When I modded the last building file I pretty much just "slopped together" some settings for building output [Industry, Food, Research, etc.].

I'd like to go back and maybe update the file to get a set of building costs & outputs.

What I'm wondering is which races are good at what? Obviously Carts & Rotharians are good at Intel. I would think CoPs are good at research. Is there any references though that would help judge which races are good at what?

The fields that I'm interested in are Intel, Research, Industry, Power Generation, Food Production, and Mining.

As far as building costs go I would think that [across the board] that the Heyoun would have the cheapest buildings and that those buildings would probably have the best "bang for the buck" in the whole game. How would the other races stack up though?

Any input would be appreciated.

I think there is no reference. But I have these suggestions:

FOOD:
like original Botf, Omegans have the worst farms

INDUSTRY:
like original Botf, Omegans after Khaoron and Cart

ENERGY:
like original Botf, Omegans similar to Carts

INTEL:
like original Botf again, Omegans has the best intel buildings

RESEARCH:
like original Botf again, Omegans after CoP and Rot at the third place

MINING:
Kha -> Car -> Ome -> CoP -> Hey -> Rot

I'll go ahead and recheck the BotF building output / costs / etc. again and use that as a template then.

I'm thinking that for building costs I'll use BotF also and go from there.

The only deviations from the above that I'd like to see [for now] would be:
1. By and large Heyoun buildings are the least expensive buildings.
2. By and large Heyoun buildings have the best bang-for the buck [output vs. cost] of the empires [due to their inexpensive nature]
3. I think that it would be a good idea to make sure that the differences in building output really mean something. [Bigger % difference in output from high to low]

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If I roll out a new version I'll look at making a change-log and getting you a copy so you'll know what changes I'm thinking of.

Check out Dafedz website i tihnk he may have something on the differant levels and what race is good at what.

Regards Wolfe

I skimmed over the site and I saw general tech levels listed but I didn't see a lot of BotF related specifics.

I'll look over the BotF: Ultimate Mod 3 which IIRC is his work. Ideally the values in question should be listed there.

If I see large discrepancies I'll post here to see what the group thinks.

http://members.aon.at/zelli/hbuildin.htm

Here you can find all values for all buildings of all races from the original botf.

Thanks for the info everyone.

If there's a question I'll use the original BotF information as Sir P. suggested. [It's his project after all]

If the info from UM3 looks closer to my personal biases though I'll go ahead and discuss the info here and see what happens.

Building File update: Because the original buiding file that I put together plays too fast I've:

1. Reduced farm output at the high end by roughly 30%. The values of farm building output are still higher [on the high end] than in BotF.

2. Reduced industry output by roughly 25 % at the high end. The industry output levels are slightly lower than in BotF.

3. Reduced power output by roughly 25% at the high end. The power output levels are still higher than BotF.

Note: The goal of the reductions in food & power are to force players to have more population manning those buildings for longer. Thus leaving fewer people for research && industry.

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Research reductions will be done so it is not AS FAST to go from tech 0 to tech 10. I'm aiming for a goal of 350 turns [+/- 10%] as being about the right time to hit tech 10. My thoughts are that lower tech levels won't see much of a change in research output but higher levels could see a 35% reduction .... playtesting continues .....

Building Cost increases [relative to industry output] are planned so it takes you longer to upgrade. There will be increases that you can feel at the low end and the high end may be close to double the cost. I'm trying to shoot for roughly 40 turn upgrade cycle for "an average colony" at medium and high tech levels. NOTE: Because of morale your homeworld and possibly other systems will [of course] upgrade faster!!

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As far as intel goes I'm using BotF as a basis. I increased the Federation intelligence [relative to other factions] marginally. As far as the Omega Alliance goes they've got the best intel buildings. I will discuss intel further in its own thread because I don't think BotF got it right ....

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So far I'm going with roughly a 20% swing in output from the best races buildings to the worst races. This is generally a bigger swing than you see in BotF. I think it will make the races a little for distinct but more gameplay will need to be done to make sure that I'm not creating more balance issues ....

More updates on the build file: [while this site was dark]

1. Research rates have been reduced so that you stand a good chance to hit tech 6 at turn 150 instead of hitting tech 7. While that doesn't sound like a big difference it all adds up.

2. Mining output is [IMHO] just about right. I looked at the resource costs of buildings vs. resource output of mines and things run much better now than before.

3. With building outputs the difference between the best & worst races is about 20% [give or take]. Building cost differences are also about 20% or so. I'm not sure if this is different-enough ... feedback will be needed.

4. As far as building costs go the Coalition actually has the most expensive buildings [on average] in the game. However, with the exception of intel, all of their buildings are better than average. Khaorons & Cartaries basically tie for second place. Rotharians and Omegans are close enough to say they "tie" for third. Heyoun have the least expensive buildings in the game.

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one alpha-tester of ours just gave this feedback concerning balance:



Do you update your file on botf2.com or send it to Sir P. via email? If you upload it on botf2.com I can link it on our forum and get the fresh file to our testers.

I could get an interim file out but the new file wouldn't do much to resolve the problems that the forum member gave.

The only things that I've done to bring the CoPs "in line" were making their buildings the most expensive in game [on average] while giving their industry and mining outputs 3rd place so they are quite possibly the "slowest building" empire esp. at the high end.

