Could I get the source for BotE_Network? I want to experiment with using Direct2D and DirectWrite in the new Windows SDK v7.0 CTP, but I'm getting link errors on BotE_Network.lib.

that's the Achilles' heel of BotE source-wise for about one and a half year. What I mean is that the source to the BotE_Network.lib is not available, even to SirP himself. He didn't loose it but CBot coded the whole network lib and he didn't leave the source c++ files, just the libs and the headers. He's in the US right now working as a programmer and so far we haven't got him on the line, seems like he has forgotten BotE over time .

That's also the reason why there is no tactical screen. It should have been coded according to plan after alpha4 release in oct'07 but since then he has been away. I think he does not want to make his self-coded lib open-source and only works on it himself and does not have time for that so that's the reason we don't hear from him. Tactical screen can't be implemented since the network lib is coded that way that server-client interaction during turn end period is interdicted so the server can't calculate the battles and ask the clients what they want to do (Fight, Retreat, Hail,..).

Lame. This is what's stopping me from compiling the game:

SirP said the error looks like as if the network lib folder is missing. Did you download recursively, i.e. all subdirectories too? The unchanged source in the svn repository should compile in VS2008 when using the botf2.sln solution file included, at least it does with me. Okay it may not work anymore if you include newer Windows 7 SDKs. I don't know if there's a chance of getting this to run anyway but you might try and pm SirP and tell him exactly what you changed to the sln file, maybe he knows something from the time CBot made the network lib.

The galaxy map itself is processed in the CGalaxyMenuView class. Function CGenerateGalaxyMap() generates the map each turn anew. OnDraw() is the drawing function. For its representation the class FCObjImage is used. Outcommented is the GDI+ code cause there this class wouldn't be needed anymore. But the code still doesn't work properly. Right now the map is drawn in simple GDI. It's not very much code to look at, 10min. max he says .

Hmm, so the Transports would then be usable on another system, ad infinitum ? Or would they also suffer casualties according to the defending system's ground combat value? What happened to th defending pop? Assimilated, or eliminated? It's strange if they're assimilated, as they'll be fighting for you next, and it's also strange if they're eliminated, as you should then get zero pop in the system? That's the problem with having civilian pop double as troops...




A few things:
- Besides the suggestion I already made about capping buildings to max pop units, have you thought about having every building cost Credits in maintenance? That'd penalize you for having excess buildings (instead of those production penalties). Or just paying maintenance for those that do not have any pop allocated to them.
- Still on the subject of the stone age, why is there a Primitive Farm and not a Primitive Factory, and a Primitive Power Plant, etc? Because food is essential, granted, but it doesn't really make much sense does it?
- About the triple shifts thing, how about separating structure building from ship building? Pop allocated to Industry would build structures, production from unallocated pop (Labor Pool) by default would go to the Shipyard - or just rename Labor Pool to Shipyard, as idle pop is just as well doing nothing as pretending to work in the shipyards (adding a new line for the Shipyard wouldn't also be too complicated I think, to keep the Labor Pool) It'd be a cleaner system (along with the base industry - strucuture only, not ship building - rating as in the original BotF).




Just up the initial pop count on homeworlds. So the player will have to make strategic choices, like do I assign pop to research/industry, or do I build more colony ships and colonize other systems (expand)? Right now, the games I've played are pretty much: build SY on HW, crank out colony ships every other turn, use colony ships as surveyors (are they actually useful?) and colonize everything in sight. Not much strategy so far. Colonizing systems doesn't really have a downside, colony ships have an adequate scan range, there are no pop considerations to be had (on the contrary, colonizing systems *generates* pop and credits), my industry is always safeguarded, everything goes smoothly. I'm going to play a bit more, and report back. Maybe with further development some things get better. I just like to *have* to make choices.

No, when a troop transport was ordered to invade a system, the transport would be permanently "used up" to gain controlled of the system - assuming it wasn't destroyed in the process by the system defenses. It was a very simplistic system, and the troops couldn't physically take damage. Training levels etc weren't taken into account either. All that mattered was the ship itself and whether the total invasion strength was higher than the system defense strength. The "people" on the ships were not taken into account in the population levels either. In fact, from the deaths caused by the invasion (Which was a minimum of 1 million) the system population was always reduced after an invasion.

