not really sabotaging moe but I just hint at what's already (partially) realised with bote and has some good benefits. Once he sees the code he can decide for himself .

Indeed, if it works well for BotE I'll consider it. I don't think it's too difficult, just that the gameplay benefits are dubious for something that requires some fundamental changes to the game framework.

that's right. things like that can also be regulated by simple planetary food and energy production bonusses as long as buildings like aquacultural center or wind turbines are affected by these percentages too. There you have different percentages for differently-sized planets and mostly class O planets have those bonusses (or at least it's more probable that they have) and also class C, K and P ones for the turbines and charge collectors. Then you only need a "minimum population requirement for building" value in the editor and you can also add upgradeable subatomic and theory simulators. That's in fact the way bote handles it. A calculated system parameter like I postulated before isn't probably going to be implemented since sir p. has also build his framework without that feature in mind and it would require some serious recoding. But at least, via the planetary bonii and the min. sys. pop. requirement property you get both size and number of planets in system affecting food or energy production since planetery bonii are accumulative.

Actually, that's another thing I would like to ask, Mike. I'm not sure if it is a bug in the editor or not, but if you set a Food or Energy bonus in a system, you can only set it for one Planet; the check boxes remain selected when you click on another planet, and if you remove the tick, it deletes the bonus you set for the first planet.

Also, the bonus is always set at 15% for both Food and Energy - but in BOTF, it was possible to get Energy bonuses of 100% from a single planet alone. If multiple planets had energy bonuses, the overall bonus was much, much more. There's already been a few mentions by people that the Energy structures don't produce enough energy due to the amount of energy-requiring structures in the game - and they haven't seen my updates that contain a lot more buildings yet. I'm definitely going to have to bump up the output of the Energy structures. I can't remember what the Food bonuses in BOTF were like but I think they were about 50% lower than the Energy bonuses.

I don't see why larger O planet should produce more food, smaller planet can have warmer sea and healthier marine sex life
I think Moe's idea is simpler and better, building queue affects system not the planet so imo one aquacultural center with bonus depending on number of oceanic planets Certainly, i want to see bonus idea in the game (great idea Moe and Mal) but please lads no more new buildings or upgrades.

There is still the same amount of micromanagement with new building or without. The lesser output on larger systems must be compensated by more food and energy buildings and their upgrades so you won't have an advantage there. Since not only size matters as we learned but also shape and special characteristics of each planet, I agree we should handle it with planetary bonii as described above. Only with subatomic simulators I'd like to have some upgrades for really large planets so you won't see that new building very often anyway.

btw. do fish have sex? okay, blue whales maybe but the ordinary shellfish and cod? hm, must look that up in wikipedia..

Well, it's more micromanagment for "art section". Well i'am not marine biologist except whales i wouldn't know when comes to sex or spat(spawn).

I still say the KISS philosophy generally works best, which in this case would mean only one instance of a building per system, and not varying the bonus outputs in different systems.

One building? There's quite a few buildings that it would affect; i've been using the Aquaculture centre purely as an example. As long as you add in an extra option that says something along the lines of + (x bonus) [per planet size] <per no. of planet type> or something with the bonus, planet type, and planet number selectable, I will be able ti implement it for all of the buildings it would affect.

These are the structures that i've identified as potentially being affected depending on if/how the change is implemented. There may be more than this as I only scanned through the list quickly.

Advanced Irrigation Network
One per Barren planet

Advanced Turbines
One per Barren planet and/or Energy bonus based on planet size

Aquaculture Centers
One per Oceanic planet and/or Food bonus based on planet size

Aqua-Dredge
One per Oceanic planet and/or Raw Material bonus based on planet size

Aquatic Deuterium Plant
One per Oceanic planet and/or Deuterium bonus based on planet size

Asteroid Sweeper
One per Asteroid belt and/or Raw Material bonus based on belt richness if Asteroid belts are also taken into consideration

Atmospheric Condensers
One per Desert planet

Cardassian Agricultural Program
One per Terran planet and/or Food bonus based on planet size

Cardassian Aquafarms
One per Oceanic planet and/or Food bonus based on planet size

Charge Collectors
One per Arctic planet and/or Energy bonus based on planet size

Desalination Plants
One per Oceanic planet

Deuterium Plant
One per Gas Giant planet and/or Deuterium bonus based on planet size

Federation Aquasphere
One per Oceanic planet and/or Food bonus based on planet size

Hydroponics Dome
One per Oceanic planet and/or Food bonus based on planet size

Ice Breaking Stations
One per Arctic planet

Purification Works
One per Terran, Jungle, or Oceanic planet

Solar Panel Array
One per Desert planet and/or Energy bonus based on planet size

Steam Vent Collectors
One per Volcanic planet

Thermal Tether
One per Volcanic planet and/or Energy bonus based on planet size

Wind Turbines
One per Barren planet and/or Energy bonus based on planet size

BotF had the restriction of one building instance per system, as do many other strategy games, and I think it works pretty well. We'll wait and see how BotE's implementation is received by players and hold off on this topic until then.

