Hi y'all,

For the sake of easy finding, I'll just post all my thoughts on problems and suggestions concerning Supremacy right here.

So far, I played the huge map for well over 100 turns and found the following (I'm sure Mike and the rest of the dev team are quite familiar with most, but still worth mentioning):


GAME FREEZES

Game freezes during turn processing on planetary production step. One has to end task. The bad things is that saving the game right prior to processing the turn does not save everything that you just did, so you lose the whole turn in case the game freezes. I was unable to determine what makes the game freeze at that turn processing step. It happened on tiny as well as huge galaxy sizes.


CANNOT SCRAP SHIPS

Ships which are obsolete cannot be scrapped. Most logically, one would upgrade them, for example from Cruiser I to Cruiser II once that ship has been researched. Obviously, any such upgrade could only be done on a shipyard (1 turn?).


A.I. NOT SET UP - duh, you guys are well aware of that one. My respects for hard work on that, it's undoubtedly the most daunting task of the project.


INTEL

It appears that the INTEL menu is at its infancy, as there is no detail for any departmental allocation. I'm sure that is work in progress. I'm just wondering what you're guys planning on including in it?


MUSIC

Music is good, except for the intro music which is simply too...well, computery. Might I suggest incorporating music from Star Trek: The Fallen? I used to play that music as MP3 while playing the original BotF and it was truly wonderful. Otherwise, music is good for starters.


ISSUE WITH SOUND

When I right-click for the first time to call up the menu, there is an odd screeching sound, which does not seem to occur again within the same game session. Not sure if this is a serious problem.


BALANCING THOUGHT

For the Sol system, far too many installations require power which is hard to come by. Perhaps there are too many restrictions for the home system?


SOLAR PANELS

Solar panels are in wide use today, while in the game it requires research to get to. That is somewhat odd, so I would suggest making solar panels available from start or earlier in development, and an upgrade availability later as the tech progresses.


PRODUCTION ISSUE

I noticed a couple of items that increase growth rate of a system require zero production effort. Same is true for orbital batteries, which do not seem to require power (don't they?). Also, would it make sense to have one or two of these buildings increase total population capacity rather than simply increase growth rate?


SPACE STATIONS

Upgrading to outpost II from outpost I is currently not supported.


Well, that's all for now...I'll keep adding things as I test the game. Wonderful work, Mike & Co. And, of course, thank you.

Hey Stromgarde. Here's the answers to your points.

GAME FREEZES
A known problem - with an unknown cause. This is most definitely a bug, and one that has plagued the game from the beginning. We have no idea about the cause, and Mike hasn't been able to trace it. We have found no relation between computer types regarding this bug, but we haven't looked hard in that respect either. The best thing to do is to save regularly, and if the game freezes on (Or near) the turn after a save, please attach it to a post for us.

CANNOT SCRAP SHIPS
I haven't tried to scrap ships lately, but the system will definitely be in the game. You will also be able to "mothball" ships - basically scuttle them for useful components, then put them into storage until such time as you need them again (So you also save the maintenance costs per turn and recover the crew). You will then be able to reactivate them - at a resource cost, and it will take a couple of turns - for use in whatever war you've got going on. You will need to take ships to a mothball yard in order to do so, and each empire can build only one. One of the The Zakdorn special structures is also a beefed up Mothball yard that allows you to recover a greater percentage of resources from mothballed ships.

The ship database in the game is incomplete, which is why the ships and stations are in such a state. We have a completed game database, which you can find but it hasn't been implemented into the game yet. I will be personally implementing this database in the future, but i'm currently working on the buildings updates. Once those are done, I will turn my attention to the ships.

A.I. NOT SET UP
Lol we know about this one. The AI is arguably the most complex part of the game, and will take a looong time to set up and get working correctly - which will also take a LOT of playtesting to make sure we don't end up with non-canon occurrences like the United Federation of Planets behaving like the Terran Empire.

INTEL
Yes, the Intel screen is still only in its' infancy. Mike has big plans for this screen, and those will be coming as part of future updates. I can't go into specifics about his plans though because I don't actually know myself what he intends to do!