Ships couldn't be assimilated in BOTF; the Borg simply destroyed everything in their path. (Unless you had a fleet of Cloaked Warbirds or a fleet of legendary-experienced Defiants )



Yes, we could easily add building maintenance in (The option to do so is in fact already in the editor) but the game already tracks a hell of a lot of stats - adding this in would inevitably have an impact on performance/turn processing times. Mike has already had to reject some of the ideas suggested on the forums because of the adverse impact on processing times. We would also need to consider the impact it would have on the game balance, as it hasn't be worked out on paper. *If* it was added in, people would need to heavily playtest and feedback on it as we make adjustments.


Actually, I was going to add these buildings in only a few weeks ago, but Mike specifically told me not to do so because the addition of each building adds a performance impact to the game. Primitive farms are much more important than primitive factories to make sure your people don't die of starvation though, so it makes more sense to have a cheap, easily-buildable food production building for times of need.

BOTF never had the primitive factories etc simply because the game was unfinished when it was released. It had primitive farms for the same reason I gave above though.



Shipbuilding sort of IS separated. It works by taking a percentage of the total system output (The efficiency rating) and using that to build ships with. It has NO effect on the build rate of buildings though; so a 25% efficiency rate does not mean that 75% of system industry is then left for building structures with. So basically it means systems with a shipyard are doing quadruple shifts.

Under normal situations, there *shouldn't* be any unallocated workforce; by default, the game automatically puts them into any available empty food or industrial buildings. If there are any people unallocated, this is because no buildings are left, or the player has enforced some redunancies.



Can't do that. I've asked Mike many times about making changes to the way the game works out populations, but he can't do it without making major changes to the programming, and he's unwilling to make those changes.

As for everything going smoothly, only for the time being. I'm still bugging Mike about adding in My Random Events. If he includes even a few of the randoms, things will definitely get more fun and unpredictable in the game.

Speaking of Transports, I noticed their description says something like they are used also to carry personnel and materials to deep space construction sites to build starbases and whatnot. So they do actually carry population (as opposed to troops)
Speaking of which, what is the Construction Ship for then?




Yes, I know. We're talking different types of separate You're saying they're independent (using the same pop, which was the whole issue I raised with the shifts), now I'm talking separating them *physically* - some people would build structures, others would build ships.




What I meant was I'm not seeing downsides to stuff. Or with enough of an impact, if you will.

---



The Federation's Surveyor I does not have a Population Health value. Is that intended?
What is this value for?

I'm (again) confused about colonization. I had checked a new colony (playing the Romulans IIRC) and it started with 50 pop, and 3/6/2/2/2 structures. Now, playing the Federation, I get 25 pop and 2/3/1/1/1 structs. So, ATM I'm going WTF? Do different empires get different colonies out of their colony ships? Does it have to do with map size? I'm a bit lost.

Is the Romulan Shipyard supposed to require 35 Energy (all others require 25)? Just checking. I've read somewhere that the Romulans have energy problems early game.

Is Editor3 supposed to work? Is it different than the Editor2? Where's Editor1?

This is a hangover from when we were going to simply use the same system that BOTF had - you needed troop transports to build stations. When we changed the system so construction ships would be needed for building stations, the descriptions weren't updated at the same time.

...I've been discussing this point with Dafedz via PM though, and we may be recombining the role of the construction ship into the transport again. Unfortunately, this means that we have no use for the Construction ship models, and Kenneth has been slaving away on them during the past few weeks to bring them up to standard. And they really are good models. You can see them in My Ship Image Thread. We would need to find an alternative use for the models if his working isn't going to be for nothing.



Shipyards aren't civilian structures. Starfleet owns and runs them.



The game isn't yet complete, so perhaps some of the downside features aren't implemented yet. If you look at my random events through, you'll find that there are more negative randoms than positive. The list isn't complete though, and I haven't really made any substantial updates over the last two years as Mike hasn't yet said what his plans are for the randoms. I'll get working on them again proper once I know for definite what their future is. As for changing the current game concepts to make those have more downsides/more tactical impact, that will have to be down to small incremental changes and player feedback. We don't want to make big game-breaking changes, and this is afterall supposed to be a community effort. We value the opinions of everyone.



