Skeeter had come up with .rar back in the time of dirt - near the end of 2006. Mike said .7z about three months or so ago. All the models are compressed files. Converting to .7z will be part of the model redo when we get around to it.

yes, but it costs money... and if someone uses the trial they only have 30 days, after which they need to reinstall windows to use the trial again (or mess with the registry to make it think you never used the trial)
I find winrar to make better compressed zip files then both 7zip and winzip... and rar files themselves are totally awesome, and then there is the fact that winrar will not cut off your ability to use it when the trial expires (instead appealing to your better side).

but all they really need is to extract it to install it. mmm, actually, with newer windows versions they don't need to download anything, windows added the ability to extract zip files with vista I think.

Anyways, most of their work goes into optimizing 7z file compression algorithms not zip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_zip#The_ ... ive_format

As for the arbitrary version numbers:


This is why
9.07 stands for july of 2009.

Anyways, I wasn't suggesting you are advertising them (and would have nothing to complain about if you DID actually.. that would be a great way yo raise money for the project and I don't mind at all)...
I am just saying that pretty much anything can extract a zip file... so why use a 30 day trial when you can use an open source program, which might not compress zips as effectively but produces identical files when it decompresses without the issues of limited trial periods.

I had some more time to play the game and I have to say I am very very impressed.
I also went and installed my old copy of BOTF and wow, what a difference...

BOTF also has a whole bunch of bugs... independant races start off starving with no buildings, but their core buildings (like founderies) are very high level... they don't care for tech level, they just build up to level 9 buildings... and once they join you, and if left on autobuild they will ignore your tech level and level up all their buildings to level 9... This, and the EXTREMELY slow rate of colony development, meant that your only "good" colony even in late game was your homeworld... and it pales in comparison to any minor races... I found that all I used was the 3 minor races colonies to produce ships, research, etc...

I have to say that supremacy REALLY needs AI to control your colonies, and to make it robust. that was also the biggest problem with BOTF (which had a build queue AI but not a colony management AI, and it was terrible)... too much micromanagement to make colonies "work".

If I may make a suggestion, this is something that wasn't in BOTF, but it would be nice of you could have a mix of higher and lower level factories/farms/etc... where if you are "upgrading factories", it will not be an "all or nothing" thing that upgrades them all at once (you don't get a discount after all), but you would upgrade X factories a turn. so if it takes 16 turns to upgrade 16 factories from level 1 to level 2, the first turn you upgraded 1 factory, you now have 1 level 2 factory and 15 level 1 factories, next turn you upgrade another factory, and so on and so forth... And clicking on the upgrade factories build command would add to the queue "16 x upgrade factory"

I very much like and approve changes I have already seen, separating ship and planet build queues is great, allowing "spillover" so that construction is not wasted and you can build more then 1 item a turn is great, the queue being able to fit more then 4 items is great, and so on and so forth.

I also noticed one tiny minor display bug... if I click to retire a building, say, 2 out of my 7 farms, then I remove or add workers to the farms, then the "retiring: 2" notice disappears. if I then click/left click on it, it will come as "retiring 3" or "retiring 1"... meaning it remembers that it is retiring 2, it just stops displaying it when I add/remove workers.

Question, is supremacy open source? and is there something I can help with?

This is true. But some of us are still using XP. The installation instructions are aimed at the lowest common denominator.

...I'll update the installation instructions to make this more obvious though.

I was actually referring to Winzip when I said this. Still mind?

Your points are valid, but we recommend Winzip for two other reasons - unzipping speed and user interface. You've got to admit, Winzip has the most user-friendly interface of them all. Winrar is ugly and limited, whilst 7zip is confusing. And Winzip is fast at unzipping. We want the "installation" experience for players to be as fast and simple as possible. (I know, Supremacy doesn't install, but you know what I mean)

We do also try to use open-source where possible as well. In fact, Supremacy Itself Is Open Source and has been for a while.

Mike has major plans for the AI. I don't know how much you know about the plans, but he's basically planning to include a "macromanagement" system; players will be able to choose the exact level of micromanagement they want. Players will be able to turn over system development to AI-controlled governors, and players will be able to influence the decisions made by telling it to focus on developing eg. economic structures. You'll even be able to create preset build-lists for new colonies etc.

