If they're not building and populating Intel buildings then that will throw things off. Do you want a redesign of the building file to ignore Intel [for now]?

As far as ships go you don't actually "need" ships for a long time in the game. Because the AI can't take populated planets and can't build outposts there's no way for the AI to get to your core planets thus leaving you at peace to develope.

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Can you use the "minor races editor" to play with the base tech level of the various minors? If that's exposed to people looking to mod the game then that's probably good enough.

I do think that the tech levels of minors are currently too high for good gameplay with the current build file philosophy. Because there is a geometric progression with Intel & Research getting a minor power that is at a higher tech level than your empire can have an overly dramatic impact.

Combine the high tech levels with the possibility of high population planets and having these minors join one empire is going to give that empire a huge advantage over other empires and may reduce the strategy of the game and cause it to be more of a game of luck.

We're still a LONG way off so I don't think that we need to address the issues now but I do think that by the time "beta 1" rolls out that we should take a good long look at the balance of homeworld vs. minors vs. native colonies and come up with some ideas that can put these items into balance.

No, because with the next bigger release you are able to use the complete intelligence system. So everybody will need intelbuildings.


I can . With the minorrace editor you can download here you only can change the names and the description. But I have an editor there you can change everything, e.g. the techlevel, the behavior, if minor builds ships... In the current minorrace-list, there are only about four races (of over 130), which are very advanced. Some races are advanced, but most of them are normal.

But your are completly right. After beta1 we have to balance all the things in BotE. Atm Mentat is balancing the complete shiplist, so no empires would have an advantage. Now for example the klingon ships are stronger than the federation ships. You see there is a lot of "work"

Thanks for the update!! Let me know if there's anything else that I can do for now.

FYI: I'm glad to hear that you guys are working on the ships. Seeing ships with updated build costs / maintenance costs / power / etc. will help the game.

However I think that it might be OK for one race to have ships that are a little better than other races as long as they have weaknesses that offset their strength in ships.

Hi

I've player my own game in network last day with your latest buildlist. So I can give some feedback:

First I think your latest shiplist is very good balanced at the moment. So I have other suggestions to make it better. The main issue we had was, that you have too much micromanagment, because you need to many resources to upgrade you buildings. In late games that makes no fun. I suggest, that not all buildings need all resources. Let me explain:

Titan is okay. I think every better building should need titan. But you need too much deuterium, even in the early game. So it is hard to build up your own colonies, because you have to build mines and refineries first. I suggest that only energy buildings need deuterium. Now the labs are needing deuterium too, so it is hard to build up your colonies. Same thing for duranium. When you reach tech 3,4 you need a lot of duranium for almost every building. I suggest that you only need duranium for fabs and mines, not for labs or intelbuildings. Some thing for crystals and iridium. You only should need crystals for late labs and intelbuildings.

What I want is, that you don't need every resource in every system. For example if you want to build up a research system. Why should you need duranium and deuterium for good labs? But if you want to build up a good industry system you have to need some of these resources. I believe it makes more fun to play, if you don't need every resource for your upgradable buildings. It is okay that special buildings, like your shipyards or your subatomic simulators need more resources.

Next thing on my list is, that the shipyards are too good. With an level two shipyard you get about 150% for shipbuilding. I build almost every ship in one or two round, huge cruisers too! I guess a level two shipyard should have an industryvalue about 100%.

Last thing: There is a little bug with the Ferengi Class 1 Energy Exchange. The predecessor-ID should be 0 (not 131).

Do you have a list of each building and exactly what resoruces that you would like to see the building take? If so I should be able to mod the build file to your specs.

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One thing that I don't understand though is what role you want mines to play. I asked the question earlier but I didn't get a clear answer. With a lack of info I just assumed that basically Industry, Intel, Research, Mines, Food+Energy should all be roughly equal partners on a balanced planet.

The result, obviously, is that if you don't actually build mines then you're going to run into building roadblocks. [I.E. mines are just as important as food & industry to get a colony going].

As far as new colonys go I think you now see why I was lobbying for Tech X colony ships to create a Tech X colony when you gave the colonize command. [With at least one or two of each of the Tech X buildings]

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FYI: I did have reasons for making some of the buildings require "odd" resources:

1. [From research over at Memory Alpha] In Star Trek technology it seems like Trek level scanner beams can't penetrate a sufficiently thick barrier of duranium. So if you don't want your Intel buildings subject to scan probes then they'd need "lots" of duranium.