I have posted an update that might fix a problem in which the details shown in the system screen for your home system might become out of sync with the actual details of the system. As usual, this update can be downloaded and applied automatically using the game's built-in update service. Please note that your old saved games will not work after applying this update.

As my other thread does not get any attention I thought I post in this thread again as it seems the developer visits this thread regularly.

Whenever I try to start a new game I get an unhandled exception, it works every so often but it's really rare that it works.
Loading saved games works always as does multiplayer.

My apologies for not addressing your problem sooner--I've replied to your original post in the Bugs forum.

Is there a problem with the icon in Vista then? This is the first i've heard of it. I've got XP not Vista so there's no way for me to check. Mike will have to change the icon if it needs to be changed, so thanks for that image.

...

Mike, do you plan to implement Personnel facilities? I ask because i've added them in now but they're not showing up in the population allocation screen when you build them. It seems strange that youve gone to the trouble of adding personnel as a resource to the editor, yet the game doesn't show these buildings in that screen.

I'd also like to ask how big the most recent game update was. I ran pnggauntlet on all of the game images (1108 files) and saved about 4mb. But When I tried to play the game it downloaded a 53.2mb, 987 file update. Luckily I backed up my files first. Optimised files will mean faster downloads later on after i've sent you my updates Mike.

What is the most up-to-date version of Supremacy? I have SupremacyTest_20080902. Is this the most current version?

Hi Jamie, welcome to the forums!

The version that you downloaded isn't the most up-to-date version - but the game contains an auto-updater that will run when you load up the game. It will connect to the update server and check if you have the latest version of the files. If any files are out of date, it will then notify you that an update is available and will ask you if you want to download the update. Once complete, the game will then need to restart - it will tell you about this, then close AND reload itself. Clever huh?

When you load the game, it will run a scan of your game files so it can compare them with those hosted on the server. This can take a few minutes depending on the power of your computer, but it rarely takes more than two minutes, so don't worry if the update message doesn't appear the moment you load the game.

Mike releases updates on an extremely regular basis - sometimes several times a week, so you will likely need to update the game almost every time that you play it.

...

I've fixed the problem with the Tholians and Lokirrim, 3 of 12; in fact I did it a month or two ago. I haven't yet released my updated game files though (Which contain a lot more updates that just that), which is why the mistake still shows up in the standard game. I promise it won't be long now, but I can't say precisely how long it will be yet as I still haven't started implementing the ship updates yet.

As for the ship names, we've already come up with a list of class-specific ship names - in fact we did them more than two years ago. There's a thread on it somewhere. However, the shiplist has changed quite a bit since then, so it will probably need updating. I'm not sure how Mike plans to implement the default ship naming yet either; he may even be considering this system already if you are lucky.

...Someone has now...

I thought you said you wanted higher quality icons though? The icons are all 16x16, and some of them could really do with cleaning up or improved transparencies. Some of them are more like MSN emoticons than program icons.

What is the newest version because mine isn't updating

I just download this.... played for 2 hours... awesome.

Is there a manual of any kind... or a list of what is and what is not implemented... or bug list... or a suggestion list... anything?

I do not want to repeat things that are documented, known issues, or on a to-do list.

How long did you leave the game for Jamie? Try leaving it on the man menu for a few minutes. If a message doesn't appear after a few minutes, you've either already got the latest files without realising, or something is going wrong (But the game usually gives error messages when that happens so that can't be it either).

There's no way to check what version of the game is "latest" because they don't really have version numbers. We instead go by release dates, since these are so frequent. The SupremacyTest_20080902 means that the file was released on the 02/09/2008, not that it is version 20080902.

...

Hi BK2K, welcome to the forums!

We don't have a game manual yet simply because it would have to be constantly updated. We're instead leaving the manual until the game is almost complete.

If you find any bugs, have any comments, any critiques, anything, just post them here in this thread. Don't worry about repeating what other people have already said, we're really tolerant of that here. It's also the main reason why this is the longest thread on the forum lol.

If you're after stats or general game content information though, we do have a Database that you might be interested in. You can find Dafedz's Database Here.

Some of the info in there is out of date, but i've just contacted Dafedz to notify him of the changes. Examples include the fact that water isn't now included as a system growth rate "resource" (There are just simply structures that increase system growth rates) and the Personnel buildings have been removed because these don't work correctly.