MUSIC
A few people have mentioned the intro music. I personally like it...except for the quiet wind-like bit at the very start. We CAN'T use any music that has been used in other games for copyright reasons though - we do NOT have the licence to make Trek games, so we can't use any official content. If you have any suggestions for music, please contact our resident musician. He's uploaded samples of his music to (The link will only work if you first sign up to and/or log in to though. The downloads are only available to registered users and we haven't figured out how to bridge user accounts so one log in works with all of the areas of our site )

ISSUE WITH SOUND
This actually happens to me too. I *think* it's an issue that was brought in with a recent game update, so it's probably an introduced bug or incompatibility somewhere. We can tell Mike about it when he gets back from his works conference thingy.

BALANCING THOUGHT
I've noticed this already - and when I release my above-mentioned update, there's going to be a LOT more energy-requiring structures. I've already bumped up the output of the energy structures by 25%, but i'm still not sure that's going to be enough. I'll test it a bit once i'm done and i'll beef it up more if necessary or reduce the energy costs before I release it. My ideal solution would be to increase the population sizes of the systems though - which I think are currently too low. You can't do this at the moment though because the game works these out automatically. I would have to completely unbalance the systems in another way to get ideal system populations, and i'm not prepared to do that.

SOLAR PANELS
I've made a lot of updates in the game, including the tech requirements for the structures. I felt the same way as you.

PRODUCTION ISSUE
Some of the buildings require zero input because they haven't got any build costs set. I've fixed these problems in my update already, I just haven't released it yet. There IS also a structure in the game that will increase total population - it's just been disabled at the moment because it is buggy. The population increase structure allows you to colonise moons and was something that I personally suggested about two or three years ago.

SPACE STATIONS
Again, this is because of the state of the ships in the game. I'll be working on this once my buildings update is done.

Oh, you need to attach the .sav file for your saved game. It will be in your Supremacy folder as xxx.sav. (Where xxx is whatever name you saved the game under) When you have one, just create a post, then scroll down the screen. You will see a small box underneath the place where you type your post message. Click on the "Browse" button, then find and click on the .sav file, then click on the "Add the file" button to attach it to a post, then submit the post to finalise it.

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The mothball yards are already in the game as a special structure, so it's not as far away as you might think. Like I said though, I haven't tested this part of the game to know whether it works - yet.

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Whilst we can't use any copyrighted stuff, that doesn't mean we can't use any other music. A lot of music is available on open licences, or we can use stuff that has been made specifically for the game - like Sandman is doing for us. The original intro music for Supremacy (When it was still Mike's university project and was titled Galactic Supremacy) was actually taken from X3: Reunion, so we have been a little bit naughty in that respect, but at least we solved it from a legal point of view. Unfortunately, the music taken from X3 was a gorgeous piece, and just like most of the music from that game, was absolutely perfect for Supremacy, but it was replaced by the current one when Mike decided to make the game proper to avoid the legalities. Thinking about it, I have no idea where he got the current music from...

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LOL Mike has a special website dedicated to bugs etc. He fixes them as he gets around to it. All I need to do is submit the bug report. I'll do it after I finish typing this post.

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I'm not sure whether the precise population of the Earth in Trek has ever been mentioned, (Except for when it's assimilated with 12 billion drones in First Contact) but i'm sure it's been alluded to being around the four billion mark, so it's less crowded than it is today, especially if the Atlantis project succeded. Anyways, the game works out the populations on a number of variables - it's a lot more complex than it would at first seem.

Each race has their own ideal class of planet. For humans it's Terran planets, for the Cardassians it's Desert planets, for the Ferengi, it's Jungle planets, and so on. The game calculates the maximum population of a planet based on the size of the planet, and how close it is to the ideal of the inhabiting race - so a system full of Desert planets inhabited by humans would have a lower maximum population if that same system was instead inhabited by Cardassians.

