Quick question about how the races capable of colonisation will be able conduct it. If they only have one or two cruisers and no colony ships or transports how will they be able to colonise worlds?

Really impressed by your project guys. The concept and it's execution are astounding so far. The canonical map system is genius.

Eventually Expandable races will be able to build colony ships and colonise nearby systems

Regards Wolfe

Yeah...they will eventually...but considering that we haven't got any minor race colony ship models and haven't even put them in the database OR shiplsit...

Good question, outremer, and welcome to the site.

Does this cross the freighter question or what?

Well I just posted in the other thread about this. We could have Freighters as the terraformers for the minor races while their colony ships do the actual colonising.

This would have implications in itself though - it would slow down their as they would need to build two types of ship, and they would need to have an AI that takes this difference compared to the Empires into account.

While doing this would slow down the initial expansion of minor races at first, once a few freighters have been made only colony ships would have to built as the freighters would be kept moving constantly from system to allowing the colony ships to colonize as fast as they could be built and sent to terraformed systems. The end result of this might actually be faster expansion of by the minor empires than the major empires themselves. Taking a page from how the minor empires are run in Civilization IV and altering it might be our best course of action. In Civ IV minor empires are given a slower rate of technological development than the major empires, and sometimes it seems as though they also be given the same technologies as the least technologically developed major empire.

However, because of both BOTF and BOTE, it is expected that at least the home worlds be vastly more developed than the major empires this would likely not go over well with the gaming community, or SciFI community for that matter. For example, while the Caldonians would be at roughly tech level 4 while the Federation (the most developed major empire in this scenario) is still only at tech level 2. This idea could be modified to apply directly to the build time of certain minor race units such as the Transport, Outpost, and Colony ship could be increased by as much as two thirds.

Minros with "colony ships" ? Is it for shore ? Far more easier would be automatic colonisation by minors for example like terraforming in old BOTF (no ships, just marking the system).

Nothing is really "for sure" until the game is finished (or if I say otherwise ). I don't really have a position on whether or not minor races should need colony ships. If they do, then it's more ships and models to define. If they don't, the minor races will need different AI routines regarding expansion (which they'll need anyway, e.g. to ensure that the Vulcans don't take over the whole Alpha Quadrant). The only real downside I see to minor race colonization without colony ships is that the player won't be able to tell that a minor race is about to colonize a system, as there will be no colony ship(s) on sensors.

I am not sure but wasn't generally decided that some of the minor would be able to colonize systems like the Xindi and the Sheliak can in the series.

Yes, some minors can expand. The question is whether or not they should need colony ships to do it, or if they should just be able to sort of "automagically" colonize nearby sectors.

why not just colonize "with their other fleet ships"? i.e. if one of their scouts or better cruiser hovers 6 turns or more over a certain unpopulated system, the system gets colonized (see it as the escort fleet/ship where the actual colonists needed those 6 turns to get invisibly and safe to that new homeworld).
that way you combine both. the no-longer-need for new ships plus the visibility for others (no auto-magick-thing).

Not a bad idea. I like it .

I don't know. I am afraid that having fleet ships wouldn't leave enough checks in place to control minor race expansion. Matress mentioned earlier that he thinks freighters should used in the colonization of planets for minor races and I think that it might be the best solution except that instead of regular freighters they would be special freighters that carry terraforming equipment and colonists instead of freight. The only issue with this is that I don't think regular freighters would be able to carry a pay load as large as that of a dedicated colony ship. The result of this would be that in order to terraform a system and colonize it, two colony freighters would be required. This would serve two purposes. The first one being that fewer ship models would have to be created for minor races than if a dedicated colony ship were created for each minor and the second being that forcing minors races to build two vessels to do the job of one colony ship would help keep the minor races expansion rates in check.

I only mentioned it as a possible idea, Fox. I wanted to get people talking about possible ideas, not that I was actually for using freighters. My personal preference is either Mal's idea with hovering ships, or to simply give them colony ships and no freighters. The races that have freighters could then be put to different uses.

Again, these are just ideas to get people talking:

Possible freighter uses (Non-colonization)
1) Extremely long-ranged, but terribly armed, poorly defended ships with system-only sensors. (Leaving exploration to dedicated science ships, scouts, and explorers. No specific role, making them pretty much useless, and giving no point to the minor races that have them in building ship capabilities. Some powerful races, such as the Malon, have Freighters however)
2) Mini transports. They would be less useful than the transports of the Empires, but would still be able to build outposts etc. One transport would be used up to build an outpost. This brings up the question of whether expandable races (Especially the Vulcans etc) should be able to build outposts?
3) Trade route "improvers"/trade route prerequisite. This would add an extra dimension to attacking your enemies, take out their freighters and you cut their supply routes. No income means no money and no money means no more ship construction, no more system development, and no more fleet maintenance, as in BotF)
4) Fuel freighters. They would take the role of rescue ships from command vessels, and would resupply ships that are left adrift. (They would again need extremely long range for this role)
5) Resource transport. They would provide the resources needed to build an outpost, as in option 1, but they would collect the resources from a system of your choice, so the ship would not be "used up" to build the outpost. A new screen/options would be needed for this.
6) Cargo transport. They physically transport resources from system to system as in BotE. This system would be more realistic, but would become tedious, especially with large Empires, however. I personally do not like this idea, but it's an idea nonetheless.

