I have a thought about the industry build vs buy feature. In BOTF I always wondered were you buy the item from that makes it available so fast. Why not just do away with the buy feature and decrease the cost of building or increase the industry output of the buildings. This way you can't make a building magicaly build itself.

I know what you mean, it seems kinda strange, that a building can be "bought", but this is the usual economic private subsector of every state economy that jumps in in that case. You buy it from the people that work in surplus of normal production. I mean you don't get those credits you need for buying for free so this is an economic value that allows you to actually buy stuff in the end.

and please remember, a turn in botf2 and botf equals roughly 2 years at the beginning (turn 0-50) and slowly decreases to 2 weeks after turn 400. That's quite a time so buying makes sense in the end .

i know your going to be adding a people revolt feature (i hope) I was thinking thoe in the news section you could add a (insert race) Citizens celebrate the ending of starvation in (insert sector). I was thinking you also spice up news next version. Not so bland. Mabey it American version. Also mabey later add Citizens approval rate. Give bonus to stuff they like. Coalition Citizens are out rage at war with Khaoron. Coalition Citizens Strongly approve war with Khaoron after they attacked defenseless freighter. Ect. Nice to see my people thought and views on my action. Make feel more like living planet. Khaoron would be happy with any millitary action, and last i want civil war. How many time had Khaorons gone to war with them selves? Coalition on X-I 1200 had broke away after 3 year of starvation and declared war on Coalition. End up fighting your enemy and your selves or rougue groups.

the civil war thing is quite good, me too had the idea in the past. but these are all things that belong to the "finishing touch" of the game. People revolt and separate from your empire already btw. .

you'll definitely hate the rogue groups among your colonies I'm sure

well im happy. Hope you do add those features. Make all the difference in the end. It little thing that count.

The 'little things' are why the various games are all part of a collaborative project, the BOTF Consortium, as we've called it.

We have a Sharepoint site where people are saving many different files that *could* be used in any of the games - graphics, icons, sound effects, game text, ship models...there's tons of stuff on there, and the list is growing by the day.

By making these files in agreed formats, (Images are .png's or .jpg's, whilst all the sounds are .mp3's for instance) any one of the various games will be able to use these files - slashing development times for each of the games. If the developers don't have to spend time making certain sound effects for instance, they can spend more time focussing on the unique aspects of their game(s).

Ideas are something that we love though - that's the whole point of these forums. We hate how 90% of the people signed up to the forums have never posted, so if you have any more ideas, keep them coming. We will consider them all, no matter how stupid they may seem at first. You never know if it *could* be done. Several of my own ideas have made it into the games, and now i'm a site admin for heavens sake! Ok, I spend far more time on these forums than is healthy...but you get my point.

^^ and this is why your one greatest sites around

Thank you! Are you by any chance one of the 730 people who voted that This Site Is "The Best One!" In Our Poll?

Actually i'd like to post a new poll if I could. That particular poll has ben running since the forums were launched - which is three years now. Unfortunately adding new polls is a bit difficult coz the programming of these forums is a little...complicated. (Read: fecked up. )

...

We welcome noobs to the forums because we are a fan project, and know that everyone has to start somewhere. I would link you to my first ever post if I could so you could see some of the ideas I had three years ago. Unfortunately the thread I made was in a forum that is no longer accessible because Jigalypuff felt it was no longer relevant to the various games in development here.

...Maybe that's a good thing though. I admit myself some of my ideas were a bit...over the top.

Who was it that wanted carriers and aircraft type ships

Regards Wolfe

Actually i am. Any how noob bring new idea (crazy mabey) but new idea none the less. New poll would be cool ...

Mwahaha just had a PM from Jigalypuff asking me about that. You must be psychic, Dontai...

Nah, you are. You mention it first.

Duno if just me but the fonts for Khaorons are a bit hard to read i think there too small and in colours that makes them harder to read. Imo of course.

Anything i can do myself to change the font or font size or colour?

Also diplomacy is weird i kept lookin for send button when i wanted to send trade pact with someone i clicked trade and spent 5 mins lookin for button for sending message. In end i just clicked turn cos of presure to from "you know who u were lol" but weirdly the trade pact was sent.

A bit of a confirmation button would be nice or pop up. And noises when u click buttons etc so i know its been clicked cos there wasnt any idication i actually clicked somit and it registered with the game.

Oh and about the door chimes when u hover over buttons on main screen. It gets annoying can it be disabled or somit? First time i played the game i thought it was a mate chatting to me lol but no messages come through. Then i thought was someone clicking turn to get me to turn but it wasnt that. It was hovering over while mouse moving. lol.

atm you can only turn all sounds off in the bote.ini file (SOUND=OFF).

as for the diplomacy, the button is on bottom right and changes to "cancel" if you press it once to send the offer.

font size and color are still hard-coded. you can however remove the whole klingondagger font from your system using windows explorer (c:\windows\fonts\) and then you get arial. might look a bit strange though I fear..

We tested with romys, the font is nice to read except the dodgy lookin very high L in lowercase and k. Looks strange (sry). lol.

Chat bug that we talked about on botf forums chat. I just post here for reminder use only.

Also the IP BOTE shows LIES...

*nitpicking* windows lies here, since the ip shown there is the only one that windows provides (do a ipconfig /all to check that) .

Im sorry if this has come up before but a few things i can recommend that needs a tweak if your up for the suggestions.

Right mouse menu. Me and uss defiant miss it hehe.

Map exploring. Its weird for some reason. Unexplored sectors just look like explored sectors at the mo, as in no fog of view thing. So lets say u start a game and move ur ship up, it reveals more squares with nebula type squares. You might not see a star system with planets unless you go directly on or one square near it. Which was hard to explore given that explored looks like explored so didnt know where i had been for example.

Also im not sure if its missing or just not in this release of alpha 4. But i miss the empire compare screen from botf, where u can compare all playable races by systems held, moral in general, military, research skils etc.

Also theres no way at the moment to know what i am researching towards. Theres no level 1-9 for each research and what each level will release for ships/buildings/specials etc. Like it was in botf. I miss this and hope it returns.

Also not sure about half the new things like reousources, or trade menus etc work but i will search the forum and hopefully find some explantion of how this works.

right menu won't make it into the game. we assigned the right mouse click to other tasks already (like mainly "undo" or "drop ship route").

map exploring wierd? hm, it works mainly like in botf. okay a real "fog of war" isn't implemented yet, but botf didn't have it either. granted, the nebula background is a bit too bright but it's a jpg in the bote folder so if you wanna edit that file with photoshop, go on!

that other thing is under intel this time (makes sense, eh? ). You can see all races compared there. The diplomatic relationships are listed at the diplo information menu. but remember, you only get things written down there if you either have enough espionage done or have a co-op treaty with the race at least! no cheap knowing of the other's progress like in botf!

this comes in the research database. not implemented yet as you can see with the empty button .

this is kinda new. for starters, just use system trade only for exchanging resources. but remember too, this fast way of exchanging things between your colonies will have its price = 15% of all goods delivered!

why dont you create at ship editor for bote?

There is one. Right at the game downloads page on main site (look for bote tools subfolder) or at the Birth of the Empires Modding subforum here: http://www.star-trek-games.com/forum/in ... =viewtopic