Eh, the Federation was able to intercept the Borg in First Contact in the Sol system. According to MoE (I think, correct me if I'm wrong), the Borg will simply select an advanced, high population colony to beat into submission. Thus, I was thinking along the same lines as the movie. They knew the Borg were headed to Earth, they amassed a fleet, and then beat the crap out of them.

Requiring X number of ships to be available will be a major problem as different ships have different strengths. 3 Enterprise-era ships is a lot different than 3 Soverigns. There also might be the problem of having your fleet no where near the Borg's destination and unable to reach the planet in time. Personally, what would be cool is if the Borg's power scaled as the empires around them scaled. For example, only minor Borg ships, perhaps spheres or even weaker during the Enterprise era (not canon, but I don't really care, plus it's a random event). As the average technology level of all the empires increases, the strength of the Borg ships increase as well. However, I'm starting to think that this would become rather complicated, and the Borg are really an exception. There are other catastrophic disasters such as the Crystaline Entity which will always be of the same strength no matter what happens, plus anything else that I can't think of right now.

I guess the Borg are a poor example, but they're probably the most familiar random event that could trigger an evacuation. And I'm kinda leary about creating different evacuation criteria based on the random event. The only things that should probably change is the target system and how many turns you have. Too many exceptions will make the evacuation system complex, which will become a burden to more casual players.

As for the Borg themselves, they HAVE to be interceptable. That implies that they HAVE to be detectable. Canon or not, the Borg will simply be too strong to allow to get halfway into your territory without anyone knowing, so some nurfing is in order. Movement speed is really the best advantage in BoTF games imo, so that should get nurfed to a more reasonable amount of squares. I think MoE already has this all planned out and might be able to shed more light on it.

Now that I think on it, I'd expect the Borg and Crystaline Entity and other space-traveling entities that are capable of massive destruction would probably use the same game system with a few differences: strength, speed, and system selection process. So KISS, I think, is the way to go.

Ok, that is some AWESOME feedback, MoE. Doubling production costs is definitely a nice route to take which is inline of what I was thinking. How would you expect the costs to normalize with a typical colony? Would it last so many turns, or be decreased every few turns over time until it's back to the base costs?

Heh, I'm glad you like the Borg idea. However, I question it's ability to be implimented. Well, more like the possibility of it being implimented (it can be implimented). For starters, there needs to be a measuring stick for technology levels. Some sort of score or something, and then a chart that contains technology score ranges and which Borg vessel to send when the event occurs.

Actually, now that I have typed that out and am thinking on it, that's ridiculously easy to do. I'm going to assume that random events such as the Borg or Crystaline Entity will follow a typical template for when they are called. Thus, the only change to the Borg random event that would differ from any other alien random event would be simply picking the correct ship from the table and ensuring an appropriate system is selected. Done. The hardest part (and it shouldn't be that hard) to figure out would be approrpiate technology score ranges for each vessel. Hmm, I like....

Perhaps the complication is within itself. I understand that with the Tech we have today versus when BOTF I was created that have been leaps and bounds in programing. But is it really nessassary to have something that on the surface seems doable, then when you discuss the deep roots shows compiled complicatons. Maybe it's me be this almost looks to be going overboard. Why have refugee ships at all? We didn't have it before and we all got along with it fine. What is making this so different? Sometimes "Brainstorming" collective minds causes more problems then a general concurrence of a basic elemental base. If this makes any sence to you all.

This is making me wonder if I should have started the post at all. LOL
[ I say this for all programmers, whos hair is turning white while they design and format this game for us to play]

I here by raise my glass of Water in toast to all the programers whom are working on building this fantastic game nodule! CHEERS!

this is indeed a problem. But the programmer must make the final decision and determine the things that can and can't be implemented. Listening to the fans is good but a developer should know what is possible and good for the game.

Ultimately, it is Mstrobel's call. However, part of the game design was to allow evacuations to occur, although there were little details after that (which is why this conversation is so great).

From what has been said, it appears Mstrobel is fine, at this point, to allow starships the ability to evacuate people and technology. It's doable (almost any programming venture is doable), but I am unsure of the cost programming-wise. Mstrobel, of course, would have a better idea on that, but he seems ok with the concept so far.

So, I'm going to assume that evacuations will make it in. Now comes the part of restricting it. Programming the order should be possible, as well as subtracting population and buildings from systems and storing them on the evacuation ships. So now it's a matter of determining what makes the evacuation order available to be clicked on.

The only idea I have is that the random event functions would enable the evacuation button. It can easily be some sort of flag for each random event. AllowEvacuation = true means that the targeted system can be evacuated. AllowEvacuation = false means it can't (and random events that are not catastrophic will probably be equal to false). That is increadibly easy to include, DEPENDING on how the random events are programmed (which I don't know).

