I'd like to start a discussion about design principles and what makes a good strategy game in general and what sorts of updates [specifically] would be good for BotE.

Please give feedback on what you think because that will let me know if I should just come up with systems that I will be happy with or if there is something that I can do that will help the rest of you enjoy BotE more.

===============================================

Building upgrades: I believe that any upgrade should net you at least a 20% boost [possibly more] in whatever the building produces to make that upgrade worthwhile.

Example: Each upgrade to a plasma reactor give you +5 energy regardless of level with the current system. A L8 plasma reactor gives 56 energy and a L9 plasma reactor gives 61 energy. Under my system IF a L8 reactor gave you 56 energy then I would suggest that a L9 reactor give you CEIL (56 * 1.2) == 68 energy.

The basic theory is why bother upgrading if it won't net you anything per-se.

Does a system like this appeal to you or do you prefer the flat +5 per level?

=================================================

Research Rate: My proposal is that [with the exception of the lower few levels] the output of research buildings should be scaled so that ROUGHLY once every 40 turns or so you'll go up a tech level.

If you start from Tech 0 hopefully you'll be at Tech 10 in the 350 to 400 turn range if everything works that I'm proposing.

Does a system as proposed above appeal to you or do you prefer the system currently in-place?

==================================================

Building rates & Resource Costs: My proposal is that over a 40 turn period [see above] that you should basically be able to upgrade all of your BASIC buildings in that time frame and possibly have time left over to build a ship or two in the interim.

IMHO it's a very good idea to have the research rates and the build rates be roughly equivalent in terms of moving from one tech level to another.

Basically if it takes you 20 or 30 turns to upgrade your industry it's not really fun because it will take forever to build your empire to its peak.

Does this principle make sense or is there something better?

==================================================

Minor Powers vs. Colonies: My proposal is that the colonies that you build yourself should be far more important than they currently are.

When I play with the current system I usually have my home system, a few of comparatively backwards colonies, and the rest are minor powers that often dwarf any of the planets that I've built or managed myself.

While I don't have concrete suggestions on how to make colonies better I do have some ideas to consider. Maybe colony ships should be able to terraform more quickly ; perhaps when a new colony is formed the starting buildings are at [Research tech -1] instead of Tech 0 ; perhaps more colonists should be initially generated ; Instead of generating a couple of initial industry / farms / titan mines when you "colonize" a system perhaps there should be at least one of each of the addition buildings and mines that your empire COULD build on that planet; perhaps there could be more starting resources depending on the tech level & type of colony ship used ; etc.

As far as the minor powers go I would suggest that they play a lesser role in the game. Perhaps changes like making it almost impossible for a major power at tech level X to talk a minor power of tech level (X+2) or higher to join ; Perhaps a different algorithm to determine minor power tech level progression would help ;

Does any of the above sound reasonable or am I smoking crack?

Hopefully we can get some good discussion going on the above issues and see where that takes us. [For the most part] at least it's good to know that many of the things above can be easily modded.

Thanks for your input. It's really appreciated.

I do have a question for you though. You mentioned that all colonies should start with a basic Titan, Dueterium, and Duranium mine if possible. I was proposing something a little different.

For example lets say that your Empire is a tech 8 empire. With the current system making a colony is [basically] a waste of time because you start out with only 4 colonists and 6 tech 0 buildings.

What I was thinking would be a better approach would be: [Assuming your colony ship is a tech 8 colony ship]:

1. When you colonize you get 2 Tech 8 Farms, 2 Tech 8 Industries, 1 Tech 8 Plasma Reactor, 1 Tech 8 Databank, 1 Tech 8 University, 2 Tech 8 Titan mines, 1 Tech 8 Deuterium mine, 1 Tech 8 Duranium mine, 1 Tech 8 Crystal mine, and 1 Tech 8 Iridium mine.

2. When you colonize [at tech 8] you would probably get 12 colonists [Tech level + 4] or so.

I'm thinking that if you start with more colonists then you'll hit max population much faster AND if you start with high tech buildings your colony can become an important contributing colony from the beginning.

Did I go way too far with my [crazy?] proposal or was I not clear on what I was proposing?

it's exactly one of my ideas too .

well I thought of a system where level 0 colo ships (i.e. the first you can build right from the beginning) have a "tech range" of 1-3 when colonizing, i.e. if you got at least tech 2 for example in every research area at the moment of colonization, then the buildings there start with level 2. if you got level 3 everywhere, then 3, if you got 4, then also 3 and so on.

level 1 colos get tech range from 4-6, same calculus as above.
takes a bit into account that those colony ships must have a means to carry and provide material, energy and "computational force" for the new tech buildings to get built on the planet and an older ship cannot carry anymore than just up to level 3.

well it's not implemented nor decided yet but I'd like to see such a solution. Of course this depends on how much more wanna see this and what sir p. has got in mind

I'd like to see something along those general lines. I think that it is important [at least to me] to make colonies more useful.

