Also when the game reaches that stage of development we will probably gain more followers.

Hehe, count me in.

I personally wouldn't want to see minors conquering the systems of empires, but it would be good if they could put up some kind of a fight, which I'm sure they would.

Using the earlier example of the Tzenkethi, I don't think anyone was concerned they would outright conquer the Federation, just that a war with them would be a logistical nightmare whilst keeping the Romulan and Cardassian borders defended and maintaining patrols near outlying systems.

Yeah, that's the idea.

All sounds good. I do agree with your earlier points, the majority of minors are really just an extra perk which is added to your empire and to make the game more interesting.

Just a quick question for Mike or anyone, rather than starting a new thread... are there plans to have larger galaxies than the Huge galaxy in the current release? Cheers in advance.

I think that it isn't planned, but it's easily moddable. My personal best is 100x100 map. I tried to mod a bigger map, but failed. Is there a hard coded limitation?

There is an intrinsic limit of 256x256 sectors because map coordinates are represented using 8 bits per dimension. Thus, for a given location (x, y), 'x' and 'y' must both be within the range of [0, 255]. If you tried to mod it to less than 256x256 and it failed, you probably just made a subtle mistake when editing the table file (it helps to just open it in MS Excel).

Note that if you go much higher than 80x80 sectors, plotting long courses for your fleets could become very slow. The time it takes to plot an optimal course between two sectors grows exponentially with the distance between those sectors. Short of theoretical quantum computing, there's no way around that issue--it's a mathematical certainty. Pathfinding already gets a little choppy with a huge galaxy, so if you decide to start modding the galaxy sizes, be sure to do test the pathfinding performance.

Yes and some have small and some have big systems, some have dilithium some not...






It's obvious after your reply that your knowledge about war and history of war is mainly derived from PC games. There is huge amount of serious literature outside of PC games, find something, start learning, inform yourself and then replay.






I hope this is not final solution, It would be nice to play with UFP and your first neighbor is Dominion.





Cutting down number of minors ship classes.





Minors will have their own tech curve, how it is going to work is up to Mike. In Botf developed race starts game with tech 3 but there is another solution all minors start with tech 0 at beginning of game.





Your reply is without sense. I said that mini-empires should be harder membered cause they have structures with great bonuses.

I hope that it is. I think that quadrants are one of the biggest improvements to the game. But since so many of you want a game without quadrants, how about this?

Did I implement that already or is that a Photoshop?

I'm pretty sure I implemented quadrants as being optional in the actual galaxy generator but I don't recall if I ever incorporated that into the UI.

It's Photoshop, actually It took me a few minutes to find the right font, Calibri and LCARS if anyone is wondering.

Actually, it's Square 721 Condensed for the label and Helvetica Ultra Compressed for the drop-down.

Calibri is the font used for the labels on the star map. It's a standard font in Windows Vista/7, unlike the other two.

But it's almost the same. I had to modify it a little in the font menu, but still...

PS: So the quadrants will have an off switch? I hope that that will finally make everyone happy.

Yes, the quadrants will have an 'off' switch. Technically you'll still see the axis lines in the galaxy map with quadrants switched off, but races' home quadrants will no longer be factor in determining their homeworld locations.

Great.

You see? When you put your mind to it, you can find a lot. Would have saved you from proposing yet another one.



Oh, I read a lot. And yes, history. I guess you can't tell from my replys, eh? I can't tell the same from yours either, so I guess it's not really a valid argument, eh? I'd say comic books though.
Anyways, back to replaying PC games. History based ones. Or maybe I should go find an history book where a small nation on earth took a backyard from a major power and then sat on their conquest. That would be fun. Lots of entertainment time.



Ping-pong? They would start at 3, now at zero? Could you make up your mind please?



Which is pretty much what everyone is expecting to happen? Talk about sense.
Uh, not the "mini-empires", the more powerful minors of course.

Any chance you could provide the possibility for players to choose movement to systems only?

Well, about the wars, our history is filled with conflicts that aren't familiar to a wider audience. Balcanic wars, Islamic-Israel wars...... All for relatively small pieces of land that "major" world nations thought were unimportant. But to those minor nations they can mean everything.

Minor races could fight over smaller star systems. Would they attack a major race to get a small system, probably not, but still, "anomalies" could happen. Not every minor race is very intelligent. Some more warlike races like the Chalnoth, the Nausicaans, the Tzenkethi, the Gorn...... could attack a stronger opponent for a small system.

We also must consider other variables. What if the system is of a great strategic importance? Or has Dilithium, or a wormhole. Population is not the only measure of a star system.

I guess it is the game value vs coding computing time thing.

It would only make a difference if we ditched the grid-based map and went with starlanes like MoO. That would mean the player couldn't build starbases outside of star systems, take advantage of nebulas to hide fleets, etc. It would also render the waypoint system more or less useless. Besides, 80x80 sectors is friggin' huge. The people who want more than that are the kind of people who probably won't be satisfied with this game no matter what decisions we make because the kind of depth they want just isn't physically possible on today's computers (and is way more than the typical player wants anyway). I started this project because I wanted to build a Trek strategy game that can appeal to 90% of players; I'm not really interested in catering to the ones looking for an entire Star Trek universe simulated on their PC.

As for the debate on wars and minor race conquest, the decision is made, and I'm locking this thread.