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.

Yes, it only need "Propulsion 0" which is a basic propulsion technology that everyone starts out with, so it's a bit weird that propulsion tech 1 is called "Warp Drive" since everyone have it even before getting to that level Maybe going over the tech levels and what they actually are, and how they relate to components would be a good idea.


the usage is just for the hull, the warp core will always have a deuterium requirement as well, so even the scoutship will use deuterium.
A freighter with the "deuterium tank" component would be much more effective.
I'll have to see when I try out the targeting and combat resolution algorithms (they are currently only on paper in bad handwriting), but I will make sure that zerging with lots of small ships are not allowed. A galaxy class or a warbird with lots of high end phasers and torpedo launchers will probably be able to oneshot lots of those scoutships.
Maybe the targeting will be random, or random with a chance to focus on damaged ships (based on experience, or something).
Maybe each "turn" in combat will not be specified on a single ship, but that number of components also are taken into affect.
so that a galaxy class ship with 10 phaser banks will get to fire 5-10 times in each "turn" of the combat. Maybe that will prevent zerging.
Many of the stats are just arbitrary numbers I've set, and I expect many of them to change and be tweaked when testing starts.



Probably not, it's set to 12 officers (from star trek 3?) and 12 regular (soldiers) tag along just for fun


Well the game is tile-based so each resource needs to take a whole "sector", it may not be realistic but resource gathering will add lots of strategy and fun to the game, with penalty to combat (large ships like the galaxy could get a penalty for fighting here against a pack of cardassian or klingon ships), and maybe slowing down fleets that travel trough them based on the quality of the ships sensors and/or crew experience.


I thought the lava in the lower right corner made it clear that there were only 3, maybe I'll have to add more


The colonyship has no pre-reqs (only level 0's) the wiki was just not updated. I'll consider adding level 1 biotech to the colonization ship, but that might irritate people that wants to expand at the start of the game.

Thanks for the comments and great questions

Yep, it wouldn't hurt. I haven't delved too much into it (in the wiki), but for example the beam emitter levels should probably be related to Weapons tech levels that relate to beam weapons. Beam Emitter 2 requires weaponstech level 2 (Torpedo hardening) , which looks odd.




Oh? That sounds strange. So assuming you are capable of building ships without a warp core (system defense for example), the ship will regardless have a deuterium consumption? Not that I'm thinking you'll allow ships without warp cores
Out of curiosity, is there such a thing as component size? I mean, a warp core for a heavy cruiser will have the same size as for a scout? Since the slots are pretty much fixed. Are the slots reserved for specific component types (weapons, armor, engine), or are they free-form?




Well, the freighter has 80 capacity, the scout 50; with no "hull" consumption. The freighter needs a component (deuterium tank) to be more effective, and is more expensive, higher tech level, less agile, etc.




Or/and on bigger ships. Assign each ship a size mod for targeting priority.
BTW, how are you going to solve 3 way battles? And I mean where all 3 are fighting each other.
On the same line, how are you going to handle simultaneous colonization, troop landing, etc? And troop landings on systems that are already being invaded?
Just a few thoughts.

And another one. Wouldn't you want to make this a PBEM? MP, hmm...




Hehe, locked in the corner it's not too clear.




Yeah, I understand.

Yeah, I guess I should go over it, so far the techs are just a botf ripoff. and they were added long before I even thought of adding components.



There are no component sizes, maybe hull should be classified as small-medium-large, but that again would be kinda weird as a defiant class and oberth class would be around the same size.
That is why hulls have a base deuterium usage, so that even tough they use the same type of warp core, a galaxy will consume more fuel than a miranda (due to it's large mass).
Components are free form at the moment, so you could have a shield with JUST torpedo launchers and a warp core (required), and of course power plants.


I have been thinking of options to fine-tune the way your ships act in combat (formations, targeting priorities, etc..) will look more at this after the alpha.
3-5 way battles will just be that each ship gets to do 1-N actions during a battle turn, then each ship targets another enemy ships (no matter what faction).
Had not tought of simultaneous colonization guess It will be a fair roll of the dice then..
troop landing will be like space combat, if opposing forces are on a planet they just duke it out until someone wins I guess if 3 federation users attack a klingon planet and defeat the ground troops there, then the federation user with the most troops on the planet (or random if a tie) conquers the planet.



hmm, I guess that could be done without to much trouble.. just run the server and make it progress the game by ONE (or a predetermined number) turn(s).
then send the small file back and forth.

again, thanks for the great questions

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...