That's a typo. Virtually all ships should have a population health value, although for most ships this value should be very small anyways. The population health value is a new concept that we've come up with to compliment the disease risk that we're also hoping to implement. Systems may randomly become infected with diseases that will kill off population. There are structures that can help people fight off the disease (Such as apothecaries, clinics, hospitals, triage centers, etc), but ships in a system will also be able to provide small amounts of help, as they did in the shows. The faster you are able to bring up population health, the more quickly your people can fight off the disease and the fewer people will die.

This is the whole purpose of Hospital ships as well; they are designed to provide emergency supplies and everything needed to help a population fight off such disease. Disease will also have an impact on relationships; if you send a ship to cure a diseased alien planet, your relationship with them will improve dramatically. If you refuse to aid them after they beg for help though, your relationship will suffer. Diseases may even wipe out entire systems if left for long enough...



The initial populations and starting structures improves over time as the Colony ships improve; colony ship II's will provide a larger starting population and more structures than a colony ship I, for instance. You didn't specify which ships you used, but i'm assuming this was an early-game experience for you to be commenting about it. If what you say is correct, it could either be a bug, or purposely-implemented differences in the races. Still, you would imagine the Federation would have the best colonies, so i'll mention your findings to Mike. As i've said before, the structures and colony sizes are hard coded in, instead of being editable in the editor.



This is a typo, but one i've already fixed; I double-checked all the shipyards after you noticed the Klingon shipyard problem.

I still haven't sent the files to Mike as i'm still making changes - partly because of you, .Iceman.



No, Editor 3 does not work yet. Editor 1 was the original editor that Supremacy had, but it was buggy and lacked several options that I needed to implement the database, so Mike built Editor 2 and removed Editor 1. But now we've found that there are bugs in Editor 2 and I've asked for a LOT of new feature additions, so Mike decided it would be easier to just build a new editor rather than update the existing one. That's where Editor 3 comes in. But he hasn't finished it yet. Some parts of it do work - if you can get it to load - but for the most part it is incomplete. Once it is complete, Mike will remove Editor 2 from the game, leaving only Editor 3.

I think the problem with the Transport is that the Construction ship had a very high Raw Materials cost, reflecting its construction ability. That was nice I guess.



All colony ship I.



I had notice it at the time, but thought it was intended.



Hey, don't hold the updates because of me
Thanks for putting up with me and my questions.

As a followup on Energy bonuses being cumulative, Food bonuses are also cumulative. Meaning 2 of them in a system will grant a 1.15*1.15 bonus to all food facilities.

The Cardassians have asteroids on their home system (and the Raw Minerals special), but they mine very little (less than the other races) per turn on that system. It shouldn't be Morale-related, as they start with the best Morale rating. It should't also be a racial modifier, as their description mentions their mining as very good.

The Cardassians have the orders panel for fleets display in black color over black bottom. Only when hovering the mouse over the orders can you see the text.

I suppose the Science Ability thing is not working yet?

Even though each race has a different name for its structures, 3 races use the same late version industry structure (Heavy Replicator). Is that intended?
BTW, why are there 6 different structures for some of the types (Machining Plant?), for 5 empires? Minors?

Does anyone else find something strange with these stats?
Solar Panel Array: 650, +40 Ene
Charge Collectors: 700, +100 Ene
Wind Turbine: 100, +35 Ene

I find Energy (production) in the game a bit irrelevant. Or rather, weird as implemented. The base energy production structures are not limited in #, they require pop to work. Then you have special structures that don't require pop to work, but are limited in #. Of course you'll want to have the latter (even because they're more than sufficient early game, most of the time), as it doesn't really make sense you having to "waste" pop on energy production when you can not to. The fact that most non-base structures require Energy to operate, and the base structures don't, can only be classified as odd too - even though it's understandable in a gameplay point of view.
As a side note, some of the minors' structures require quite a bit of energy to operate. I'm guessing this will be part of the still to be implemented AI, but it's a point to be considered.

What's the difference between HomeSystem and NativeSystem?

The last release came with some savegames and log files. These should be removed from the zip. BTW, at least some of the log files don't seem to be overwritten, but appended, meaning their size increases over time.

