I see the Civilian Scoutship and the Colonyship don't need Warp Drive (propulsion 1) to be built. Is that intended?
Also, the Civilian Scoutship has deut usage zero, with capacity 50? Weird. Apparently it can act as a "fuel tank" in fleets, but that's a strange notion; I mean, a scout of all ships. And since targeting in combat seems to be random, it could prove to be (too?) effective to have a swarm of (cheap and agile) scouts soaking/diverting damage from a big ship (plus carrying the fuel).

Is the Crew figure for the Klingon B´rel correct? (12)

The asteroids in deep space, occupying a sector, are a bit weird. I understand the objective, with mining ships and all. A bit GC2'esque...

The Volcanic planet type gives the impression of having 4 tiles, but the description says 3.

The colonyship hull has pre-req Bio 1, but the colonization module 1 component has no pre-req. Shouldn't it be the other way around? The hull itself has no relation to Bio.

Hmm...Warp-capable torpedo launchers. Bringing the fight to your doorstep! I could imagine a Ferengi selling these to a Klingon.

The techs in BOTF followed a regular pattern - energy weapon development, torpedo development, repeat. Changing the system in itself might look wierd though. You therefore might want to consider splitting energy weapon and torpedo development into two separate tech types. This could potentially allow players to further specialise their tech development - and therefore their ship designs then.

Weapons techs could be an interesting area for considering further development on though, as there are so many areas that weapons could be improved in. For example:

Damage Output
Weapon Size/Mass (Less Means More)
Cost Requirements (Fuel Cost? Reloads/Ammo?)
Recharge Rates
Accuracy
Firing Arcs (Energy Weapons)
Torpedo Tracking/Guidance (Launch Speed? Starship Tracking/Torpedo Sensor Systems/Torpedo Propulsion Speed)


If players could focus their tech developments on individual areas like these, this could add further variation to the game. For instance, a player might decide to focus purely on miniaturizing their weapons. This could allow them to equip small attack ships with a single, massively powerful torpedo system. Or they could equip a large vessel with tons of low-powered torpedo launchers. Accuracy and damage output wouldn't be a problem then as so many torpedoes have been launched, at least *some* of them will hit.

You could go down a similar route with defense systems actually...

Anti-Weapon Defense Systems (Point Defense? ECM?)
Shield Raise Speed
Shield Strength
Shield Recharge
Shield Power Efficiency
Armor Strength
Armor Mass
Armor Cost

And Engines come to think of it...

And Sensors...

And Cloaking Devices...

Few more questions:

Will ships and buildings cost raw materials (from asteroids)? Or are these just for production rushing, like credits in Sup?
Are there going to be seperate queues for ships and buildings, in planetary production?
Will you remove Crew and Officers from the planetary population?
Will the pop colony ships create be removed from the system building the ship?
In shipdesign, can you have multiple items of the same type per slot? Or just one?
Does system generation take into account all the normal stuff, like orbit, star type, temp, etc? Or is it completely random?
How will Scan / Cloak work? Fixed numbers per ship type, or say Energy / Computers tech level (dinamically) based?

Raw materials
Doesn't make much sense IMO. It assumes that the mining capacity of the system is each turn exactly equal to the minerals spending. Even in turns in which the system builds nothing. If you normally have more than enough materials, then you don't really need asteroids to boost production; you shouldn't that is. Besides, technically asteroids *should* be in starsystems, so their mining capacity should be part of the system's production
About the strategic impact, the asteroids being in deep space means that mining ships are easy targets; you'll have to escort them. I'm guessing the mining order automates the whole process, to avoid micro.

Population
A couple of hundred per turn, where pop growth is maybe in the thousands, can be significant. At least to hold back pop growth in the system. Enter ground troop recruitment, and it might have a bigger impact.
As for pop in colony modules, it's significant too. That's not a few hundred I'm guessing.

Slots
If the warp core component is mandatory, why is it even a component? Why not just give all hulls its base stats? Match those stats to the size of the ship while at it.

Scanners
Maybe you should only allow one per ship, and make a new component (Long Range Scanner) usable by scouts only, or give scout ships an intrinsic bonus to scan ranges. Cumulative scanners can be an invitation for exploits.