I've asked Mike to make a change to take another factor into account though - population density. We know that some races have chronic over-population problems (Such as the B'Omar) whilst other races are scattered, few in number, or are in decline. Being able to set this for individual systems or races would allow me to set the home systems to have dense populations, which would solve some of the problems - AND make the game even closer to canon. I don't know whether he will actually implement it, but i've submitted it as a feature request for the editor, so fingers crossed.

The only other way to make the systems bigger would be to add planets or make the planets bigger - which is obviously a cardinal sin for a game that is trying to follow canon.

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Beefing up the Solar cells would be one way of canonically (Is that a word?) boosting the energy output I suppose. Hell, we could even come up with upgrades as energy efficiency improves. The Wind farms get an upgrade afterall. I'll have a look at it and see what Dafedz (The database creator) thinks.

Hi y'all,

Here's some more feedback.

FREEZE ON TURN PROCESSING

Stuck at planetary production.JPG [ 60.99 KiB | Viewed 13169 times ]


In the next post, I'm including the .sav file you requested, Matress.

SCAN STRENGTH?
I hope you guys plan on including scan strength to be included in the game. What do I mean? When you go with a cursor over a system, scan strength is indicated (which also reveals whether you'll detect cloaked ships). That was present in the original BotF and I hope you guys are planning on including it here as well.

WHERE AM I ON THE MAP WHEN I VIEW THE SYSTEM MENU?
One really important feature to consider adding would be a minimap in the corner of the system view, so you can see where that system lies on the map. Otherwise, you have to exit the system view to see where it is on the map. It would just make a lot of things way easier. Just a thought.

OMARION NEBULA
When you select the Omarion Nebula, in the menu below it says "nebula" twice.

RAW MATERIALS
As far as I understand it, the little icon next to the sun that represents raw materials indicates whether that system has any. It is odd, therefore, that you'd be able to build the mining corps and asteroid sweepers in systems which do not have any raw materials. These buildings should be limited only to systems which actually have raw materials present. Right now, I've seen these buildings available for construction in systems that do not have any raw materials (in upper left corner it indicates zero) and there's no raw material symbol next to the star. Also, I've seen these buildings included in systems which have asteroid fields, but even if you build an asteroid sweeper you get no raw materials. I'd implement a feature which would allow any asteroid belt to have raw materials. In fact, nearly every system (if not all) should have some form of raw materials present, it's just the amount that would have to vary greatly.

RETAIL OUTLETS?
If replicators can replicate just about anything, what's the point of having retail outlets? I guess I'm just not seeing the point in having that building.

PRIVATE FARMS
To construct private farms, it takes a lot of industry, yet one gets very little food increase. Consider changing that.

EMPTY CONSTRUCTION SLOT = NOTHING?
I recommend that when the player does not have anything of use to construct, the system generates credits instead (like in the original BotF).

PURCHASING TO HASTEN PRODUCTION?
I don't know how relevant this can be, as the economy of the future is not supposed to be money-based, but original BotF had the option to hasten production by purchasing remaining industry needed to manufacture what's being built. Is that going to be implemented here also? If so, how would it be reconciled with "no meaning of money"?

UPGRADING AND BUILDING
When you put a manufacturing plant in the construction queue, the "upgrade to type X construction plant" disappears and vice versa. I fail to see why that has to be the case. After building one type I manufacturing plant (for instance), one should be able to queue "upgrade to type II manufacturing plant".

ORBITAL BATTERIES
Right now, the orbital batteries cost no energy. Shouldn't they? Also, even after you build them, system info on the main view still shows "no defenses" for that system. Defense strength is not indicated.

APOTHECARIES AND STUFF
I'm not sure I understand the point in building apothecaries and clinics, that may be too much micromanagement. I suspect that that's part of a greater scheme (such as if an enemy empire poisons the population how readily it'll recover)?

CANNOT INVADE
If you declare war and build transport ships, put them in the system of the enemy, there is no option to invade the system. At least that was the case in the Omarion Nebula where I tried to conquer the Founders.