Home system is for example Cardassia Prime, while a native system is just a colony which has your colonists on it.

Regards Wolfe

Meaning that a minor that is somehow annexed doesn't count as a Native system, right? Thx!
Conquered systems have their own identifier, but I suppose they don't count as Native, since the original population remains on the system, right?

The timesing of the Food bonuses definitely isn't right. I'll ask Mike about them. I'll ask him about the Cardassian mining bonus as well because they are definitely supposed to have the best mining ability.

The Cardassian fleet orders bug is a known issue though; I told Mike about it last week. He says it's occured because he used the Federation interface as a template for the Cardassian one - but he recently made updates to the interface system, which by default also updates the Federation interface since that is the default interface. Since the Cardassian interface was based on the old Federation interface though, it is no longer fully compatible, resulting in the blacking out. Mike says he is therefore going to scrap the Cardassian theme and rebuild it from scratch.

No, Science ability has no yet been implemented.

There are six different facilities but only five empires because I wanted to give the minor races a greater variation on the facility types they could build. This would make the game more interesting, realistic, and fun. If you look, you'll see the sixth type is actually based on the old Ferengi facilities from BOTF; they would have been used by Ferengi-like races in the game. But as Mike has told me that assigning individual facility types to each of the minor races would lead to an unacceptable performance loss, i've had to scrap that idea. I'll be scrapping the extra buildings too, so there will be a performance improvement from that. Some of the empires share their final facilities because we know from DS9 that eg. the Federation and Cardassians actually shared a lot of industrial technologies - even if they had vastly different work ethics. Many of their weapons were similar too.

The presence of save games and log files is the result of updates. Things get lost or accidentally added - it's just down to human error. Since Mike is refactoring the game though, these should hopefully get removed. It may even mean the log files that should be there will get replaced correctly instead of being appended then. Fingers crossed.
The energy production/requirements in the game are one of the many things that will need to be balanced during gameplay; they've been balanced on paper (Even if they don't sound like it) but since the game will obviously have little perculiarities/differences to what you expect on paper, you can only find out how well it holds up by actually playing it. There are some things you didn't point out about the Wind Turbines and Solar panels though...possibly because those are part of my new update, I can't remember lol. The Solar Array can only be built in systems that have a Terran, Oceanic, Desert, or Jungle planet, whilst the Advanced Array can be built in any system. The advanced array therefore doesn't require the presence of a Solar Array, but still obsoletes any that do exist. Not only does the advanced array therefore have more places where it can be built, it also produces energy much more efficiently thanks to improvements in energy and biotech (Studies of energy production in plants). I've rewritten the descriptions for both of these structures so it makes more sense. That is why there is such a bump in the amount of energy they produce. The advanced turbines produce less energy because the wind is less reliable than solar energy. The turbines can also be placed in fewer places than the solar Arrays - and the Advanced Turbines are introduced at a lower tech level than the Advanced Solar Arrays. This is why the implementation looks a bit wierd at first glance.

As Wolfe said, Homesystems are the original system that a race comes from, so Sol for the Federation, Cardassia for the Cardassians. NativeSystem is a system that has been colonised by the occupying race, ConqueredSystem is a system that has been Conquered, and Non-Native system is a system that has joined as a member of a larger organisation.

I meant really comparing hard stats, as in cost vs output. Requirements are irrelevant - on the contrary, if tech advances lead to obsoleting much more viable structures, then there's something wrong. But obsoletion is a matter for a whole dissertation a weak point in the game IMO. The type of systems where they can be built is also irrelevant (to cost). The fact that wind is less reliable than solar radiation, hmm, that's not really a fact. Especially when we're talking about other planets. Regardless, for a given cost, you can build a plant of a given *size*, which will hopefully have a comparable output. Else, you'll not build it at all

Food/Energy bonuses
Re the cumulative thing, and other issues, one of them being nergy production. I'd suggest one of the following:
a) Make these bonuses system-based instead of planet-based. One per system, displayed below the star. This would fix the cumulative issue (if that's indeed a bug). The Energy bonus should only be present if the star is yellow or hotter. The Food bonus should only be present on yellow (and orange maybe) stars.
b) Remove the bonuses completely and instead make yellow or hotter stars (which would have the energy bonus maybe?) be able to build Solar Panel Arrays. The description doesn't make sense, there's no guarantee that Des/Jun/Ter/Oce planets will be the innermost planets on a system (besides the bug that they can only be built on systems with all of these planet types). Additionally, but a bit more complicated to code, the hotter the star, the higher the output of the Arrays would be. Yellow (and orange maybe) stars could build a corresponding food production facility.

