Hi Mike,


I stopped playing BOTF consistently about a year ago and I had no idea this kind of community had sprung up around my favorite game! I'm unbelievably excited.



That having been said, the game visually looks amazing, its streamlined, pleasant to look at, smooth and clean. I really, really, really love it, you've done a fantastic job.


My concerns are about the gameplay and I'm sure that these issues don't come up until later, I wanted to bring them to the front now.

The main problems with BOTF in its original form was

1) Very Buggy (obviously)

2) Didn't support fleets that reflected the world counterparts in the star trek universe. That is to say, the game didn't support large fleets

3) And this might just be me, but the ungodly amount of time it took to make a colony viable such that if you didn't stumble upon a great planet early on, worlds you colonize might pottentially never become a viable hepl to your empire at any point in the game.



I see that you made the cost to produce a farm, or foundry or whatever much lower (you can make one per turn, which is great) but they don't seem to produce all that much, thus repeating the drudgery of having to build 4-8 farms, 20-40 industrial structures, 4-8 energy structures, etc. etc. to get your planet to be productive. While I thought their was an elegance to this system in BOTF, the sheer volume of what you had to build made the process mind-numbingly repetitive and took away from the real fun of the game.

Also, I see that all the structures in the game are type 1, which obviously implies their will be a type II up through type IX, I assume like the original games. Are having different upgrades like this necessary? At the very least (and I of course, don't know you haven't thought of this already) will they at least upgrade automatically when your research levels up? Otherwise, its yet another mind-numbingly boring task that was a mistake in the first game.

I also hope maintenance costs on ships will be such that they could support large fleets,

Finally, and I don't know if any of you have ever played Galactic Civlizations, but I think what would really put BOTF II over the top would be to have a similar dynamic diplomacy system, where you can trade not only money but technoclogies, supply other empires with arms, wage proxy wars, etc. It is this type of mechanic that would let the game be truly multi-dimensional as it allows control of the galaxy through other means than combat. (Thus, making empires like the Ferengi far less ridiculous an inclusion).




I hope I didn't post this in the wrong forum/make this post too early in development/make another mistake. I think what you guys are doing is an incredible feat of populism by taking something that a lot more people than I realized love and more or less saying "free market be damned, I'm making it myself." Your commitment is amazing and it looks like oyu're going to make an incredible game. I don't know a lot of XML, but what I do know I'd be willing to implement to make the game play better. Best of luck to you, Mike, and I can't wait.

Welcome to the forums, bmercantile, and thanks for all the kind words about myself and the game . I understand your concerns about the time it takes to develop a colony and upgrade its facilities, and I myself share that concern. The building designs that I am including in the game are the ones that this community put together over the course of a year or two, and you can find them in the BotF2 Database. That said, a lot of the resource values will probably need tweaking, and I think upgrades take a bit long, but there are others who like it that way, as it makes for longer, more drawn-out gameplay. Since you can't make everyone happy, here's what's likely to happen:

First, I'll probably tweak a lot of the build costs so that buildings and ships don't take so bloody long to build. I'll aim for nice, balanced numbers so you can't build them too quickly, but also so it doesn't take 30+ turns to upgrade your factories. Fortunately, it will be very easy for anyone to go through a modify the XML for the object database to tweak these values themselves.

Second, I may include a game option to enable auto-upgrades for players who don't want to have to go through the mind-numbingly tedious and time-consuming task of upgrading all their facilities.

Lastly, unlike the original BotF, new colonies will start out with *current* facilities rather than Tech Level 1 facilities that will need to be upgraded over and over again to catch up.

I hope this is satisfactory. As for fleet sizes, we'll see what happens. We'll need to do a lot of playtesting to balance out resource costs and availablity. The diplomacy system is still up in the air a bit, though I think I might aim for something similar to GalCiv2 crossed with Medieval 2: Total War. You won't be able to trade technologies because of how research works and because there frankly aren't that many. However, you might be able trade ships, systems, and other "tangible" objects.

Thanks again for your enthusiastic praise, and I hope you'll stick around and participate in the great feature debates .

The making colonies worthwhile issue in plain botf can actually be resolved to a certain degree and therefore requires a sophisticated build order handling and clever buy tactics. It is still a pain in the ass but I will give you the outlines here that may even help in botf2 (it never hurts to know good tactics doesn't it? ).

