Hey Harafias, i'm not an expert on BotE (Allegiance and Supremacy are more my domain) but there are certain points that are true about all the games:
The games - ALL OF THEM - will be 100% free. They will NOT be available in the shops to buy (Unless Paramount finally realise that buying fan-made games and professionally developing them would be a way of making mountains of money) - the games will instead only be available to download from this site, or any mirrors that forum members or interested parties set up. Making people pay for the game would be
completely illegal because we
don't own the licence to develop ANYTHING based on Trek. To my knowledge, Activision and only activision currently owns the licence to develop Trek-based games.
In Supremacy and BotE, turn-based combat a la BOTF-style will be the ultimate goal - but will be the absolutely last part f the games to be completed and released. This is purely because soo much work will have to go into it - we need to develop the systems, programs, interfaces, models, textures, special effects, combat engines, AI, weapons strengths, etc etc.
It then needs to be balanced, tweaked, and optimised to make sure it can run on as many computers as possible with as few resources as possible in as many resolutions as possible. All this will take time, and we are looking at 1 - 1.5 years MINIMUM before we even start thinking about combat, let alone release any sort of finalised download! 8O
Micromanagement has always been something that we wanted to be able to have absolute control of - but at the same time to also have a "set-it-and-forget-it" system. This is because everyone is different. Some people - like me
- love to be able to control every last detail of their Empire, and will play excessively long games and spend hours on a single turn, whilst other people - possibly like yourself - like to just queue a couple of commands and leave the computer to do the rest.
We heve to be able to keep as many people as happy as possible, and so when the game first starts up, there will likely be a lot more options than BOTF had. This is to allow you to customise the game to your style of play, so that when you actually get into the game itself, you will be able to do precisely what YOU want to do. Obviously BOTE and Supremacy are vastly different games however, so the amount of these options and how big an effect they will have will be purely up to the individual programmer. They are always open to suggestions though!
So what am I saying in all of this drone? Basically, there WILL be a system governor.
BOTE is likely to be the first game to be completed. Whilst these forums have been around for much longer than the BOTE project, due to the loss of our original programmer along with everything he made, our project was significantly set back. I am sad to say that these forums
almost completely died at that time. It was only after Jigalypuff decided to fill the void by creating his own project that the ball started rolling again.
However, things were going slowly, and the forums started to go quiet again. It was just at that time that Mike came along with his own college project - a game that just happened to be a turn-based, space-based, 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) game that just happened to be similar to BOTF. Mike decided to rebuild and expand his game into a successor for BOTF, and that revitalised and focussed these forums.
Then, in January 2007, we became aware of another, rival, BOTF2 project. This project was being run by a group of Germans, and whilst significantly ahead of Supremacy in terms of development, the game didn't have the large support network and forum membership that our project had gathered. We offered to help the BotE team, and a month later they joined our forums as a second project.
A few months later, General_Nemitor - he recently changed his name to Nemitor_Atimen - joined the forums with an idea for a new web-based project called Star Trek: Allegiance. Allegance was based on another game called Solar Empire - by adapting and expanding this game, he was able to get his project going with a flying start, rather than having to start from scratch. Nemitor has been continually working on this game behind the scenes, but I've been personally playing a beta-test of the game with a select few other people, and it is coming along nicely - although as my signature states, an idea that I came up with earlier this week was one step too far and the game crashed completely when Nem tested it.
When Jigalypuff realised that the forums had begun to focus on the other games, he decided to scrap his project, and do somethign different. He is developing a new game, called Star Trek: New Beginnings, which will be a completely different genere of game...
...
As you can see, there is no real way of saying that
one particular game IS BOTF2 - they all are, in their own particular way. It is your choice as to which is BOTF2. My personal choice is that Supremacy is THE BOTF2, but that certainly won't stop me from playing Allegiance or BotE.
The project is by the fans, for the fans. We're doing this because we WANT to. We aren't here to make money, we're just here to do something ourselves because we have gotten fed up of waiting for eight long years for the big companies to make themselves - and to no avail. Whilst we could make money from the project, we don't want to. And besides, as I said it would be illegal to do so.
Our project is many things. It is a labour of love, an act of defiance, and an extension of our unified need for the continuation of Trek. Without yours and the many other forum members' support, this project would not be possible - so keep asking questions, keep coming up with ideas, and above all, offer your help.
Is that enough info? Let me know if you want to know anything else - or if you don't like reading long messages!
