Terraforming scraped? It must be some kind of mistake

I didn't see the terraform option in the game so I thought it wasn't going in, and then there were the water structures that made worlds more habitable, so I put the two together and thought this is the new terraform, queue-able and all,

A-ha! Strings gets +1 points for being the first to discover one of my little easter eggs . There's another joke system name in there, and it's a bit more esoteric. Nobody's found that one yet so far .

Yes, the post-turn processing part of the game involves some complex algorithms, including computing the geometric convex hulls containing all of a civilization's systems. These will be used by the AI for determining which civilizations are expanding "too close" to its borders. I've looked into speeding some of this up, but it will still be a computationally expensive operation, particularly on larger galaxies (it's O(n*log(n)) for n sectors claimed by a civ, but it has to scan the whole galaxy first to determine which sectors are claimed).

I thought I had fixed this in the latest release--I'll look into it.

Ok, I think that sounds sensible. Put a feature request on CodePlex. I had already intended to jump to the diplomacy screen when double-clicking a Summary window event, but I had implemeted the events before I implemented the diplomacy screen, and I forgot to add that in .

I agree as well.

If you remember, that's how I originally implemented the build lists. Then I changed it to the way BotF works (the current implementation) because some people got confused. I have no problem changing it back, I think the double-clicking was more sensible anyway.

I don't remember exactly what criteria I use, but I think currently it only auto-assigns labor units to food facilities if you're producing less food than you'll need to feed your estimated new population in n turns, where n=3 or so. I've been planning on allowing you to set a 'Focus' area for colonies that determines which production category new labor gets assigned to.

The "S" stands for "Station", because Supremacy doesn't make a distinction between different kinds of stations, and I see no reason why it should. Supremacy isn't a BotF clone, nor should it be, as BotF was a great idea but a very flawed game. As for clicking on the indicators, you won't have that option (when you click on the map, you're always clicking on the map--never on an icon), though it shows up in the Task Forces pane, and in the future you will be able to find more information about the station there. That might include the ability to assign ships to repair slots, assuming the idea of explicit ship repair doesn't get scrapped, which it probably will (regrettably, sacrifices must be made to ensure the game actually gets finished).

There are several bonuses that have no effect yet, as the infrastructure wasn't there when I created them. The Growth Rate bonus probably fell through the cracks. File a bug report on CodePlex for it.

I believe I added a Food stockpile at the system level, but the others are stockpiled at the Empire level. I see no point in hording other resources in individual systems, as that would prevent you from making use of them elsewhere.

Nothing you do in the current turn will get saved, because saving occurs on the server, and the server is unaware of any orders you issue (fleet orders, movement orders, colony build orders, etc) until you end a turn. I believe BotF worked the same way.

The build restrictions are ANDed together, not ORed together. I'd say change it to a Gas Giant restriction and drop the Oceanic restriction.

I'm sure you will .

Terraforming as it was in BotF is not in Supremacy. There are two mechanisms that replace it. First, every race's desired planet environment is based on their homeworld environment, so the max population and growth rates of a system are calculated based on the desirability of a system for the inquiring race. For instance, a Cardassian player might find a system with several desert planets, and that system would be very comfortable for them, so it would have a high max population and high growth rate. If the Andorians discovered the same system, they would see a low max population and low growth rate because they come from an Arctic planet. Whereas if the Andorians discovered a system with a giant Arctic planet, the max pop and growth rate would be high, while those values would be low for the Cardassians. There are (I think) 4 stages of planet environments. All the planet types are connected in a logical 'ring', where two types on opposite sides of the ring are as opposite as can be (think Oceanic and Barren) and would have a Hostile environment, while two next to each other (like Oceanic and Terran) are very close and would have a Comfortable environment. For each step away from the ideal planet type in the ring, the environment (desirability) drops down a level.

Secondly, I plan on introducing terraforming 'projects' late in the tech tree that will allow you to effectively convert a planet into a slightly more friendly type. For instance, the Vorta might terraform an Oceanic planet into a Terran planet, and then terraform the Terran planet into a Jungle planet (or something). These would be available as build projects, and would prevent other planetside build projects from completing (similar to the morale-boosting projects like Martial Law, which haven't been implemented yet either).

That terraforming system is awesome, and much more realistic, I like it! One question comes to mind though, how does it work when an already inhabited system falls under your control, it shouldn't adjust the population cap to your race immediately, firstly because if you're the Cardis and the conquered system was Andorian then Andoria would become hostile to you, thus dropping the population cap, and wiping out most of the population, which is neither realistic nor sensible.

