Here we can discuss the diplomacy options that we can put in the game. Mstrobel can tell us wether a certain idea is not possible/takes to much time to implement. I know that we already have some ideas and design for diplomacy but let us talk more about it here.

I've an idea to use propaganda via intel on minor races to make them more receptive towards your people. I don't know if this is possible? That the minors also have some sort of intel? But also the possibility for back-fire, they get to know that it comes directly by the ******* governement and the people are pissed off.

I think you've got a good idea, iwulff. I think it's a definite possibility. The Intelligence screens will need to be reworked a bit compared to BOTF. Since you'll be able to mod the game pretty easily and add empires, it doesn't make sense to have a screen with 4 or 5 other empires amongst which to divide your resources. I was thinking maybe something like this:

You start with all of your intelligence allocated to internal security. You can then add "targets" to a list. When you add a target, you select an empire or minor race, a target type (espionage, sabotage, propaganda, etc) and, if necessary, an area of focus (military, economic, social, etc). Your new target then appears on the targets list, and you can then distribute your total intel points between internal security and whatever targets you have specified. I think that would be a pretty flexible implementation.

How does that sound to you?

and the number of targets can be specified by yourselve. Sounds good.

I know this is not a diplomacy question, but.. will systems with lesser intel buildings be less protected against infiltrations? I know that we need to be careful not to overdo things in a game, but to actually manage internal affairs over your systems sounds cool, but might mean to much micromanagement.

I always assumed that each system's protection against infiltration could be calculated by its total intel output (from intel buildings) times your relative internal security allocation.

For example, if you had an Intel output of 400 in one system, and your internal security allocation was 50%, you would have 200 points of infiltration protection for that star system.

it seems good.. hope it will work out good . I have another diplomacy idea, but it is dependant on how trading is expanded in your game.

Some sort of trade agreement that you can do with another empire/minor race. Normally people would be nicer to you if you trade with them.. i think.

I always assumed that signing any treaty with another power would put your higher in their favor. It would make sense that if they're profiting from trade with your empire that they would be more receptive to your diplomatic overtures.

That would be an acurate way of doing it but the set back is that you couldn't build a plannet devoted to industry or research because those would be easy targets for sabotage.

True, there would have to be an empire-wide anti-infiltration rating as well. I may poke around some other game forums and see what kind of equations people have come up with. There's some good ideas out there.

you hit the nail there... Perhaps the intel buildings affects the region around the system also? But that seems tricky and confusing to the player. OR just a extra bonus for intel defence on the system that has it. Sounds fair

The player doesn't necessarily have to know exactly how the system works "under the hood". We could take the total internal security rating, divide half of it evenly amongst the invididual systems, and then divide the other half proportionally among the systems that actually produce intel points (giving the system whatever fraction that it contributes). Whatever system we come up with shouldn't be too complicated--I'm a firm proponent of the "keep it simple, stupid" philosophy .

I really like the feel for the game. It is very old school botf and the speed of the turn times have improved. There needs just a little adjustments to the games feel. And I noticed one bug in the game if you take out one race in the game all of them die and you win.

There are just suggestions.
• The game wording is too much like botf1 with diplomacy options, killing off races.
• There needs to be other types of treaties available to the game.
• Financial aid, minor should be able request money amounts under treaties with major races.
• Military aid, selling old technologies, ships, minors requesting the support of military might of a major race.
• Expansion aid, minors requesting majors to help territory expansion.

I agree with you, Valcoren, but the game as it stands is only a "trial run". Since it was a class project, I didn't have enough time to implement the full diplomacy system that I want to have. And as you pointed out, the wording is all very generic. I will very soon start rebuilding the game and adding many new features as well as the BOTF2 content.

I'm open to the idea of trading territories, military assets, etc. I'm not sure about expansion aid--enforcing that from a programming perspective might be difficult. I'm not ruling it out though--what exactly did you have in mind?

BTW, thanks for playing my pre-release . And I noticed that bug too, though not until a couple days ago. I haven't had the chance to figure out exactly what causes it. Thanks for feedback, though.

Well since we're all working together you can obviously have the random events that i've come up with so far, MStrobel. I've worded them for each of the Empires, so instead of generic messages as in BOTF, the game will have messages that actually sound like they are from the Emipres.

As an example:



I'm far from finishing them off, but i've got a good deal of them done. If you want a copy, just let me know.

I know programming them in will be the difficult bit, but just coz I write them doesn't mean they have to be in the game. It's nice to have a variety, so me and OmniQ thought of as many as we possibly could. Dafedz suggested a few more to me about a month ago, so i've added those in too.

The thing that is taking the longest is simply the "localisations".

Mattress, I'll want to snag those from you when I get around to programming random events.

Valcoren, I've published an update that fixes that bug.

your welcome mstrobel. I'm glad I can provide you with some feed back.

as far as territory expansion. This would be along the lines of a bribe from the minors to a major race. A minor race that does not have warp drive but wants to expand passed its solar system.

i.e. the Bandi want to claim the a start near to their solar system and they offer their resources or large amount of credits to Romulans to help them expand to that star. Romulians accept the offer and send a colony ship to that star as they go to colonize the solar system a pop up asks do Romulans would you like to claim this system for the Bandi. If they accept the request a Bandi population will be deposited in that solar system.

I don’t know of the difficulty of the programming of that but again. these are only suggestions.

Perhaps as an alternative, the a minor race could just ask for a colony ship as part of a diplomatic exchange.

That would work also. I have a bad habit of over thinking things sometimes, but on a side note I tested your fix. I did not have a good result. I found that when conquering over a race the game does not end, but the other races still disappear from their solar systems in the game.

