Right now they have the highest output of all the races, 18% (IIRC, Rom=14, Fed=15, Klin=16, Card=17).

Like with my observation about Personnel, mining Raw materials could also not be automatic. You could need to build a mining facility to actually start mining them - again the homeworld would get this automatically. Ideally, mining facilities would be base structures like farms and replicators, but that's some more coding, and another performance issue I'm sure

Another idea. Why not make those Intel structures useful early game, and make Personnel output in a system tied to them? If you have people assigned to them, you'll get some Personnel. If you don't, well, you don't. How many / what % per structure, that's the issue. With proper balancing, could be nice IMO. Intel structures aren't really used early game, are they?

With the same line of thought, the mining facilities mentioned above could be power-dependent structures (maybe non-pop dependent to compensate, automated). Small amount of power, of course, and some (a lot?) of balancing would be required. Still early to tell, but some systems don't seem to require the energy structures all that much.



A good reason to defend those system with all you got.



Not sure if it's valid or not, but they're supposed to grant more research or something too, right? I mean with the Science ships. Dilithium is good too.

Now that's one area where realism would make the game slightly unplayable and certainly frustrating - although also cool at the same time. I've already suggested to Mike about the possibility of having sublight speeds (Eg. speeds of 0.5 etc) so people could eventually create pre-warp mods.

Anyways, if a ship was travelling at sublight speed, it would realistically take the ship many turns to travel across even one sector. For instance, the nearest star to Earth is just over 4 light years away. In Trek, Impulse engines are traditionally limited to quarter light speed. They *can* go a lot faster than that, but it results in unacceptable time "lag". (As in the faster you go, the slower time gets relative to the movement of time in the rest of the known Universe). So *if* a turn is equal to 2 years at the start of the game, and the ship was travelling at quarter impulse, then it would take four years to go one lightyear. That's just over 16 years to get to the nearest star even at that extreme velocity. Now for arguments sake, people have thrown about the idea of a sector in the game being about 20 lightyears across. So that means the nearest star is quarter of a sector away, which is impossible at the moment. So for the sake of argument, lets say that a sector is four lightyears. So that means the two stars are next to each other on the map. At quarter impulse then, it would take 8 turns to travel across a single sector, since 4 years x 0.25 lightyears per year = 16 years. As 2 years = 1 turn, that's 8 turns.

...But then that's complicated by the fact that turns end up being two months or whatever when you're near the end of the game. At two months a turn, the turn time would be increase by a factor of 12 (Since there are 12 lots of 2-month turns in an early game 2-year turn) So that's 8 x 12, which is 96 turns. At that sort of movement time, people would think the ship was "broke" or "stuck". We would therefore need to sacrifice a bit of realism to keep it playable *if* sublight speeds were introduced. So sublight movement times would need to kept constant throughout the game, irrespective of the increasing pace of the game.

/End realism rant.

...

Intel "strength" is accumulative, so whilst players may neglect their intel early in the game, they will pay for doing so later. Basically, if you are producing say 100 intel per turn, and all of it was going into internal security. Then, 10 turns later, an enemy empire turns its' eye towards sabotaging you. They would need to build up at least 1000 intel points to break through your internal security. (Since 100 intel x 10 turns = 1000 intel points) Not many people realise this, but it was actually that way in BOTF as well, and I think it was a pretty good system.

Now obviously, there will be a certain amount of randomness built into the system or it would become too predictable and unrealistic; you never know when a security system may randomly fail, a guard goes off sick, or whatever, so some attacks may get lucky breaks and be able to sabotage you early, or some may be uncovered even though internal security has been compromised. Players will have to hope lady luck is with them.

...

As i've mentioned before, there are a few special structures which you *should* be able to build as many as you want of - as long as you can support them. These include the Orbital Batteries, Retail Outlets, and Private Farms. This is unfortunately buggy at the moment, but perhaps mining structures could be added to this category? What do you think? Their output could be kept very low to prevent players just spamming systems with them (Private Farms generate 3 food per turn and Retail Outlets generate 1 credit per turn each), but it could also add in the possibility of players specialising certain systems to be mining meccas, the loss of which would potentially be devastating. Not only that, an increase in the number of structures to which they could build as many as people want of - as long as they can support them - would force people to take decisions to ensure they have a balanced mix of each of the types of structure.