Maybe faction should be factored in. If you were a klingon commander facing both a federation and a romulan fleet, which one would you be most likely to target?



Or, depending on stats of ships in the game, something like (sublight) speed.



In this game I played some 20 years ago (made by a friend of mine), all invaders fought each other first, with no entrenchment modifiers (attacker, defender), and the surviving troops then fought the defenders.



It's just that nowadays getting to play a MP game is a pain I guess. I've had good experiences with PBEM though.

Keep up the good work!

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?

Nope, it is assumed that the starsystems with all their planets contain enough raw materials to build lots of crap (like in the real world)
So when you bring home a freighter full of ore, you can use the ore to "hurry" production, and get a quick boost in industry.


So far there is just one queue, I considered having 2 queues and allow priority to be set giving 30% to structures and 70% to ships for example, but for the time being there is 1 queue to rule them all


nope, the planet population is HUGE (billions) so removing a couple of hundred to fly your ship would be pointless... Depending on your faction, structures (academy) the planet will generate officers/crew/soldiers each turn.


Probably not, it will just be assumed to be part of the effort/time used to build the colony module.. the bigger the colony module the bigger the initial colony population will be (and the more starter structures will be made when colonizing the system).


1 slot can either be empty or have ONE component.


it's pretty random at the moment.. maybe later there will be different kinds of stars and that the stars temperature affect the type of planets in the system.


Your starsystems and ships will be scanners and will view the area around them.
If you add a bunch of scanner components to a ship (or a scanner structure to a starsystem) they will see further (up to a limit so that you cant see the whole galaxy with a single systems with ONLY scanners).
For each player, each tile (square) in the game has a certain scan strength, so for example: right next to your main system where the system has scanners and a fleet with science ships is right by, the scan resolution/strength is good (100) and you have a good chance to see cloaked vessels. While far away from the system the strength could be low (10) in which case it would be extremely hard / impossible to detect cloaked vessels.

When you make a ship with cloaking you just add one or more cloaking devices to the design. The better the cloaking device the less power it uses, and better is masks the ship.
Also the other components you add also affects how stealthy the ship is.. so if you have a warbird with lots of fusion generators and a huge warp engine, just adding ONE cloaking generator will not give very much protection and the ship will be easily detected.

The better your computer tech is, the better sensors components you get access to.
Also there will be a small bonus based on the computer tech level alone.. so a user with computer tech 9 and the starter scanner will have a better scanner than a user with the same scanner but computer tech level 2.




I want to redesign the tech tree, to make techs better match the components you get from it, and not just have 5 fields that increase in levels.. but something more like Civilization. But that will have to wait a bit until after alpha testing.

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.

Well, It's in there to add variation and We'll see in alpha/beta testing if people like mining asteroids and nebula.


growth rate would be MUCH higher than in the thousands. if you get 10 million new people per turn, it would take 1000 turns to get 10 billion people in the system.
So a few hundred is nothing.. maybe creating a colonyship will remove a couple of millions when it is constructed.


because then you can actually add several warp cores to make faster ships (not really cannon, maybe I should rename them coil assemblies). minimal requirement for a ship design to be valid is that it has a speed of at least 2 (I think) which means it moves one tile every 5 turns, and that it has enough power production for it's components.


Don't want to limit the number of any type of components. if this is exploited to make a galaxy class ship with scanners that can see everything then I might reduce the effect of the scanners so that the first you add gives you 100% effect, second = 80%, third = 60% sixth = 0%, ninth = 0%

Actually I was going with your numbers The screenshot you posted in this thread, 1st page, says fertility 10,405 for a 5.66 billion current pop (of 12 billion max) - or something like that. Hence my question. Unless that means 10.4 million, one thousand being the smallest pop unit.



Since warp cores actually produce energy for ship components (35 for a cost of 115), fusion reactors don't seem to have much use, as the cores will also provide speed AND are better at producing energy (reactor 2 comes closest to the core's stats, and it's worse). And they have no tech requirement.
BTW, in the wiki the warp core is set to Civilian=false.
Renaming sounds like a good idea, I'd suggest warp coil.

The Bussard Collectors apparently only collect deuterium when in nebulae or with gas giants? They constantly consume energy (more than a beam emitter) from the ship, for an occasional use? Seems a bit innefficient (with the probable additional slots for reactors). Same happens with weapons, sure, but it's a bit different. You *need* weapons

Armor vs Shields. Seems shields offer a bit more protection for some energy consumption (probable additional slot for reactor) and higher cost. Is there any other benefit? You need a reactor 1 to feed a single shield emitter (15 energy). Maybe armor is weak against torpedoes or something?



