I have been reading and thinking about this whole Dominion business and frankly it has me a bit puzzled.

I just want to know that I am understanding the whole concept correctly. Now They (Dominion) will start in the Gamma Quadrant Correct? I mean aside from the borg which I think will be ran by AI by most Devs. That player then will be basically alone as they build there empire or whatever it is called by them. Am I correct in thinking this?

Will they be restricted to entering the Alpha Quadrant until a set level of tech or will they be able to expand right away?

We all know in DS9 that they first came to the Alpha Quadrant via the wormhole. Will this be the case in the games also? OR will they do as the Borg do and in a manner of speaking take the long way to get into Alpha?

This is just something I have been wondering about.

The Dominion are supposedly an ancient Empire that has been around for at least 10,000 years. (Don't quote me that coz I don't know where I heard that though )

They conquered or allowed other races to join them, and they became a vast Empire that eventually spanned an entire Quadrant. They were brutal and used "genetic improvement" to create races that met the needs of the Founders exactly. Any deviants were executed. For all intents and purposes, they were essentially an "anti-Federation". (That was what the writers wanted them to be, and if they'd had their way there would have been a LOT more Dominion races, but the producers and accountants didn't like the idea and the Dominion ended up becoming the Founder-Vorta-Jem'Hadar triangle that we now know them for)

Anyways, this is my understanding of how the different races will play in the game(s):


The Federation will build multi-role ships with excellent systems and experienced crews - which makes their ships the most expensive to build and maintain in the game - but individually, they will be "the best". The Federation will use diplomacy to win races over - be that by credits, peace talks, humanitarian missions, or war.

The Klingons will be armed to the teeth. Their defenses may be weaker than those of the Federation, but they will make up for that in pure combat readiness, maneouverability, and combat speed. They will get greater experience bonuses than the other races. The Klingons will expand by spreading the glory of the Empire further by fighting enemies that are equal to or better than them, enslaving those who do not wish to fight, and using diplomacy if all else fails.

The Romulans will have large, lumbering, ships. They will have powerful weaponry, although not necessarily as many weapons per ship as the Klingon designs. Some of the smaller Romulan designs will be almost as agile as the Klingon designs, but they will (Almost) all have the Cloaking device, making them dangerous enemies ineed. The Romulans will be a secretive, enigmatic race, who will only use diplomacy as a last resort. They prefer actions to words, and will use their exceptional intelligence methods to weaken their enemies before going in for the final strike.

The Cardassians will be the "poor mans player". Their ships will be rigidly efficient, and will be the cheapest to maintain in the game - but they will expensive to build in the first place. Their ships are designed to take massive internal damage before they are finally destroyed, and they will have good firing arcs and weapons. Individually, their ships are weak, but in numbers, they will be a force to be reconned with. They will expand by any means necessary, although force will be their preferred option. They will enslave anything that will be of use to Cardassia, and destroy the rest.

The Dominion will rely on two types of specialised ships - hundreds of the throwaway "bugs", and a small number of supermassive heavy support cruisers. The bugs will aim to cause as much damage and confusion to enemy ranks as possible, whilst the heavy cruisers lay down cover fire and attempt to decimate the larger ships of their enemies. The Dominion will be "alone" in the Gamma Quadrant - they won't have early-game victories, (Unless you're an aggresive player that expands straight towards the other Empires as fast as possible) but will instead spread across the Gamma Quadrant - like a plague. The minor races in the Gamma Quadrant will surrender or die when the Dominion get near, and their 200% ship building bonus will mean they will pump out hundreds, if not thousands of combat-ready ships. This great advantage is offset by the fact that the other races wil have had thousands of turns of infighting - leaving only one or two super-powerful Empires with lots of highly experienced ships to take on the might of the Dominion.

...

The game is going to come in several different styles - canon, (Everything will be roughly where it "should" be) semi-canon, (Everything will be within a set area, with a small amount of randomisation to make things a bit more fun) and completely random. (This will be the most commonly played map, and don't think there will be any point in explaining this one! )

IF we were going to set it so that the Gamma Quadrant could ONLY be reached via a Wormhole, this would take extra programming. We'd essentially need a physical wall around the Gamma Quadrant (Which I don't like the idea of) or we'd need to have two separate maps - the main one, it would be "L shaped" and would be the Alpha, Beta, and Delta Quadrants - and a second map, which would be the Gamma Quadrant on its own.

Whilst the second option would be the coolest, (If you can do that, you could then try one for Borg space, Fluidic space, and so on ) it would take a lot to program, would mean extra buttons would be needed on the interface, would be more difficult for player to keep track of systems if they are on multiple maps, would slow down the game (It would likely require a lot more procesing) and would just generally complicate things.

My personal choice is to leave it as it is, and just have the Gamma Quadrant like any other Quadrant. If people really wanted to keep things separate though, one possible compromise would be to have really HUGE maps.

