i was reading another post about cloaking and that and i saw somethin sayin about the klingons developing the cloak as well as the Romulans. i always thought that the klings first got the tech for the cloak off the Romulans when they had there alliance in the early kirck times. i swere they swaped ships as well for wat ever reason that was.

any1 shed light on this?

Klingons and ROmulans shared a brief alliance in the exchange of technology as well as allies. The klingons gave advanced warp design ships to romulans and klingons got cloak. Im rather sure its cannon and was mentioned in a tos episode if not i dunno where i heard it but it is cannon fact as asking paramount will show u.

Yeah, the tech exchange worked out exactly as Skeeter said, Englandbloke.

I can't remember any specific episodes that say when though - it's just one of those things that you know but you don't know how you know it...

Anyways, startrek.com has a brief writeup on the Klingon cloaking device:

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/technology/article/70049.html

The tech exchange is the canon reason why older Klingon and Romulan designs look so similar to each other - they are all of Klingon origin or are Klingon design-based. The real reason is they didn't have a big enough budget to make more models.

In the game, the Klingons will develop Cloaking tech independantly, becuase you can't ensure the Klingons and Romulans will have a tech-sharing alliance in every single game you play, without introducing an unfair imbalance. It would also being extremely boring, since you'd know that they would end up being being allies at some point.

On top of that, it puts a Klingon player at an extreme disadvantage, coz it means they can't open up an entire section of the tech tree without allying themselves with the Romulans - who might even get killed off before you have a chance to trade techs. 8O

So you can see that it makes more sense to have it as an independant tech.

Yes, like the Federation's ban on cloaking tech, the Klingon's access to the technology has shaped every vessel built by them since. If the Klingons were left alone and never developed cloaking tech, who knows what they'd be like!

Matress is right. From a canon standpoint, the Klingons need to have access to cloaking technology from at least the 2260's on. (or the game equivalent). From a gameplay perspective, the Klingons must be able to develop that technology independently, so they aren't reliant on anyone else to get it for them. Especially since there's no guarantee they'd even meet the Romulans, let alone form an alliance with them!

Then again, wouldn't that be interesting.....

Suppose each race were really balanced overall, but had a few technologies other races lacked, such as the cloaking device for the Romulans, fast warp drive for the Federation, etc., etc.

In-game contact between technologies (espionage, alliance, conquest of certain systems), opens up whatever 'special' technology the other race has, and you can develop it further in your own way. So if the Klingons buy, borrow, or steal the cloak from the Romulans, they can develop it too in their own way. So eventually you'd have something like an 'Advanced Romulan Cloak' and 'Advanced Klingon Cloak' which would offer slightly different advantages and stats. Also, perhaps they can never quite be as good as the originating race, but good enough to be a real advantage.

Bear in mind that each race would have one special technology that only it could get, and share with allies or have it taken from them.

The final result would be REALLY weird, you might have Federation starships with cloaking devices and Klingons with Quantum torpedoes and ablative armour, or some other interesting combinations!

This is so complicated it could never get into BotF II, but maybe BotF III (special non-canon edition!)

Don't forget the BOTF5 thread - your ideas could be worthy of BOTF5...

http://botfii.armadafleetcommand.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=380

I'm not sure, but I think it may be possible to have each race have their own unique tech tree in BOTF2.

As far as I know, there will be a single, unified tech tree in BOTF2, so every race gets the same techs. (As in BOTF1) This might mean that it is impossible to assign the new techs to individual races, but if you can, then it would be quite easy to mod the game.

All you'd need to do is change the name of each tech and write a new tech description for the new technologies.

As for having mixed technologies so you end up with the afore-mentioned Quantum-armed Klingons and Cloakable Feds though, it's as you said, Jarok. I think that would simply be too hard to program in.

One of my very first posts on the site asked if it would be possible to have a "starship design screen".

Essentially, once you had enough technology to commision a new Starship design, you would be taken to a screen where you could decide what the main components of the ship were.

For example, say you had just gotten enough tech to "design" the Galaxy class. You would be able to specify how much technology went into the ship - the more technology she had (Shields, Weapons, whatever) the harder they would be to build, and the fewer of them you could field. They would obviously perform better in combat though, since they would be suited to your own style of play.

You could end up with fleets made of hundreds of Starships that were simply canon-fodder to destract the enemy, but were supported by singular uber-ships that would devastate enemy fleets on their own. It would all be tailored to your style of combat, because you designed your ships from the ground up.

Of course, the designs would be limited by the technology you have available to you at the time of design - you couldn't have Oberths with Ablative armour, for example (Unless for some reason you decided to refit them later on in the game ) but you'd be able to give it better Sensors or Shields, with the downside of a longer build time and increased build/support costs.

Any changes you made during the designing would be permanent (For the rest of that game or a refit becomes avavilable, at least) so you'd have to ensure that you designed the ships well. You may decide that you'll make a new class uber-powerful, only to find that it was too expensive to build in high enough numbers to even defend yourself with. The opposite could also happen - you may have hundreds of ships that were soo weak they couldn't do anything - but losing a ship or even a fleet of them wouldn't matter coz you could rebuild them quickly and easily.

I know this is asking for a lot from a game, and I would never ask for it to be done in BOTF2, but I can always dream though...

We should revisit that BoTF 5 thread!