OVERWRITE OK?
It's a good idea to add a dialogue when saving a game, asking whether the it's okay to overwrite the selected file (if selected).

CONTESTED SECTORS
On the main menu, contested sectors should be indicated as such, not as neutral.

And lastly...Earth has 4 moons?

Well, that's it for now. I'll keep posting as I go through. Cheers!

File comment: This is the save RIGHT BEFORE I clicked PROCESS TURN. Then it froze, but if I re-load and try again, it may work just fine.
Save small.sav [303 KiB]
Downloaded 231 times

Here's another crash report. I tested the Dominion game (although I don't think that is the cause), the first 10 turns or so.

Ok, now that I have the new version, here's first feedback on that.

1) If you go to SYSTEM screen, the buttons on top now seem further apart.
2) When negotiating in diplomacy, if you are the faction that makes a suggestion and if the suggestion is accepted by the negotiating party, it should not say "we have accepted proposal from *** " but the other way around.
3) I briefly tried the Dominion and Klingon. The screen layouts are the same as for the Fed, and I'm sure you're planning on changing that. Also, some buildings like the Universities are not appropriate for Klingons or Dominion and should be different yet equivalent to University for Fed.
4) "Klingon war room" can be built on every Klingon-inhabited system? It gives +1 loyalty empire-wide, so that may be a lot of loyalty to go around if you have a huge empire. Is that the idea?
5) "Tactical college" is buildable on all native systems, which may be inappropriate.
6) Praxis gives a hell of a lot of power, which may completely obsolete the fusion and plasma reactors.
7) Klingon battle cruiser image is on white background.
Finally, if you RETIRE from a game and want to start a new single player game (don't know if selecting a different race has anything to do with it), you'll get the below error message.

Error.JPG [ 108.86 KiB | Viewed 13108 times ]


I'm curious how all these ships will look like on the combat engine. I hope the graphics will be at least approaching what Bridge Commander was like. Ever since I played that game I hoped someone would fuse Bridge Commander and BotF and make this ultimate Trek game.

Hi guys,

Here's a thought on music, which I addressed before. I was saying that ST: DS9 The Fallen has excellent music which can be exploited for the game. In fact, it's downloadable . Now I'd guess that you'd have to ask for a permission to use it (or not, since this is not for-profit), but I just thought I'd provide you with the link.

Cheers.

Thanks for the link Stromgarde, but a guy called AndrewJT has agreed to make music for us - ALL of the music. Apparently Andrew has made music for games and hollywood in the past, and is the official composer for Star Trek: Excalibur as well. He hasn't submitted anything for us yet, but we're waiting for that day.

Hi guys,

Here's that bug that I think I addressed before. Namely, the icon for raw materials is present next to the star, yet on the left "Raw Materials" will be set to zero. Now, you can build facilities which normally boost raw material harnessing, but if the number is zero, then it also remains zero. Here's the pic.
File comment: Problem circled in red, twice.

raw materials.JPG [ 131.96 KiB | Viewed 12905 times ]

I have this nasty feeling that when Star Trek Online (STO) comes out, progress on this game will come to a virtual halt. Keeping my fingers crossed that I'm dead wrong...

Oh i wouldn't worry about that,....

We have to much invested man!!!!! TO MUCH!!!!!!

ahem...



Regards Wolfe

Ok, the flawless Internet Explorer just crashed on me as I was submitting my previus post, so I lost everything I wrote…so I’ll make this one concise and to the point.

First, thank you guys for your continuing hard work!

Now, here’s some additional thoughts.

1) It would be nice to have the “minimize” feature available. I mean to minimize the game by pressing Alt+Tab simultaneously. It would especially help in taking snapshots of the game, so I don’t have to exit the game after every snapshot. Is there a way around that?