I seriously doubt that this would be possible from a programming perspective. But it's an idea, so we'll have to see what Mike says about it.

There's no limit to the number of buildable structures per turn either. The game will keep building til everything is done or the spillover runs out.

Hmm...that's a new bug on me. I'll pass it on.


Oops, I already answered this above lol. If you want to help with the game, then what you can do depends on your skills and where you ant to help. Check out our Jobs Forum for the available jobs.

.net framework 3.5 would not install on my windows 7 pc
so I used .net framework 4. I hope that works.

You're not the first person to mention .Net problems with Windows 7. I've heard mention that 7 actually comes with .Net preinstalled though, so that may be the reason for the installation problems. I'm not sure *which* version it comes with though.

Supremacy actually requires the latest version of .Net; since the last update was released when the latest .Net version was 3.5, 3.5 is the version the game needs. Each update is incremental, building on the old version, rather than writing from scratch, so as long as you have the latest version, you should never have problems with it. And the next version of Supremacy will have .Net 4.0 RTM as an installation requirement, as Mike is building the latest features with the draft version of 4.0. As 4.0 RTM hasn't been released though, you *may* still need to update .Net when the time comes.

The current Supremacy appears to run on the .net framework 4 I am using.

The whole point of my previous post was to say that it should work - as you say it does. I was also simply saying that it might not be enough for the next version of Supremacy though - you might still need to update to 4.0 RTM when that becomes available.

Is there an echo in here or is it just me?
Thanks Matress,

Echo.

Actually, the .NET Framework 4 is a side-by-side install, as opposed to .NET 3.0 and 3.5, which essentially installed on top of .NET 2.0. Current public builds of Supremacy will continue running with the .NET 3.5 (SP1) framework, even if you have .NET 4 installed. Consequently, even if you install .NET 4, you will still need .NET 3.5 SP1 to play Supremacy (at least until the next update, which will target .NET 4).

I apologize if this has all ready been asked, but what is the role of the Borg going to be in the game?

The Borg still have a role I believe in much the same way as they used to in BOTF I. We have substituted the Dominion for the Ferengi as a major player race, relegating the Ferengi to a minor race role. Captain Bashir

Well the role will be similar to BOTF I with the difference that they will be more dangerous and will have their own territory.

I hope the ability to shut off surprise events will exist in the game like it did in BOTF I. I'm afraid of the Borg Bashir

Well, I can't wait to kick some Borg ass.

Does that mean if you manage to wipe out the Borg in their territory that they wont come back? Also is there going to be balancing done so that non cloaked races can still effectivly fight the Borg? It was quite unfair in BOTF that a cloaked race could engage with a lot of cloaked ships and lose none while a non cloaked race always lose most of the fleet.

On the first point I do not know.
On the second point the answer is yes. We also need to balance the major races in Alpha Beta testing. In BOTF I it was easier to win with the massive Ferengi economy over the other races.

I certainly hope we'll be able to vanquish the Borg for good. Will they be their own independent empire (like they're unplayable, but they colonize worlds, form an empire, work their way through the galaxy, etc.) or are they going to be more of a nuiscance (like they don't form colony worlds, but gain ships through assimilation and they can destroy others, and are killed off permanently when you kill the threat.)? Also, will they be triggered to start existing upon game start, or when a race enters a certain system, or what? I was just wondering. I have too many questions for someone posting at midnight who is half-awake. Time for regeneration... Entering Regeneration Cycle

I believe that they will be half-race half-random event. They will have planets but they won't gain them by colonization but by assimilation. They will appear randomly in the system of the most advanced race they encounter and every time you fight them they receive some points, and after some time they become more advanced and advanced with better ships, stronger weapons and better defenses.

Yeah, a real Borg pain in the... Captain Bashir

these are weird:







I found them by accident while trying to find animated GIFs of exploding Borg ships.

I think the cards reflect what will happen to the major empires (barring the Federation) in BoTF after encountering the Borg .

There are no plans to allow the player(s) to permanently "defeat" the Borg.