My intial thoughts didn't match yours exactly. I was intially thinking of having Tech 0 to Tech 9 colony ships. The cost of these ships would have [at least some] of the elements that you'd need built-in.

However it occurs to me if you just have "small, medium, large, and huge" colony ships that you might be able to adjust some of the ship abilities with the in-game ship-designer.

I imagine the larger ships could give you larger starting populations. Perhaps with the ship designer you could include certain options that would allow building more buildings of higher tech levels than you'd otherwise get.

The only other thing that I could think of to help would be to allow you to upgrade from something like a "primitive farm" straight to a Tech 8 farm in one step instead of having to go from Tech 0, Tech 1, ..., Tech 7, Tech 8.

There should be a Colony Ship I/ II/ III /IV. They would correlate to an empire's Tech Level. They would provide higher tech buildings, including Mines, & slightly larger starting populations. This would also reduce the labor of the game. It's not ideal to be advanced & have to start at almost zero with each new colony. It’s time consuming.

I like to put in a number of buildings to be built in the queue at one time. I can't do this with the game as it is right now. If I don't have the resources to build the structure, I can't even put it in the queue. This forces me to come back frequently to the queue as resources become available. With a lot of systems, this becomes quite a chore.

I still like my idea of 4 different ship sizes [thus you can decide between 4 values of starting population].

As far as tech & buildings go it would be nice to see something with the in-game ship designer that would allow you configure bigger & better buildings that would be built upon initial colonization.

Basically you want more & better buildings then the resource costs of whatever colony ship that you're modding go up.

I have a question on building up a planet. Do you find it easier to build all you facilities and then start upgrading or upgrade as you go?

Designing Colony ships would be cool if you can pick what it builds. How big would the increased population be? Too much population too early could be unbalancing. Also, that would increase the difficulty of conquering newer systems.

It depends on the the current need. If the colony does not have enough food, buy a new farm or buy a farm upgrade if it can't be built quickly. Farms, replicators and mines take priority.

@jpoling. It's like with the old botf1. It heavily depends on your planet system's max population and pop growth. if it's high then first build as many buildings as possible before upgrading. if it's very low, then upgrade as you go.

okay, thanks. I never played the old botf1, so this has all been new to me. I've tried it both ways and pretty much I've built and then upgraded, but then I fall behind with my newer colonies.

it's just a matter of keeping your workers busy but on the other side have them work efficiently, i.e. with "high-tech"-equipment. You have to find a balance there but you're right, colonies do have a big handicap and need long takin-care before they get useful to the empire. It's a thing to be thoroughly kept discussing in the whole process of bote development I think..

We have the first feedback of your new building list. I only want to translate some issues with your file

1. At high levels (like industry buildings level 8,9) you got to much IP. You only need about one round to build a big ship or you only need about three rounds to upgrade your buildings. That is a little bit too fast. You get a too high IP production in systems with normal moral, so what is in systems with moralvalues greater than 175? Maybe the IP production at higher levels should be decreased.

2. You get too much research points at higher levels. So you can research tech 10 with special research in about 280 rounds (with about 45k research points per turn) in a normal game. The research rate is a little bit to high. You research a complete new level too fast, especially in the late game.

Thanks for the feedback man. I'm already in the process of gathering feedback for an updated build file so this comes at a great time.

The Industry output & Research output issues are resolved easily enough by just reducing the delta percentage in research and also reducing the output of research for special buildings. I'm sure that we can come up with something better than what I "slopped together" earlier.

BTW: I think that I also need to look at mining output as I think that's probably also on the high side ... The problem will be compounded when we increase build times because that gives more time for resources to build up ....

EDIT: I agree that the above rates are "too fast" ... Please feel free to keep more constructive feedback coming.

Another EDIT: As far as ship building I suspect that a combination of increasing ship costs combined with lowering IP is the way to go.

===================================================

I do want to make sure that some design prinicples are kept for the build file though:

1. Each upgrade should give a minimum of 20% over the previous building output. This should apply for food, industry, power, intel, research, mining, etc.

2. I'd like some variability in the improvement delta [depending on race / building type / etc.] so everything shouldn't be set at exactly the same min. of 20%. [A range of 20-30% maybe??]

3. I'd like the increase in low level buildings to be at least +5 points so that the early upgrades give you real benefit. Higher level buildings will need a percentage increase as in 1 & 2 above.

4. The "final" [perhaps not alpha?] data file should be designed assuming that roughly equal numbers of population are involved in Intel & Research.

===================================================

Because Intel is currently not implemented would you recommend that I redesign the building file assuming that nobody would be building / staffing intel buildings??? Note the current file assumes that you'll be spending about 20% of your population in Intel -- I was hoping Intel would be introduced in a version of the alpha "soon".

What is the ETA for getting Intel implemented?

I got a request to release an interim update to the build file to address the "quick research" issue.

I'll also go over the Romulans & Klingons again. I got feedback that they have bad development issues late in the game [slow dev. issues] .... maybe I made a typo in one of the building costs / research outputs / something?????

Please keep the feedback and other things coming.