..is not that good. I will explain what I came upon and people here can tell me if I was just a newbie or this things are really missing.

I downloaded yesterday the Alpha5.1 english version of BotE. All exited since I am a great fan of BotF.

Chose "Federation" and played at default difficulty.
Negative:
1. UI was strange, more unfriendly and clunky then BotF. Right click to get to the menu was missing and the game really needs that. Needing to click of menu left all the time got tedious fast. Some automation in system view is needed. If I forget to put something to build turns can go by and my system does nothing. Also I should be able to click Buy button from any point in that view where I can see that is currently in the build queue. Good UI is supposed to reduce the amount of needless clicking.

2. I noticed this as soon as I had two systems. I could not find a way to move to another system directly from the System View. Only way was to go to Galaxy view and then double click on another system. If this feature is not in the game it is one of the 3 missing that bothered me most. If it is I could not find it

3. New resources in the game. I did not like it, for me BotF was about combat. System building was to produce ships so I can go crush my opposition or to produce ships so I could scrap them and bribe others. When I want to bother with many resources I play Civilization or Settlers.
3a. On a side note, since they are already in the game they really need to be named differently. There are 3 resourced whose names start with D and they are similar. I spent half the time trying to figure out which is which. Give each resource a different name with a different starting letter.
3b. UI around sending resources to other systems is clunky. There should be easy ways to do it. If anyone every played Tribalwars they need to copy their system at least if not better.

4. Game had no combat. Combat was about an event message that said who won. Not even a screen that tells me who is fighting who and ask me to fight, hail or run away. If there was a way to get to see combat I did not find it.

Let me leave some positive remarks.
1. Turns went pretty fast and I got enough info about events.
2. Research was done well, and that special research thing was a nice surprise.
3. I liked ship customization options although I didn't play with it too much.
4. Ship models looked pretty in build view pictures.
5. The Trade options are cool with the stock market and prices changing when you buy or sell resources. Although I do not like the additional resources management this was cool.

Altogether I will check out this game again in a year and hope many of this things are better

1. Right-click menu will remain to code-experienced modders to implement it. We will concentrate on the other missing parts. Buying from Empire->Systems view will probably come at any time. There might be other ways implemented like extra mouse buttons for switching through menus on left side or cursor up and down to do that. Other possibilities are mouse gestures that you might know from Firefox or Opera browser, i.e. a right-click menu without the graphical representation of it but just plain mouse movement with pressed-down right mouse button.

For automization, go to Empire->Systems and press A after having left-clicked on a system you want botf-style Auto-Build to take over management. That way a system will never run an empty queue. Once there is an empty queue, auto-build will kick in and fill it with something it finds adequate.

If you don't want resources in-game just take buildings editor and mod all resource costs and mines out of the game (take 0 as value everywhere the resource plays a role). The game is fully playable and balanced that way. There's also a ship editor to remove resource costs from all ships.

2. You can use your third mouse buttons (the ones at the sides) or keyboard cursors left and right to switch between systems.

3. Renaming resources is a matter of seconds with the building editor provided. I don't know tribal wars, maybe you can explain a bit further what's better there.

4. Combat screen is one of the next things to be implemented. There is already a combat simulator which has a graphical frontend (though very old-style graphics). Comes with one of the next versions. Usually we had that implemented earlier cause it is an important feature of the game but our netcode master was away and only recently we got full access to modify (our own) code .


Try it out a bit further. The UI isn't that bad and shifting around resources becomes easier in late-game with the distributor facility.

1. This automation could use a clickable button on the build UI of system view, not just a shortcut.

About resources, at this point with no combat modifying the game is pointless, it will be even more empty
At least this way I can plan Colonization(that game was all about resource trade between your cities) is space

2. Eh, I never use my 3rd mouse button for anything, and as an idiot I am I tried the up/down keys but not left/right

3. Tribalwars is a web based mass multiplayer online real time strategy game. One of the important parts of the game is managing 3 resources you gather in the game and trading those between your villages so they all grow fast. What they got there are couple of nice list views.
On one you can view all your villages on one screen and see how much of each resource they have and what is the maximum they can hold. This screen also provides many other useful info like what is being produced and how close are you to the population limit of that village (in BotE that would be the available workers compared to max workers for that system).
The other screen specialized for sending/receiving resources allows you to send resources to any of your villages where you can click on a little button that opens up a popup screen which lists all your villages with name and current amount of each resource as well as the maximum their warehouses can hold. Since the whole UI is made in such a way that you can see the resources in the current village you are visiting you always have a clear view of both your origin and destination resources. (I will try to post some screenshots some time later)
This second one BotE could use. Now in BotE I was sending stuff to the common storehouse and removing it from there in another village. Needlessly complicated, you should be able to send resources whereever you want and only have them travel longer if the target is farther away.