Range is limited to 300%, but what about strength? Limited to 300% is still powerful.

hehe, that number is just the growth rate in % for all planets added together.. kinda a temporary thing maybe average would be better.


A civilian component can only be used by a civilian ship (to avoid just using galaxy class ships to harvest ore/deuterium), act as overpowered troop transports, etc..
Point 1.3.2 on my todo list is actually "nerf warp core"



Yes, bussard collectors will just harvest when ship is in a tile with nebula or system with gas giant.. If you need to move a BIG fleet you may need more deuterium than your systems produce, and therefor must harvest it with freighters with a couple of collectors and deuterium storage tanks.. Also long range scoutships could have bussard collectors to avoid having to return to base for refueling.
Please note that most of the values in the game are just put there as I code.. I'm sure ALL of them needs to be changed during/after alpha testing.. and again during and under beta testing


Phasers will probably be best against shields.. while torpedoes are good against armor.. and structure will be teared to shreds by torpedoes. for the values, see answer above


We'll see, the maps can potentially be pretty big, and again the values will probably fall into place during testing
Also sensors will be affected by asteroids/nebula (lightly) and heavily influenced by pulsars/black holes/neutron stars/etc..

Then you'll need a boatload of storage tanks and the collectors need to harvest huge amounts of Deuterium... Seems unwieldy. Also, if your freighters die, you're... hehe. You're dead anyway if your empire ran out of Deuterium and you have big fleets on the loose; you can't run an empire on bussard collectors. Anyways, you're right, testing will tell.
I just have too much time on my hands right now



Or any other ship raiding enemy systems that are undefended

Phasers will probably be best against shields.. while torpedoes are good against armor.. and structure will be teared to shreds by torpedoes.

Shouldn't torpedoes be longer ranged weapons? Doesn't that kinda work against this?

You mentioned that asteroids will probably slow down ships in the tile. You mean when traveling at warp speed?

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.

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.

Well, Bussard Collectors are basically a theoretical component They also create an em field that "must" be several hundred kms wide to be effective.
Yes, resource gathering is a major part of a 4X strategy game (the 3rd X, eXploit). Collecting Deuterium from nebulae and gas giants is great, I was pointing out that if it is actually a normally viable option, then your systems that produce Deuterium aren't really needed anymore. I was only pointing out the dangers in the statement you made, not projecting flaws in a game that wasn't released yet.



You misunderstood me. *Combat* long range. As in, same tile, but firing first. Just going with the "tradicional" way of "missile" type weapons having longer range than beam weapons. As a way to distinguish weapons and their tactical value in combat.



What I meant was, does an asteroid field in normal space affect the movement of a ship travelling in subspace/warp? The question comes from the fact that asteroids are separate entities in the game, whereas tradicionally they belong in star systems (and hence don't affect interstellar movement).



In the screenshots you posted, the mining ship for example, the core is providing all the energy (35) for the ship, sensors and mining lasers (also 35 - which, if the core is nerfed, means that design will not be valid anymore). The boomship seems to have a deficit of 4 energy, you probably shouldn't be able to activate invalid designs?

Yes there definitely should be a difference between beam weapons and torpedoes, maybe in targeting, or other aspects of ship to ship combat.
Torpedoes are also used for planetary bombardment.


You can fly trough the tile with the asteroid field just like a normal tile.. Maybe with a little penalty to speed.
I could have belts confined to systems which makes astronomical sense, but then the map gets more boring + you loose the resource collecting :/


The mining ship in that example must then replace one of the mining lasers with a fusion reactor.
Boomship has a energy surplus of 4, if you removed the fusion reactor and added a phaser instead it would have a energy shortage, the energy rating would be marked red and you would be unable to save the design (and you can only construct ships based on a valid template you have created)

"Canon" (as canon as ST can be) puts photon torps at ~300,000km max tactical range (and also at 8 million kms...). They can't be fired too close unless shields are boosted too. Hence the comment.



Will there be planetary shields?



Nevermind.



By my calcs, not really. Hence my comment. Production 50 (core +35 reactor +15); Consumption -52 (sensors -5 phaser -12 torp -20 shield -15).


What kind of diplomacy will you have? Alliances, NAPs? Restricted space, "borders"?

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.