Also what build projects will you get then, ones that suit your race, or ones that suit the inhabitants? Maybe it depends on how evil you are, hehe.

I think there needs to be some kind of exception for this. Or maybe there is already.

If a system is inhabited, then the max population and growth rates are based on the environmental preferences of the inhabiting race. This always hold true. If a system is uninhabited, then the max population and growth rate shown will be based on the primary race of the player inspecting that system. So if you're playing as the Cardassians and conquer the Andorians, the max population and growth rates of the Andor system will remain the same, as the environment is still Ideal for the people living there (the Andorians).

The terraforming projects available will be computed dynamically, and will allow you to transform a single planet in a system at a time by one "link" in the planet type "ring" at a time. The available project will always move a single planet one link closer to the ideal environment of the inhabiting race. So in Sol (inhabited by Humans), you could transform Pluto from Arctic to Oceanic with one terraforming project, then transform Pluto again from Oceanic to Terran in another project. Or you could then transform another planet. If you've ever played MoO2, that game had a nearly identical system, though I believe all races favored the same kinds of planets.

what I'd like to know in that case is the exact canon number for race population divided by planet size for "Arctic" and "Desert" races in Star Trek. I mean, they may feel more accustomed to class P,K or H planets, but I doubt such a planet bears enough resources to feed as much people as a same-sized class M planet would for humans. Got what I mean?

It has to be said though that if you were to perform any of these projects, you would lose the building benefits - for instance, transforming an Oceanic planet would mean losing your Aquaculture Centre and its' +50 food bonus, Strings.

That's a point, Mike - when you "build" the terraforming projects, would these planet type-specific structures be automatically scrapped, or would you have to scrap them later on? It would be useless to keep them in the system, especailly if you can recover some of the materials used to build them in the first place. This would also need to take into account the number of planets of each type as well, otherwise if it was automatic then you would end up scrapping the structure and have to build it again for the unterraformed planet.

Strings, in the editor, you have to set the Homeworld type of each individual species, if you remember what I said in my PM about the races and factions representing the species and Empires. This is how the game would know which way the planet would need to shift during each terraforming project.

Mike, I know you haven't thought about the random events yet, but are you going to include climate shifts as a random event? If so, you would need to ensure these preferences are taken into account when it decides whether the shift is a good or bad one.

I've submitted the two items to Codeplex.

Yes, that's a good point.

I think the best way to handle this would be to leave the structures unaffected if their build requirements/restrictions will still be met after the terraforming is complete (e.g. Charge Collectors would be left untouched if you had two polar planets and only terraformed one). If a structure's requirements would not be met once the terraforming process is over, then they ought to be rendered inoperative during the terraforming, and then automatically removed once the terraforming process has completed, or be made operable again if the terraforming process is terminated by the player prior to completion. Naturally, it makes sense to provide a list of any structures that are present which would be affected by the project so that the player knows what she will be losing when she initiates the terraforming process.

The logic for determining if a random event executes and handling the consequences of the event will be self-contained within the events themselves, so a climate shift event would certainly be able to make such assessments. Though I think in this particuar example, the desirable implementation would be a 50/50 chance of a planet moving one link in either direction in the 'ring', so you'd have a 50%/50% chance of it being good or bad, unless the planet is already ideal (i.e. a Terran planet inhabited by Humans), in which case you have a 100% chance of it being bad. The event implementation would be responsible for generating a message to the user describing the shift and its consequences, and "adjusting" ( ) the system's population if necessary.

Thank you, sir.

Certainly a good point, though I think this is one of those instances in which realism gets sacrificed for the sake of balance and gameplay. Besides, an advanced race that evolved on an arctic planet or desert planet has no doubt become quite adept at producing food under those conditions, and would probably be at a loss as to how to raise food on an Aquatic planet (What do you mean "fish"? Those things moving around in the ocean? You mean you eat those?! OMG WTF?!).

BTW, Strings, have you given any more thought to helping develop a combat engine for our games? I'm don't know if there's a thread dedicated to such a discussion, but I haven't had a lot of time to sift through all the new posts around here lately .

I think strings is compiling a skeleton document of some kind on the subject.

Is colonization now an instant thing with the colony ships? makes any new colony ship above level I a bit redundant doesn't it?, bar the fact it will be faster etc.

Regards Wolfe

Would the yield of structures vary depending on the size of the planets in a system? For example, would an Aquaculture center on a large ocean planet be able to produce less than on a small planet? Also, on a related note, wouldn't a large or medium Terran world be just as capable as supporting an Aquaculture center as a small ocean planet. Seeing as how Earth is a Terran planet of roughly medium size but is still about 70% covered and water that probably adds up to more water than would Pluto would have if turned into an ocean world.