I like the idea of the weapons having different effects vs different defense types. In the shows, whilst there were some contradictions, it seems that each of the weapons had limitations too; Phasers cannot fire whilst the ship is at Warp (Phasers are limited to lightspeed, although I can remember at least one contradiction to this in Voyager) and torpedoes can be fired from any direction because they are self-propelled and self-aiming, but they have limited "ammo". So to add to .Iceman's two torpedo-related questions, will ships have unlimited torpedoes? Will ships have a finite number that are automatically replaced after a battle? Will you need to make the torpedoes?

As for the problem with the Fusion generators, what if the weapons got their power from the Warp Core whilst the shields got their power from the Fusion Generators? Ships would still need both power types, then, and would mean if a power system was destroyed, the shields or weapons might still work, depending on the damaged system. I believe ships in Trek also used their Fusion generators to power the Impulse engines, so perhaps the Fusion generators could have some effect on the sublight/combat speed of your ships?

As for the technologies, a long time ago I created a list of all the tech that were from BOTF, plus all of the canon and semi-canon techs that I could think of that would fit into the six tech categories from the game. The list has since been expanded by other people on the forums, such as Sheva. The techs are a little one-sided, since there are 30 weapons techs alone, but it might serve as a starting point for you if you wanted to create a Civilization-style tech tree.

Techs.txt [2.39 KiB]
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It does not even make sense to harvest from nebula's using collectors as real nebula's are so thin you would only be getting a few atoms every meter you go. But resources is a big part of strategy games, and I think if there were no resources it would be less fun.

Never seen a torpedo fired at a LONG range in star trek, only "close" combat.. so all combat will take place in one tile (or maybe torpedoes can fire at adjacent tiles, kinda like artillery in civilizations).

Moving 1 tile cost 10 movement points.. ships can generate 2 - 20 movement points each turn.. maybe asteroid would require 12 or 15 movement points for a ship to move trough it.



Don't want to much micromanagement, so ships will probably have unlimited number of torpedoes, or that torpedoes are magically refilled after each battle.

For the game a warp core will only provide power for the warp engine.. And fusion reactors power sensors, weapons and shields.. Isn't this canon? (Does DS9 have a warp core?)

Matress: thanks for the list of techs, will probably have to do something with the current (simple) tech system at some point.

Yeah, I've seen those numbers at memory alpha, and they seem kinda Weird..
300'000 km would only be like 1 second away at Warp 1
8 million = 25 seconds away at warp 1.. or like 1 second at warp 2.5-3 (TNG scale)
Strange numbers for a weapon that can be fired at warp.



Planetary shields maybe, orbital defenses definitely.



Maybe the numbers in that screenshot are off, but no "invalid" designs will be possible in the game.




Diplomacy...
So far there is NO diplomacy in the game. It's just faction versus faction.. you may of course make deals of protection and coordinate attacks with your team, and that will be a big part of the game.
Maybe later it will be possible to have "guilds" instead of faction vs faction.. and maybe a "free for all" mode.

I did not care for the diplomacy in BOTF at all, the minor races thing was especially tiresome, and the deals you made with the other factions were pretty random and unpredictable.
Since this is game is about strategic combat, it does not make much sense to have one federation player make a cease fire with the romulans while all the other federation players are at war with them. There is also not a traditional economy in the game so there is not much trade opportunities.

Maybe planets will have "borders" that expand based on the population and number of buildings in that system. And fighting in this gives a small bonus to the "home/defending" fleet.

There is a hull rating (structure) which is increased by a small amount for each component, this is weak and easily destroyed by weapons.

The armor is increased by adding armor plates, and is tougher than structure. All hull also have a base armor.

Shields are added by fitting shield emitter components, there is no base shields for any hull.
Shields regenerate between battles.

Armor and structure must be repaired at shipyard or starbase.




It' will just be faction vs. faction at the start.. If you want to make a cease fire treaty with the romulan next to you while you try to take out the Klingons then you have to actually make a deal (chat) with him.. There will be no mechanics in the game to facilitate this (The romulan player has to declare war, then wait a few turns, and THEN attack? that's just silly)

But other types of gameplays with guilds or something might be added sometime in the future =)