@MOE: Don't mean to nit-pick but black holes do not appear from nowhere. They're born from the death of stars. In fact, they're born for a very specific *type* of star: huge stars of more than 10 solar masses... Er... My memory says 10 but it needs to be checked to confirm... When such stars die they do so with supernovea.

The giant star at _____ has gone supernova. The nebula and black hole it has left behind are dangerous. Regular traffic should avoid the area.
However....
If you're a Romulan you might want to put a listening post there.
If you're Federation you might want to study it.
Klingons might use the powerfully charged ions to power a weapons manufacturing plant.
The Dominion.... Well, I'm not sure. A prison outpost?
Cardassians... Hrm....

Anyway, black holes, neutron stars, quark stars, magnetars and nebulea don't just come from nowhere.... Of course, it's only a game and being totally realistic might be a serious pain to program. That is up the programmer(s). But there are *real* astronomical hazards out there and I vote for this to be as real as possible.

(Sorry it's a bit off topic y'all but I'm not really sure where I should put this objection.)

End rant.

You could have PM'd it to me, and since it was me that went off-topic in the first place, it doesn't matter.

Thanks for the nitpick, ZDarby, i'll reword it when I have time.

Regarding random events..

Anyone ever play Space Empires IV? Or III for that matter? Or Gal Civ?

Lots of random, sometimes hilarious, random events in those. Space Empires ones are more serious, but.. engaging none the less.

I don't know how many dreadnoughts I've had that get flung USS Voyager-style to a random system alllll the way across the map due to random wormholes flinging a ship around.

And diplomatic options, SEIV had some very practical treaties, like Protectorate, and progressively higher levels of subjugation, where the dominant empire protects the small one and gets a progressively larger chunk of their income; mineral, research, and intel. Players vs AI's likely wouldn't use that, but it's fun, and practical, at times during PvP.

Sorry, Ringold, never played it.

...

Right then, i've reworked the Blackhole random event. I also re-thinked the Supernova one, and they're now bundled together. When a Red Giant goes Nova, there will be a chance that a Blackhole forms. Makes things easier then - and means that a Blackhole doesn't happen without at least some mention of a Nova in the text first.

mstrobel, May I get a copy of your pre-release?

Also, what programming language did you use?

I know enough Visual Basic
I know some C++

Maybe I could give a hand with some of the easier but minuteness coding; such as the random event messages per empire. Anyway get back to me guys! I am willing to lend a hand now.

You can find a link to the pre-release in the Supremacy Game Thread within the General Chat forum.

Supremacy is written entirely in C# and XAML (for the UI). It would be difficult for anyone to work on small segments of code, since I would have to manually merge their changes into source control. However, there will be a ton of XML that I could use some help with. For example, taking the entire tech object database and entering it in XML format would save me a lot of time. I'll post a thread once I've finalized the XML schemas, and people can volunteer to help me out .

I think i might be able to help with that!

Got a lot of time on my hands...

Another diplomacy idea:

Through out playing the game Majors ask for (demand) money from you. In which I think that Botf1 has the game heavy weighted on your favor of major races approval for you, if you provide the demanding amount to that race. With the options of the trading of specific materials in Supremacy; credits should not hold as much weight as it does in Botf1. So on to my idea of counter offerings.

Got the idea with the silliness of what EU and the USA are going through right now with Iran. I hate to poke at a real life matters, but I thought it would be interesting to be part of the game to say the less.

So say if the Klingons are demanding 200,000 credits from you and you want to keep in good favor with them for what ever reason, but you don’t want to bankrupt your empire by giving up all your credits. So you make a counter offer. Instead of 200,000 credits; you offer 100,000 credits and the rest in materials expenses and data exchange. So depending on you current approval ratings with the Klingons say they are respectful. You could offer them by using drop down menu options and offer something like the following (100,000 credit, 1000 tons of deuterium, and 250 teraquads of data.) as a counter offer.

In saying that would this to be close to the equivalent of 200,000 credits. You then send this counter offer back the Klingons, and could have the options to accept of decline your offer, or request the original 200,000 credits again. You the can weight your options of rejecting the 200,000 credit proposal the Klingons are asking for. Negations would last no more then 3 turns of game play, but if you decline their second request you endure I large penalty and can fall out of favor with the Klingons depending on your current approval ratings with them.

Whilst it might be difficult to implement, I think that that's a great idea.

We'd have to set up a system so the AI knows that 1 Raw Material = 2 Credits and 1 Deuterium = 5 dredits and so on for this to work, but it would certainly be cool, and would enhance the Diplomacy in the game at the same time.

opinions of other races should not be based solely on you giving them something. The AI should (if possible) take into account your integrity, other agreements, proximity to your space, joint ventures and such...

I know that programming the AI is the hardest part, but this should be taken into consideration both HERE and in jig's BOTF3

For Mike's game, then chances are he'll include it - and if not, he'll "remember" to, once he sees our posts.

And as for Jig's game, i'm pretty sure it's gonna be in anyway.

If you want to do something like this, it would be helpful to follow the Civilization III model. You have the option to do exactly this type of proposal/counter-proposal, but also there's a little guy up in the corner of the screen saying, "They would never accept such an arrangment," "They will probably be insulted by this offer," "This offer probably won't be accepted," "We're getting close to a deal," "This deal will probably be acceptable." That way you can check your offers before actually sending them on. You also have the option of saying essentially, "I want [x]. What do you want for [x]?" or, "I have [x]. Would you care to make an offer?" Those are very helpful options, but I don't know how complicated they are to program and might be simply too complex to include in a non-corporation made game. Still, it would be great to, for instance, go to the Dominion--who happens to be building up a massive fleet on your border while you're already at war with the Klingons on the other side of your empire--and say, "What would you need to agree to a mutual defense pact?"