Which reminds me Mike, the bug I mentioned above where you can't actually build more than one of the multi-build structures may actually need an interface change before it will work; how do you turn these multi-structures on or off when each structure type occupies only one place in the energy screen and only shows one building? I can think of two potential ways to fix this; show each building individually, or add a BOTF-style bar so you can choose how many of them are turned on. The Orbital Batteries especially need *something* so players can turn them on.

...

.Iceman, the way research bonuses from scanning was supposed to work was that you would send a ship to perform research/scan anything that they encounter. Each object - star, nebula, planet type, neutron star, black hole, whatever - would be worth a set amount of research points. We've usually said this would be a one-time bonus, but thinking about it, that amount would then need to be tracked for each individual object so perhaps it would need to be modified somehow. (Science stations would be a waste of resources otherwise)

Since Crystalline planets are relatively rare though, they would be worth a lot more research points than ordinary planets. The overall amounts you get would make such research a useful bonus near the start of the game, but would be much less useful near the end of the game when the amount of research needed to get to the next level skyrockets.

Hmm, let me see if I got this straight. Stranded ships have *zero* speed, but having them have some (low) speed is frustrating...



They're not going anywhere anyway. Unless you actually do something about it, but that's an option you *always* have.



Zzzzzzz....
Honestly, you guys need to get off those pills. Some people waved the KISS rule at me, and the it's-a-game adage when I first posted here. Now, you all brandish these convoluted, trekkie arguments to justify something that could simply be put as 1 turn = 1 year, period. The game does have varying map sizes and configurations, you can't really go into math frenzy to explain how it "conforms" to Trek canon. So what if a sector is actually 100-ly across? Who cares?
Don't take this as a rant, I'm just saying you guys like to complicate *where* you shouldn't.



Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Doesn't make any sense. You know it, I know it, only Mal doesn't. Does everybody have to live by that?



It is?! I think I tried it once, the first time I played actually, and I didn't see no accumulation. I'll have to check again then.



Can you know an empire's internal security rating?
What happens when you get to 1000+? I assume the chance for a successful sabotage depends on your amount of intel points over that of the target empire's? And that those actions cost intel points? (thinking about it, if they do cost IPs, then you'll be wide open after you use them...hmmm)



What I was thinking was, for example, a system that currently generates 44 Raw Materials per turn, would have to build 44 mining facilities to extract them all; that is, each mine mines 1 RM per turn, and you can only build them up to the max mining capacity of the system.



Yes, I read about it, hence my comment.
As for science stations, they could work like a glorified research facility, maybe with a large scan radius. Lost Empire had 2 types of scanners, one for ships and one for planets. If there was such a thing in this game, SS could have a large scan radius for astral bodies, but low ship detection. Outposts would be the opposite.



Which reminds me, there isn't an RP pool in the game. Excess research spills over to the next level. Research from these sources (science ability) is probably added to your total research that turn, and it not being quantifiable/predictable, may lead to "waste" in your research plans. The research screen is also not very helpful in what comes to predicting breakthroughs - in this light, the RP pool would be great. Granted, you may want to make research more unpredictable, but there are always arguments against that too. One of them is scientists are not stupid , as soon as they reach a breakthrough, they switch their attention immediately to something else (it might be the same thing of course) - the pool allows you to redirect unspent RPs to another area the next turn. Another one is that an experienced player will memorize the RP costs, and manipulate the sliders accordingly, which requires micromanagement.
Just a thought though.

Iceman, you sound a little arrogant do you (kidding ). Just let it go. Other games are other games and KISS be KISS. We make it that way and that's it. Mod it otherwise if you feel like it's better but I haven't heard any argument yet that disqualifies our way of living in the future. The other universes are just so slow, I mean there's always a hatch no matter which way you go, constant or decreasing turn times.

There's actually a point in having sector lengths at 20 ly. Warp speed math matches with that distance and our turn times and map speeds. It's all linked to each other.

Yep.



We're trekkies. What else can we rant about?



Yes.



Like I said, most people don't realise it. There's no bar or point reading that visiblly measures how much intel strength you've got built up in defense or to commit sabotae/espionage, it's all calculated internally. You've also got to remember that BOTF was an incomplete game when it was released - many of the features simply didn't work, were incomplete, or were incompletely removed at the last minute. (As evidenced by the extra structure pics that the stbof.res file contains but are never actually used in the game) It may be that intel doesn't work exactly to this rule, but that's how the programmers tried to make it work.



