I'll do my best to answer them for you, Winterhawk. The other devs my have more knowledge about some of them than me though.

1) The interfaces are not complete...yet. I've got a couple of example ones on my computer, but i'm not sure if the other devs want to keep those secret until it has been finalised or not.

We had some problems with the LCARS style and the colour scheme, as well as the inclusion of extra screens during the process, which meant we had to start from scratch to ensure it all worked out properly.

These problems have almost been sorted out though. I can tell you that the interfaces will be designed to support a much higher resolution than BOTF had, and they might even be scaled so that they can support pretty much any resolution above 1024x768. We're still deciding on that point.


2) 8O

Please don't tell me you missed the gigantic thread on this?!

Yes, we've got all the race descriptions done, and we've got pictures. There are 7 races that we either can't think of a use for, haven't got pictures, or know nothing about though. These are being saved as "potential" races.

If you want to read up on the races, their structures, and the ships that they have, then check out

The database is the modern equivalent of TWAAO, if you remember what that was.


3) We've had discussions on this, and we did decide that there would be many more start-of-game options, such as varying map sizes more, vary the number of races more, and so on.

To my knowledge nothing concrete was actually decided though. The devs have definitely got these matters in their minds though, and want the same things themselves, so I imagine they will be in even without a proper decision-making discussion.


4) I'm not really sure what you're asking here. I'm posting the ships as people send me screenies and let me know they're done - but if people don't tell me, I don't know. There are still plenty of models that need to be done, but the final ship lists are complete.

Many of the new designs that we've created to fill in the ship list gaps are free-reign -the modellers/designers can do what they want with them, as long as it A) looks cool but practical and B) looks like it really was designed by the race it is meant for.


5) This one is most certainly aimed at me!

No, the random events aren't finalised for a number of reasons:

A) I'm very busy with stuff at the moment.
B) I'm mostly doing them on my own. I've had help off OmniQ and Captain_Billy_Bacon in the the past, with additional ideas coming from Dafedz, but 99% of them have been typed up by me.
C) I'm "localising" them for each of the races - every Empire will have their own personalised message for each event - so the Klingons have Klingon curses spread throughout their messages, whilst the Romulans frequently mention the Tal'Shiar. This one point has effectively pentrupled the size of the random events on its own!
D) The random events list was made to have every single random event that could possibly be conceived - and it's still growing! This gives the various programmers the scope that they need from a programming perspective. They will pick-and-chose the events that they themselves think will be possible to program - and some of them may not even be used! I still have to make message for them so that they are ready if the time comes though!


6) There was talk that during diplomacy, the AI would be able to make really simple responses to messages you send it - eg. you type a message including the word "war", and the race will think you're declaring war and instantly send a message in response.

This was mentioned by Jig as a possibility for inclusion in his New Beginnings game, but whether this is truly programmable or something that has actually been implemented, I honestly don't know.

The AI is one of the features that the devs really know needs improvement though, so they will focus on it.


7) Just because a ship lose its flagship status, doesn't mean you can't simply give it another 70-year mission.

The only problem with that is your flagship will be 140 years out-of-date and will be crewed by skeletons!

Na, the reason for the 70-year limit is quite simply that the flagship is generally the best ship - and that isn't going to be a vessel that is using 140-year-old technology, is it?

Thanks for the Info Matress,

A bummer about the LCARS, but understandable, They did look complex,
however I loved the designs.

LOL, No I read the 17 page thread from end to end. I was looking for something non tech to lend a hand with. Was thinking this might be something! Perhaps not. lol

Thanks for the reply on #3. sounds like we will have a great list of options to use!

As I stated the Ships are being built as I posted. Not an infraction pointed at anyone. It was one thing I was sure a bunch of players were busy on. I'm not any good at building, or I would have jumped right in to that one!

Dealing with the randoms, You need help? Speak up thier Fellow Rom! I'm eager to get my fingers stiff writing things up. I'm happy to confer with you at any time. That is if you would like to have the extra help.

For #6 If the Devs could use ideas as for what to say I would enjoy making a few hundred line up for them to choose from. At least it would save them from having to do even more thinking and e-mailing 60,000 ideas to each other. lol Just a thought!


#7 thanks for the info on the Flagship life. In BOTF I I kinda make my own ( as in I pick one with a cool name and build a fleet to go with it) then I let it fly. !! lol but then again My play on any given game runs way past 2000 turns. lol So I can see that a ship would be in a sence worn out! lol thanks for the info!

Again if I can even help fi something as simple as some text writing Let me know! I'm always ready to lend a hand!

(Sure beats some of the really stupid posts that I made way back when I first started) ( Man were they dumb! LOL)

Lol I love going back and reading

I thought BOTF2 was called ROTF at the time and SOM hated me...

Even back then though, I was making pretty big posts...little has changed...

...

Any help people could give me with the random events would be very much appreciated. I would prefer it if any updates that you - or anyone else - does were emailed to me rather than posted though.

Send them to grimmedbythereapernew@yahoo.co.uk

Please make the changes to the actual document itself, rather than simply sending just the new events/messages/updates - i've got that compares different versions of a file so I can quickly find any differences.

Matress,

Excellent! Now I can actually lend a helping hand to this awesome game!
i'll be reading the info and repling back to you shortly!

Thanks again!

What happens if you've researched all there is to research and your last ship advancement was 350 turns ago? (I like big battles with big ships).

Hadn't thought of that, to be honest. Dafedz has balanced all the tech levels and stuff to ensure that a game will last a long time - much longer than in BOTF.

There are two additional tech levels as well, making 12 instead of 10.

In BOTF, when you ran out of techs, you moved onto "future technologies". These technolgies continued giving you the 2% bonus per level that all the other techs did, but were otherwise useless. I usually focus all my research into Food, Energy, or Construction, or even stop researching altogether and put the people into extra intel centers and sabotage my enemies into oblivion.

What else can you really do though? The only way to avoid this problem would be to have infinite technolgies and infinite content, which is obviously impossible...