That way, the evacuation functions would look for that flag when the random event is triggered, and then enable evacuation for that system. It's pretty easy in theory to do. Chances are, however, that random events and evacuations won't be part of the game until it's almost ready for an early beta test.

But that doesn't stop us from talking about.

There also seems to be some confusion on complicated to program and complicate to use. There's a huge difference that's very important, especially to people who might be casual video gamers and/or Star Trek fans. If we intend to make this game as popular as possible, then the different aspects of the game need to be simple to use. Combat needs to be simple. System management needs to be simple. Evacuations need to be simple.

If we attempt to set up criteria for evacuations to account for any possible event where we think it could be useful, it's adding complexity to it. And if it's too restrictive or complicated, it will simply be ignored. What we need to do is determine some simple criteria where evacuations can take place and some simple bonuses and drawbacks to utilizing it.

If the stars need to align in a certain order and you can only evacuate on even turns, and only between 10 am and 5 pm, then it will be a mechanic that will be completely lost on more casual gamers/fans, and may even turn them away from the game. I have stopped playing games simply because they were too complicated to use.

Let Strobel worry about the programming complication (I sometimes try to guess, I probably shouldn't, but I like trying to guess :p). And sometimes I try to help explain my idea by using some logicial programming steps (I did earlier in this post). But don't look too far into it when I do it; I often attempt to visualize what the program is doing or should do and it helps expand my thought process (like signing off on the ever-increasing strength of the borg random event). And it is entirely possible that I'm completely wrong. But typing things and talking about them in some logical order of what and how it could be done helps me think things through.

The reason why I'm thinking of a penalty for evacuations is to fight against the following example and any others that are simiiar in nature:

An alien entity is headed to the Sol system to wreak havoc and destruction. It must surely be stopped, or evacuate what you can!

Player things to himself:

"Oh no, what shall I and my giant fleet of destructive destruction ever going to do? Well, I can obviously stop it, but there's a couple empty systems nearby that I was going to colonize soon. Eh, I'll just take the opportunity to evacuate some people from Sol, grab a couple badass farms and replictors, and go throw them over there with a huge advantage over what the colonists could do. Then I'll vaporize the alien and continue conquring the galaxy with a couple of new "colonies" that are way ahead of where they should be, and I'll take 5 turns to rebuild the structures I moved from Sol."

That seems like an abuse of a game mechanic to me. Either evacuations need get penalized or restricted in some way, or colony ships need to have an obvious bonus. In this example, Sol is never in any danger due to the player's fleet. However, the player would benefit from evacuating population and buildings from Sol anyways.

Also, it'll be impossible to determine when a system is able to be evacuated based on the size of the player's fleet because of gameplay issues. The player may need their fleet elsewhere and a) can't get there in time or b) are needed to defend the Romulans that are trying to take advantage of the situation or c) some other reason I can't think of.

So, the freedom to evacuate during a catastrophic event *needs* to be there. But there has to be something that would prevent a player, who is perfectly capable of handling the event, from using it as an opportunity to create colonies with advanced buildings from their developed system when a random event is targeting it. The developed system would probably take only a couple turns to repopulate to max and rebuild the lost buildings, so there's hardly any loss.

The player has a) gained a (or several) new colony(ies) with some advanced structures not normally allowed with colony ships b) defended against the random event and c) perserved their advanced system with the only loss being a few units of population and some structures, both of which are easily replaceable for a developed system.

Again I have to ask this as it is something I see as happening during gameplay and is possable. But was most likly overlooked.

[ Has anyone thought of the rate of loss of population per turn as the system effected waits for help? (something to think on)

Another thought occured to me. Let us suppose I'm playing Klingon and either the A.I. or other players are engaged. Lets say I have a strong alliance with the any of the other majors. Now a "Natural Disaster happens in one of my systems, but my fleet(s)/ships are too far out to preform a rescue mission. Here Are my Questions;
1. Can I request assisstance from my ally, and can they help but only on a very limited basis. (limited meaning they could use transports, larger warships, but no colony ships, and can only travel to the closest uninhabed system)
2. Can they offer assistance to me, as a gesture of strong relatons with a small bonus to them for the effort if accepted.

3. They could refuse to help, with no penality to them, But should I refuse help I would lose popular support (but only slightly) for a limited amount of turns.

(think in real time here) IF you offered to help me after whatever happened and I refused or did not reply our news agencies would get wind of this and my leadership would be questioned by my own people, due to the fact that I was able to save 10,000 out of 45,000, when with your help, I could have saved 38,000.... Kinda see what I'm getting at here?]


As a variable to this dicussion in whole I see it as making sence. Or could this also end up being a type of MOD?..