Colonization
When a colony ship creates a colony, the crew of the ship is lost. It should be added to the colonized planet's pool of Officers.

UI
The displayed values for Personnel/Officers and Raw Materials are in a different order, in the Main screen and in the System screen. Switching one of them would be nice, not to create confusion.

Production
Military production is actually 10x larger than civilian production, eg a given amount of pop that creates 100 production for structures, creates 1000 production for ships. Costs are scaled, sure, but it's a bit odd nonetheless. Especially if you consider a Shipyard costing 100, and ships costing at least ~1000.
BTW, small (meaning the first) shipyards can build Cruisers, even though their descriptions say they can't.

They all have some form of replicators, that's not the issue - even because the Heavy Replicator is common to the Kli/Rom/Car, not the Federation

BTW, the Cardassian menu style is really weird, I much prefer the default/Fed one. It's much more intuitive. You have to guess or experiment, with the Card's.




An early game example with the Klingons. Building the Basic Food Processors in Qo'noS. The BFP needs 5 energy, for 20 food. When I get an additional pop, I can either put it in a Type 1 Processing Plant for 25 food (which is already built, but otherwise costs 60), or put it in energy production and build a BFP for 150 (and waste energy) for less food. Hardly effective. Also, putting 2 pop in energy production generates 28 energy, which, if the Klingons follow the rest of the races (when fixed), is insufficient to power both the Shipyard and the BFP (25+5).

BTW, in that game, I had a Radio Pulsar right next to Qo'noS, I don't think that should be a possibility in a game. The adjacent sectors should be empty.

The scanner range for the homeworld is also odd. It's 1 initially. Strangely, ships have a much larger scan range... Like 3+.

Shipyards. Another oddity. The homeworld should start with a shipyard already built IMO. And its cost should be increased dramatically (previous post). With a cost of 100, it's built in one turn. Even recently established colonies can build one in a couple of turns, which IMO is really detracting. Too simple to hop from system to system (see colony ships not costing pop issue).

When you stop construction of a ship being built, I don't think you are returned its costs? I mean Dil, Deu, Raw, Off. Not even partially, I think. I guess the Officers go get wasted, since their commission was cancelled?

Seems like a slight miscommunication there. I said initial pop count on the homeworld, not system max pop. Like Earth for example starting with a full 120 pop instead of 80 (system max is still 195), and each colony ship costing say 30 pop. So if you build one colony ship first turn, you'll actually only have 90 people to assign to production, approx what you have now. So colonization hampers your general production - momentarily, as when you colonise another system, that pop will start working there.

Still on the pop thing, and regarding the previous post, it's a bit strange that the homesystem's pop gets to max within 20 turns/months of game start If you disregard Mal's distorted math that is

The research costs in the game are 1/10th those in the xml file. Any specific reason for this?

Protein Resequencers: 300, 10 Ene, +5% Food
Free Market: 150, 5 Ene, +5% Food and Credits
These translate into ~10 Food with an even food production in the homeworld. Also, the FM is a lot better than the PR; IIRC the FM is Fed-specific, so I'm guessing it's intended. Still, worth noting.

Purification Works has the same problem as Solar Panel Array, multiple planet type restrictions.

Upgrading structures
Construction time is UpgradedStructureCost * #Structures * 0.5 / IndustryOutput
Is there a reason it takes half the new level's cost instead of the full difference in costs?
Also, it doesn't cost any credits. Maybe it's not fully implemented yet? If it's intended, building up systems at Type 1s, and then upgrading seems like a cheap option.

