Well, while waiting for the next Supremacy release <crosses fingers>, I downloaded and played BotE, and holy s***! It's much further along than Supremacy. I didn't notice too much wrong, but I wanted to point out a few things and ask a question or two:

1. For some of the planet discriptions (classes S and T), you say the planet is on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of kilometers in diameter. No. Just no. I know you're probably going by the one Star Trek book that has all of the planet classifications (Star Charts? I have it, but can't find it), but planets are never going to be so big. In fact, things start getting bigger than Jupiter's diameter once they become stars. (I apologize for this; it annoys me as an astrophysicist more than purple/green stars and the other oddities/physical impossibilities in the game)

2. I like the fact that you can build minor race ships after they join your empire. Some that BOTF and (thus far) Supremacy lack.

3. Are you going to add which race inhabits the star system?

4. Where are all the nebulae, neutron stars, black holes, wormholes, and all the other fun anomalies from BOTF? They are going to be in it, I hope.

5. Nice touch using the Star Trek: New Worlds music for the Rotherians. Not enough love is given to that game.

6. You think you might "accidentally" leak the stuff you had when it was still a Star Trek game? You know, to give the Star Trek TCers a head start?

Further comments:

1. There aren't any good instructions on how to do stuff. For example, I didn't figure out how to do intelligence until I'd written part of this post explaining why it was broken, and I went back to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass (I was, but that isn't the point). This is an important thing. Oh, and for the love of the Vi, put buttons so you can adjust the intel levels without having to click on the slider itself; trying to find the zero point over and over is annoying. In fact, buttons to adjust things are a good idea in general for fine-tuning.

2. Some bizarre diplomatic things are going on. For instance, the Khaorons made a demand to me. while at war with me. Oh yeah, let's give our enemies stuff they can use against us, hurr durr. Bottom line, it doesn't make sense. Also, there was a point when (again, while at war with me) they made demands for six consecutive turns!

3. The whole bribing minor race thing is annoying; there is (apparently) no way to stop a minor race from eventually being bribed away from your empire, making subjugating them the only real option to prevent them from leaving you for your greatest enemy while using their system as a staging ground. The communication grid is no help, either.

4. The numbering system for system population is weird: while it says things like 46.000 Mrd (which I assume means 46 million residents), when a system gets bombarded, it'll say 1.231 billion people killed. How did more people die in a system than were there to begin with?

5. When I open save files with empires other than the one I started playing with, I notice that their morale is very high, yet without any morale structures. In fact, they rarely build any special structures, and seldom upgrade. How are they remaining competitive? *edit* Upon further looking, I've noticed more special structures. I've also noticed them in systems I've conquered. Thus, this may not be an issue. Also, some Khaoron systems have lower morale, so the whole point might be a non-issue.

6. Even with some treaties, you automatically fight and win/lose when you come in contact with another power. The trade agreement is such a treaty. That seems nonsensical; if you have any treaty, it should prevent battle.

7. When changing the weapons on ships via the research menu, it only affects the first instance, i.e. if a ship as "2 x StandardLauncher (PlasmaTorpedo II), 2 x StandardLauncher (PlasmaTorpedo II)", changing the torpedo will affect only the first one.

While I may appear to be nothing but negative, this is a great start to a fangame. I'm just trying to help ensure the final product is as good as it can possibly be.

we took some reference here obviously: http://misc.thefullwiki.org/Class_S . But you're right it's wrong. Actually this data hasn't been updated since we made the content change. I changed it in the new stringtable http://botf2.star-trek-games.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=63780#p63780. Still it would be good if someone takes this file, opens it with notepad and makes further changes to the text. As an astrophysicist you are probably the most qualified person to do so if you want to .

well the green star issues have already been extensively discussed in our german forums. bottom line was that it's more about our retinal visual interpretation of colors than actual wavelength (where the black body radiation has its maximum). If I remember right, our sun actually radiates in green color, we are just interpreting it as white due to evolutionary adaption to its enormous intensity but another race would just see it green or whatever they see as representation of green wavelength spectrum. I mean, if you map all wavelengths to specific colors, then green is definitely within the list of wavelengths a star can radiate (also where a maximum of density/amplitudes can be). Color temperatures is - to my knowledge - a pure "human" thing.

3. sure. at some point.

4. comes very soon .

5. well, I recognized it too. We are going to remove it with alpha6, it's copyrighted so it has no place inside our game. Btw. do you recognize our current Heyoun track? TerakRall from this forums has done it 5 years ago (so he said back then) but I'm really not sure if it's really his work (he said he did it in one hour...). It resembles final fantasy vii melodies a lot..

6. we haven't planned to do so. still, there were quite a few downloads back then before we changed content so chances are there someone still has the old stuff. Although a complete new mod with stuff for example made for Supremacy is the way to go if you want to mod bote with proprietary content and offer it here. Simple reason is that such a mod belongs intellectually to the ones it should (CBS/Paramount) and therefore there is no problem whatsoever for us. If they don't want the mod, the modders are to be taken responsible, not the BotE-team .


Referring to the newer posting:

1. I know. Currently we are building a german wiki page where things are explained intensively. Still, writing it in english requires others to do that (we simply lack the time, other things have higher priority). This site here has a wiki btw.. Once everything is completed (in german), it will be implemented in the game as an encyclopedia to look things up quickly.

2. well, demands when at war are more a fun thing. it's for people who think they might please the enemy and have him end the war by that gift respectively fulfilled demand. No reason not to have it in the game. Of course the professional player is more like amused/annoyed. Maybe six times in a row is a bit much, you're right .

3. communication grid has no effect in Alpha 5.1 . it comes with Alpha6. Well, there was a way (and still is). You needed to make (counter-)gifts to your own minor (you see the barometer falling down slightly when the enemy makes gifts, although I know, no one checks it regularly, maybe a news report message would be good). In Alpha6, it's much harder to bribe, especially when you are the Coalition of Planets, they reduce the effective amount of bribing money by 90% . Plus, at alpha7 or later, it is planned to have credits/resources from failed bribes being confiscated and relayed to the Major in question (not every failed attempt, but a certain percentage). Then you will think twice before you make your enemy rich .

4. Mrd. is the german abbr. for bn. It's an old english one too, stands for Milliard. Populations are like on earth (scaled to size) and since we have like 7 bn...

6. I don't think so. You can have trade treaties and still rob and steal. You just shouldn't expect the treaty to last much longer then.. Other thing is when you have an explicit non-aggression pact (or higher). Then it is explicitly forbidden to do such acts.

7. you need to click on the text on the right. This switches to aft and side launchers. Same with laser cannons. (yes, it could be made easier for the player )


I know the drill actually . Constructive criticism is exactly what we want. Active participation even more so..