Hello guys,

I am new on this forum and I want to present my idea for Minor races.

Minor races for example the Breen build up their own small empire.
That means they are explaning (not such fast as the Main races do) and so on..

What do you think of that?


And a small question a least, are there plans to publish Supremacy in other languages?

Welcome to the forums Qinside. Yes, there are minor races that will expand with colony ships and transports. Great minds think alike. We would love to be able to translate the game into a number of languages. Can you help?

Hey Qinside, welcome to the forums!

As Kenneth said, we already plan to make many of the minor race races expandable - in fact, they will expand at different rates. About a third of the races, like the Vulcans, will expand relatively aggressively, and will have a lot of ship designs to support their mini-empires. Another third, such as the Pakleds, will expand, but will do so much more slowly. And the final third, such as the Mintakans, won't expand at all.

Supremacy already supports the ability to have translations for hundreds of languages. All that is needed is for someone to actually sit down and do the translating. This would likely increase the filesize of the game considerably though, so if a translated game is released, it would likely be released as multiple single-language versions, rather than a single version with multiple languages. That isn't definite though.

Thanks for the informations.

I could help you to translate into the German language, but at the next three months I don t have much time to spend on it (much work and I have to learn for my study). After that I would help you where I can

Mfg Q

Tons of work is still needed to develop the game, so it's a little premature to begin translating it anyways - you could end up translating files that don't eventually make it into the game, wasting your translation work. So the longer you leave it, the less work you would need to do.

If you still want to translate the game once you're free though, send a PM to Mstrobel and let him know though.

Sorry for this minor thread necromancy but this seems to be the best thread for my question.
If minor races will be able to expand/colonize while independent, will you as a player be able to build colony ships of that race once they have joined your empire?
For example, if the federation has its eye on a dilithium rich system with only barren and volcanic planets, why should they try to settle it with humans who will barely make a living in those surroundings while their vulcan members would be more than happy to go there?

This was also discussed and I believe it was scrapped. I remember me being a strong supporter of that idea, but I believe Mike was against and his word is the last. Again I'm not sure what the final word was, and I could be wrong that it was scraped.

I think Mike found it too complicated for the result. It might happen later.

Colonization might be revisited, but for now there are no changes planned. Expanding minor races will also be revisited, and their potential to expand will likely be curbed, and possibly eliminated altogether (hopefully not, as I know how many people are looking forward to this). I have some concerns about minor race expansion throwing off the mechanics of the game, and those concerns will need to be addressed at some point.

But in answer to your question, no, there are no plans to allow the player to colonize systems with races other than his own. This was a decision made in the interests in keeping the mechanics simple.

Okay, too bad but i guess its better to concentrate on getting the core features of the game running than adding more and more side features.
Another question would be terraforming - can you give us any hint as to how this will work in supremacy? Will you terraform the entire star system in one sweep or will each planet have to terraformed individually? And will terraforming simply 'unlock' a planet (ie make it available for settling like a class M planet) or change the planet type ( eg from polar to oceanic or from desert to terran)?

We've always planned that terraforming would physically change the class of the planet, rather than simply having it as an unlock system as in BOTF. The direction that a planet would be terraformed in would depend on the race you play as, as well; for the Federation and Romulans, planets would be terraformed towards Terran. For the Cardassians, it would be towards Deserts, and for the Klingons and Dominion (Note that their "people" are Jem'Hadar), it would be towards Jungle planets.

Also note that this would occur in stages, eg Volcanic -> Desert -> Terran, not Volcanic -> Terran. Whether that will remain the case, only Mike can say though. But we've intended the system to work this way from day one, and the game actually already records the planetary preferences of every race, so the information the system would need has already been added. All that's needed is the terraforming system itself. We even already have the necessary terraforming "wireframe" artwork done, which would be overlaid on the planets as an atmosphere texture, since the planets are set up as empty spheres wrapped in a flat surface texture that spins round the sphere, with a partially transparent second texture placed on top for the atmosphere.