Anyone like these ideas? Anyone suggestion anymore? And don't forget the issue of colonization!

None the less I think it does sound like a good idea that would prevent minor races from expanding too fast. My fear is that if their ships only have to hover over a system to colonize it that they would grow out of control because their colony ships wouldn't actually be spent in the process of founding a colony. One possible way to get around the problem of not all minor races having freighters is too just infer or say outright that the freighters were purchased from another race. Doing this eliminate to create very many non-combat minor vessels since the Colony Freighters would mostly all come from the same source.


I don't know about the extremely long ranged or them being useless part.


I don't see why not. It seems that a good number of the minor races were already space faring long before the founding of the Federation. Also, there seem to be quite a few minor races that, in their past, were at one point at the head of their own empires.


Nice idea. I like the thought of setting up blockades and cutting off your enemies supply lines. This would also add an additional incentive to make sure that transport ships are well protected.


I really like this idea. Only it might be a good idea if the fuel freighter looked at least slightly different than a regular freighter. I was thinking that doing something like rounding out the main hull of the freighters a bit would do the trick.


In other words they would haul resources for the construction ships? That would certainly fit in with what has been seen in the series.

I really don't see how not using them for this could be avoided considering not all systems always have the needed resources in order to thrive.


I don't know... It seems like you nailed all the potential uses for freighters pretty good there.

I just found something that I think would really help out this discussion. The USS Huxley.

http://www.treknology.org/starships3.htm

http://www.treknology.org/huxley.gif

http://www.treknology.org/huxley-deuterium.gif

http://www.treknology.org/huxley-msd.gif

PS. Is there any way to shrink to fit images that you link to?

To Matress: Please check the last post on the previous page.

Fox, you can't link to Ex-Astris-Scientia as they block hotlinking - you CANNOT post any of their images in a post, nor set it as a link instead of an image. If you want people to see it, you'll have to link to the webpage and tell people what image to look at.

Oh. Well the link at the top is for the website and the ship I was trying to post a picture of was the Huxley class.

Why not have it so that all the minor races share the same colony ship? some kind of default model for civilian use. (or a couple models that most people share) Kind of like a modified freighter. But don't let them build the ship. Once one of their fleets discovers a planet, have some algorithm based on how far from one of their planets it is and if any other ships have visited for x amount of turns to determine if said colony ship spawns at the minor race's home planet. Could also limit the spawn time of colony ships by total population of planets vs population max of planets for need of expansion.

We could easily do that, Kirktitude, and it would mean less work, but it would also mean less eye candy. And Matress wants eyecandy!

Mike made his decision on all of these questions. Minors will behave like majors with limit in expansion ration. This is the way how supremacy is going to handle minor race colonisation and transporting:









This is one of candidates for minor races transport ship (Kriosian freighter from Ent):

If a minor has colonized to its limit will it be able to conquer sytems to expand?

And will a minor be able to declare war on another minor?

Hmm...that's a good point Wookie. Can they, Mike? Should they?

They'll be able to conquer as part of a war strategy, but they won't be motivated to go to war just for the sake of expanding.

Absolutely.

How often would a minor declare war on another minor and if they don't declare war to expand why else would they declare war?

Maybe they just hate eachother? As for how often, it's difficult to tell until all the initial algorithms are in place. The AI will have a lot of information to consider, and war will certainly not be a casual decision. Generally, I would assume that minor races will not declare war on eachother very often.

There are plenty of races that hate each other. The Anticans and the Selay. The Bajorans and the Cardassians. The Klingons and the Romulans. As long as the AI works well and the game follows the relationships between the races properly, i'm sure we will be seing the sparks fly.

...

Thanks to Dafedz, i've now acquired a LOT of new images for the minor race special buildings, which will be included in my next content update. Several of the existing images have also been replaced with newer ones. That means most of Zeleni's images have been taken out i'm afraid, (Sorry Zeleni) but even some of the old BOTF images have been replaced with newer ones. I've kept the all in a separate folder on my computer just in case though.

What was that program you made me try a few weeks ago for shrinking .png's down, Mike? I'm gonna have to let it run overnight or something, because some of the new images are pretty large files. My Techobjects folder is currently at 40.7Mb!

I've got some more questions.

1.Is there going to be a generic colony ship for every minor race?

2.How will minors invade systems without transports? Will there be generic transports for races without there own transports or will they have to by them from major empires?

3.Will minors help each other against majors? I like the idea of minors forming an alliance against a major who has been conquering minors. For example say the Klingon Empire has been conquering minors system so the Bolians, Andorians, and Tellerites form an alliance and declare war on the Klingons.

3. is actually quite cool.