types they apply to in their descriptions.

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Chapter 8: Psionics and Religious

These two racial traits are a special case. They have been broken down into subtraits from the standard Space Empires IV traits.

Psionics replace the Psychic racial trait of Space Empires IV. To benefit from any Psionic abilities, you must take both Basic Psionic Capacity and at least one Psionic Discipline trait.

To benefit from any Religious abilities, you must take Deeply Religious and at least one Religious Ethos trait.

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Chapter 9: Racial Characteristics

For the most part, Racial Characteristics function identically to how they function in unmodded Space Empires IV. The costs and thresholds have been tweaked, but that does not change how they function. There are a few exceptions though.

In unmodded Space Empires IV, you can gain free racial points by lowering Environmental Resistance and increasing Reproduction to compensate for the lowered growth rate. This exploit is fixed in Adamant.

Maintenance Aptitude functions differently in Adamant. In unmodded Space Empires IV, the trait lowers maintenance paid for a ship, not the actual base maintenance cost of the ship. In Adamant, the trait now actually lowers the base maintenance cost. So, 110% Maintenance Aptitude does not change base maintenance costs from 25% to 15%, but instead changes it to 22.5%. This is a much better way for the characteristic to function.

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Chapter 10: Racial Trait Index

The following is a listing of all advanced racial traits in Adamant Mod (except for the colony, paradigm, and roleplay elements traits) and a listing of which race types they work with. Note that it has not yet been updated for 0.15.00.

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Copyright Nolan Kelly, 2003.