Where can I get this building editor?

4. The game feels a little empty without that. The game would definitely need at least something like that screen for me to play it more.
I quit some other 4x space games after figuring they got no space combat. MoO2 was the best game for me, although space combat was on the side of the players. BotF had great combat as well but not enough modularity. After a while you could predict the result all combats before you start the fight due to all ships always being the same and always preforming the same.

1. sure, just a matter of not forgetting about it during coding which happens sometimes .

About resources and combat, well there is an automatic ship combat running in the background which is actually 3D, so it's not just rolling a dice or rock-paper-scissors. Only thing missing is an adequate 2D or 3D representation and of course tactical options like hailing, attack or withdrawal.

3. I assume you noticed the resource routes right beside the trade routes in system trade view already. So there are other ways than to use global storage which costs 15% per turn on loaded-up resources btw.. I rather use it scarcely, a titanium resource route from your homeworld to your 1st colony is more than enough at the beginning. And also later-on if you're planning it strategically good enough then it's not that much work to keep your systems supplied with everything they need without much clicking. It's all about getting accustomed to it.

When laying a resource route (also with trade routes), you're right, there are some pop-up infos missing. One could show both start system resources and a list of systems with their amount of resources instead of laying the route blank with no information on map. But since you know that your resource is missing somewhere you can lay it one-by-one very quickly. What's missing is an english manual or a collection of valuable tips for the player so he doesn't miss all the things the game has to offer. Some are a bit more hidden than others.

Resource routes are linking two system depots together, but only one-way.

The building editor as well as ship editor are within bote subfolders: ..\bote\data\buildings\ or ....\ships\ . But beware, it's a lot of work since there are more than 800 buildings in the list. Besides as you already said it, the game could become quite empty when doing so. That's one reason why we added it in the first place.

4. If tactical (2D, 3D) space combat is that important to you well then you're right it's better for you to wait a while before that comes in. But if botf on auto-combat is enough for you, bote has a lot to offer. The AI will keep you busy, on one or the other difficulty level, I'm sure of that .

About botf tactical combat, well that's exactly what's the problem with such combat modes, it's not that easy to make it non-predictable. In BotF, you just had to take a bunch of heavy destroyers or Ferengi Raider II and set them 1st turn on fly-by, and all the other turns - when they were close enough to the enemy - on Evade which had the effect that the enemy didn't hit them and they were able to take them out one-by-one. Took a little longer in time but did let you win nearly every battle no matter how bad the odds. With auto-combat, that could not happen.

I applaude those who have accomplished so much on this game. I LOVE BOTF and this game has to potential to truly be BOTF2 (legal issues,names-blah!)

One suggestion: In System view when scrolling thru items in the build list, if the resource panel could indicate in RED those resources missing or lacking would help (visibly) rather tham evaluating or cliking on the item only to get a beep.

If the battles programming is to par with what has been accomplished so far . I CAN'T WAIT (But I guess I'll have to-lol)

GREAT WORK - THANK YOU

thx. nice idea btw. I also pondered with the idea of adding a text at the bottom panel where the "buy this item" text and buttons usually appear. The text could be "x amount of resource a is missing, should we establish a temporary resource route to system y which has z amount of this resource in surplus? OK or cancel". That would make it even easier.

Hi there,

I am also new to this and thought I'd add my 2 cents to these comments as I agree with most of them.

Mainly nr. 1 as the game really could benefit form a right-click navigation option or maybe just a simpler way as the menu on the left takes up too much space and is a little bit awkward.

Also nr 4. For me I don't care if it is a simple quick fix, but not being able to check out the oponents strengths except for the message that a ship has been lost in battle is not very convenient.

As you said they are still in development so I will have to wait, just wish it was sooner rather than later.