2. I figured that Research buildings would need some of everything. Of course most elements wouldn't be used in building construction BUT I imagined that there would be significant amounts of research going on and you'd need those materials to do research on ..... Think of it as a material maintenance cost but it's really just "built-in" to the original purchase price.

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As for ship building speed what ships were you building that quickly? What tech level were you at?

If you made a ship-building-planet with no research, no intel, and just enough power, food, and mining then yeah ships SHOULD build very fast. I would think that a day or two would be perfectly fine in this case.

If we decrease the build speed too much then an approach where you'd have "balanced" planets [with equal measures of industry, intel, and research] producing ships wouldn't work well because they would need to upgrade their internal structures well before they could squeeze out a ship.

Because of the ship costs I'd hate to eliminate a possible playing style as that would reduce the number of possibilities that you could play around with to find something that works for you.

Here I suggest the list, I believe it makes more fun to play.

- Farms: only need titan, they are okay

- Industry: need titan, duranium, iridium, they are okay too

- Energy: need titan, deuterium, maybe high level energy buildings need duranium too. So you only have to remove the requirement of duranium, later the requirement of crystal and iridium

- Intel: I think they are okay. With your argumentation that they need duranium it is okay. Maybe the intel buildings don't need duranium until you reach higher tech levels (6 or 7)

- Research: Here I think we should change most. Research buildings only should need titan, high level buildings should need crystals too. I think there is no requirement of the masses for deuterium, duranium and iridum to make science.

- all mines: they are okay

So there isn't much to change. All other buildings are okay.

- Shipbuilding: I could build ships very fast from level 1 till level 8 I was. So it doesn't matter what research level you've reached and what ship you wanted to build. But that isn't so important now. I can fix it fast by myself.


I'll think about your idea with the Tech X colony ships. Maybe you allways get better buildings after colonization. This depends on your current research level, not on your colonyship.

Here is one thing I forgot: I think research rate is too fast. Especially in the early levels, tech 0 till 4. The later lavels are okay. But you allways get new buildings and can upgrade your old buildings without concentrating on research. I played the Romulans and I reached tech level 7 at round 200. I researched all available special techs too. In another game I played the Klingons and I reached tech level 7 at round 200 too, but I only research three or four speical techs. I think it is a little bit too fast, because without researching special techs you can reach tech level 8 or 9 at round 200. In both games I didn't have good minorraces with a lot of research buildings.

I should be able to update the building resource requirements to your specifications without too many troubles.

Your suggestions seem like a reasonable compromise. After all the only reason that I included the other elements were for research purposes only.

[I.E. like some universities have their own mini nuclear reactors some universities in the future may have mini anti-matter reactors thus requiring dueterium as fuel ...]

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I can also fix shortages of resources in the early game. Basically I wasn't sure how many turns it would take to go from tech 0 to tech 5 with my research updates so that obviously effected how many resources you could build up between tech levels.

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For ship building having a space dock at 25%, a type 1 space port at 50%, and a type 2 space port at 100% seems reasonable to me. The only real bonuses [above 100%] should come with Utopia Planatia or other similar types of 1-per-Empire sorts of buildings. I think your idea with ship building structures is just fine.

IF I don't like how long it takes to build ships on balanced planets I can always make a mod for myself and my friends only that reduces ship costs so you wouldn't NEED planets that specialized only in ship building.

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As for research rates at tech levels 0-5 I can try to adjust that with an updated build file.

Basically all that I need to know is roughly how many turns you want it to take to go from 0 to 1 to 2 etc. and I should be able to make that happen.

If it matters the slowest rate of research that I'd like to see would be:

Tech 0->Tech 1 at Turn 20 or so.
Tech 1->Tech 2 at Turn 50 or so.
Tech 3 to Tech 7 averages 40 turns or so.
Tech 8-Tech 10 averages 50 turns or so.

This means tech 0 to tech 10 should be about 400 turns. Does this sound about right???

Of course note that if you get AWESOME minors it will go faster. If you get crappy minors it can go MUCH slower. Note even with the current build file and a bad starting position Tech 8 [without special research] at turn 300+ is a reality. Right now everything literally depends on the quality & quantitiy of minor powers that you meet.