Those were the numbers in the wiki too, and everything seems to add up; well, not everything, the left side values (hull base stats if I'm reading it correctly) don't really add up with the bottom values (design stats), but I was taking that as a WiP.

BTW, shield emitters and duranium armor seem to add to the same stat, Armor? And there's only Hull and Armor, as far as defenses are concerned?



If you're going to allow multiple instances of the same faction in play, I think you'll have to let go of that notion Besides, those will all be human players (flesh and blood), so they'll do whatever suits them best at the time to win the game.
Anyway, Alliances and Non-Aggression Pacts are useful to allow you a 1-2 turn window of relative safety vs a certain faction (breaking treaty + declaration of war), enforced by the game (instead of human will), with other benefits like scan range sharing and right of passage (in case of Alliances, with territory).

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 =)

What I meant was, in the shipdesign screen, both armor slabs and shield emitters have the same symbol, a kind of a shield, with 30 and 40 strength respectively. It gives the impression that they add to the same global stat.



I would have thought so. But your example was several fed players
Not sure in a game like this it makes too much sense to have several players play the same faction. What could make some sense was to increase the number of playable races, with natural canon allies play as an allied faction in the game - for example, the Vulcans being a player that must be allied with the humans, the Breen with the Dominion; maybe the Ferengi back as an independent faction, etc.



It might be, if you've never played PBEM games. If you read what I wrote above, about the potential benefits, and the couple of turns "cushion", it's not so silly once you try it.
What would be really silly would be you having to take a screenshot of your starmap and send it over by email to your "ally" to share recon...

---

Few more questions, if you're willing to answer

The civilian ships, can you build a mining ship or a colony ship with a "carrier" hull? AFAICT you can, and it sounds a bit off character.

The raw materials from asteroids, by the screenshots they seem to be on a global empire-wide pool? Each system may access it indiscriminately? Kind of takes the edge off of the strategic value IMO, if that's the case.

Will all races have terran as prefered inhabitability?

Is population related to production in any way, like BotF? Apparently it doesn't seem to be. Maybe on a small scale?

Slightly related, what does a colonization module generate in a colonized system? Pop only (if so, how is food and production and energy handled?), or some structures? It's not very clear how systems start out in screenshots.

It's just a general defence icon, not any particular type (armor/shield), maybe it should be changed at some point


It is of course possible to play it like botf with only 1 player per faction (5 players max). But It is also possible to play it with 2-50 players per faction, (10-250 players) and that brings teamwork much more into the game, which is great.
The hardest part with adding races and keeping stuff canon are the ships.. For example the Ferengi basically only have the Maurauder class ship. Same thing with vulcans, their most powerfull ship (from Enterprise) would get asskicked by a miranda class ship. If those were to be added lots of non-canon ships would have to be used.

At one point I considered making it "The Death of the Federation", insted of BOTF, and it would be about a big internal conflict where the federation was breaking up.
There you would only be able to play as the federation, have LOTS of different ship classes, more techs, and have new ships added in proper timeline from ENT to VOY.
The players would then make their own guids/alliances/"fleets" and fight other federation players.
But the survey I did said people wanted several races, despite this meaning reduced number of ship types.


The civillian ships are used for all non-military tasks (mining, nebula collecting, colonization, terraforming?, moving fuel).
You don't see Galaxy class ships going around mining, transporting colonists (large scale) and deuterium. So all get access to 3 different freighters that increase in size.


It's not the case
To get the materials from asteroids you have to bring a ship there, it will mine for some turns, it's cargo hold will be full and then you fly it to a system to hurry production in that system.
Deuterium is shared between systems and you have a empire-wide pool of that.. so that ships will always get deuterium refilled (automatically) when they are in a friendly system.


The maximum population and fertility for planets will be the same for all factions.. Which works fine unless I want to add Tholians as a playable race


Example: A system has room for 10 billion people and 30 structures. Each structure takes up 1 workforce, and workforce is dependent on how many people are in the system. So in this example 10 billion people would give 100% workforce (30 of them). 5 = 15 and 1 = 3, etc..


I haven't implemented terraforming yet, but a colonization module (based on the number of modules on a ship + tech level of the module) will create population in a new system, as well as set up some starter buildings at least a (factory, powerplant and a farm).. having more colony modules (takes longer to build ship then) will add additional buildings and more population.

As long as you can get people to play "as they should", and not let friendships control the game (backstabbing and stuff can kill a game IMO). With what I mentioned above, when you see one of your allies break an alliance or a pact, you *know* something is going to happen in a couple of turns, and you can prepare - build defenses, retreat fleets from their area, etc. Next turn, the war declaration will clear any doubts



The civilian ships aren't exactly canon or the asteroids. Just pulling your leg.



