Game 1, Dominion (yeah, I had to try the new one first)

Appearance

* Right away the system display at the bottom of the screen blew my mind. Far and away superior to the original game, though I'd like the gas giants to appear considerably larger than the terrestrial planets at all times. All in all, an awesome job here.

* Sadly the Dominion was missing a good number of structure images so there's not a whole lot to evaluate, but the advanced wind turbines image seemed a bit grainy too me and could be improved upon a bit I think.

* I'm no 3d modeling expert, but I am an idea man and a reflective pool of beige goo with some rocky crags to represent the Great Link shouldn't be too difficult to create. Did this 'structure' require power? If it did, it really shouldn't since it's a product of the changeling physiology itself.

Content

* The initial solar panel structure seems to be missing which made it exceedingly difficult to produce enough energy to power all of the structures.

* The 3rd food structure upgrade is missing.

* I was a bit confused by the unfamiliar model used by the Attack Ship I. I was looking for something familiar right off and was only happy once I was able to build both the Attack Ship II and the Battleship.

* Powering all of the structures early on in the game seems nearly impossible, while later in the game there seems to be too large a surplus.

* Jem'Hadar colonizing systems? They're not citizens of the dominion, they're the enforcers. While there should be a Jem'Hadar soldier presence in every Dominion held system, they might not be the same ones

* Jem`Hadar also don't consume food, but they will need a supply of white. The ketracel white production facility should be something able to be produced early on and should only exist to produce 'food' for the Jem`Hadar soldiers and workers, it's effect on morale should be removed.

* Multiple ketracel white facilities, I think it's obvious that there are many of these but perhaps not so many that they are found in every system within the Dominion. Perhaps only in systems with Raw Materials?

Game 2, Romulans (my old favorites)

Appearance

* The shipyard image seems very rough, almost appearing hand drawn rather than rendered on a computer.

* I was curious to see the singularity plant model being used for the deuterium plant in Supremacy, but I don't really oppose it.

Content

* No cloaking ability, though perhaps this feature hasn't been implemented yet. I will be patient.

* Structures that grant a % bonus to Raw Materials collection can be built in systems without the Raw Materials special attribute. This could be fixed by simply adding a similar spec like the one used for the Dilithium Refinery.

* Inability to build outposts, coming later perhaps?

* Same issue with powering structures, particularly on Romulus. The energy cost of the Imperial Senate may need to be lessened, 170 is extremely difficult, if not impossible to produce early on in the game.

* Steam vents should be accessible earlier in the game, and the advanced turbines and solar panels later on.

* Bunker network and basic shelters should be handled just like the imperial shipyard and basic shipyard, choose to build the better one and the lesser one is removed from the built list. This should also apply to the positron shield and planetary shield structures.

* The Aldean planetary shield should have the ability of cloaking the entire planet (leaving a gap in the system display area). Additionally, in the TNG episode where the Aldeans were introduced - an enormous power generator was found within their capital city. I suggest implementing a similar structure into Supremacy which uses the Ardanan grav-generator as a template. An image of this can be found in the episode 'When the Bough Breaks'.

* The Ardanans can build a grav-generator that produces a huge amount of energy and boosts morale, perhaps instead the structure should only provide energy and a separate 'Stratos' structure should be made available to produce the morale bonus.

* Mark I, Type A, Class 3... huh?? Part of what I appreciated about the original game was each major race having a giving a feeling of continuity. All of the Romulan production structures began with Mark I, Mark IV, etc. As minor races were incorporated these structure types were incorporated into these systems and created a bit of a bonus to continuity. I am dismayed to see so many different structure types and names being used by the Romulans, many of which perform the same function. I think there's a better naming system, and I'd be happy to work one out if someone provided me with a complete structure list.

* I LOVED playing as the Romulans in Botf and studied the Romans in depth back in college, I think I'd be a good choice to add to their in game 'look and feel'.

Big Idea

* For a long time while playing Botf I wondered why colonists were only of one of the five major races (humans, romulans, klingons, cardassians, and ferengi). Surely a member race (not subjugated) would like to expand beyond it's home system as well. What we need is a listing of all the races living in a given system. (human 82%, vulcan 8%, andorian, 2%, etc). These numbers can fluctuate over time, but staying within a specified formula unless acted drastically upon by the player. Perhaps the klingons want to execute all vulcans in a conquered system for example. In a large empire this can quickly become chaotic as populations of people move throughout, so I suggest limiting the display to the top 3 races and an other category at the bottom of the system screen. In a sub-menu the actual population breakdown and their 'attitude' which would mirror that found on the diplomacy screen would be visible. Executions, removal/granting of freedoms, and assignment to labor camps could be done from here as well. Lastly, the ratio of colonists on board a given colony ship should reflect the percentage of free citizens (non-labor camp slaves) of the system it was built it.

