Just some observations from playing for the last few days...

1) Bug?... Upon first encountering a ship from one of the other major races there was a battle but after the turn concluded there was no mention in the news about meeting this race and they were not available in the diplomacy list. This has only occured once.

2) Bug?... After a battle where I had 2 ships and my opponent had only 1 ship the news reported that 'we lost a battle'. However both of my ships survived and the opponents was destroyed.

3) Bug?... I had a minor race cancel their membership we my empire but I was still receiving reports that other races were trying to bribe them.

4) Bug... The Baa minor race name has not been changed to english. However understand that the current english translation is not an offical version.

5) Bug?... Major races are now request crazy. Bombarded with 2-3 requests per turn depending on the number of major races you have currently met. And their requests are impossible to meet. 40 turns in and they are requesting 2k lts of Du.

6) Bug?... Had good relations with the Cartare. Offered them a trade treaty and on the same turn they offered an co-op treaty. I accepted their offer but after the turn resolved we didn't have a co-op treaty. Shouldn't it default to the highest offered treaty?

7) The AI doesn't seem to bothered about forging alliances with minors, just destroys them all.

Requests/improvements ideas...

a) OMG we need orbital batterys, Keep getting all my planets destroyed and can't build fleets as quickly as the ai.

b) I haven't noticed anywhere where it says the number of troops stationed on a planet? was this implemented, wasn't there going to be a defense tab in the system information page?

c) Can trade routes change colour like in BotF when the cursor moves over a planet that you can establish trade with?

d) Possible for ship icons of other races to be ? as in BotF until you encounter them.

e) Screen Saver

f) Data base


May seem like a lots of complaints but I'm very happy really, Alpha 4 represents another huge step towards a completed game.

1. is intended. if you loose, no distress call will reach your empire. later on, this will get a little more sophisticated.
2. that is new. can you attach savegame to a post at http://www.birth-of-the-empires.de -> forums ?
3. strange..
4. fixed
5. if you are rising up to a challenge to the AI players but still are inferior to them, they try to get at war with you quickly. that is not the case if you are totally inferior though (then they see you as lovely pets and don't care much ) or totally superior (for obvious reasons). Try and set the AI difficulty level differently for starters. open bote.ini and set difficulty to BABY, HARD or IMPOSSIBLE.
6. had a similar bug over here. will be fixed.
7. really? have to check that..

answers to:

a) yes!!
b) right, have to ask sir p. where that was left behind on the way..
c) sure, in alpha5
d) as in c)
e) does the normal windows screensaver not work while bote is running?
f) agreed. we will need some texting help once we get started on this. might be some months though..

it's alright, I understand .

Mal, I think blane is referring to a BotE screensaver, rather than saying that the existing one is broken.

BotF actually had a built-in screensaver that automatically plays if the game is left on for long enough without any input by the user. The models from the game spin around on the screen - you even see some 'joke' models such as a Borg cube with a smiley face on it!

Yep, an ingame screen saver is what I was refering to. I left it running for an hour last night and when I returned there was defo no screen saver in operation.

Not sure if I have any saves from previous testing but will definately make some as I continue to test.

And with regard to the difficulty setting. I consider myself an expert BotF player but I'm still getting a beating from the AI in BotE. Granted it's a different game but I expect better of myself without having to resort to playing on BABY setting

And just out of interest what is the default difficulty setting for BotE?

normal

here the full list: BABY, EASY, NORMAL, HARD and IMPOSSIBLE (capital letters are important!)

More testing observations....

Playing Khaorons, the text in the 'industry and resource cost' box overlaps on basic replicators and also on Mining prison.

I made contact with the Cartare, however their ship did not come into contact with either a ship, planet, or outpost. As far as I can tell it just entered into the green area on my map. Does this trigger contact?
I believe I have a save for this if required.

When contact was made I checked the intel report to see how many systems/minors etc they had. All stats were 0, is this correct? i.e. you don't know until you do spying?

When I signed a co-op treaty with the Cartare on the following turn it appeared to reveal the entire map. It also looked like the Cartare had ships flying outside of their range restrictions. Does the AI obay range restriction rules? Also have a save for this.