Ah great, if its implemented that way it would be a marked improvement compared to BOTF. But one minor question: Wouldn't it make more sense to set the Cardassian preference to terran (with desert at the comfortable level) while keeping Cardassia Prime a desert? This would fit with the cardassian backstory where the ecological desaster caused by the exploitation of the natural resources of their homeworld forced them to abandon democracy and start to expand to other star systems....

We could certainly do that, though it might put the Cardassians at a disadvantage by reducing their home system's max population and growth rate. We'd have to try it out to see what the actual difference is, and how it affects gameplay.

Certainly, but the home systems of all other races have a lower max population level and growth rate, so i don't expect it to be a game breaker.

Another question regarding terraforming. If terraforming does not only 'unlock' a planet to make it available for colonisation, but also changes its type towards the race optimum, how can you build structures like wind turbines or geothermal vents? A volcanic or barren world would have to be terraformed away from their current type to be settled, right?
On the other hand if you can build such structures without having to settle the planet, what happens if later on you decide to terraform the planet to a type that no longer fits the requirement for the structure? Do they stay or disappear?

Terraforming would not be a prerequisite to colonizing a system--terraforming projects would become available as construction projects late in the game, and basically allow you to transform less desirable planets so that they are better suited to the inhabiting race. The issue of structure requirements is tricky--presumably, we would have to dismantle those with planet type requirements that are no longer satisfied. However, terraforming is a low priority feature, meaning it is likely to be scrapped if we need to cut back on features (which we probably will); I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about the details just yet.

I for one, would miss the terraforming aspect to BOTF a great deal. Perhaps we are putting too much on the plate here. Can we just go back to "Unlocking the planet" and not worry about the details?.

Planet maker Bashir

Yes, I agree. I would miss being able to terraform as well. But maybe the problem can be mitigated by adding a text in the information box of the energy structures which states that they will be dismantled if the neccessary conditions are no longer met due to terraforming or random events.
On a similar note maybe the building restrictions for the energy structures should be adjusted. The image of the solar array depicts an orbital station and not a planet-bound structure - therefore it would be fitting if the solar array (and the advanced version) could be built in all settled systems, as they are orbital installations and not dependent on planetary conditions. Similarly the wind turbine (and the advanced version) should not be limited to barren worlds (which at least in my understanding do not even have an atmosphere for the turbines to work with). Instead you should be able to build them on desert planets (lots of temperature changes between day and night creating a big thermodynamic potential), ocean worlds (no mountain ranges to speak of to weaken wind and large water bodies which favors the formation of mega-hurricans) and maybe polar planets (arctic storms) or even terran worlds. And charge collectors should be buildable on jungle worlds as well (tropical storms should produce just as much lightnings to harness) and maybe also on ocean and desert worlds (see above) - an argument could be made for volcanic worlds as well (thunder storms often occur after a volcanic eruption due to the many charged particles in the atmosphere).
These adjustments would reduce the risk of losing an installation in many cases due to terraforming. Only the geothermal vents should stay restricted to volcanic worlds for obvious reasons.

There are no features I could cut without disappointing some people. The reasons terraforming is likely to be cut are:

• BotF-style terraforming (as a prerequisite to colonization) adds a mandatory layer of micromanagement, and the action required by the player is rather uninteresting and repetitive.
• Terraforming implemented as planet type transformations (MoO2-style) introduces other issues.
• It would largely negate the point of racial planet type preferences.
• I was never terribly fond of the feature anyway.

BotF-style terraforming would actually introduce more issues than MoO2-style terraforming.

So a large portion of the planets will just be habitable? I know it was micromanegement in one sense but strategic in another, since more people on more planets in the system meant more work to conquer them.

Bashir

This would certainly be a disappointment, although I understand the reasoning behind it. I always thought a terraforming process that changed a planet rather than just unlocking it would actually be easier, but I guess that just shows how limited my knowledge of programming is.

I personally would say not to drop it though. I can understand having it as a low-priority feature that gets added late on in the game, but dropping it completely would actually lose some of the fun of BOTF in my opinion. And if we don't have terraforming, other than for max population sizes, what is the point in having planetary preferences?