* A special variant of this should be worked out for the Dominion. The Founders should represent a portion of the colonists in every system (1%), and beneath them any free citizens and slave laborers. Initially until a minor race is coerced into joining or is conquered by the Dominion, the colony should only be manned by a special class of Jem`Hadar laborers which can be phased out as other workers become available. Further, only Changelings should be allowed to inhabit the home system which I'm sure we all agree would be logical.

* Romulus would be populated by Romulans and Remans, but the Remans would be little more than troops and laborers as was outlined by the Nemesis film. This further illustrates how having free citizens and slaves would add to the richness of the game. If the Federation takes a former Romulan world they could grant freedoms to the former subjugated Remans and gain their favor, perhaps increasing unrest within the Romulan Empire amongst the Remans.

Closing

This is all I can think of at the moment, but I intend to play again soon and I'll compose another list then. Until then, thanks for reading.

Ooooh nice to someone passionate about the game and background give some nice ideas.

Naturally the game is still developing so some of the art assets and data need to be continually updated and improved upon.

With regards to ship pictures, I beleive i did the majority of them but that was some time ago and may have been updated, however as i'am sure you understand where the Feds, Roms and Klingons have an abundance of ships and ship pictures to choose from while the dominion and cards do not.

Also i tried to have it look as that as you progress up the tech tree each races ships progress in a style similar to the series, therefore early tech ships are clunky and TOS / Ent styled and then they slowly look more futuristic, though given the limited number of pics it wasn't easy lol.

With regards to food and production structures having a tiered system of naming i.e first 5 are named differantly then you go up a tech level and they are renamed. This is how it was ment to be and is the same for every major race. MOE will probably have a better understanding of them as he has just produced a great / big update on structures + lots more.

I would expect MOE to come in anyway, he likes Romulans and is attracted to large posts, therefore he sees it as a challange to best them .

Keep up the feedback though we all appreciate it especially MStrobel, also give the Combat system a go if you want, though it doesn't work with Vista at the Moment.

Regards Wolfe

Hi vh_2k, thanks for the fantastic feedback!

• The size of the Gas Giants as they currently are is already the biggest we can make them without moving things around in the system view. I personally would like to see much larger Gas Giants as well, but it is currently impossible.
  
• The missing structure images are simply because we haven't made/acquired them yet. Myself and Zeleni are adding images to the game all the time; in fact, Zeleni sent me 10 new ones only a few days ago. I've got a thread dedicated to which structures still need images and we're working through that as fast as we can, but it really is a lot of images so it's gonna take some time. We're also looking to improve on the images if we can, so just because an image looks grainy at the moment doesn't mean we won't either improve it or won't find a replacement in future.
  
• The in-game database is always undergoing changes. Stats such as the power requirements especially will undergo a lot of changes because we simply don't know what the ideal balance is - yet. That will only be possible once people have play-tested the game and given us feedback just as you have done. It's an easy enough change to remove the power requirements of the Great Link.
  
• I've just checked and there is nothing wrong with the Solar Panel Array. The Arrays can ONLY be built in systems with Terran, Jungle, Desert, or Oceanic planets. However, I'm not sure if the game is interpreting this requirement as an "and" or an "or" situation; it may be that the game will only let you build the Solar Panel Array in systems that have a Terran, AND a Jungle, AND a Desert, AND an Oceanic planet. I'll have to check this to find out. I already know that there is an issue in the game with power production though. I've already bumped up the energy output of the energy structures by 25% but it doesn't look like this is enough, so I might need to do it again.
  
• The lack of the 3rd food structure is a bug; the 2nd foo structure is set to "upgrade" to level 1. I've just fixed it and will send the updated files to Mike.
  
• The ships that are currently in the game are purely a stopgap shiplist to let people build something. I'm going to be working on a major overhaul of the entire shiplist soon. You can find images of all the model designs that we have elsewhere on the forums though. Please remember that we need to have Dominion ships from around Enterprise era though; we didn't meet the Dominion until DS9 era though, so we've had to create non-canon models for those early designs.
  
• As i've said before, energy is one of the things we need to look at. I could easily bump up the output of the early structures and reduce the benefits of the upgrades to balance things out better.
  
