Hi guys,
I'm not sure if you have thought of these ideas yet but I had some thoughts for the game (My laptop is on the frizz and I'm saving for a new one, so I don't want to download anything right now).

-One thing that bugged me abut the original BotF was that certain items that were built in a system that should be in space were not part of a battle scene if a fleet was attacking a planet/system. Items such as orbital batteries and shipyards should be targets for attacking fleets the same as if they were targeting other ships/starbases.

-Add a diplomatic feature that allows a player to suggest to a (NPC whom is allied or affiliated to the player) the NPC's next target. For example, say I'm playing as the Federation and I'm allied with the Klingons and we're both at war with the Cardassians. I could send a diplomatic message asking the Klingons to attack a specific Cardassian system next. They either reply in the positive and focus on attacking that system (and don't make other moves until they capture that system) or in the negative and fight the battles they choose to. NPCs should be able to send the same requests to a player. This would help allies coordinate campaigns.

-Have 2 options for maps when you start a new game.
1. A random generated map, similar to how the original BotF starts
2. A standard Alpha quadrant map with wormhole near Bajor leading to a partial standard Gamma quadrant map. All races/stellar phenomena (badlands, wormhole, famous nebulae, etc) will be set in place based on their locations in Star Trek/TNG/DS9. I can probably provide some accurate input for a stellar map if you need help (Keep in mind that I'm by no means a programmer, only a star trek geek with some free time).

to realize the idea of combined attacks one could also implement a follow order and give the AI certain preferences to just "attach" one of their fleets to a fleet of yours at a given rendez-vous point. This rendez-vous point would always be a common reachable starbase in the borderline of both territories. if both allies aren't connected then I guess it won't make much sense to tell them to attack a specific system cause you won't have much intel about that other borderline anyway and it'd be best to let the AI decide which system to attack according to their better intel.

In Supremacy orbital batteries, science stations and ship yards will be showing up in 3D combat. We have the models online ready for use in the 3D engine that is being refined.

Hi Edo, welcome to the forums and thanks for your ideas.



As the guys have said, we're hoping to include the space-based structures in the battle system. Whilst we can't make any promises yet because we haven't built an integrated combat system for the game yet, Orbital batteries and shipyards will be one of the feature improvements that we will definitely be pushing for, and our modellers have already come up with the models of those structures ready for when they can be implemented in the game.



The diplomacy system of Supremacy is very much in its' infancy at the moment. Suggestions like this are definitely worth considering for implementation, although it will be down to Mike to decide precisely how this would work. It would need to be tied into the games' artificial intelligence (AI), which will be one of the most complex parts of the game for him to implement, so whilst he might be able to program the groundwork (Add in the messages to the diplomacy screen) relatively soon, the system itself might not work until the AI is working and configured to use it (IE they will both respond to your messages and act on them). This is definitely an idea I like though, so we'll have to wait and se what Mike's thoughts on it are.



We are actually considering these map options already - and a few more. Whilst it would be impossible to make a truly canon map since one doesn't exist, we've had a few people say that they are willing to make some canon-ish maps for us. They won't be able to do that until Mike makes some improvements to the game or the game editor, (Such as adding in a screen in the editor for people to design, place, and name systems and races, or he adds in the congiguration file that will make the game randomly create a Galaxy with a certain set of parameters such as a stable Wormhole going from the Alpha to the Gamma Quadrant) but I believe he is already working on some of those improvements.

There are some other improvements you might like to hear about as well; in another thread, we have been discussing how Wormholes will work. There will basically be three types - stable, Bajoran-style Wormholes; semi-stable Wormholes that have a permanent entrance but a random exit point; and Wormholes that exit outside the Galaxy, leaving your ships permanently stranded. The thing that we are discussing at the moment is how you will encounter/discover them, and how you will find out where they exit to (Since it would be stupid having to send ships through like you had to in BOTF).

Shipyards now have four levels instead of just the one; small shipyards can build light, fast attack vessels; medium shipyards can build the same plus cruisers; large shipyards can build all ships; and fleetyards are one-per-empire structures (The Federation can build two but one of them is a much lower tech version than the other Empires get. Both fleetyards also get a relatively small bonus compared to the fleetyards of the other races, so it actually balances out) that builds ALL ships 50% faster than large shipyards (The Dominion get a 75% bonus).