Well put. My opinion has always been that the least risky thing to do as far as fan acceptance is to limit ourselves to improving what was already in BOTF I. At least for the initial Version 1.0 of Supremacy. So much of what has already been done in Supremacy fixes what I didn't care for in BOTF. It is awesome, modable, visually appealing, easy to use... great! Re doing the game from here on is challenge plenty without a lot of changes.

CB

Different growth rates?

The growth rate differences aren't going to be that great though. And it really depends on the size of the system/total number of planets too. I still think that removing terraforming would diminish the point of planetary preferences. And I agree with Bashir above, we should concentrate on improving what BOTF had first. But ultimately Mike makes that decision, even if I don't agree with it.

If they aren't gonna be that great, then terraforming will be pretty much useless... so not much point in having it in the game.

Something to consider if you like the idea of Terraforming but don't wish to make a feature designed around it, simply write in the description of colony ships: that part of the colonization process involves some form of terraforming anyways. It easy to imagine that after landing on a planet the colonist divert a few rivers, blow up some mountains, purify some air, grow some vegetation, etc. (that is technically terraforming to a minor degree).

What about a building "Terraforming Project" (or Terraforming Project Headquarters, or etc.) that simply increases max pop by a small amount, I can see it as a building because it would be an ongoing project to continually adjusts the climate and terrain. This would be an easy way to add it with little coding work needed and it would work for all races. You could add whatever flavor text you wanted, heck even add a higher tech version “Advanced Terraforming Project”.

These don't exactly do the full on change the class of the planet on the system view but you still get the flavor of the idea.

The game already has these - look for the Federation Habitation Project. Just don't build one, as it's buggy at the moment. All of the population-related structures (Growth rate and population size) are buggy, so don't build them.

One thing we discussed some time ago was having "terraforming" be a "structure" that you build in a system (which takes time to build and occupies the build queue) which allows you to populate (increases max pop) planets in the system that belong to the type that you are terraforming / have unlocked (through the techtree).

The buildings Matress mentioned allow you to populate Moons in the system.

True true, my point was more that there are other options if this feature proves difficult to implement. Its really all in how you describe it. The idea Iceman mentions is pretty much along the lines of what I was meaning in my brainstormed idea.

Back to expanding minor races:

If creating slowly growing minor races is an issue from a game balance perspective, couldn't you set "maximum size" limits at which point they will cease to expand (except if they conquer territory via war with a major...that would be funny for the cardassians to lose to the Breen and be subjugated...)

So a "small" race like the Pakleds might only ever expand to 1 other planet beyond their homeworld, while vulcans might get a small handful (3-5) to patrol around while the breen might keep expanding until they've got a sizable empire (~12 planets or so).

If THAT is too complicated or game unbalancing, could "expansion" be faked. Could it be set up so that a minor race has a chance of colonizing the nearest planetary system to it? Up to X systems?

So on map generation, Vulcan is placed on the map. During a second pass or something, Vulcan gets a random number rolled for it due to attributes and Vulcan "colonizes" the nearest X planets within Y distance of the homeworld.

It's not as dynamic but I would think it would be much easier from both a programming and game balancing perspective.

Now, as larger empires result in larger gains, I'd imagine that the larger the alien empire (bonus points if it's in comparison to your own empire), the more difficult diplomacy becomes, with some modifier placed on that reduces the impact of your positive actions.

So a mega-empire like the Breen would be nigh impossible to just diplo-annex early game because they're x3 the size of you.




UNRELATEFD NOTE: It always made me a little bothered how minor race worlds were so much better then colonies. What if minor race "structures" couldn't be upgraded easily? In BotF you would upgrade them to "your tech" at the next upgrade with very little variance, but what if it cost you x10 to upgrade from their "hunting grounds" to your "food replicators".

Add in a general "production inefficiency" factor and Minor race worlds would still be great early on, but once you need to actually update them and move on, that's when your faster growing, working, and upgrading colonies would get a chance to shine.

Playing BotF right now and as the Fed, colonies are just a different form of Space Station so I can hop between Tech 7-9 minor race after minor race