This applies to nearly every colony of every imaginable population size.
First, build 2 factories, 1 farm, 2 factories, 1 farm. Repeat that if pop growth is above 3%.
Then build fed replicators or all equivalent food supply extra buildings.
Now upgrade to level 2,3,4,5,.. factories by buying them as often as you can (you will get the money out of this rather quickly when considering the credits boost you'll get out of the improved colony).
Now you should have like 20 upgraded factories, 5 farms and 3 energy buildings. This colony is now able to fast-build ships for your fleets while others with upgraded intel/research can do that task now. Therefore you don't need to upgrade the new colony to 20 level 9 research labs for example.

All this takes no longer than 50 turns so with the new idea of mstrobel to already start with the highest tech level which makes sense since colonists don't usually neglect current technology which might improve their colony welfare for that matter, so with that new idea, it won't make for much than 25 rounds now which should quite resolve that issue thoroughly.

I like this idea, and for those who want a middle ground between BOTFI system and the new one, the tech level of the colony ship might play a factor into the level your colony starts off at.

Colony ship level 2 builds a colony to level 2 buildings etc. Colony ship level 3 starts colony off at level 3 stuff?

Then thats it.

Tho i supose you could do colony ship 1 level starts with level 1 as you do. But colony ship level 2 would make your colony either half of what level ur homeworld is set at, or have it at same level as homeworld.

Balance is the problem.

Eh, there's not going to be 12 different levels of colony ships (what's the current plan? 3?) So, when you colonize, the colony will get whatever buildings you are currently capable of upgrading to.

However, the three different versions of colony ships could have a "technology cap" so to speak. That way, if you still happen to have the Ent-era colony ship, it'd be unable to supply new colonies with tech 12 buildings, for example. But this might be completely unneccessary.

Azhdeen, listen to Skeeter

he's right, the 3 ships should make for a "percentage" of the current techlevel rounded down, so there's no gap and you don't need mark XII ..

let's say. Level 1 col brings only up to level 3 tech. Level 2 has range 3-6, and Level 3 col has techlevels 7-9 and up depending which current tech you got atm. Example: If you still got an old tech 2 col ship and current tech level 8, then the colony created by this particuliar ship will have tech 6 buildings and so on.

that wouldn't even be a percentage but I marked it in " "

One possible problem is buliding at higher tech levels. One reason no doubt the old Botf style existed was so you could build up from a low tech and generally make it possible, Higher tech construction yards take longer to bulid no doubt and are more expensive to buy. Having a situation where you have to wait 10-15 turns to build one farming unit could lead to starvation.

Just something to think about.....

Presumably the higher leveled colony ships when colonized system the system has built a number of structures and enough colonists to run them. So presumably would be workable.

Tho i must stress if this system was done, then the advanced colony ships would be very high in research field to unlock.

Well lets consider one thing, was the original Botf system good at and what was it bad at?

Was it such a bad thing having to start from the beginning and taking a century of turns for the system to become really vianle yes no doubt. However it did bring about one thing in the need to protect the colony and the force some kind of commitment.

Having fully functional systems sprouting up to quickly could be unrealistic and simplify the game. I suppose having population growth taking longer to grow might simulate some of the original botf style without being such a pain.

What i ment previously in my suggestion was to have three sets of colony ships at differant tech levels. co colonyship tech 1, tech 4 and tech 9 etc where each one would start at the level it was at but not the level of research your at.

So if your at Industry level tech say 8 and have a colonyship II which is tech 4 your colony still only has tech level 4 industry centres etc. So you still have to spend some time building the colony up and waiting before it reach your more current "Best" systems.

Just one idea..

Regards Wolfe

This is what I was talking about as well (I did "listen" or as close as you can when reading :p). To break it down a bit more clearly, let's say that there are three different colony ships through out the tech tree (Marks 1, 2, and 3). Let's also assume, for simplicity's sake, that we will divide the 12 levels of technology into even thirds. Thus, Mark 1 exists between Tech levels 1-4, Mark 2 exists between tech levels 5-8, and Mark 3 exists between levels 9-12.