Yikes! I had no idea that it was that complex. The mapping you described there is like a multi layered cake! ..

I'm now stuck on to respond any further. lol A bit overwhelemed I guess.

In Supremacy, you will have an option at the start of the game that controls whether or not each civilization will start out in its canon home quadrant (a random location in that quadrant). The Dominion would start in the Gamma quadrant, the Federation and Cardassians would start in the Alpha Quadrant, and the Klingons and Romulans would start in the Beta quadrant. I believe the Klingons and Romulans are actually in both Alpha and Beta quadrants according to the canon, but this will spread things out a bit.

Later on down the road, I'll likely build a map editor that will allow some poor, generous soul to build us a canon map (among other things). Custom maps will probably just be loaded as saved games (saved at Turn 1).

Well I'm glad to see that the games wont be a "slash and burn" type play. I am one who does not like that type of play. Takes the fun out of the whole concept. Allowing players to build the respective areas (wisely) should enhance to time involved.

justthinking, the dominoin being that powerful is cool in canon, but say u play a samll random map, theyll kick everyones asses asthe can throw out ships cheap and cheerful

Agreed, and rest assured, I won't release a game with unbalanced empires. That just wouldn't be fun.

Thing that everyone is forgetting is that every player in the game botf 2 (any of them i think) will have each empire starting out so everyone is the same practically. Its how you play and they develope which is what u need to watch for. And just because dominion ruled the gamma quadrent in the show doesnt mean they will in the game.

Mainly i say that because well it took the dominion over 10,000 years to get most of the gamma quadrent which for me i dont plan on playing that long lol.

They will have good fighting ability in the game no doubt but they should advance about the same as the player in general and it will come down to the bonuses of each race + what minors u have which will establish who will win.

I'm not saying that Dominion should be unbalanced to make the game more canon, i'm just saying that the races should be geared in the general direction of canon - yes, the races are gonna have their own bonuses, but these may be offset by an equal or better opposite bonus by another race.

As MStrobel said, its down to balancing the game. get that right, and we won't have any worries. Its once we start equipping ships with insane bonuses and/or weaknesses that people will encounter problems.

We can't really finalise the balancing until the combat system is complete and ready for testing though.

Thats kinda how I was looking at it.. It all boils down to how you play your turns. Even in old Botf it was the same way. This may sound stupid but it is almost like chess. you got to think through your actions before you move. Of course you can not know how your opponant will react, but thats the risk you take..
I hope I said that right.

Lookin forward to that day when testing this part of the game.

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is the relatively small number of minor races we know of from the Gamma Quadrant. I was thinking it was a problem, but now that I look at it from a different angle, it may help to curb the Dominion's growth. Instead of having lots of minor race systems to "acquire" (be it through invasion or diplomacy), they will have to build most of their empire from scratch. We'll have to wait and see, because even I can't speculate how things will really end up in the game until we start approaching the alpha stage. But I'm hoping it helps offset the Dominion's other advantages.

Skeeter, So your gonna give the Dominion a try out when it is time?

He's gotta fight me for it! You wanna rumble for control of the Dominion, Skeeter?!

Now Now Mstrobel, that not very fair.. you need to include Matress in there too! I'll be the Guest Referee! lol

No way. Klingons for me. Us honor bound warriors will fight your jem'h'dar soldiers and we will annialate them and YOU!..



Plus our "bird" of prey will eat your "bug" ships for breakfast.

Heh, true. To be honest, I'll probably end up mostly playing as the Federation or the Cardassians. Which is why I'm pushing my UI artist to work on the Cardassian interface next .

The Tal-shir smells a head to head battle in the future. *Sends my Ferengi slave to make Popcorn and get me a fresh soda so i can watch the fight! *

Guys, battle it out all you want.

Seriously, cause as much damage as you can. I'll be there to clean up the mess and answer the question.

By the way, you misquoted me, Skeeter. Reread your quote. That's me being even more pedantic than usual.

By the way....

In canon, the Domion's strength and weakness is their isolation. They will have massive production with very little loss, as long as they can maintain the resources required for it. But since there is little chance for losing ships, that also means there is little chance to gain experience (plus factoring that they will have the worst experience modifier already).

On a random map, the Dominion will lack that isolation. They will lose ships. Thus, both their strength and weakness are the same, but both are scaled back. They still have the best production capacity for ships, but the worst experience modifier.

They're already balanced. If anything, the Dominion should be balanced under the assumption of a random map once we are the step of empire rebalancing gameplay-wise (all empires will need a rebalance). And then in canon, we can balance the Dominion by determining how far away to set their homeworld.

As far as I can see, there is no issue with Dominion advantages because they aren't any more pronounced than the other empire's on paper. They're only more pronounced in canon because of their isolation (but at that point, their weakness is just as pronounced, yay balance!)