3? Aren't there 5 civilian hulls? Hence my question. A colony ship or a mining ship with the largest hull, 24 slots IIRC. Oh, the Narada...



I'm sure the round trip will be fully automated, but will the production boost also? To be fully efficient, this needs storage capacity, and some micro.



So a system with 10 bill and 20 structures has a different work force unit?



Those will be built on a random planet in the system, or on random slots in random planets? Will population be separated per planet, or just the growth rates? I'm thinking about the work force units.
Hopefully no system will have less than 3 slots available, hehe.

yeah, but the scoutship and colonyship are not "freighters", but that is just semantics, you can use the hulls for whatever you want:)
they wont be much good for combat tough because of low base armor / structure and very bad handling/agility/maneuverability


depending on cargo space and number of mining lasers, then you have to return so it could easily take 13-40 turns to mine a asteroid.



yes, your maximum workforce will always be equal to the maximum number of structures.
And to be able to enable 10 structures if your system max is 20, you will need 50% of maximum population in that system.


Yes, it will place the structures on the biggest planet (max structures) in the system, so a terran planet if it is there.
Each planet has a maximum population, and it's own growth rate, but you only have to worry about the systems combined population.

Think maybe the number of planets in a system now is AT LEAST 2-3, but this may change.. also there may be a system with only gas giants.
In which case you will be unable to do the "colonize" action for systems that can't fit the 3 basic structures (1 farm, 1 factory and 1 powerplant).

40 turns? Sounds like something you might forget during the course of a game.
Haven't understood yet if there are local stockpiles of raw materials. If there aren't, then you have to use them in a single turn? Waiting 40 turns for a single turn boost (assuming you're actually building something that turn)... I'm sure there are stockpiles, else it wouldn't make much sense I think.



But will the output of the structures depend on the size of the system's workforce? If it's a fixed value, a factory in a system with 30 pop will produce the same as one in a system with 20, but the former has more people working in it.

well that was kind of a worst case scenario with a very slow mining ship mining with few mining lasers at a field far away from home

Actually I was just planning to move the ship to the system and then use the "hurry production" action when there is something I want to build in the build queue.

But haven't given that feature much thought really.. Maybe it will be that each system can hold a certain amount of ore, maybe a kind of structure that will boost ore storage.
And you could use freighters to move ore to systems that needs a production boost. I'll make a poll for this and see what the people say

We'll see




Nope, population does not directly influence the production output.. It's only required to make the structures to be online.

Did you consider making ore a real resource? I'd say most games in the genre do If a system is in shortage, then you assign it a mining route, or use freighters to move ore around. Just a thought



That's an odd concept. So people in larger systems are lazy bastards, huh?
Also, a really small systems takes as much time to get to full production (more or less, with variations due to growth rate) as a huge system...

real resource? as in that you need ore to build stuff?.. The stuff with star trek is that you control a whole planet/system which has LOTS of raw materials, so you don't really need anything from the outside. I only added ore as an additional resource/bonus to make things interesting. Civilization does not have resources (later versions have special resources like silk, oil, etc.. to build special units).


A certain factory only has room for so many workers, but larger systems will probably have more factories so people will still have stuff to do
put 5 million people in a small system (max 5 billion) and that system will get "full" before a large system (max 20 billion people).
A small systems production will also be smaller than a large system, and therefor takes shorter time to "set up".

Yes, that's what I mean. And by your logic, food shouldn't be a resource either Or energy. Minerals are a (better, *the*) prime resource in most space based 4X games, that's what I meant. In fact, in BotF food and energy are more of a nuissance, only justified by the extra structures and planet types. Take the example of food; it's basically just a way to decrease available pop for other tasks.
Ore would make things a lot more interesting, in the fact that some systems would have more or less of it, therefore adding a strategic element to colonization. Supremacy went that way, more or less; mining is still automatic, but it's the right direction IMO. Asteroids provide extra minerals, and they're *in* star systems



You didn't get my point. Factories in larger systems are then larger than those in smaller systems, and they take more workers; but they produce *exactly* the same. Doesn't make much sense.



But will those 5 mill produce the exact same in both systems? That's the whole point.



Will *all* types of production work the same way? I mean, if you have half pop in a system, and it's mostly factories, will the only lab in there only produce half its potential output? And the generator? And the farm? Especially these last 2. You see what I'm saying?