Fed Cruiser II vs Cruiser I, costs 370 vs 30 Raw Materials. Hmm. Steep. I cannot build lower tech Cruisers. Maybe I do not want to upgrade? Oh wait, but I have to, it's automatic when I reach a new tech level

Turn processing order
1.Colonization
2.PopGrowth
3.Construction
4.MoraleCalc
1+2: the turn colonists are busy assembling the colony, they're also doing other stuff (already mentioned)
2+3: the new pop produces stuff the turn they're generated, possibly changing estimated build times if assigned to factories
3+4: Morale producing structures affect Morale the turn they're built, affecting production times, research, credit income
etc.
Just an observation, since the game doesn't provide you any feedback for the current turn (only the previous turn).

growth hormones and speed breeding . no actually my distorted math is explaining it all. You see per year we get around 80 million more people on earth as a whole in 2008 right now, that makes 160 million in 2 years = 1 turn at the beginning, so 0.16 billion et voilà that's the growth rate for a standard M class planet when first colonized. with the 2 years you get the needed generations. Later on we can actually talk about other things that might make an equivalent to worker growth cause at some point a turn is actually one month whereby a colony then still gets the same growth rates. That seems at first a bit strange but I found a distorted explanation for that too .

Woo! I've got my computer back so i'm just downloading .Net 3.5 SP1 and i'll start updating Supremacy again. I've got to install a million other things and i've got to do the Dominion ship images update as well, so that's gonna keep me busy all tomorrow. Thanks for continuing the typo hunt, .Iceman, i'll get on it soon as I can. I've got to catch up on a few days worth of your posts first though.

Hmm, 160mil out of ~6bil is 2.5% growth, not 5%... And you start with 4 or 5 planets, not 1.
Anyways, I don't buy any of that.

--

There seems to be a bug when you add a minor into your empire, with food. It's known that they'll be starving, that I know. But when you add workers to farms beyond those that the planet had initially, no food will not be produced by those farms. Is this a known issue? Switching to a different window, or giving a build order seems to fix it though.

Hmm, this is a new one. However, I'm in the middle of a major refactoring of the game client, which includes changing the way the screens work internally. The problem may disappear as a result, but I'll keep an eye out for it.

I'm guessing the 370 Raw cost for the Fed's Cruiser II is a mistake, maybe Cost and Raw Materials got switched?

Private Farms: +3 Food for 15 Energy? Description says it boosts Morale, but Statistics doesn't reflect that. Also, the Production window doesn't automatically update food production when it is turned on, it has to be refreshed.

Retail Outlets: +1 Credits for 200 Cost and 5 Energy? Description says it boosts Morale, but Statistics doesn't reflect that.

In the Diplomacy screen, acceptance of a minoir into an empire should use the Empire's name, not the race:
The xxx have been welcomed as members of the Romulans. Romulan Star Empire


The new resources:
They sound nice really, but IMO their implementation is a bit lacking.

Personnel/Officers
They're just a % of your pop each turn, each race having a different % (ranging from 14~18%). They're generated by *all* systems, regardless of any structures - meaning colony ships seem to build an academy as soon as they land Dafedz's site mentions some Personnel recruitment facilities, that could be nice. Or maybe just one structure that you can build as soon as the system has a shipyard, that triggers the ability of systems to generate those %s mentioned above (the home system would get the ability automatically, the main academy if you will). As it is, not only does it sound odd [and there you have the quadruple shifts, not only do people work their asses off, they also have time to attend the academy ] , but a bit lame IMO. Sorry.

Deuterium
Every system with a Gas Giant gets 10 Deuterium per GG automatically (the Federation does get an edge here with 4 GGs, and the Dominion gets shafted with none). Same thing as with personnel really. In this case there is a structure that gets you additional Deuterium, but that should really be *the* facility, you should have to build it to get any Deuterium. The home system again would have it automatically. They could/should be cheap structures, but they should have to be built nevertheless.

BTW, the Deuterium Plant cannot be built in system with only Crystalline Gas Giants. Odd, since they're GGs nonetheless.

Raw Materials
Not really true that every system generates Raw Materials. Only those with the Raw Materials special do. Those without it, generate nothing, even if they have Asteroids. For a building block of ships, it's odd.
Mining Corps is actually allowed to be built in systems that generate no Raw Materials, which makes no sense since it's a %. Maybe it should be changed to providing an additive bonus.


