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.

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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.

That sounds okay, but what is with the lowtech buildings, like energybuildings level 1? They don't produce enough energy, that 20% have an effect. So we need this +5 per level system. With later buildings and higher production, we can think about a boost.


That sounds good, too. I want it this way. But it isn't easy to balance, because of the different races. The Federation has the best research buildings, so the Federation doesn't need these 40 turns. Main thing to change is the algorithm which says how many research points are needed to reach the next level. I think you should need a little bit longer at the beginning of the game to research a new tech. But later it takes to long with the current system.


I think you shouldn't have enough time to upgrade all of your buildings and build ships at this time too. It should be hard to decide, if you want to build a ship or to upgrade your buildings. So you need a strategy! Without that, everybody can build enough in the same time.


There wouldn't be special buildings at startup for your colonies. But you are right, your colonies have to play a bigger role in the game. Perhaps we need some resources (like Titan) at the beginning on your colony, or more population (like 5mio). But the minorrace systems should be better than your colonies too. So you have to fight for minors. Maybe it is to easy to get a minor in the late game. But at the beginning, sometimes it is hard, especially if you are playing with the romulans. The Federation has a little diplomacy bonus.

I've already thought about that. With the buildings that I've been testing with for a while the low tech buildings give +5 or +10 per level until the point that a 20% [up to 33% depending on building type] bonus exceeds that +5.

Often tech 1-4 buildings get similar bonuses to the original system but after that you start to notice the difference.

BTW: I agree with your critique. We're on the same page here.

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I agree with your analysis.

FYI: I've mostly been concentrating on getting the Feds close to right [maybe just a little too fast] and hoping that the other slower races will be pretty close.

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I can buy that ... strategy IS what the game should be about.

I would suggest though that the build rate for the fastest research empire should be such to where they can just barely keep up.

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I basically agree with your analysis. Minor powers [because they are often fully populated with decent tech levels] by definition are likely to be better than a relatively new colony. We should also have to "fight" for minor powers.

My best guess at what to do with colonies would be:

1. Faster terraform rates
2. More initial population
3. The initial buildings should be at the tech level of the colony ship
4. Having some mines as initial buildings may not be bad [????]

My best guess at what to do with minor powers would be:
1. Make it harder to get an "advanced" tech species to join. Tech 9s should be reluctant to join tech 4 empires except in unusual circumstances.
2. Make the rate of advancement for minors slower [and/or moddable]

I agree. When a system is colonized, it should start with a Basic Duranium Mine, Basic Titan Mine, & Basic Deuterium Mine if it has those resources available. This would allow the resources to slowly build up. This would also spare the player a little work for each new system. It’s not easy to build these basic mines in the beginning if they need resources and when the food production is not enough for the population. A problem I ran into was I could not upgrade to the Type 4 Mass Replicator because I did not have enough resources. Having the mines from the start could help with this. This would make the game funner too.

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.

Since your tech level is going up and the ship is carrying more, it should cost more in resources. Maybe an idea would be to have a new colony ship for each new tech level or an auto upgrade.

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..

With the current building data files and the way the game inherently works there's no way that your colonies can keep up with either minor powers OR your homeworld. The best that you can hope for is that they become self-sufficient quickly.

Note: [With the current system] If you have 1 Type 9 factory it takes most races about 70 turns to build a second Type 9 Factory. With the updates that I'm working on that number is reduced to about 10 turns .....

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.

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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.

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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?

Yes, of course. There could be a little difference between the races and their buildings and upgrades.


I'm thinking it is better to implement the intel buildings in the right way yet. The AI doesn't build any intel buildings, only some minors. I can't say how the Intel will work exactly. But I'm thinking that most of the players won't set workers into intel buildings all over the time, so you have a similar game like it is in the current version.

If I understand you correctly it will be a while before Intel is done so you prefer that we design the building data file with the assumption that Intel buildings won't be built or staffed for now .... correct?

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Question on building output principle .... what should the differences in building output between the best in one area [industry, research, intel, etc.] and the worst in one area be?

With BotF you can really feel a difference between races in the early game. However late in a game [in BotF] the difference between races kind of get glossed over.

So that you could really "feel" differences between empires my guess is that you'd really need to see at least a 4% difference between each empire and maybe a swing of lets say 20% between best & worst.

Example: Lets say that the race with the BEST industry would be at roughly 100 points. I'm thinking that number 2 should be about 96 ; number 3 should be about 92 ; number 4 should be about 88 ; number 5 should be about 84 ; and number 6 should be about 80.

Does this approach look reasonable or do you want to keep the differences between races at the high end down to something like 10%??

