Hey - long time since I posted here last! Lots has changed by the looks of things.

I have been playing the current version of the game over the weekend, and thought I'd let you know what I think. Firstly, it looks and feels great - you've certainly captured the essence of the original and updated and generally improved on it, so well done there. Looks like there are enough people playing that my observations have probably been noted before, but I'll just drop them in here anyway...

Something seems to be causing the game to freeze when starting a new turn. [oh, that seems to be to do with issuing the same orders to two fleets in one turn... ok]

A minor thing, but Mars and Venus are the wrong way around, size-wise. Mars is currently about the size of the Earth and Venus much smaller, when of course in real life it is the other way around.

I noticed that you can re-name ships - nice feature (are ships going to be receiving names automatically in the future?); unfortunately it seems the names are lost at the start of the next turn.

Another thing to do with the naming - it isn't quite obvious how to make the name stick even for the turn you are on... seems after you type the name in you need to deselect the ship but stay in redeploy mode - not very intuitive. A little 'Accept' button alongside the name field would be a much more positive way of handling it, I think.

There's a weird bug in the diplomacy section whereby in the inbox, only some of the messages display. It seems ok if you only have one in there, but if there are several, they sometimes just give you a blank screen (ie the message panel) when you select them.

I can declare war, but it doesn't seem to survive the turn change...

Also, I notice that at the moment, all planets that can be inhabited start out as being habitable. I hope it isn't planned to keep it this way, as terraforming a world was a significant strategic element of the original, requiring you to keep your colony ships protected for longer periods of time. A suggestion on that front: perhaps as a bit of an improvement over the original, why not have it so that the colony ship is capable of only terraforming a world to a basic level of habitability (still requiring several turns), and then requiring you to build some terraforming structure that completes the process over X turns (20 perhaps), gradually increasing the max pop. level of the planet to its true maximum. It always seemed a bit odd to me that you could effectively terraform an entire world from orbit, to the best it could possibly be, within 3 or 4 turns It would also serve to slow down the development of systems somewhat - and given the number that there will be on the larger maps, I think that is absolutely essential.

I've seen the combat demo videos and have to say it certainly looks extremely good, so I'm looking forward to trying that out for myself All in all I think you're on to a winner with this one - keep up the good work

terraforming while having colonists on the planet is quite hazardous since terraforming requires in-depth changes to the current ecosystem and planet atmosphere. I would rather be in a ship in orbit than on the planet if something went wrong..

speaking of which, why does terraforming always work? Shouldn't there be some random failures that turn a planet maybe even into a Class A,B,C,Y one? or at least slow down the terraforming?

Becareful with the random event on planets factor, nothing is more pissing off then finding the perfect 500+ planet in the orignal BOTF and then having a comet completely blow it to bits lol .

Random events should probably be set backs rather then anything permanently detrimental.

Regards Wolfe

Ah I didn't know about the working combat demo - I shall try that out a little later

I like that idea for the terraforming - should add a layer of strategy over the original on that front which is good In fact that whole planet habitability thing sounds good - a bit of a cross between BotF and MoO I think. I think random terraforming events sounds good - but yeah it would probably be better if they didn't completely cripple your efforts. Things along the lines of some instability in the crust caused a large amount of some toxic gas to be released into the atmosphere, which requires cleaning before the planet can reach its maximum potential (perhaps by going through another terraforming cycle?) would probably add a lot to the gameplay, without giving the player the 'computer is ganging up on me' factor which I find very annoying

I have one other thing to mention actually: during my playing earlier I had the Cytheri (er... spelled something like that ), with a system-max pop of 20, and a current population of 8. Out of interest, I decided to ask them to become members, and they agreed. This system is now stuck in a permanent cycle of starvation which is keeping the population static. This is a pretty extreme example as you could only ever have a labour pool of 2, but given that there are no bonuses of any kind that would allow me to get any food to them, is there something planned that would allow the player to provide relief to such a system? After all, it could be a more normal system that has just beaten off a major assault, has no food or energy bonuses and so cannot feed its population. Perhaps food aid could be sent to get them on their feet again? Or even an infusion of new colonists? That was something I always felt I'd like to be able to do, to send an extra colony ship to a system that was really struggling to get a foothold.

Yeah I think you need a balance of good and bad things with a system like that

Those are the ones, but really I was just using it as an example. Forget it's them for a moment, and just imagine that you have a system with no food or energy bonuses. Up until now, it has been a thriving system. But it has just been subjected to a protracted assault by, let's say, the Dominion. They had sent battleships and assault ships, but their transports had been intercepted by my border patrols. The rest of their force carried on anyway, with the intention of sending a second wave of ships including transports - the first wave of capital ships managed to slip by unnoticed. They arrive in my nice bonus-free system, and begin heavy bombardment, which carries on for several turns. By the time my relief force arrives and drives the Dominion fleet away, the population of the system is reduced to 8. The growth rate is not high enough to overcome the effects of starvation each turn, and so the population stagnates at a level that makes it impossible to do anything at all with the system. What can the player do at this point? What I'm suggesting is that you should be able to send a colony ship to a system like this, and order it to join the colony (perhaps something that can only be done with a colony with a population of less than 10?) - that way you can get the colony going again which would otherwise be impossible.

Having systems with less than one population unit is a known bug - I noticed it first a few weeks ago and told Mike about it. Exactly what can be done i'm not sure, unless you can force the game to always give systems one population point or have populations with less than that not eat any food but still have babies.

Evacuating systems is something that has been discussed for a long time, and we decided we would have it in. The option to do so hasn't been implemented - yet - but it will be in as soon as Mike programs it. It took a long time to decide on this feature because there are many potential abuses for it - players could purposely evacuate high-growth systems to build up their colonies for instance.

Anyways, we did decide that when a system does it, the people may also randomly decide take a few pieces of technology with them - so you could start a new colony with a fancy new replicator before the colony even had any powerplants to run it. It will be impossible to know what structures the population have taken (If any) until you colonise a new system.

Evacuations will require colony ships as you said. I'm not sure how it will work exactly - perhaps as a Colony ship order or something i'm not sure, but Mike will eventually implement the system.

OK Sounds like everything is in hand then hehe

I had a play with the combat system demos as well now! cdrwolfe's is very impressive; obvious issues aside it is a very promising foundation for the combat system

Yes it is still in pre-pre-pre-Alpha-Omega stage .

Any bugs or issues or things you might want added or looked into feel free to post them.

Regards Wolfe

Hmm that might be one way around it...i'll let Mike know of these two potential solutions and see what he says.

I've just implemented two new structures for the Feds. (The other races will have different combinations or their own versions) They are both like the orbital batteries; you can build an infinite number of them - but only support as many as you produce energy.

The first structure is Private Farms. These require 15 energy and give +3 food - so four of them would comfortably support a <10 population system IF they also have Charge Collectors or another energy structure.

The second structure is Retail Outlets. It works in the same way as the Private Farms, but gives a +1 Credit bonus. I'm gonna check how they work in the game now. If they work, it'll mean i've completed the updates for the Federation buildings.

*Edit - looks like there's a glitch in the game. More-than-1-per-system-structures won't appear in the game.

I've notified Mike on his Codeplex site. Damn i've made a lot of updates on there in the last few days!

**Edit the second - koki, i've got some good news for you! Mike decided that giving all systems a default of +10 food was the most code-friendly way of implementing the fix, so hes going to add it in. Congratulations, one of your ideas made it into the game!

That's quite a reasonable solution I think, after all, it is hardly stretching the boundaries of realism to assume that a relatively small community would be capable of producing enough food for itself without government interference