I was just wondering what every thinks should be the most important aspect of Botf 2..like what should be most improved or added from the original. Personally I think it should be the AI, god knows it was woefull in the original.[/b]

AI
Being able to have only 9 ships in a group.
The crappy autosave.
How bitchy it was to mod.
The Ferengi
Gameplay lag
Constant crashing in multiplayer (at least for me)
Having to kill the Crystal entity 4 times in one game.
Being able to shovel money on a minor that hates you, and 6 turns later they are worshipful (another reason why I disliked the Ferengi)
The fact that there was only 1 positive random event in the game.
Having a great game ruined when the Borg come along and wipe out all my comeptition.
When on one turn the minor had one planet in their system colonised, with a max pop of 40, and the next turn all planets were colonized, with a max population of 400.
A star going 'nova'.
The Andorians race pic.

Oh wait, I was only supposed to list one thing I disliked and wanted changed. Well then I'd have to go with AI as well.

Mine would have to be what I call the "gigantic" aspect
Gigantic map, gigantic amount of randoms, gigantic about of minors, gigantically packed and awesome game all and all.
As you can see this is very vague aspect, but that's how it is.

*AI
*The map size needs to be as big as possible
*The lack of choice in diplomacy
*Cloaked ships can be seen in battle and cant choose whether or not they want to decloak at any time
*Lack of planets
*Maintanance costs sucked.

But again main 1 is AI

I can't wait for the battle sequences. And there will be lots of them!

Can't wait for the in-game movies as well. I know, i've seen them all, but it's gonna be great to see them in-game.

of course fix the bugs, but the minor race population "jump" is not really a bug, it always happens if you just let them grow, it would happen a 2. time if you wait long enough and i think its a great tactical aspect. not realistic but still belongs to the game

Well, i dont know about anybody else, but the minor race 'jump', is nothing more than a bug to me. If they grew at a steady pace until they reached their max population, that would be one thing. But it will really piss me off when I'm trying to conquer a race early in the game, and while I'm one turn away, they are at their lowest pop level, and one turn later they have all planets in their system colonized and completely populated.

I know it would not be easy for the game to let each minor grow slowly, but Damnit!, thats how it shoulda been done.

The reason for those jumps was just to decrease the time it takes to process a turn. If the game has to calculate the growth and construction for each minor race, each turn, it takes a long while to process the turns.

Oh boy...BOTF could have taken even longer for a turn to process?

I knew the reason for it, but I never thought of the implications before... <shudder BOTF being even slower shudder>

id love to see the memory leak plugged, that in itself would fix the AI, decrease the lag, lessen the crash problems of multiplayer games, would also mean you could have each indevidual ship aim and fire and not "everyone shoots at the sodding huge static borg cube and misses", planets could evolve per turn etc etc..

I know why they did it. Still doesnt make it any less stupid/annoying/infuriating.

I mean they could have atleast had the minors mae a few smaller 'jumps'. You know, maybe three or four 'jumps' and then the race would be at max, not just one gaint leap.

No arguments there...

...No arguments from over here either. This is one of the myriad of reasons why we want BOTF2 after all...

I agree with all this, especially that there should be more diplomatic options (a barter tool, perhaps? Trade one sector for another, give up colonies, etc. Better yet, a tribute or conditional surrender option.), and definitely more combat options, especially regarding cloaked ships. (and how uncloaked ships deal with them. Example; there is a three-way battle, one cloaked ship, two uncloaked. Why can't the uncloaked ships choose their orders against each other?

To make a rant short, I want more diplomatic options. Battle could be improved, but it's not my main gripe (how can we Romulans be manipulative when the diplomacy screen is entirely lacking in subtlety?)

Being able to unsult the other races.
Being able to threaten them if they get to close to my domain, like they do us in play.

something along those lines. The rest you mentioned above I concur with totally.


*Edit* Also to be able to back up 1 turn when you do amove you didn't want to do, but you hit the turn button too soon.