No. Design the building data file with the assumption that Intel buildings will be built now. Because later you don't distribute workers at the intel buildings all the time. So there is no bigger change in play with the current version. Only in the late game or in war times, you have to set workers into intel buildings, but rest of the time you don't need this.

I think what he means is that intel will be more or less negligible in workers' distribution matter later on when implemented, so calculate it already in your building list now but don't give it too much "impact" on the balance

NP ... I'll design the build file with Intel in mind. However I'll try to not let it impact me too much

However I would recommend that players staff Intel buildings from the time they make "First Contact" with other races. Lord knows that I'll be happy to turn loose my spies from day 1 after contact War or no war. This is esp. true if my first few turns of "info gathering" somehow say you have let your spy network decay

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Also what do you think of the building-differences proposal in my prior post? Is it something you'd like to see or do you prefer something more BotF-like?

That sounds very good. I like your idea with the greater differences. That is what I was imagining. Try it and I'm thinking your updated buildlist becomes great, especially because of the difference between the races.

Do you think that 20% between highest & lowest building output is about right? Do you also think that a 20% cost delta is about right?

As for my observations so far:

The Romulans definitely play differently with their intial population & "power needy" empire.

The Fed's early game is different because you're in a mad race to build up your homeworld ... after this it feels defensive with the only ships built "for a long time" being colony ships & transports.

I'm not sure if I really "get" the Klingons or not. I know that they should be a militaristic empire but in actual gameplay I'm having a hard time really making that work out for me.

That sounds very good. A different way to play a race is what I wanted.


I think it is okay, try it. Maybe we can use more than 20% too, why not?

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.

We got some new feedback at our german forum. I write it here in the short way:

- research is too fast
- the resourceoutput of the mines is too high

I've been gone from the forums for a while [wedding anniversary, entertaining friends in from Japan, etc.] so I haven't done much work on the build file over the last month.

I do have some questions about the feedback:

1. Are they using the most recent Exe, ship, and build files? IIRC the most recent build file reduces both research and mine output dramatically.

Download from: Building data from BotE sharepoint

2. Are they building with a balanced mix of Industry, Intel [unusable now but it won't be for long], and Research? The build file was designed assuming a balanced use of the above so if they aren't doing that then the game will play too fast.

3. Are they building enough ships to fend off the AI OR are they just expanding with knowledge that the AI can't take away an indefensible planet from them so they can do a lot of early expansion / minor meeting without fear.

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Right now starting position results [imho] in too much variability. For example if you are in an awesome starting position you'll likely hit tech 10 by turn 300 or so. However if you are in a bad starting position [I.E. almost no minors anywhere near you and minimal juicy colony planets] it may take you 500-600 turns to hit tech 10.

IMHO [which doesn't count for much] I think that we need to look at the formula for how population and tech level of minor powers are generated. If you're lucky and get several high population, high tech minor powers then you're in great shape. However if you don't get those then you're pretty much hosed.

While it's a great idea on paper to have minor powers being "always useful" I think the current implementation causes problems by having many [most?] minor powers at higher tech levels than the major empires thus making the homeworlds and natural colonies less valueable.

I would propose changing how minor powers tech levels are calculated by:

1. Assign each minor their own starting tech level at turn 1.

2. Have a given minor go up a tech level every X turns. X can be configured differently for each minor power.

The theory is that we should be able to control the sorts of tech levels that other races will progress at .... this can go a long way to making research work the way we want it to ....

As for minor power population perhaps changing the way that systems are generated so that their population is 25 mil to 50 mil would be better. A similar reshuffle of unpopulated systems may not be a bad idea. While it makes the universe much more boring / vanilla it would help cut down on the randomness that we currently see.

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Perhaps, to generate a better build file, I should know your goals. At what turns [on average] should you hit various tech levels? To make things easy just let me know what turns the Feds [on average] should hit the various tech levels [1-10]. This way I should be able to make better adjustments to what you'd like to see.

No. They are using the buildlist from the klingon update. With the next little update, I will upload your latest buildlist file too, so everybody has the same version.

2. and 3:
I don't know. But I think they are bulding ships, because they need these ships against the AI. I can't say how they are building the rest of the buildings. I think most of them build enough industry, research and farms. In the current version is no need of building intel buildings. So I think they don't build them.

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I think there is no really problem with the techlevel of the minorraces. I use an algorithm similiar to what you suggested. First I take the average techlevel of all majorraces. Then there is a value for each minorraces, which says how advanced a minorrace is. With the known averagetech and the value from the minorrace I can decide which techlevels the startbuildings in the system of the minorrace would have.