There are still a few bugs I noticed (colony text missing, words in german, buildings disappearing from build list) but then it is still in alpha so I can understand. I will post them under the bugs section for a better overview.

Finally, as the OP did, let me finish with some positives:

-I actually like the new resources. It needs a little work (e.g. costs of certian things could be adjusted), renaming so they don't all start with d...
But overall it brings a whole new dimension to the game in terms of strategy and gameplay that I like.

-The minor races are great. Again, needs some work (e.g. so that not everyone either worships or hates you), but the characters, design, detail are excellently worked out and I appreciate the effort.

-I also appreciated the new research: the new buildings and their design/descriptions.
-ship design I also did little with but I'm sure there's people that appreciate it.

I'll be sure to make some comments further down the line and keep up the good work!

yeah I guess, I'm always in favor of mouse gestures for that matter like in Firefox or Opera but I guess it's not that easy to implement with our codebase unfortunately.

If you got scouts in the area you can see the opponent's presumable strengths by checking out all nearby sectors. Of course it's not the real thing. That comes with the tactical option screen which I don't know when it is gonna be implemented. Right now SirP has finished the anomalies and adapts the AI to cope with them. Then some random events will get implemented and I guess after that a combat information screen is top on priority.

Deritium could be renamed, that's right . Deuterium and Duranium sound fine for me. Any suggestions?

Actually they don't all hate or worship you. Especially the "un-corrupt" ones, i.e. those that need lots of credits to be persuaded, can stay like neutral for a long, long time if not ever. Their willingness to change diplomatic status with you correlates with their own population strength so it can happen that some minors are practically not moving in terms of diplomacy. But of course, the system with gifts and credits and bribing is quite linear so to speak. Random events and diplomatic mishaps in that respect will hopefully change that a little bit.

Ship design is quite useful, especially when you got minors with ships on your side. Just try a Coalition cruiser with Brane torpedos. They rule the battlefield .

wikipedia has a few suggestions, both Star Trek and general fiction materials

I would suggest definately keep Duranium but maybe change deritium to Latinum? or does that bring it too close to star trek? there are other ways to hint to star trek too without 'stealing' from the show e.g. name a character after it: picardium, odoide, etc. just a thought.

well i'd like to have a name less obviously taken from Star Trek. Also Latinum are basically Ferengi credits in Star Trek so this could lead to confusion.

Didn't find anything nicely sounding in both lists. Maybe someone gets a good idea someday.

Maybe Xeritium?

Why not simply gold. Who says that in the future we won't be paying with gold.

well it's about an equivalent to Dilithium, not Credits or Latinum as Highway mentioned above, so gold won't fly I guess. Credits are named Credits just like in botf.

Xeritium would sound a bit awkward pronouncing it in English: Siritium...

Hmm, but why do you want to change the name of the Dilithium. It's a real life synonym for the hydrogen isotope also called heavy hydrogen.

no, that one was Deuterium . Tritium is the super heavy hydrogen.

Dilithium is a non-existing molecule in real life consisting of 2 Lithium atoms. Lithium itself exists, but no Di- nor Trilithium, so it's Trek-only. Well technically that counts for Duranium also, but I just like the name so I'm willing to overlook that one.

Yeah, I know, I meant Deuterium.

well, Deuterium stays in-game. No need to change that. Still what to do with Deritium...

When I read this thread I was happy to see that Malvosin regards the name deretium as undesirable, I found the name confusing and lacking in flavor when I first played BotE.

An ideal name would refer to a known or at least theorized real world substance, to increase recognizability by players. The substance should be extremely rare and recognized as having exotic physical properties, to give it flavor. And the name shouldn't start with D.

I would like to propose changing the name deretium to monopoles. Monopoles refer to magnetic monoples, hypothetical particles that possess a single magnetic pole rather than the paired north and south poles of all normal matter. If you are unfamiliar with them just consult wikipedia for more information. Monopoles are a hot topic in speculative physics, and I think possess the desired exotic flavor. If pressed I could probably come up with some plausible technobabble explaining how monopoles are a required catalyst for continuum drives.

I don't know German so can't suggest an equivalent German word. Hopefully monopoles doesn't translate to something starting with D.

It would be "Monopol" too , but it's the same word in german as Monopoly in english so it has an undesired double-meaning. Also, I think it doesn't sound like a real resource, more like a sort of energy.