On yet another related note, are there any terraforming projects that would allow for the heating of a planet that has little to no energy from the systems sun like Pluto or even the potential 'Planet X' that is beyond the Kyper Belt. Also, would this system be able to keep the planet warm enough because if a planet far enough from its star to require such a system then it would most likely not be able to sustain a reaction (natural or artificial) in it's core that would be sufficient enough to heat the planet.



Wouldn't the environmental control structures prevent these changes from happening all together?

So anyway it took me 1 minute 42 seconds to run turn one on a tiny. If it means anything the first minute of that was processing diplomatic relations.

I built this PC myself from parts. (A box, a mother board, Athelon 64 2.21 GHz, 1.5 GB Ram, Nividia GeForce 6600 GT video card....) and it runs XP.

It was fun to build but takes time. If I would rather be building ships right now where do I look to get the best deal on a good (already put together) PC for this kind of Game? I used CNET back before I started to build my own. Any other suggestions?

Kenneth, your system configuration should be more than sufficient for running Supremacy. I don't know why you're experiencing such long turns, but rest assured, it's not because your computer is too slow. There's obviously something very wrong that is causing absolutely abysmal performance on some systems, and rest assured I'll track it down .

Whilst you're right, Fox, we're trying to keep in the spirit of BOTF, which is a game not entirely based on reality.

The planet types had different buildings that made them unique. If we start mixing and matching the buildings the planets would then start to lose that uniqueness.

Still, i'm going to implement a Deuterium-producing structure for Oceanic worlds (That will require more tech and energy but produce less Deuterium than the current Gas Giant requiring one) so we could easily just make that the unique structure, but then again it won't be all that special then will it?

The issue of how realistic that we make the game would apply to your outer-rim planets as well, Fox. We could make it so realistic that outer-rim planets can never be terraformed, or we could make it so there are limits - one terraform only for instance. This is all up to Mike though, as he will be the one that ultimately decides if it will be in or not - and whether it is actually programmable in the first place. And if he did implement it, we would then need to define "outer-rim" planets...

Hey guys, new poster here. Good to see that some people around the world enjoyed BOTF as much as me and are desparate to see a newer version of it.

I've downloaded all the stuff you mentioned in your first post but for some reason i'm not getting the game to load. The flash screen appears, and then the menu does for an instant before I get an error message.

The report in the error file reads like this:



Any help on what I can do to make this work would be helpful, I really wanna try this game out, it looks great. Hopefully i'll have my new laptop soon and i'll give the game a go on that, but I thought it might be playable on my current laptop.

NH1985, try running the game with the -NoMusic argument, e.g. set a shortcut like so:

...where the "..." represents the full path to the game.

Working fine now. Cheers for that.

The game looks really good, well done! Having a lot of fun dominating the galaxy, though I fully know getting the AI to work will take a while.

Guys, i've noticed a minor mistake in the game with one of the image files. I've already told Mike and it'll be fixed in the next update, but if you're one of those people who like a perfect game ( ) then here's how to fix it. It really is a minor issue and I doubt you'll notice it anyways.

One of the minor races currently do not have an image set. This race is the Teplans, but the image for that race IS in the game. What has gone wrong is that the image file is named "teplan.jpg" instead of "teplans.jpg". I know, tiny little mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

The image is contained in Supremacy/Resources/Images/Races. Just right-click rename the file and add on the "s" and it will be fixed.

...

My next round of updates will include a few more building updates - i've added in the Aquatic Deuterium Plant and removed the Oceanic planet requirement for the standard Deuterium plant - i've also given industry costs to some more of the buildings and changed the build and energy costs of the Dilithium structures so that they are now more uniform. (They varied wildly because most of them are made up )

I've also started to add in the minor race ships, written more building descriptions, updated more of the building images, changed the image links of the facilities so that they point to the first structure of that class to make future image modding easier, and added in the descriptions for the facilities yet again. This part is still glitching whenever I download updated Supremacy files and copy-and-paste my updated files back into the game - Mike, where are the descriptions for the facilities (Not the buildings, the production buildings like Hydroponic farms) saved so I know i'm saving a copy of the right files?

Every time I do this, I save the contents of the Data and Strings folders - do I need to save anything else?

You shouldn't need to save the Strings folder anymore. All tech object descriptions (buildings, facilities, etc) are now stored "Resources\Data\Text.sdf". It's a database file, so it's not human-readable, but if you include it you should be fine.