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As for starting colonies off at higher tech levels this may become a "requirement" if players are eventually allowed to configure their game where they turn minors "off" so the only thing that you have are colonies and you can't get that UBER boost from minor powers.

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Speaking of being able to disable minor powers is there a way that we can easily turn off minor power generation in BotE. I would have thought that just killing entries in the minor power's data file would have worked but it seems that minors just generate without proper names

Sounds good.

Main thing is that you shouldn't need every resource for every building. The resource output of your mines is very good. I believe we don't need to change something on the resource output. The only thing to change is the research output at early techlevels.

I think you should research the complete techlevel 6 about round 200 in a good game. Maybe the federation is a little bit faster and the klingons have a slower researchrate, so they reach tech 6 at round 220. In late games you should research a new techlevel with the same rate than in earlier games, because the duration of one round takes more time. You have to manage more systems and more ships. So I don't think that it should take more turns to research a new techlevel in late games.

Here is my suggestion which is very similar to yours:
Tech 0 -> complete Tech 1 at Turn 20 or so.
Tech 1 -> complete Tech 2 at Turn 40 or so.
Tech 2 -> complete Tech 3 at Turn 70 or so.
Tech 3 -> complete Tech 4 at Turn 120 or so.
Tech 4 -> complete Tech 5 at Turn 160 or so.
Tech 5 -> complete Tech 6 at Turn 200 or so.
Tech 7 ... Tech 10 averages 40 turns or so.

So you reach techlevel 10 at round 320 - 400. I think it depends on the research of specialtechs. Your current buildlist is very close to what I suggest. You should only change a little bit. I think it isn't good, if researching a new techlevel takes too much time.

In the current version you can't play without minors. For the next alpha version I will implement an optionflag in the ini file, where you can set off minorraces.

-- I'll try to keep my mine output about the same.

-- I'll see what I can do about research to make the early game [tech 0-4] last a little longer.

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Question about buildings like Phoenix Facility, Subatomic Simulator, etc.:

Right now these buildings give you a large, fixed bonus to intel, research, etc.

I was reading over some threads that indicated maybe it would be better to have these buildings give a +X% bonus instead of a large fixed bonus.

What do you think about such an approach? Should we keep the game more BotF-like for now and experiment later?

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I see that you'd like to see people hitting tech 10 in the 320 to 350 neighborhood if they're not researching special projects.

Right now [in the worst case scenario] you'll only hit tech 8 around turn 313 [I have a Federation save game] if you don't get any minor powers worth having.

Of course in the best case scenario you'd be tech 10 before turn 300 ....

Is this kind of variability OK with you? If not is there anything that you can suggest?

Just to summarize you'd like:

Changes to building costs:
1. Keep Farms exactly as is.
2. Keep Industry exactly as is.
3. For energy only require Titanium & Dueterium.
4. For Intel keep the high level buildings exactly the same. Don't require Duranium until L6 Intel buildings
5. Universities only require Titanium and Chrystals at high levels (L7+?)
6. Mine keep EXACTLY the same

Mine output changes:
-- Even though costs go down dramatically for some resource types [see above] you want the costs to be exactly the same.


Space Port Changes:
1. Space dock [Level 0] stays the same at 25%
2. Space port Level 1 needs to be set to 50%
3. Space port Level 2 needs to be set to 100%
4. Utopia Planatia [or equivalent] needs to be set at 150%

Research changes:
Tech 0 -> complete Tech 1 at Turn 20 or so.
Tech 1 -> complete Tech 2 at Turn 40 or so.
Tech 2 -> complete Tech 3 at Turn 70 or so.
Tech 3 -> complete Tech 4 at Turn 120 or so.
Tech 4 -> complete Tech 5 at Turn 160 or so.
Tech 5 -> complete Tech 6 at Turn 200 or so.
Tech 7 ... Tech 10 averages 40 turns or so.


Fix the Ferengi Class 1 Energy Exchange's predecessor ID.

Fix any "bugs" that I happen to find [similar to Ferengi predecessor ID above].

Does all this sound good for the next "minor revision" of the build file?

Yes, that sounds good to me. That is exactly what I was imaging. I'm looking forward to see your new buildlist


I believe a more BotF-like style is better at the moment. Maybe you can decrease the output of these buildings too.


That is okay.

I got your PM and I'll do the best that I can.

I've currently got the Feds [more or less] in shape with your suggestions. I'll move to the Romulans and other powers one at a time to see what I can do.