As for bugs, there aren't any major bugs that are known, although there are a few bits of info you might want to know about;

• If there are any game content problems (Ie, a minor race is placed in the wrong Quadrant, a structure isn't working correctly, a picture is missing, etc etc) then do not worry about this. I am personally working on a content update that I will be releasing soon. Zeleni (Our resident 2D artist) is also working on making or acquiring images for us.
  
• If the game ever crashes, it will generate a crash report for you in your Supremacy folder. The report will be in one (Or both) of two files; Error.txt and ServerError.txt. They won't necessarily be both created when the game crashes. If your game crashes and both files appear though, we need the info contained in both files. Open them, then copy-and-paste the info into a post. The game will delete these files the next time you load the game, so please post the crashes report before you load up the game again if you want a diagnosis.
  
• The game suffers from a rare, random freezing bug during turn processing, and has done for a long time now. We have no idea what the cause is, because this type of crash does NOT generate a bug report. We haven't found any link yet between hardware that may be the cause either. If it ever happens to you, you will need to forcibly close the game via Ctrl+Alt+Del. You will need to save regularly to reduce the game-losing effects of this bug. Game updates may mean your old saves no longer work though.

As for suggestions, like I said, just tell us anything you can think of. The more times people tell Mike they want a feature, the more likely it is to be implemented.

If anyone is still experiencing this problem with the most recent updates, please let me know. I also ask that you try loading your auto-saved game and see if you can reproduce the issue. If you can, please send me your save file so I can investigate .

Thanks for the welcome!

Here's a list of things I noticed last night (or rather way early this morning because the game kept me up past my bedtime )

- Is there a way to pick your starting empire/race/faction (whatever you want to call it) or is this not implemented yet? (I assume not implemented but just want to be sure I haven't missed something)
- How do you stack/group/redeploy ships? I saw the redeploy option but for the life of me could not figure out how to stack ships. I wanted to speed construction of an Outpost by grouping 2 construction ships together, but couldn't figure out how to do it.
- Transport ships, how do you use a transport ship for anything other than as a troop transport? From memory, the description states the ship can be used for research and construction bonuses, and trading. Can you group the ship with a constructor to increase construction speed? Does keeping a transport ship in orbit (well, in your system) give research and construction bonuses to the system? To trade with a minor race do you set the transport to fly the trade route between your system and the minor race's system (a route you can create and the transport navigates continuously until new orders are given)? Can you stack/group multiple transports to fly the route for an increased trade bonus? Do you only get the trade income per round trip, meaning your ship would have to reach the destination and return before receiving the income? This would entice you to create shorter trades routes and assign escorts to protect the transport ships?
- I've only seen battles from the videos, can you use transporters to take over ships and make them your own? Would be cool to capture enemy ships during battle -- to turn the tide of battle or capture some trade-transports on their return trip to steal the supplies/resources/income.
- How do you upgrade facilities? Last night, I researched the next tier in construction. I was expecting to be able to upgrade all my level 1 factories to level 2 upon doing so but the option never came about. Was quite frustrating.

This is all until I get to play again.

I was beaten to replying to a question post? Kill me now.



As Overlord said, there is currently no way to select your starting Empire other than in multiplayer. (Since you need to have more than one Empire to be able to play) Empire selection capability will be introduced in the future as part of an update, but I can't say when this will be.



Transports won't be able to give you research bonuses - i'm not sure where you read that, but it is definitely not correct. Transports are your invasion ships just like in BOTF, but otherwise have little use. Construction ships will build your bases, and science/scout vessels will perform space-based research. Trade is done via trade routes just like Overlord said.



Combat will be relatively similar to BOTF - capturing ships during combat will almost definitely not be in the game. You might be able to capture them using your intelligence agencies in the future though...

We've got a demo of the combat system if you want to try it out. Check out the Combat System Thread to try it.





The upgrade system is a little different to BOTF; where you only had to research Biology for your Food buildings, you now need to research in multiple areas; even more so for the higher level buildings. This is to ensure people balance their research efforts out better, instead of just focusing on one area.

However, the game content for the standard game is out of date and full of mistakes. The tech requirements for many of the buildings are wrong - and in fact upgrading some of the buildings actually results in the removal of other buildings, eg upgrading a level 7 Automated farm will remove all of your energy structures! (This isn't an actual example for reasons i'll go into in a moment but the glitches have that sort of effect)

I am personally working on a major content update for the game that will solve these problems and more - but this means I haven't got the original game files anymore which is why I wasn't able to give you an actual example of the problems earlier. I haven't finished my updates yet, but I will be releasing them to Mike soon.