What Wolfe is suggesting is that Mark 1 colony ships will ALWAYS yield tech level 1 buildings when first colonized. Mark 2 colony ships will always yield tech level 5 buildings, and mark 3 ships will grant tech level 9 buildings.

What MStrobel has alluded to is that the colony ships will instead grant building levels that are equal to your current technology level. Personally, I was thinking of using both ideas.

Instead of Mark 1 ships only installing tech level 1 buildings, I'd rather instead see them install buildings equivilent to your technology level or up to level 4, which ever is less.

Mark 2 ships would install buildings equal to your tech level or up to level 8, which ever is less.

Mark 3 ships would simply install whatever level you have researched (tech level 12 is the max no matter how you slice it, so adding this criteria is redundant).

However, as pointed out... balancing the buildings are the issue. Should the better buildings take more time to impliment? I haven't really thought too long on it, but my initial review of the problem leads me to say "no", it shouldn't take any longer.

If it's the year 1900 and I'm building a farm, it's going to take a long time because the technology of the time is not quite further along. But as technology increases, effenciency increases as well which often takes less time to do things for the same result. But new improvements and methods will come up which will take their own time and resources, thus keeping the "costs" about even for better production.

Does that make sense? :p

Essentially, a farm should always take X number of production time/resources/shields/whatever regardless of what tech level it is. The same for factories, intel, and everything else. The actual resources could increase, sure (more expensive materials, or more of them), but the amount of time should be consistent. As production becomes better, it's more effecient, but there's always some "new thing" that comes around that winds up requiring the extra time that was saved that increases overall net production....

BUT (heh, who saw that coming?) this would only really work in a "balanced" world, so to speak. Often times with BotF, I would simply order factory upgrade after factory upgrade after factory upgrade and completely ignore the rest of the buildings as the colony survived while I worked hard on increase it's production. Afterwards, I'd then allow the colony to upgrade farms, energy, and eventually intel/research. Allowing this type of strategy destroys the "balanced world" I was alluding to.

So, in order to bring balance to this, I would like to see something that rewards the player for building balanced colonies (or punishes them for not building balanced ones). For example, if there's a good balance in the constructed buildings, the colony overall would receive a boost in production from all five areas or some other thing. Using Earth as an example, there would be need for all five BotF productions: food, construction, energy, research, and intelligence. So if there is a good proportion of production across all five areas, all five areas could receive a slight boost, thus encouraging players to diversify their systems. I'm also willing to assume that just about any race would require some sort of balance like this. For some, the different levels in each field might vary, but there still needs to be some sort of balance between the major production areas.

However, there will still be incentive for players to devote particular systems into singular roles such as research or intelligence, or construction. The indigideous racial bonuses (if applicaple) and system bonuses would likely determine if the "balanced system bonus" is worthwhile or if it'd still be better to make the system focus on only one type of production.

Is this making sense? This is straying a bit from the original question, but it's all of the different concepts are very related to each other.

well, I frankly don't understand why the game should balance everything in advance for the player. Don't put everything into the smooth balancing mixer. If I want to upgrade factories (btw. why should that not be possible in real life to do separated from other upgrades?) then I do just that, period. If later on I get those blown up by enemy (balanced built) intel, then I (the player) am a fool and the game should allow to be a fool, either it won't be funny.

I don't see the need to balance here. Botf system was good aside from the level 1 negligent colonization.

Edit: I don't wanna step on your feet but I tend to recognize you put a lot of effort on the details of your post. Just a hint, you can assume us to be able to read between lines, i.e. get the meaning out of fewer more compressed words, so though some might like to read short stories it blows one's mind a little when you see such large posts first time. It might scare people away from further participating in the discussion.

In this example it would have been enough if you stated you meant the same like my idea when telling about what colos can do (it is exactly my idea).

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against long posts (I do them myself ) but I tend not to repeat other posts like an overview or something and put short stories in it only when I think they read funny or are very important.

I've just stopped reading Azh's posts .

Winterhawk is too scared of long posts he told me. Stresses him out lol.

Ha. I'm sure people are capable of reading between the lines. It's just that different people read different things between different lines (myself included). I just try to remove all doubt entirely.