--

Scanners
When colonizing a system, you immediately get the 10 Deuterium per Gas Giant bonus and personnel without having to build any facility (see above), but you don't get a decent scanner... Instead, for whatever reason, scan range depends on pop count. Even the homeworld doesn't start with a decent scanner, which is strange for an empire wanting to expand to space. To compound on that, ships have higher scan ranges than system. Another oddity IMO.

BTW, is the Subspace Scanner working? I see no change in Scan range. (see below)


Range
I had a ship just inside its Range (=5) from my homeworld, and took it 2 sectors out. It had Fuel 4, so it should have been able to make it and back. It did, but when it got back to the starting sector, it got Stranded. The Range limit (yellow line) had shrinked to 3 sectors from my homeworld. The next turn, everything was back to normal, and the ship was fueled again.


Attached pic:
* Pathfinding is not optimized, should plot through my territory, take Deuterium from the global stockpile instead of consuming fuel (when ships replenish their fuel reserves, is it discounted from the global stockpile?)
* System has active Subspace Scanner (+2 scan range), and 200+ pop, yet scan range is only 2.

The raw material cost is a typo. It should be 70 raw materials and 1700 industry. I've fixed it now.

Private Farms work - or *should* work - differently to BOTF. You will be able to build as many of them as you want, providing you can support them. Their energy cost should be 5 not 15, but the food output is correct. I've also given them a +1 morale bonus as you said they needed. The Retail Outlets are the same - correct output but needed a morale bonus so i've added that too. Retail Outlets will work in the same way too - you can build as many as you want, providing you can support them. Unfortunately the one per system requirement is a bit buggy and is always turned on, so the game still only lets you build one of them per system. Mike knows of the problem though.

The Diplomacy bug will need to be passed on to Mike. Diplomacy is Mike's domain as it is still under development.

Personnel/Officers have NOT been implemented how Dafedz envisaged. That's why there is some confusion at the moment in this area. Dafedz wanted training facilities (To go with food, industry, energy, intel, and research) but Mike doesn't want that. Since it's Mike game, he has the ultimate say so that idea was scrapped. I actually implemented the Training Facilities about two months ago, but removed them when Mike told me to do so. Instead, each system produces a percentage output, although I don't know if this amount can be varied or not. Mike would have to say. The Dominion would obviously get a bonus if possible. The difference in opinion is why there is this confusion at the moment though.

The auto-output of Gas Giants is a programming issue rather than an editor isue; I can't change that. I can only change the buildings in this particular respect. However, the auto-output does help to solve a potential problem of people running out of Deuterium. Whilst it makes the game less realistic, it makes it more playable, because Empires can't collapse from a permanent fuel shortage if their only Deuterium-producing system gets destroyed or something. The Crystalline planets i'm still not sure about though. I really do need to ask Mike about their purpose. If you remember, I said that I *might* make them Dilithium planets or something, I just never got round to asking Mike about them. I'll do it now before I forget.

The missing raw materials is a new one on me, although it may be down to the bug where some systems with the raw material bonus not actually producing raw materials. Anyways, i've done as you suggested and given the Mining Corps a raw materials requirement. I did the same for the Geo-Survey Commissing and the Harvesting Complex.

The scan range problem is one that i've noticed myself. I personally envisaged the scan ranges in Dafedz's database as referring to combat values, rather than map values. Playtesting is definitely something that needs to be done in this area, although i'm already 99% sure I will be reducing the scan ranges because as you said, they're too high at the start of the game. Scanners are in the game, they just aren't a start of game structure. You can also build sensor jammers, but they're a late-game structure. If they're not working as expected though, it may be that they're buggy at the moment. I guess i'm gonna have to do some experimenting.

The range issue you mentioned is definitely a bug. I'll tell Mike about it.

Mike knows that there are some problems with pathfinding. I believe he posted a few weeks ago that he was still making updates to it. I'll lethim know about your comments.

Those yellow dotted lines don't represent scan range, they represent ship range. It's the distance a ship can travel before it exceeds refueling range. The solid light gray lines represent scanning range. A system with a subspace scanner has a scanning range of 2 sectors from that colony (it has a base value of zero). This is not in any way influenced by the size of the population. Only your empire's "range of influence" is expanded based on population size, which is considered when determining territorial claims.

