Hi, First of want to say the game looks really good so far. I just have a couple of ideas and questions.

First, it would be really cool to be able to create names for your ships once they are built.
Second, At this point in the game do the transports serve any purpose?
Third, Why do the images of the colony,construction,transport and surveyor ships display "No Image" when the files are in the game?

Ouu and another thing...hehe...It would be nice to decommission ships (aka Scrap).

Hey EnsignHawk, welcome to the forums!

The ability to create names for ships is something that has been discussed on the forums before, although not recently. I don't know what Mike's (The developer) intentions in this area are, but if he is going to implement it, it will be a low-priority addition. There are much more pressing (And time-consuming) things to be done at the moment - like adding AI for the other Empires.

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The role of transports has changed somewhat from BOTF, although we're still in a bit of a limbo on precisely how they will work. It was intended that Transports would be a necessary part of the system colonization process, providing all the resources, equipment, and technology needed to terraform a planet (Whilst colony ships would provide the colonists, structures, supplies etc) along with a scout ship that would chart the system to find the best places to colonise.

...But the terraforming process itself has completely changed, so I don't know precisely how this will work anymore. The change is a cool one though - if somewhat confusing for noobs to the game. Basically though, a class M planet will NOT be an ideal planet for every race in the game. We know for instance that the Cardassians evolved on a Desert planet, so when they terraform a planet, it will shift towards a Desert climate, rather than class M. This also means that the maximum population for each class of planet will vary depending on the preferred planet type for each race. The planets will STILL have planet-specific bonuses though - Food, Energy, and a new one - raw materials - as well as Aquaculture centers for Oceanic worlds etc. There are even new planet-specific buildings AND new planet types, although the new planets are EXTREMELY rare...

Multiple terraforming attempts may also be required before you can make a planet ideal for your race as well. For instance, if Humans were to Terraform an Arctic planet, it would produce an Oceanic or Desert planet. You would then need to Terraform the planet again to make it class M - unless you decide that the planet-specific bonuses would be of more worth than the population increase!

Multiple terraforming attempts will be extremely energy-intensive processes as well - which is where your energy technology comes into play. The more advanced you are, the faster and more easily you will be able to terraform a planet. What might take multiple terraforming processes early in the game may be possible in only one by the end of the game...

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The 'missing' images is just a glitch - the game is probably looking for files that have since had a name change during an update or something. (Eg. Colonyship.jpg -> colony ship.jpg) It's an easy fix, so dont worry about that.

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Decommissioning ships IS going to be in the game. In fact, this was something that was decided right back at the start of the entire BOTF2 project - back in September 2004. The code hasn't yet been implemented for this - yet - but the buildings have. Decomissioning will only be possible where you have built decommissioning yards, however, and there will also be strict limits on the number of yards you can build, possibly around the 4 per Empire mark. The Zakdorn special building is actually a "Surplus Depot" - which is a decommissioning yard, so acquiring the Zakdorn will actually give you access to a FIFTH decommissioning yard!

The yards will allow you to recoup a certain percentage of resources by decommissioning a ship - and the Zakdorn Surplus Depot has another advantage, because it will be able to recycle a greater percentage of resources from old ships than the other yards will be capable of acquiring. Decommissioning will NOT mean scrapping outright though. Instead, you will be able to bring decommissioned ships back into use, but it will take time and resources to do so. In a pinch though, it will allow you to build up a sizeable battlefleet - even if it's made of woefully outdated ships. That fleet of recommissioned ships may be the last thing between you and assimilation, however...






...Sorry for making an uberpost in reply, but as you've probably realised by now, making uberposts is my thing. I just like to ensure people have access to all the info that I have.

Welcome to the forums, and if you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them. I promise i'll *try* to restrain my urge to uberpost if huge volumes of text frighten you.

So in other words....

First, it would be really cool to be able to create names for your ships once they are built.
WORKING ON IT

Second, At this point in the game do the transports serve any purpose?
NOT YET

Third, Why do the images of the colony,construction,transport and surveyor ships display "No Image" when the files are in the game?
RELAX ITS GOING TO BE OK

Ouu and another thing...hehe...It would be nice to decommission ships (aka Scrap).
WORKING ON IT

Thanks for the reply!
So....hows the AI coming???

MOE are you entirley sure about being able to teraform planets to the best possible class for each race?, the problem i have with it is that like in MOO2 you'll end up with every system being uber POP wise, which negates the strategic interest of finding that once in a game system and protecting it. Also it kind of negates the variation Dafedz and co thought up with various types of planet given varying resources non?

just a thought.

Regards Wolfe

Just to add my two cents, I think the way colonization is as its stands is the way it should be, I think the whole terraforming idea is a waste of turns. Yes I believe that different races should have a higher max population on specific planet tyes Human-class M ect.... Also resources should be system specific in that you can only build starships in a system only if that system has dilithium and the materials, not jut pull it from the total empire pool. Of course you could use the transports to move resources from system to system like in BOTe. Just more realistic in my eyes.

I've tossed around the idea of pooling resources at the system level rather than the galactic level, but for that to be viable, you'd really need a way of transporting resources between systems. The problem is that every solution I've come up with is either ambiguous or requires too much micromanagement. The ambiguous solutions are like the one in MoO2 where you had a fleet of freighters, but no way to determine *which* systems got resources when there weren't enough freighters to go around, or even any way to prioritize them. You could have a system where you manually load, move, and unload freighters, but I think that would be a nightmare for players who hate micromanagement.

hmm, I actually just came up with a third idea... I'll think about it some more .

Glad we could get you thinking......

I don't know if this would help but I have 2 good images of a Conestoga Class and a Icarus Class.

doesn't hurt to show does it?

The Icarus

We've already got the Conestoga as the colony ship 1 - you can download the model for it by clicking Here should you so wish. I'm not sure about the status of the Icarus though, but thanks for the pic. I'm sure our modellers will use it if they need it.

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So what's this third option, Mike? I LOVE micromanagement, but even I do NOT want a system where you have to move ships around to transport resources. That would simply be too tedious - even for me.

I was just saying there are no "images" for these ships in the game....
fed_colony_ship_i
and
fed_surveyor_i

About the resource issue I think you should be able to use the transports to load and deliver resources to a system

OR

For the "lazy" people you can have a screen where you can use "private merchants" deliver resources you select to the system you select in just the course of 1 turn...of course there would be a credit fee for this feature.

I know the idea is simple enough to come up with but the coding is another matter so just throwing this out there as a thought.

We have an Icarus as a survey ship. If there are models behind those images that we could use that would be great.

Colonyships and Transports are amoung the last models we are getting around to building. They will be the some of the last images to go into the game.

Oh...sorry about that, EnsignHawk, didn't realise you meant the graphics themselves were missing. If the game ever says "image missing" for a ship, then it refers to the image itself, NOT the model. In the case of those two ships, we have models but not images lol. Don't worry, lose ends like these WILL be sorted out as time goes by, but do keep pointing them out to keep us on our toes.