While I'm still trying to get all caught up on what has been posted since I've been gone, a question has come to mind.

Out of being courious, Where is the Game at this point? I mean, what is finished as far as beginning , middle, end... I remember from years ago when we wrote our programs papyrus and stone, everything took a long time and if you messed up ( a crack in the stone) you had to start all over again.
Yes currectly ships are being designed, and completed. I understand this is a long process.

Is all the basic dialog already written out or in the planning stages for all races? This is reguarding things like first contact, trade demands, ect.

Also, not sure if this would fly but I do have an idea for a type of segment. Instead of the AI saying you met so and so. or just having demands thrown at us, why not have an ambassodor do the work they are supposed to do. Perhaps we can have a limited # of pics to choose from to "create" one ( for major races only) here is an example;

You have encountered the klingons in sector ****. **** They have dispatched an ambassador (pic appears)
to discuss details for surrender ___ or
for offical diplomatic relations__ or
to estlablish trade routes... ect..

During your first meeting, you make a serious blunder and insult the ambassador causing him to storm out screaming in klingon about reprisals.



Could catch all of us off guard as the responces would be generated by the AI (unless your in a multiplayer game).

Just a thought!

Thinking about it , my idea could be a programming nightmare but to me it sounds interesting.

I'm not sure how much the other devs want to let on about the game as of yet, but we've almost decided on the final look of the interfaces, the random events are getting closer to completion every day, and people are still making ships.

The text side of things has so far mostly been up to Dafedz, with me beta-reading it for him. We haven't actually discussed doing that part of the text yet, but I assume things aren't going to change and we'll be doing that one day in the relatively-near future.

The game won't be coming out for at least another 6 months, and I severely doubt it will even be as fast as that. There is much to be done, and we are all simply volunteers - we are doing this in our spare time, around work and life commitments. The game will get done, but people simply cannot expect us to do things as efficiently as a major games studio.

Perghaps I should be a bit more clear. I'm in no hurry as you well know. Just call me a bit nosey ! lol. Tis better to do all things right then to have to fight with glitches.

I pondered such things, due to what seems to me to be little chat actually happeneing. Does anyone but me still play BOTF I ? my current game (unmodded) is at turn 5263. I love to build things up take over everyone then back away and allow them to "try" to come back against me. So far only the klingons and the feds are in alliance against me. Ferengi and Cardi's.. well all they do is whine. lol....( Man I hope that wont happen in the new game! lol)

I know you weren't trying to be pushy or anything, Winterhawk, I just wanted to make a pre-emptive strike against any posts that people might decide to make in this thread along the lines of my last post.

There were times whilst you were away Winterhawk, where things got pretty heated on the forums. I didn't want a recurrence of this to happen again.

I still play BOTF when I can, but my general game-playing time is considerably smaller than it used to be. I'm in uni and i've just started a placement with my local council so i'm basically working. (It's not paid though! )

If you're looking for a game, Winterhawk, just make a thread about it in the General Chat forums. There's plenty of people who will be willing to have a game. Billy and other have arranged games of Armada in the past as well.

You might have even more luck if you arrange it all via the main armadafleetcommand forums, though.

As the time grows near I have dug out my old BOTF disk. It was rescued in the nick of time from plastic eating dust bunnies. Soon I will load it up to refresh my memory.

One thing I would like to see is a minor race you can conquer in a turn. After that though, and as you ignore reconstruction while installing incompetent pro life political appointees to run the place, the minor race degenerates into civil war and insurrection. You get the point. You beat them but bleed your economy supporting the occupation. The terrorist inspired by your attack start eating away at you. You will be unable to deal with other real threats.

Eh, whenever I've subjugated planets, I've noticed one of two things has HAD to happen in BOTF1. Things either must be going 100% swimmingly, or I have to do martial law after every other built structure.

Then again, I don't play the cardassians very often. Their ships make me cry.

Heh, I usually just bribe the hell out of minors and forgo war entirely. The majors are the pains in the butt to hang on to.

Actually, the point of that was to show that, as far as the Federation could tell, a propaganda campaign was started against the Federation to increase tension between them and the Klingons. Oh, and it's the Klingon's who started the campaign.

Now imagine you are the Federation and see:

A propaganda campaign on your system has been started to deterioate your relations with the Klingons. By the way, the Klingon's caused it.

Uhh... right.... Like the Klingons (or any empire) would actually waste time attempting to sabotage their own relationship with you. I *might* see the Romulans using it as a wierd reverse-psychology ploy, but even they would probably prefer to defer all attention away from themselves as much as possible.

The intilligence event just doesn't make much sense.

It would still work if you just tweaked it a bit - instead of "relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire have deteriorated because the Klingon agents were caught spreading propaganda within the Federation", you could program it so that another non-involved race always gets pulled in - eg. "relations between the Federation and the Klingons have deteriorated. Evidence has been planted to implicate the Cardassians".

Of course, as Iwulff said, the flip side would have to work as well - and if you're involving three other Empires, this would worsen your relations with all three of them if you were discovered! 8O

Well, in all honesty... the event popped up and informed me of a convert op against the Feds and asked who to implicate. Since they were allied with the Klingons and I wanted to make them look bad at each and every oppurtunity (I had 100% sabotage into the Feds, so I got to pick someone to blame, each time I selected the Klingons, A LOT), this really was a good thing for me since it got a double-dose. Propaganda was spread in a Federation system that eroded support for the Klingons. And just to stick it home, I blamed the Klingon's themselves for it. Haha!

But it still makes zero sense. In all honesty, the game should determine the type of sabotage before prompting the user to blame someone. Thus, the game could disable Klingons in this example as a selectable race to defer blame to.

I don't think I'd want to implicate myself Winterhawk. If I were the Feds and I saw evidence that implicated the Roms, I'd blame the Roms, even if they planted that evidence themselves.

Err, in reality that'd be correct because then you could claim "foul" when you're really at fault.

However, this is a game. The Federation AI will see: "-reputation with Klingons because of propaganda, -reputation with Klingons because of sabotage fault".

Programming reverse pschology for a computer is an entire program in of itself.