The thing is that the CoPs can be slow builders and it won't hurt them much --- currently the game is about who can get what minors to join and when. If you win that war it's quite likely that you win everything.

Also I'm not tooooo sure that we should be worried about making major adjustments until we see what effects implementing Intel gives us. The CoPs, with the worst intel in the game, should get dramatically weaker.

What I don't get is that after 400 turns neither the Rotharians or Khaorons got past tech 7. With the currently released build file both Empires should be hitting that mark by turn 200 unless their galactic positions [and minor distribution] hosed them entirely.

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Either way I have an interim file that I'll see if I can get out tonight or tomorrow. Just don't expect it to be polished in any way

Preliminary change log for the building file:

1. The outputs of "traditional" buildings are more like what we see in BotF. Races that are good at something in BotF are good at the same things now. The relative order between races from best to worst has been roughly maintained. I did swap the Omega Alliance and Coalition slots for industry output to help compensate for the CoPs having the most expensive high-end buildings on average.

2. As far as mining output goes I swapped the Omega Alliance and Coalition from what Sir P suggested earlier in the thread. With the CoPs having on average the costliest buildings I figured it would be bad to have them in 4th place as far as mining goes.

3. For building costs I used BotF as a template but I did make some changes in places that made sense to me. For example I had a hard time justifying to myself that the Khaorons would outspend Rotharians & Cartaries on security buildings .... they also shouldn't outspend the CoPs on research.

Updates of this nature makes each race play a little more differently in terms of industry output vs. building costs.

4. The time to upgrade buildings has been increased. The difference is largest in the Level 2 through Level 8 buildings. The goal was to have a colony with a [guess?] of +2 morale have upgrade turns of roughly 40. Note that low level upgrades are much cheaper in terms of time because it's expected that having to "grow" the colony population will take away a lot of time so this will compensate for that [hopefully].

5. Research in general has been lowered esp. at the high end. IIRC research rates are cut by roughly 33% for all factions and special buildings on the high end. The goal is to get most races to Tech 10 at roughly turn 325-375 instead of the former 250-275.

6. Mining values have been updated. The output of mines has been adjusted so they better fit building costs.

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Please note that I'm still working on getting the building file tweaked out. It is nowhere near done and needs lots of playtesting & feedback!!

-- I went through the building file yesterday before it was released and corrected numerous typos but I'm not convinced that I've playtested ANYWHERE CLOSE TO ENOUGH to make sure all the typos are gone .....

-- Getting research / build times / etc. working about right still needs a lot of work I was playtesting a version of the file with some serious typos so I'm hoping that in this version [with several major typos corrected] that things will play better that what I've seen in the past.

-- I'm debating whether I should do anything to give the Ferengi an additional bonus to make their buildings even cheaper [by 5%?].

Please contact me when you are thinking you finished, so I can make an announcement. I'll upload your file in our german forums too. I think more people have the chance to test your buildlist and give feedback.

I think that Malovisin already has uploaded an interim file in the "buildings" thread. I could of course be wrong ....

As long as I know the version of the file then any feedback I get would be useful.

Thanks.

Gametest update: Build rate & research rates

In my prior test game I had a very favorable layout of planets. Very high populations that were favorable to colonization. The minors that I met [only 2] both liked me and each had a population of 60+. This should be considered one of the best starting positions possible.

In my current game I have had a horrid selection of planets to colonize and have only recently met 2 minors with low populations [one at 20 and one at 30]. This situation should be considered one of the worst starting positions.

In the "almost best case" I was able to hit tech 6 by roughly turn 150. In the "worst case" I was able to hit tech 5 by turn 165. I don't really think that this is too bad ....

In both cases I had to put my empire "on hold" from about turn 75 to 150 or so and had to concentrate on pumping out enough ships to keep from being overrun by the AI who has a ship building fetish Needless to say this is the biggest reason that things are going more slowly ....

As for build rates so far I'm not able to build nearly fast enough on any of my planets [except sometimes for minors that join me] to even come close to keeping up with my technology. So far [with my possibly poor play style] I don't really see a problem with fast build speeds.

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Testing will continue .. [I REALLY need to pay lots more attention to Rotharians & Khaorons ... I generally only play through the first 5 or 6 tech levels with those races so I really need to do a better job with them]

Some bugs I found in your buildlist.
- A lot of building names are missed in the english language part. The german language part seems to be okay. Only buildings of the Cartaries and the Omega Alliance are affected.

- the known bug, that the subspace scanner of the Khaorons isn't upradeable.

I figured that the Cart & Omegan buildings are just placeholders for now [copies of the CoPs] so I haven't bothered with naming their buildings. I guess that it would make taking one of their planets confusing though. I'll get to that with the next full update.

As for the Khaoron bug I'll get that taken care of too. Just in case I'll look through all of the upgradeable buildings and make sure that they work as expected. [Almost every Empire has the space dock issue for example]

It was planned that every empire has a little spacedock, so it can build ships on tech 0. But these spacedocks aren't upgradable and you only can build them at your homesystem. But in the current file you can build these spacedocks everywhere.

FYI: I made that change to help out the AI. It made it so that it didn't have to wait for a planet to develope before it expanded further [and it didn't have to buy a full blown shipyard] In future builds it may not be needed but I think that it would be good to keep it that way for now.

As far as making them upgradeable it doesn't really matter much to me but if we keep them as-is for now then making them upgradeable [IMHO] would make sense.

Yes, that would make sense.