Cloaking will a bit different in Supremacy. Cloaking can be countered to various degrees with sensor strength. If your sensors are sophisticated enough, you will be able to detect the presence of cloaked ships, and possibly even pinpoint their location. The Borg have not been finalized yet, but I suspect they will be able to penetrate cloaking devices at lower tech levels and at least detect the presence of cloaked ships (but not necessarily the number or position) at higher tech levels too. The result should be a diminished cloak advantage compared to BotF.

I suggested some thing very similar a couple of months back I hope I provided some insight

There is also a wonderful free zip utility called IZarc. It unzips and zips almost every format: zip, 7zip, ace, rar, arc, and a lot more. Just check it and get it on the site. http://www.izarc.org. I don't know if I'm allowed to give a link here but it's legal and free and if it helps anybody, I'm happy then.

Good information and great guidance. I like your way of posting.

Welcome gameslobby. We are glad to have your input.

Hi, i'm new to this forum, so my first post will be a long one. i hope someone will read it nevertheless.

first ov all, as a big fan ov botf and star trek, ov course, i am amazed by the work you guys put into this sequel, and most importantly the quality ov it. I read about this game a few years ago, but downloaded it and started reading this forums just a couple ov weeks ago. When i started supremacy for the first time i was blown away by the beauty ov gui and the music, along with cool new fewatures ov the game, and the way all ov this is put together to make the game more beautiful and complex in a way, what i love the most about it.
i do have one suggestion about the task force list display and task force info appearance in the main galactic screen. By reading the forums i know that this part is being worked on, and will be improved in the future supremacy updates, since i don't know how it will look like, except from this tread: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3630&start=0 , where mike strobel showed some ov his new ideas, i would like to give my suggestion.
Ok, when we click on a taskforce that means we want to do one of the following things: move it to another sector, look at its info (like speed, fuel, strength), or redeploy our taskforces. Most of the times we will want to do two ov those actions or all three ov them. Since redeployment in supremacy is the same as in original botf, and don't see nothing wrong with it, i'll concentrate on the first two actions (taskforce info and moving). Looking from my gameplay, when i want to bring a ship to some sector to guard it, defend it or whatever i would need to know speed and strength ov the ships near the sector which i want to defend or whatever, so i would like to see all that when i click on a taskforce, and then move this taskforce to a selected sector. This means that in that moment ov selecting a taskforce we need a map, and a window with taskforce info which wont cover the map. The way they dealt with this in the original botf is that you would see the ship info in the system window (under the galactic map). This is very functional because of the things i said , and because you don't need to see planets when you're dealing with taskforces (except when terraforming, but when you give order to terraform, you see the planets again).
So what i'm proposing is that, when you click on a taskforce, you see some basic info about that ship (like it's picture, shield ahd hull status, fuel, strength, scan range, and speed), if not all info in the system window (under the galactic map). That way by clicking on that ship you instantly know its status. If a taskforce consists ov more than one ship, by clicking on it, in the system window you would see the same thing (instead ov picture ov a ship there would be a picture ov a fleet, which would be the same for all taskforces, no mater what ships are in it, fuel, strength and shield status ov the taskforce would be aritmetic middle of all ships in the fleet, speed of the fleet would be the speed ov the slowest ship, and the scan range would be the scan range ov the ship with best sensors). In the taskforce window (on the left, where it is) there would be a taskforce „tree“(like in the encyclopedia in the research screen, where you can collapse buildings list or ships list in order to see the list ov all ships or buildings), so when you have a taskforce which consists of more than one ship, you could collapse it to see the list ov ships in it, and would be able to see info for any ship in the fleet by clicking on it (the info would be in the system window under the map like i said before).
I know that maybe this is already taken care ov, but wanted to give my point ov view because ov one picture mike made (download/file.php?id=2242). In this picture the taskforce list covers a part ov the map which we may need, and down in the system window we see a system which we probably don't need to see in that moment , which means that window is unused space. further about the picture, the tooltip-ship-info is a cool thing, but seeing ship info in the system window (like in original botf) is more trekish, or should i put it; more lcars like.

So there's my suggestion. and weather something like this will be implemented in game or not, for me, it will still be a great game.

Welcome. That is a good suggestion amon ome.
This is great by the way. We have so many Croatians
on the team now. I will have to defer to Mike on
features like that but it sounds like a well thought
out idea.