In a nutshell, determining what tech level buildings a colony ship installs is just a small part of a greater issue because it is dependant on how upgrading buildings work, how much time it takes to build those buildings, etc, etc. I'm not saying that we have to balance everything, but this aspect of the game does require some sort of balance. If we ignore it and simply impliment whatever initially comes to mind we could make system management too trivial or too cumbersome. A balance needs to exist to make the management level of the game "just right".

Besides, my posts aren't that long. You've read magazine articles longer than that. :p

in magazine articles or non-scientific/humourous articles anyway I only read the conclusion (Fazit in german) part at the end. Saves time and is in 99% percent of all cases sufficient

I am sure one might think about taking the colonists needs a bit more into consideration, let's say if one upgrades only one specific part neglecting the food production (which is annoying for the colonists since they can everyday see the highlevel factories but still work with bare hands at the farmland..), then the moral should go down by a certain degree.

But that's it. The game should allow for every possible thing to do/commit. If it's a crime then you get punished with moral. But don't restrict user decision abilities. Only if really necessary.

I wasn't going to restrict them. I was simply going to offer a bonus for systems that have balanced productions across all five areas. Morale, honestly, doesn't really matter a whole lot unless you're losing battles or planets (and, if the Feds, taking planets).

Production is something tangible. You can do something with production. So for people who spread their system focus across all five major areas, I thought perhaps the game could reward them with a slight bonus across all five areas. Say... five percent increased production from all five building types? That way, instead of 100 population returning 100 units of production, it's returning 105 instead, for example.

But nothing is stopping you from just upgrading the crap out of your factories and ignoring the other buildings.

well and that's exactly what morale would do. A better morale in botf gave you the exact 5% surplus so where's the problem here? I'd say we both think the same.

One bonus that is coming by itself is the mentioned capability of a balanced-builder to sabotage with his lets say level 4 intel the level 6 overpowered enemy who only focussed on buildings stuff.

That's how I think one should "reward oneself" by doing one's tactic and doing it good.

Let me state that I honestly don't care what happens. However, I would like to point out that if you already have sufficient amounts of morale, any other bonuses to it are redundant and unnoticeable.

I would also agree with


I'm not really arguing about this concept as it is true. I was attempting to find a way to solve some of the issues that would exist for some of the building upgrade issues. The "long post" that people are scared to read through is really a complete analysis of the entire question as a whole. It attempts to connect all of the dots and find an optimal solution. I took some of the suggestions and attempted to find a solution that included them as best as possible.

But like I said, I really could care less what the final result will be. If it takes 100 turns to make a useful colony, so be it. If it takes 10 turns, I'm ok with that too.

After reading this post, I'm a little worried that colony development will be too easy. I mean don't get me wrong, it was certainly tedious at times in BotF but it's the very foundation of your empire and as a result it always seemed to make sense to me that one should spend the most time on it.

So far from what you've said, the main thing I would agree with is that starting buildings from level 1 with a colony ship, including the colony ship 2, was painful. However, I think we should keep in mind that the colony ship cost should, imo, reflect the cost of the buildings it builds. After all, the cost difference between the differing levels of say factories grows and grows with each level in BotF and thus I don't see why a colony ship's cost should stay the same whether it's going to result in building a level 4 or 5 (for example) farm and factory.

I think the first thing to try would be to make factory production scale better - it takes A LOT longer for one level 9 factory to build another level 9 facotry than a level 1 factory to build another level 1 in BotF, that is to say that their production capability does not scale linearly with their cost.

And I'm with Malvoisin regarding the balancing - I don't see why there should be a reward to diversify colonies, specialisation is what makes our global economy far more productive than it was 200 years ago and I don't see a reason why it wouldn't scale to an interplanetary scale. I mean heck, if they didn't have replicators in Star Trek, it would make sense for systems with planets that are predisposed to farming/farmland to even feed other systems! (but let's not open that can of worms for the game :p)

You make some good points, Fedor. Keep in mind though that nothing is set in stone, and once the game is a bit farther along, we can start to really tweak and balance things. Also, the game is very easily modified, and there will doubtlessly be several mods that affect the rate of technological growth and production times.

How about using Hearts of Iron approach ? Every upgrade except the last one should be done at half cost.