*Edit2* One more thing. you have a badly damaged ship, be able to tow it or at least abandon the crew off then blow it up yourself.

In game movies? What will they be? When will they appear?

I know I read someting about a movie when the first of a new type of ship is commissioned.

the jerky intro to BOTF!

does it jerk on anyoen elses PC? never worked on any of mine haha!

Well it was originally planned that some of the movies that were in the Starship Creator Warp 2 program were going to be in the game (Thanks to me and Iwulff)

I haven't heard anything since I sent them to Jigalypuff though, so I honestly don't know if they are still being used.

Shame really, coz there is some good stuff. They were all screen captures from DS9 and Voyager. There was stuff like the Federation fleet, laying the minefield (And blowing it up) the Omega particle, the Timeship, species 8472, Bioship/Borg battles, DS9 closeups, Klingon ship flybys, Marquis shuttles, the Wormhole...loads of stuff (51 movies)

Thinking about it, i'm surprised how long it took people to notice that part of my post...

...

Dabomb, the very first time I ever played BOTF, the intro movie wasn't jerky, but it certainly is now. It must be something to do with the normal wear and tear of the CD.

51 movies!?!?!?! Wow .... very, very cool. If they're not in the game then you should put them somewhere so we can download them!!!!

They aren't movies in the sense of First contact or Harry Potter - they are just screen captures, like I said.

All of them are less than about 10 seconds each, and they can be a bit fiddly to watch, since they are all Quicktime movies (Which my computer apparently hates, since they often crash)

Some of them have no sound at all, and some of them have little snippets of the music that was part of the episode, so they are definitely screenies.

I could email them if you want, but there isn't any point in them, except as part of a game or something.

all good ideas, but I am not sure about the going back if u mess up a turn. Can you go back in time in life? (though botf isnt real life, u get my point :p)

lol harry potter trek movie, now there's an idea that would wake innocent trekkies with a scream...

Yea got your thought. I knew it was reaching, but wanted to toss it out there.

Well Far be it to dispute everyone, but the Ferengi should stay because of the time frame of when the game takes place. However, Because the game is suposed to take place in the entire Galaxy, and all the playable races exis in about one and a quarter of it, you get an inconsistancy. Soo this is sloved by adding more playable races from all quadrents of the galaxy.not including the Borg.... For obvious reason of balance. they are just good and dandy randomly showing up and stirring up trouble........ the way it should be. You all should do like the sequil of BOTF is doing, just add 6 or 7 playable races and work from there.

Frausto

Well the Ferengi are gonna be in the game as a minor race (They are in the minor races list)

A lot of people are anti-Ferengi, simply because of the way they were portrayed in the original game. They were simply overpowered, and shown to be as strong (And in some cases even stronger) than the other powers.

This totally &(^%$! off a lot of people, and due to wanting a balance, is the reason why they are no longer a Major Empire. (It is also the reason why there were several Dominion mods for BOTF1)

The Ferengi are still gonna be in the game as a minor race, but this is simply because people want to have the Galaxt filled with the races we all hate and love. (There were one or two people who also fought for them, although I people tend to 'forget' this...)

One or two of the races are still being ummed and ahhed about at the moment, due to the random events and things.

An example of this is the Krenim (The people who built the Timeship in the Voyager episodes Year of Hell)

We are thinking about having the Timeship as a random event - so it wouldn't make sense to have them in as an actual race as well, unless you get to fight the ship itself (And that causes other problems and a lot more programming)

Whilst there are few races that are being discussed in this way, one or two may not make it in the final release. The list of minor races is pretty extensive already though (Between 200 and 250 minor races I believe) so the loss of one or two to improve other aspects of the game is a compromise I am happy with.

Rest assured though, unless some new argument against the Ferengi appears, they will be in the game in some shape or form.

theres lots id like fixed but the one overlooked by this thread is intelligence and the ability for carassians and romulans to abuse it in multiplayer to the point whrer they could steel 2-3 ships a turn and win the game without a fleet.