• The Jem'Hadar are set as the colonising race because they are the only race that we could think of that would fit the role. We know that the Dominion had millions of Jem'Hadar troops - they had to go somewhere! We couldn't put the Vorta in that place because the Vorta were just the Jem'Hadar overseers, and they're also a separate minor race (Albeit one that will always try to join the Dominion), and we can't use the Karemma because they were just the trading arm of the Dominion - and they're also another minor race.
  
• What version of the game do you have? The Ketracel White facility should ONLY be buildable in the Dominion homesystem. I just checked the building and it didn't have any tech requirements set so I just corrected this. It definitely had only home system requirements though.
  
• The problems with the Romulan shipyard images are because of the program that Kenneth_of_Borg is using to make the images. I assure you that it is a computer render, because it is an image of the actual model that will be used in-game during combat (Yes, shipyards will show up as part of the combat ), the modelling program just isn't very good at making screenshots and renders. Once the model database is complete, Kenneth will redo all of the images in a program that is better at making such images.
  
• We're only using the image as a stop-gap replacement. It was actually my decision to recycle that particular image for that role. Once we've got a better image to replace it, then we'll use that instead.
  
• Cloaking device have definitely been implemented - in fact, the Federation Oberth was the first ship class to have one - for testing purposes. The Romulan ships just haven't had one set - yet. I'll be adding this as part of my future shiplist update.
  
• ALL systems produce raw materials, albeit small amounts. Systems with the raw material icon produce much larger amounts; these systems can also build special structures that further boost resource output. Some special raw-material-producing buildings can also only be built if an Asteroid belt is present in the system.
  
• Outposts are in the game; the Romulans just don't yet have a construction ship to build them.
  
• The real problem with the energy is more a case of a lack of population. I've asked Mike for a way to increase the amount of people in a system, but that won't be possible without making some considerable changes to the game code; the system that works out populations is a lot more complex than you might imagine so it would take a lot of work to change it. I' have asked him if it would be possible to add in one additional factor to take into account though, which would be population density. I could set home systems to have dense populations then. It would also allow me to create special cases with the minor races, such as the B'omar, who suffer from massive overpopulation of their home system.
  
• Changing over the vents sounds like a reasonable idea. The database was created by Dafedz, so i'll speak to him about what he thinks and whether we can make any other changes to ease the energy problems.
  
• I've just checked and the Bunker Networks HAVE been set to obsolete correctly, so i'm not sure what is going wrong there. I'll have to test the game myself and see what is going on.
  
• I would LOVE to have this effect in the game - it would also be a useful feature for the Meridians (Whose planet shifts into another dimension every 60 years or so), but these are special cases so Mike is unlikely to add the feature to the game. Thanks for the heads-up on the potential new special structure though.
  
• Again, thanks for the info and ideas on the special structures. I'll speak with Dafedz and see what he thinks.
  
• The different structure types is something that is now shared by ALL of the different races. The fact of the matter is that a lot of different names would be used for things over time, which is why the names apparently seem all over the place. All of the structures are (Or should be) still interchangeable though, so if another empire comes along they will be able to upgrade a system to their own tech. To my knowledge, you're the first person in about four years to have complained about this, but that doesn't mean we won't consider changing it. If you want a complete facilities list, here it is:
  
  
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...Umm...i'm not sure if it's possible to put yourself in the game yet. Maybe Mike will add that as a feature in the future.

• The five Empires are NOT the only races that can colonise in Supremacy; approximately a third of the minor races will expand aggressively and another third will have at least some colonizing potential; leave the game long enough, and the minor races will have their own empires! Obviously this will only be possible when the AI is implemented though. As for your big idea...wow! That's a great idea, but i'm not sure it would be one that Mike would be able to implement. I'm not an expert at programming, but I imagine it would take a lot of work and processing power to do it. It's definitely worth asking him about though to get a definite answer.
  
• Whether Mike agrees to the big idea or not affects what you said in this comment, but The Founders are already the only race that inhabit the Dominion home system - if you look, you'll see that the Home system is Founders, and any colonies are inhabited by Jem'Hadar, so at least part of your idea is already in.
  
• I'd like to have the Remans in as well, but while you can set the population of systems, you can't set them for planets. Maybe Mike might think about changing this when he reads the posts though.

Thanks for all of this feedback, vh_2k. We find big reviews like this really useful, and as you can see you've identified problems that I was able to fix, so be proud; you've already helped to improve the game!

...

I think I managed to best the post Wolfe.

I was actually already typing this when you submitted your post, but I had to compile the list of structures for vh_2k and I sent Dafedz a PM as well.