The minor races now have their own generic defense structures that they can build to actually defend against invasions. Which structures they can build depends on their social structure, tech capabilities etc, so you won't have pacifist races building defence structures, warrior races that leave themselves open to attack, or advanced races defending themselves with sticks and stones.

These structures are:

• Air Response - Tachyon Laser Shield
• Anti-Ship - Air Command HQ, Combat Grid, Fighter Squadrons, Missile Silo
• Bunkers - Basic Shelters, Hardened Bunkers, Heavy Bunkers
• Cells - Civilian Reserve, Resistance Cells
• Defence Shield - Molecular Shield, Positron Shield, Graviton Shield, Advanced Graviton Shield

Moons are now in the game. They will even be colonisable, although moon colonisation is currently buggy so disabled.

(Some) of the minor races can now expand and colonise other systems independantly, forming their own mini-empires.

Terraforming will be different to BOTF. It will physically cause a planet to shift type, and multiple terraforming events may be necessary to make a planet fully hospitable (Depending on your tech). Not all races consider Terran planets to be the best type of planet either; the Cardassians prefer Deserts whilst the Klingons like Jungles. This also means that the maximum population a planet can have will vary based on the occupying race. Therefore, a system inhabited by humans that is full of Desert planets would have a lower maximum population than if that same system was occupied by Cardassians.

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It's a shame you can't play the game yet, but I hope that's enough info to whet your appetite.

Hi Matress_of_evil and everyone

Ok so I thought of something to help with the problem determining if wormholes are stable or not. As was posted before, a player wouldn't want to send a ship through. Why not use probes? They could have the sensor range of the weakest level outpost, have the shortest range/speed and only take one turn to build (that way they're no big loss).


One other idea regarding diplomacy. A previous post noted that diplomacy now featured the ability to trade certain items (dilithium, etc). Why not have items specific to the major races that could be traded for either another race's special item or dilitium/credits, etc.

Federation: Genesis Device (makes one barren / gas giant into a class M Planet)
Klingons: Portable Cloaking device (can equip to one ship and once that ship is destroyed, it's lost)
Romulans: Portable Cloaking device (can equip to one ship and once that ship is destroyed, it's lost)
Cardassians: Long Range Unmanned Missle (as was seen in ST Voyager) (This can be used to attack planetary system defenses or star bases prior to a fleet attacking to soften defenses).
Dominion: Tachyon grid to attach to a ship that prevents cloaked ships from getting first strike (can equip to one ship and once that ship is destroyed, it's lost).

I see there's some juicy talk going on here...I'll add some input, if that's okay.

Edo, the sensor scanning and launching probes into wormholes was already discussed elsewhere. Basically, the idea was that only science vessels would be able to detect wormholes (why else did the Cardies not detect the Celestial Temple for so long and Barzaan their own unstable wormhole?) Also, launching probes is a neat idea, but we'll just have to see what the programmers say about it. If it's too much of a hassle to do, I wouldn't bother. After all, as LaForge put it, the only way to know for sure whether the wormhole is stable is to fly in it (that's why the Ferengi flew into the Barzaan wormhole together with the Enterprise shuttle). So that time trying to figure out that part of programming may be better spent elsewhere.

I like all the above ideas, they're really great. About Edo's suggestion to have those special items for empire to be traded: the problem arises as far as the legality of such items. What I mean by that is that the Klingons never gave away their cloaking technology through official channels. In the game, if you play Klingon, you could never have that option, at least not sanctioned by the Council. As far as the Romulans, the only reason why they gave it to the Feds was as a counter-offer for Fed intelligence on the Dominion, but I guess that's okay. So, the bottom line is that one such offer could be countered by a counter-offer that is empire-specific. It would just suck that both Roms and Klings would offer the same thing. Consider Romulan Ale. As far as the Genesis project, it never ended up actually producing a stable planet, but I guess for the purposes of the game it would be okay.

My biggest concern in the game is the battle itself. It is without a doubt to become the most prominent and most important part of the game. By no means do I intend to scoff at Cmdr. Wolfe's great work, but there's much that needs to be done, beginning with the star field and through the graphics of starships and ending with the intelligence of the ships. The bottom line is that there is so much work involved that it may well be impossible for Cmdr. Wolfe to accomplish this, no matter how much of a Trek fan he is. Right now, here's what needs improvement:
-the star field,
-the planet(s) and immediate surroundings,
-orbital batteries and other space constructions, as mentioned above by all of you,
-starship texture improved, the nacelles do not glow,
-if possible (VERY important from the esthetic point of view), the phaser beam coming together on the array arc before it fires, much like in Bridge Commander (if Bridge Commander could somehow get fused with this game, that would be something!!!!!!!),
-info on screen showing order status, speed, ship condition, morale, (possibly remaining torpedo count?), etc.
-the explosions truly need improvement, hopefully leaving debris.