1. I somehow knew that changing titan into titanium gets these results..in german language, there's obviously not that problem since we just say titan. might be, that this is one the few things that never really get fixed .
2. yes. it does.
3. yes, you don't.
4. well the cards must have a co-op with another empire too, cause the AI does not cheat in any way except resource production (here baby means no percentage per turn, easy 5%, normal 10%, hard 20% and impossible 30%). this is the only difference between the different difficulty settings. not sure if I got every percentage right here but it has such a tremendous effect on the AI expansion, it's something like triple the expansion between a baby AI and a impossible AI (though the "handling" is exactly the same). basically you always fight against the same AI type, only difference he got a little "interest" in resource production..

is it normal?for some reason i dont see my ship on the map

i run on Vista by the way

of course . you mean the fleet symbols for each race? well, the installer kinda fails if you got any previous alpha installed with the fonts (those symbols are chars within the font). You have to remove all fonts from c:\windows\fonts that are in the bote fonts subfolder and then manually copy them over again with windows explorer (important that you use only the win explorer, any other file manager will fail!).

i have found another bug i think,even tought your population get to the maximum,the food requird to feed the population of a system keep growing wich mean that no matter what you do your system is going to be starving since they stop reproducing but they keep on eating more

or maybey they are just glutton lol (sorry for my poor english)

no way. you sure? i haven't had this 'bug' never! can you upload a save game somewhere or link a screenie? is this with every system? I can't believe that..!

oops sorry i was wrong lol been playin all night

but could you explain to me how can a fleet of 6 Khaoron Destroyers can defeat my fleet of 5 Montgomery 3 Peraine 3 Hathaway and 3 LongEye so easy i mean they completly wipe me out whats going on ? 8O

easy catch, yours were probably equipped with low level/type shields and phasers. go to the special ship design menu inside research and mod your ships accordingly. they will severely suck if they use old-fashioned torpedos and stuff! also the double (titanium)duranium hull is something very useful.

if you wanna find out why exactly then have a close look at the shiplist with the shipeditor. there you see the difference.

nope they still kick my ass very badly

also is it normal that once you've defeated an oppressor race the oppressed one dont get free? i mean ive just conquered the Khaoron Empire and while the Yimandar were under Khaoron control i did not meet them but once the Khaoron empire have been defeated i cant get to meet them i dont know its wierd

sorry if i ask alot of question

might be this isn't implemented yet. only when they separate themselves (i.e. cancel membership treaty) then you can get back to diplomacy again. if you conquer them too (obviously you had to when you say you totally conquered the Khaoron empire) then they won't appear (the "freeing" thing might be not implemented yet as said above).

Maybe the Khaoron had a lot of cloaked ships in this sector, too. Maybe there were about 20 Cyllaxar classes you didn't see

lol another question i have cloaked ship now (now playin as the Khaoron) and the Rotharian also have cloaked ship in the sector, do i have to uncloak to fight them? or did they just out of the sector?

No, you can attack the Rotharian ships with your cloaked ships. But it is good to have some scouts in your fleet, so they can detect the Rotharian ships first.

ok thanks lol i just cant wait for the translation to come so i can know what im doin

you noticed hopefully in the other thread, that there is actually a rough translation out yet? no need to play the game fully in german for the time being .

wich thread is it plz im looking for it

doesn't matter anymore, the new alpha4 is uploaded and updated to the Downloads section here on the site. Enjoy!

yeah thanks i just noticed

if the AI is too strong, set it to EASY or BABY at the bote.ini. The other settings (including the default setting) are for the advanced botf or alpha3 players! of course, if you are one of them, then let it as it is or even change it to HARD or IMPOSSIBLE like I did in my last game .

thanks i realy have trouble to understand the value of the ship tought seriously Khaoron ship seems pretty useless againts Omegan Ship ive been playin this game and i had a fleet of Cyrillar and Cyllaxar on

i was outnumbering the enemy my Cyllaxar and Cyrillar were fully equiped some even had duranium double armor however they were destroyed by a much smaller fleet of omegan cruisers whats wrong?are there class that are more effective againts other?

I was not the one who initially put the combat values into the shiplist file plus in my most recent game I didn't get over turn 124 so no omegan cruiser class encountered yet but I did hear that Khaoron ships are the strongest so you shouldn't have had these losses.

well, there is a combat simulator. put your shiplist.data from alpha4 in the respective folder and run it with the same set of ships like in that battle of yours. then you see a statistical outcome of the fight. maybe that will help.

also beware of cloaked Rotharian ships which might have fought also in the battle "hidden"..

yeah cause there is deffenatly something wrong here 26 Cyllaxar combine with Cyrillar againts 9 cruisers and a couple of fighter,for some reason the comp loose all this fighter yet no omegan cruiser is destroyed

where is the battle simulator?