@Matress i'm in process of collecting new race images for Supremacy so fare 60 is done, once finshed i ll let you know! (spell cheker teplan-teplans)




@Mike, few questions about diplomacy and AI

1. Empires will offer gifts and money to minor races to join in membership, i presume minor empires will demand more and more as they expand...

what about when they reach full expansion ratio? Is it, a little bit unreal for big mini empires with own fleets (15 star systems or more) to

sign membership threaty at that size? Maybe is better, once they ll reach full potential they would behave like major empires refusing to

negotiate membership threaty but they are still open for trade and war pacts?


2. Minors will expand through colonisation, what about conquering? Are they going to fight wars between themselves with the possibility of taking
each other star system?


3. What about war between major power and minor? Is there any possibility for Breen to conquer Sol system? If answer is "yes", what about when Breen reachs expansion limit? Instead of conquering it will bomb till total anhilation?

4. If the answer is "yes" for some of this questions, it' s clear we need colony and tranport ships, outposts and starbases for expandable minors.
Different models for each minor is out of question but we can easily bypass such obstacle making all minors to use same mesh for transport ship,colony ship and so on...


Transport and colony ship and stations will be grey textured for easy distinguishing between minors and majors...example :

TRANPORT SHIP



COLONY SHIP



This is only proposal

Minors will stop expanding after they join your empire... they will no longer act autonomously. And yes, they will probably require more money if they are larger.

I don't really know yet. It's hard to say until the algorithms are in place.

Sure. Minor race AI will be a subset of the Empire AI, and all that comes with it.

Yes, for the same reason as above.

I agree on both counts.

I like it. I really like those models too .

Yeah, those are nice models - although they somehow look influenced by Battlestar galactica to me...not that that is a bad thing.

...

Mike, I've noticed three more things about Supremacy.

1) People have mentioned this before, but this is the first time i've noticed it. The drop-down options on the game options screen are appearing behind the selections themselves.



2) The problem with being able to see the minor races in unexplored sectors is kind of still there:



3) If you press alt, the cursor changes to the normal windows cursor. If you click on anywhere in the game though, the cursor changes back. I'm not sure if that is a bug or intentional.

I also loaded up a huge map (Dense everything, many minors) and it took 1 minute 28 seconds to load the game.

However, it took a very long time to process turn one - I lost count after four minutes. The game took an especially long time to process "Processing Diplomatic Exchanges" "PostTurnOperations", and "Downloading Updated Game State From Game Server". Hopefully that'll help you id the slow performing parts of the game.

@matress: That issue with the game options screen is sporadic, and I don't think it's a glitch with Supremacy. But either way, I might have a solution, so I'll work it in to the next release.

I've already identified a couple choke points in galaxy generation and turn processing, which should drastically reduce turn processing time in larger galaxy sizes. Even so, it's still far too long, and I'm going to work on improving it further this weekend.

You're right Mike, the problem does seem sporadic- at the time I tested Supremacy and it happened three times in a row, but I just tested it again and it's now working fine.

I know you're working on making the game faster, but 6400 star systems really is a lot of data for any computer to handle. If you feel you can't make it any faster after you've finished these updates then don't worry about it. You could always just put a tooltip warning about slow processing or something...

I agree with Matress. 6400 star systems is way too many for my mind to comprehend too. Lol. So it is alright if the turn processing can't be improved any more. You could put a warning like, "Huge Map recommended for high-performance PCs" or something like that. I wonder how many ships and how long will one game on a huge map be...it's totally mind-numbing!

But all in all, looks like good progress! This is one wonderful development team!

I agree, but there are players who want maps that large. And it's not really 6400 star systems, it's 6400 sectors and <= 800 star systems.

Oh, I will, but the huge galaxy sizes help me to identify choke points in the turn processing logic. By making the code more efficient, I can reduce the turn processing time for smaller galaxy sizes as well. This will become increasingly important as more game features and are added, like AI.

Too many . I don't imagine I'll play many games on a map size larger than Medium.

Thanks . I agree about the team--everyone here is great and has been immensely helpful! That goes double for Matress! Your feedback has been invaluable as well, SeaBee .

Thank you very much, sir!

Excellant Job so far!
I wonder are you going to keep Construction Ships or will Transport ships replace them?

Also Will you be able to add tech levels to the Game?

Thanks for your time

MJT

Hey guys, just thought i'd mention the editor is a brilliant peice of technology. Really makes the game much easier to modify in the future. I've already managed to put in my own race, faction and system pretty easily, with individual planet graphics too. Its lookin really good!

Is it possible to put editor more logging. It tells me nothing to look problem System.BadImageFormatException

well, bad image format is quite enough IMHO. check what format other pics in the editor have and then the presumably wrong format of your new one and simply convert. should work .