Well I don't think that is worth mentioning...I mean a true Romulan wouldn't do that sort of thing...

They'd leave 'evidence' that the ship(s) had been 'destroyed' first!

I thought this was the sequel.

I've been wasting all my time these past months on the wrong site!

Of course the “AI� in the original game wasn’t worth the name.

Apart from that problem which absolutely has to be resolved there is another point that I would like to focus on. It’s the question of what I can do with my ships. Because in the end it’s all about the fleet; research, sabotage, diplomacy, resources, officers, minor races … everything that is built or done in the game is because it will directly or indirectly contribute to a better or larger fleet. So what I am saying is that I want to be able to do something with my ships other than just amass them in a system and wait for a sufficiently big number to one day overrun my enemies. In the original game this was almost everything that could be done with ships:
Crew training took far too long (I’d prefer a much faster training – let’s say 2-3 turns for experience level 2, another 4-5 turns for experience level 3; whereas the higher experience levels should not be reached by theoretical training but only in real combat (although there could be an exception for Starfleet because Starfleet depends more on theoretical training than the other, rather aggressive empires and could therefore train up to experience level 4). The raid option was never really interesting because it was not at all efficient. The intercept option was good, though due to the fact that it was impossible to make groups of more than 9 ships, it was a rather suicidal mission…

To sum it up, combat ships in the original game were quite boring because they had nothing to do. Luckily there were troop transports and colony ships, that could at least terraform, colonize, construct outposts and invade systems.

In the new game (thanks to everyone who is in any way involved in this great project!!! ) I’d like some more choices of what to do with my ships, e.g.:
- Explore (not new, but why not have a auto-explore-function, so that I don’t always have to give orders to scouts)
- Amass huge battle fleets (not new either)
- Border patrol (auto-function as well? Let’s say every unit (be it one ship or ten ships) which is given the order to patrol borders adds points to internal security up to a certain maximum bonus, because it makes the own territory harder to be infiltrated by foreign agents. This could be a job only to be performed by destroyers, which would be one more reason to build them and not always just cruisers! That fact that the internal security bonus depends on how many units patrol the borders and not how many ships there are in those units means you could easily deploy only single destroyers to that task. The problem is that border patrol can be dangerous and for every unit engaged in that duty there could be a certain risk per turn of being destroyed, the risk depending on how many ships there are in the unit (more ships = less risk) and how powerful the enemy empires are (less powerful = less risk).
- Patrol inside my own territory to deter pirates, smugglers etc. (could give some bonus to trade routes (more security = more trade = more wealth); also a job for destroyers only! There could also be a danger to that duty)
- Defend minor races (not totally new, but I want them to be grateful for what I do!)
- Do research
- Be trained (in the way mentioned above)
- Escort ships (e.g. some minor race diplomat which will be grateful for that) or escort my own vulnerable ships (once more not only against enemy empires but also to protect them from pirates etc. e.g. there could be certain danger for vulnerable ships to travel alone – let’s say a 1:20 chance of being destroyed)
- Help minor races with my hospital ships (I like those!)
- Build mine fields (a job for troop transports) and respectively take them down (also a job for troop transports)
- Raid (being more effective than in the original game)
- Intercept (with more than nine ships; this has nothing to do with the patrol duty I described above; the intercept option is directed against enemy units (as it always was) whereas patrol duty (border or internal) is directed against enemy spy ships, pirates, smugglers etc. i.e. ships that cannot be seen on the map.
- And - as always - terraform (also for affiliated minor races), colonize, build outposts and invade systems.

OK, that was much to read. Thanks for the patience and let me know what you think about all of this! How much can be realized? Did I forget anything? Will some of this already be implemented?

Lol im sorry i mistyped that its not THE sequil, its another project like you guys are working on but by some other crazy gamers.

when you replyed i had realised i made it look like A nonexistant Official release.