2) Related to what I wrote earlier (i.e. about raw material icon being present in the system, but the system info in upper left corner showing a zero for raw material quantity available), I am also finding that there are some systems where you have no raw materials (zero), yet you can build raw-material-gathering stations, such as Mining Corps.
Here’s what I mean:
File comment: mining structures buildable without raw materials present

Mining structures without raw materials.JPG [ 116.1 KiB | Viewed 12797 times ]

Frankly, it doesn’t make sense that any system would have zero raw materials (not sure it this was already discussed). If you guys simply make every system have a random amount of raw materials, that should solve the problem of buildable raw material structures. It would also make far more sense that every system has at least some raw material present for good use. That way you can also get rid of the raw material icon (or, perhaps leave it where LOTS of raw material is present).

3) In this particular system, two Mining Corps and two Starfleet Shipyards were built, even though I built each only once. Not sure if this is a new bug, but something tells me that this came up before as well. Here’s the pic for that:
File comment: double structures built

double structures.JPG [ 112.85 KiB | Viewed 12797 times ]


4) The game still freezes at the turn processing, while processing planetary production. Now that's a major bug, hopefully it'll be fixed before the game's release.

5) I think you can get rid of the X-mas tree in the intro now (not really that important, just filler so that it appears like I’m giving you more useful feedback).

About systems with zero raw materials, maybe the name of the resource is not that descriptive, but these raw materials are those used for building ships. Structures don't use them, they're simply made of something other than Duranium or some other material. My take on it anyways. Not saying that every system shouldn't have raw materials though, but the global nature of stockpiles in the game kind of makes it irrelevant.

Oh, well, I'd say that if they're the materials used for building ships, then perhaps it would be better to state which raw materials those are...for example, duranium, tritanium, etc. But all in all, it's still a bug that hasn't been fixed yet.

I'm surprised that Matress hasn't replied yet, he usually does so by the time I refresh the page...

Agreed, calling it Duranium instead of Raw Materials would be better.

Hey Stromgarde, welcome back to the forums. Happy birthday for yesterday by the way.

I haven't been on the forums as much as normal lately because i've had computer problems. I've also been working on a new Supremacy update.

1) You CAN have a windowed screen so you can minimise the game. In the game options, on the graphics tab, turn OFF the option that says "Run in fullscreen mode".

2) As for the raw materials, Mike knows that there is a bug in how the raw materials work, so he's looking at that. We'll just have to wait for the update, although that might not be for a few weeks because he is currently working on refactoring the game.

3) Yes, that is a known bug, although it is one Mike supposedly fixed an update or two ago. It may be he accidentally removed the fix or reintroduced the bug with a more recent update. It happens when the build queue temporarily desynchronises from the rest of the game; the structure is completed, but the build queue doesn't get updated to remove the recently-completed structure from the build list. So when you start building the next structure in the list, it is STILL the structure you've already built, resulting in you building two of the same structure.

4) We know. We still haven't figured the cause, but there is one piece of good new. The refactoring process that Mike is undertaking has the potential to remove some of the bugs from the game - including the random freeze bug if we're lucky. It will *hopefully* also fix some other bugs, such as the ever-increasing industrial costs bug for some of the ships (Some of the build costs are being permanently multiplied each time the game is updated), and the ever-growing log files bug that is caused by the log files being appended to instead of being replaced. Mike has also told me that based on early tests, the refactoring will lead to improved turn processing times. It remains to be seen whether this really is the case though and by how much once the refactoring is complete.

5) The christmas tree will be removed during the next update. As i've said before, that won't be until the refactoring is complete, which unfortunately won't be for a few weeks at least. I've also just sent Mike an update to fix all of the typos that .Iceman has kindly pointed out, as well as updates to change the Outpost prerequisites/obsoletion/upgrade system (But not the starbases, I don't know whether the updates will work as I intended yet), and it will add in a load of new or updated images, especially when it comes to the ships. Kenneth has done an outstanding job on the models, as you can see from my recently updated

6) Raw materials are referred to as raw materials simply to get around th eissue of being too specific. Ships aren't *just* made of Duranium for instance. It also means that it's easier to mod the game - I don't think they've ever mentioned Duranium as a metal in Star Wars for instance, so that makes life easier if someone wanted to make a Star Wars mod. That's purely an example though. I'm not saying I know of any mods yet.