Once I have released the update, the buildings will upgrade as they are supposed to - so Overlord's comment about all facilities requiring research in ALL areas is currently correct, but won't be once i've released the update. The game used to suffer from a bug where research was required in all areas but that bug has since been fixed. The game content wasn't updated until I began my update though which is why that problem is still there in the default files. Here's what the facilities will need once I release my update:

• Food Facilities: Biotech, Computers, Construction (All of equal level to the building)
• Industrial Facilities: Energy, Computers, Construction (All of equal level to the building)
• Energy Facilities: Energy, Computers, Construction (All of equal level to the building)
• Research: All areas (All of equal level to the building)
• Intelligence: All areas (All of equal level to the building)

After 12 months not being on-line one of the first things I did was to find out in BOTFII was actually happening. Well done guys for progressing this far!

I'm currently downloading demo but I have a few general questions (I don't have time to read all the mass of posts)

How are you funding the game and will the full release be sold? What is the licencing situation with Paramount?
How far is the game off completion.. I know its hard to estimate such things even with major games developers, but are we taking 6, 12, 18 months or longer?
Are the playable races the same as BOTF? Personally I'd love a play as the Borg option.
Are you incorperating ships and races from all 5 series of Star Trek? (I'll prob find the answer to that when I play myself)

I'll probably have more questions after I played for a bit.

P.S. how large are the updates? I have mobile broadband but the demo is only downloading at 6KB/s (barely faster than dial-up should be) will the updates be this slow?

Hey MikeWilton, welcome to the forums!



Are you saying you heard about us before you got online? How did you find out? Or do you mean that you were hoping there was a project?



We aren't funding the game at all. The game is a fan-made project that is by the community, for the community. All contributions to the game are done for free. There is no obligation on anyone to make anything - not even on the programmers. Anyone can make stuff for the game, and we happily accept anything that we are given - as long as it comes with information on where it has come from/who made it and how to contact them, what sort of licence/agreement it is given to us under, info on whether we are allowed to modify it in any way, how long we can use it for, and an understanding that we cannot pay for any of the content that we are given.

Since we are a fan-based game, the game will NOT be sold. Ever. (Unless a company buys tha game off us of course) It will be made available as a free download as you already know. We do NOT have a licence to make a Trek game, so it would be illegal to make money from selling the game. This is also why we can't pay anyone for their game content/contributions. It also means that the project could be shut down at any time by the licence holders, but we're hoping that won't happen.



It depends how you define "completion" really. The game currently lacks an AI, winning conditions, a combat system, the random events, a working intel system, and the ability to choose a starting Empire. These will all be added as part of future updates. Mike is currently working on the AI, but this will likely be a long time in the making because the AI is the most complex parts of the game. It will also need to be playtested and balanced to death to get it working as we expect it to. (BOTF was never playtested, which is why it suffers from so many problems)

Christmas is the first milestone we're looking at - we've technically only been working on the game for about a year. We're hoping to have more fo the game complete by christmas as a bit of a christmas present for the community, but I can't say what exactly is being done since i'm not the programmer.

Work on the game will likely continue even after all the features that i mentioned above are complete as well. People will always want to improve on the existing sound effects, music, images, ship models, etc etc. If you take these improvements/mods into account, it may be several years before the game really is complete in every sense of the word. It will most definitely be in a playable state long before this point however.



The selectable Empires are the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardasians, and Dominion. The Ferengi are now a minor race, but a particular powerful and advanced one at that. Getting them to member with you will be difficult, but will give you a significant economic advantage - which then means you can support a more powerful military. As for the Borg, it's a shame you didn't join a few weeks ago. We've had a Big Discussion And Poll on the Borg, and the concensus is that they won't be a playable race. Mike (The developer) has therefore decided not to make them playable in the standard game.

HOWEVER, the game is extremely moddable, so someone is bound to make them one of the playable Empires in the future.



Yep. We've got ships from all five series and the all the films. And this applies to all of the Empires. Our modellers have worked hard to produce early looking counterpart ships for the Empires that were unknown during Enterprise era for example. (The Dominion)



The updates are rarely larger than 20mb - so significantly smaller than the game itself. However, they are released on an extremely regular basis, sometimes several times a week. The game comes with an auto-updater, that runs in the background every time you load the game. It scans your files, then compares them with a list of files on the update server. If there are any differences (Unfortunately "differences" also includes any mods that you've made), then it will notify you that an update is available and will ask if you want to download them. Once the download has completed, ithe game will need to close itself - but will then also reload itself automatically.

Since you've got such a slow connection, have you got any alternatives available for getting the game or the updates? Ask your friends or relatives if they would be willing to let you install the game on their computers. All you need to do then is whenever you vist them, run the game on their computer and let the update process take place, then close the game and copy the entire contents of the Supremacy folder onto your computer (You could use a memory stick or burn a CD to transfer them) Since the game itself doesn't need to install anything, this won't cause you any problems if you update the game in this way.

Fingers crossed you find a solution.