The bottom line: to implement all of that above is without a doubt a lot of work, which can be demoralizing, but the way I see it I'd strive either for near-perfection or not at all. Given such large Star Trek audience and enthusiasts among the programming community, it should be possible to do the above by collaborating with others with high programming qualifications. But then I'm sure you guys already have that as part of your approach. I would be sure that anyone who saw the current status of the game would be enthusiastic enough about it to lend a hand (and this is one of those moments where I deeply regret that I have no clue how to do any of this stuff, so hat off to all of you guys, especially to Cmdr. Wolfe for his hard work!).

And then we have the A.I. Other than the space battle, that is the most time-consuming and most complicated piece of work. All above suggestions are great, let's hope to see them implemented.

One possible additional way (additional with regards to cdrwolfe's work) for all of those things are going to end up in botf2 is by merging with a then finished ST:Excalibur engine. The things you search for will be attempted to be realized there but I think only for small-scale BC-type battles, i.e. not the Dominion wars type of large-scale battles that should be possible to perform in botf2. That means of course cutting down eye-candyness a little since all eye-candyness means more CPU power to be used and multiplying this usage with the amount of ships in battle you might get a feeling for what could cause problems in large-scale battles.
For smaller battles of course one could add those things. It would make sense btw. since in large scale battles you have so much interaction just by the sheer mass of ships that you won't look at details like phaser beam convergence or correct nacelle lighting (btw. nacelles should have constant lighting when not using warp engine, i.e. only at retreat command, the nacelles should change their glow) on each ship on the battlefield. It simply escapes the eye. One could of course calculate these things for zoomed-in camera areas because only there you need to show eye-candyness.

Btw. near-perfectionness is a good thing but not at all costs. Even if you get to near-perfection stages, it wouldn't make the game 0%-100% playable, i.e. near-perfection or not at all is no option for a fan-based game. The credo here reads more like the Olympic credo: near-perfection but having fun while doing it is the greatest part of it, no matter the outcome. Nevertheless your suggestions are really good. You should add them to the corresponding 3D engine main thread so that cdrwolfe can "digest" them . Things like phaser beams coming together or debris might be easier than we think but also, they might not be. As cdrwolfe said, he has learned 3D programming in Irrlicht "by doing", i.e. unlike company programmers, he did not and to a certain degree still doesn't know what's possibly easy-to-do and what requires tons of work. Just look at the shield implementation. He expected it to take months to capture the math behind it while it was just a matter of seconds to be exact. There you can see that it's all about knowledge and if someone comes up with an easy idea or implementation of debris mesh creation (which Irrlicht should be able to perform theoretically since it allows for run-time mesh creation) and phaser beam convergence (in theory just a light ball moving across the texture along given/calculated points of the mesh) then you might get to near-perfection in the end. It's all about someone actually doing the work. Sadly, I think you overestimate the size of hardcore trek fans. From what I know, both ST:Excalibur and Supremacy weren't really flooded by helping hands programming-wise. It's all up to us I believe to get the job done on our own..

To my knowledge, the Klingons didn't develop cloaking devices. The Klingons traded some of their oldest battlecruiser designs (And their Warp technology) to the Romulans in exchange for their Cloaking devices during an alliance some time before the Original Series. The Romulans must have betrayed the Klingons or *something* though because the Alliance was extremely brief, and the Klingons have been their sworn enemies ever since, especially after the events at Khitomer.

Anyways, back to the game.

I agree that the trading of unique items shouldn't be in the game. As you said Strom, many of the items that Edo suggested wouldn't be legal - and even if they were, I seriously doubt the Empires would *want* to trade such technology unless they had a seriously good reason for doing so. Take the Genesis device for instance. Just imagine what would happen if the device was activated on an existing planet...like Earth. Total annihilation would be the only outcome. BOTF managed to work without such a trading system anyways, so why does Supremacy need it? BotE already has a trading system, and a pretty complex one at that. Not having one would therefore help to Separate Supremacy from BotE.