Just popping into this thread to speak on the last point, colonies vs minor races: I believe that when a system is colonised its starting buildings should correspond to your current tech level. I have never understood why a colony ship from a tech 3 world should only have tech 1 equipment on board. It slows things down considerably and makes players prefer minor races.

Keep the number of starting buildings the same - only so much room on a colony ship, after all - but keep the tech level up to date with that of your empire.

Perhaps if this still makes things too easy, you could make it a requirement that all six research possibilities have to be at a certain level for your colonies to have that tech level. For instance, if one thing is tech 2 but the rest is tech 3, your colony should start at tech 2.

I suppose if you wanted to get very technical about it, you could make it so that the colony's starting tech level depends on when and where the colony ship was built, but I imagine that would be too much trouble.

It depends on your colonyship. If you have better colonyships, like Colonyships II, you get more and better buildings on your new colony. If you found a new colony with a Colonyship III, it is allmost the same like a system of a minorrace.

It would be nice if torpedo tubes had subtext letting people know how much advanced they are or a description. It is confusing because there is no 'stronger' or 'weaker' option for them.

That sounds good for the regular length game though I think there also needs to be a mode for an Epic and Marathon mode like is Civilization 4. Another thing that people might like is a Quick game setting that would work on the current setting. I assume that the current system works off of a points per turn set up so all that would have to be done is to multiply the required number of tech points for each development. For example, normal would have a value of 1, slow would have a value of 0.75, Epic would have a value of 2 and Marathon would have a setting of 3 to 4.

right. comes probably with alpha5.

Great! Is it too much to ask for an estimate on that?

you wouldn't wanna hear I fear..

sir p. says probably around easter 2008 (still there are lots of new features again planned). but maybe or likely there'll be an update or two to the alpha4 before but it won't change anything dramatic to the core game engine. but this game length thing...maybe, shouldn't be much of a thing to do..

Not too bad I guess. Anyhow I just came up with another thing that the game needs. Trade route lines need to be set to a toggle on/off option. In addition to this, an option to cycle through trade route information on the map itself such as when in the route assign mode there would be indicators as to which trading systems would offer the most profit, indicators that allow the player to cycle through trade routes with different empires. This would really help out because in BOTF 1 it sometimes became confusing as to what trade routes where going where.

sure, a short projected income-notice before doing the final "contract" would be extremely nice. Me too has sometimes laid wrong trade routes that only gave .. what 5 latinum or so .

the toggling is currently rather crudely solved: just go and repeat the trade route laying in the same exact sector. then the color of it turns pink and the trade route "runs out" in the next 5 turns..

still this is certainly something to be made a little more user-friendly.

1. Patrol routes
2. automatic population spread from any colonized 'full' worlds in a system to terraformed 'empty' worlds in the same system like in the original.
3. the ability to snap to any event mentioned in the 'news and information' screen
4. display that shows the current grid location of the mouse cursor without having to click anywhere

On a side note, what happened to the colonizable moons idea?

moons are included in the overall planet type. too much stress for too little difference in our opinion .

Then how come gas giants don't have population then? They typically have tons of moons.

moons in the near of gas giants are uninhabitable. too much gravitational disturbance due to overtly heavy gas giant. so no resource digging too..

Even with trek tech? I always thought anyone that can make force fields and weather modification nets would be able to manage.

yeah but not in the proximity of such huge stars. on class c planets, that works but the gravitational shield energy consumption would be too high to maintain proper habitational conditions and stable climate. besides it's not much of a place you want to live too. as mining company, you get big gravitational and ion storms around those gas giants on the moon which makes mining life unprofitable in the end cause you loose your equipment and staff everytime such a blast occurs. this is just what i understand about this topic. life around gas giants ain't funny nor sustainable so let's just forget them. no sensible-minded person would go mining in such a hazardous place..

btw. if you can disprove me with a canon st example of moons being inhabited near gas giants, go shoot .

I see you did your research

what one could possibly think of would be moons around planets that carry resources which usually don't occur on that specific type of planet with the moon surrounding it. The moon would be "invisible" but the planet would have additional resources. what are you thinkin? could lead to some confusion with people if one doesn't explain why a class N planet suddenly got titanium (which usually can't be due to the more "liquid" state of the whole planet)..

That could work.

On a different note, how come when a system has multiple sources of Dilithium it only produces one per turn?