Um, I'm not sure why the range line would shrink unless a shipyard got deactivated or something. I'll look into it.

Pathfinding is optimized for shortest paths. At the moment, the only territorial consideration it makes is that space protected by a non-aggression pact is off-limits. In the future, I may add multiple pathfinding modes, like "most direct route", "safest route" (friendly space preferred), etc.

0+2 = 2.

Oh. I knew about the yellow lines, I figured those out pretty early BTW, the whole thing with the "extra" range provided by the Deuterium cost (the red lines), beyond the refueling range... hmmm... that's an odd concept. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, ships can travel freely inside their range (spending Deuterium from the global stockpile), *and* they can go beyond that by their Fuel rating (spending the fuel they carry)... that's kind of a doubling effect, isn't it?!
I didn't know about the area of influence though. So the scanner range is actually obfuscated by the AoI? Is that a good thing? Doesn't look like it. You have to remember your actual scan range or something? Notice that in the image I attached, you can't see the scan range - the green arrow shows the location of the colony that has the scanner built.

Here's how fuel works:

Each ship has an onboard deuterium fuel reserve. For each sector the ship moves, one unit of deuterium is depleted (e.g. removed from the reserve). If the ship is within its maximum fuel range, each unit taken from the reserves is automatically replenished from the global stockpile. If the ship is out of range, then the reserves don't get replenished. Thus, if a ship travels outside of its range for too long, it will completely expend its deuterium reserve and become stranded.

The idea is that a ship's fuel range is "flexible", so if you find yourself in a situation where the supply lines are disrupted, you can still move your ships a short range. Look at the example scenario in my attached image. Here, a critical supply post has been destroyed, rendering your forces unable to move from Point A to Point B through your own territory. The fuel reserves alleviate this problem to a limited extent. A much more common scenario is that a supply post is destroyed, potentially leaving ships out of range, even though they were previously within range. Assuming they're not too far out, they should have enough fuel to return to your territory.

As for scanning range, sectors within scan range are indicated by colored grid lines (the color of your empire).

Also, I should add that I think you're quite right about the resource issues. I think they need some serious review and refinement. Perhaps a deuterium facility should be required to produce any deuterium, with all systems having the same "base" output level, and production bonuses being granted for systems with a gas giant present (or if the system resides within a nebula)?

Nebula bonuses would be a nice touch. Don't forget that we have two Deuterium structures though Mike - Oceanic worlds produce Deuterium as well. We've got Aquatic Deuterium Plants for Oceanic worlds.

...We actually still need an image for the Deuterium Plant. We're using the Romulan Singularity Plant image from BOTF at the moment, so we'll need to replace it. Luckily, SMIFFGIG returned to the forums last night - he hasn't been online in almost two years. I've already forwarded him the list of structures that are still in need of images so fingers corssed he'll put his skills to use for us.

We've got an image for the Aquatic Deuterium Plant though, and it's one I particularly like. Zeleni got it for us.

I understand all of that. The problem I see (conceptually of course) is the situation I explained. You're on the limit of your RR, you can go half your Fuel reserves distance outside RR and back, and you'll still be refueled when you're back into your RR *even* if you're right on the edge of your territory - thus negating the whole effect of a refueling range.



Which in turn kind of invalidates disrupting supply lines



Time to build another station?



Lost Empire solves this issue by having stranded ships move automatically to your territory at a much slower speed - like you're moving at sub-warp speed. Kind of makes sense, you're out of deuterium, no warp speed.



Oh. Funny thing is, those lines show at the very beginning of the game, from your homeworld. Does the homeworld have scan range 1, instead of zero, by default?
So, it's not a solid gray line?



Yep, that'd be nice. That base output level could even vary with type of planet. The Cardassians' homeworld should probably produce less than a Terran or Jungle homeworld. It could produce more Raw Materials to compensate ("flatter" planet easier to implement mines and all), and it'd go well with their increased mining capabilities.
Off-world activities (asteroid mining, deuterium collection) could also be tied to the system having a shipyard - ideally it should be an independent docking platform like some kind of starbase, but with the KISS rule and all that...

This of course doesn't invalidate the existance of the Aquatic Deuterium Plant in Oceanic worlds. It's a bonus.