Wolfe knows of the problems, and he's working to fix them. He posted an update on the forums only yesterday, although he's admitted that he hasn't had a chance to bugtest it yet and it *may* have a memory leak. (IE. the cause of the crippling slowdown in BOTF)


This one isn't completely down to Wolfe - the models will only glow if the engine is capable of supporting glows AND if the modellers actually create the illumination textures. Each of the models needs a certain set of textures that do different things. Some are the details like the hull panelling, others are for glows, bumps, hull damage, etc. The modellers know about this alreayd, but at the same time the ships are very much a work in progress. At the moment they are working on quantity rather than quality - so fewer textures. Quality will be added later in version 2 of the models; the modellers will be able to add in the extra textures or improved models later on.


We've already discussed that on the forums, and there are a few ideas on how it can be done. I can't say it WILL be done because I don't know the constraints of the engine, but they say that good things come to those that wait.


Wolfe knows that he needs to add an actual interface into the combat system to provide info and better BotF-style controls. Those will come when he gets round to doing them.


Wolfe knows, it's just a matter of time. The Combat system is still only an early work-in-progress version.


This community has been going for more than four years, but it is by no means the first. We are apparently the third or even fourth attempt at making a BOTF2; the others failed miserably. But the dream lived on, and here we are. We've suffered at the hands of crashes, hacks, and viruses. But here we are. Members have come and gone. But we're still here. The forums moved to a new website. And here we are. Whatever happens, this game is going to be made. One day or another, we're gonna have BOTF2.

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Regarding the implementation of debris Mal, Sins of a Solar Empire might be of some help. Every destroyable object (Which is pretty much everything in the game) generates debris - the largest ships can generate something like 16 pieces of debris each when they explode, and that debris is persistant - you can even collect the debris and use it to produce resources for new ships. But the 16 pieces is a limitation in the .entity file for the model (Which is editable in notepad), not a coded limitation, so you can generate as much debris as you want. The game animates all the pieces of debris constantly, and you can see it even whilst you are zoomed out, as long as you have a high quality monitor/high resolution.

I'm not saying that Wolfe needs to make something as complex as that, but it shows that it *can* be done. People have even posted videos on Youtube of battles between 1000+ ships in that game. People on the Sins forums are really friendly so it might be worth posting a few questions and seeing what the response is.

I don't think they know the needed details of the engine to actually copy that behaviour. The SoaSE engine provides tools to tweak it but how everything's done is surely not open to the public or else some other competing company could just imitate it and bring out a similar engine in a similar game for cheap.

I think the debris works as I mentioned, by simply run-time creating random meshes and applying some black, burned standard texture and some plasma waves around it to simulate outflowing plasma. That way, they'd be persistant in Irrlicht too.

The Klingons did officially give away cloaking technology. They donated 20 cloaking devices to the Maquis shortly before the Dominion war broke out. But I do see the point about trading items. If the Dominion or Klingons got a hold of Genesis devices, that could spell the end of an otherwise fun game. Let alone if the Borg assimilated one . . .

It'd only be a shame if we didn't have the ability to do something about the obvious advantage the cloaked ships have in the game. In the original BotF, a fleet a 4 Romulan warbirds could be parked over an enemy homeword and take out a fleet twice it's size and effectively cut off that homeworld from the game indefinately. Maybe Starbases and planets can be equiped with tachyon detection grids to limit the cloak advantage in system / starbase battles. Or even better, give spys the ability to steal a cloaking device as part of the espianoge/sabotage function, which a player can equip to a ship in their fleet. This would give an outlet for other ships to have a cloak possibility, as this occasionally occured in the series (Defiant, some Cardassian Keldon class ships, Enterprise D's temporary phase cloak, Quark buying a stolen one, etc).

We've *always* had concerns and ideas about the implementation of the cloaking devices, Edo; it's not going to be a last-minute tacked on feature like it was in BOTF. We plan to give Cloaking devices distinct disadvantages when they are used, such as the loss of shields and weapons, periods of vulnerability between the lowering of the cloak and the raising of shields, and time limitations on usage. (Eg. time limits before cloak failure or timed recharge requirements after it has been lowered)

These are just plans though, and obviously could change in the future as the game, combat system, and gameplay ideas evolve. Cloaking devices are something that has definitely been given some serious thought.