No, you can't know; I was just using this as an example. Depending on the size of star systems (If you have the planets mod for instance, you can have systems with maybe 600 or 700 population), the size of the intel bonuses you have, how many systems you have, and how many people are actually working in intel, you can generate a hell of a lot of intel points. The Romulans and Cardassians received big bonuses to their intel, and i've played many games where they completely obliterated me with their intel strength alone - so you know they do use intel. When you "attacked" enemy empires with your intel, you would sometimes be given options to plant evidence to frame other empires as well, although this usually only happened when you had a lot of intel strength built up. Therefore the game definitely did do at least *some* comparisons between the relative intel strengths.



Hmm...44 mines is a lot of structures, and, depending on the costs, would take you a long time to complete. There is also the energy cost of all those structures. Perhaps it would be better to tone it down a bit, and require 1 mine for every 5 or 10 RM's or something?



Err...why would you want to detect astral bodies? Ships are the thing you really want to detect; chances are, by the time you've built a science station, you already know about any nearby neutron stars, black holes, whatever. It was my understanding that a Science station would be a long-term research structure; instead of leaving a ship to constantly monitor such objects, it would be better to build a station that has all the equipment and people that you need to research such things. Ships would be a wasteful way to do long-term studies because they have many unneccesary systems, and not all the crew would have expertise that would be useful for such missions. In the game context, I always imagined that they would have very powerful, but very short-ranged sensors, afterall they have been built in a sector to monitor a specific object, not to monitor what is (Usually) just empty space. Defensively they would also be very weak - Outposts and Starbases with tactically-minded crews would be better suited to combat than research stations crewed by scientists.



I doubt there are many people like that. I mean how many people know that the research cost of Silicobiology is 1439100 research points?

Still, a pool might be an idea.

Sectors are the unit of distance measurement in the game. You can think of them any way you like, but they do not represent any other unit of measure. Game turns are the unit of time measurement. Game turns do not represent any other measure of time, be it weeks, months or years. I have no plans to implement stardates or anything of the kind. I'm keeping it simple. If someone wants something more tractable, they're welcome to modify the game's source code.

I have also said on a few occasions that I will not implement any form of sublight travel. Ship speed is a natural number of sectors per turn, period. Sorry, guys, but this is one thing I won't change my mind about.

Iceman, could you explain this concept of a "research pool" to me? I'm not quite sure what you mean.

Sorry if I sounded arrogant mal, I won't touch the issue again.



Well, there's an Intel display right in the main menu, and it reads zero all the time, so I thought that meant something.



RMs are a random number, 44 for example is not divisable by 5 or 10. Hence the suggestion. They can be cheap to build, after all Sup is not limited in structures built per turn like BotE
Energy needs an overhaul anyway. Across the game. IMO.



I was replying to the part of the science station's purpose being to gain research by analyzing _astral bodies_...

[quote]I mean how many people know that the research cost of Silicobiology is 1439100 research points?

Actually, IIRC it's not, it's 143910, since the values in the xml file are 10x those the game actually uses For whatever reason.

Heheh. Sorry, couldn't resist.



Notice I wasn't asking you to change that. Simply that, like building outposts ot collecting deuterium, a ship might take several turns to move one sector. Can't get any simpler than that. Not important though, just a thought.



Simple. When you finish researching a tech, the remaining points, instead of being applied to the following level, are put in a pool. The next turn, you can apply those points anywhere you wish.

Well, my primary objection is that the player sees a ship with a route assigned to it, presses the 'Turn' button, and it doesn't go anywhere. I don't want any situations in the game where a ship moves at a fractional number of sectors per turn. I think it would just end up confusing too many people.

Hmm, I don't see a lot of gameplay benefit to that. Given that it would require refactoring the code, creating a new screen, and would result in research earned the previous turn being deferred until the next turn, the cost/utility ratio just doesn't seem worth it.

never mind iceman, I was just kidding anyway.

That last idea with the pool is naturally circumvented by the possibility to distribute the surplus according to the last research percentage distribution. So if you research a project at 100% with full intent although it is already 99% finished and you know you would need only 5% to certainly get the tech, then all RP are transferred to the next tech level within the same tech area. If you decide now to only give 20% onto that tech and distribute the other research percentage on other techs, then only 20% are surplus on that tech. You don't need a pool. Just rearrange distribution the turn before. It's micromanagement but you know..

I know how it works Mal, my point was that you just need another variable to hold the excess points. It works pretty well in LE:I. Notice that the way the research screen works, I don't know what is coming up next in the various tech areas. I might not want to pursue that line of research. And yes, that kind of micro is totally uncalled for. Sure, I can do the math, and work the sliders (which aren't all that easy anyway, unless you lock them). There wouldn't really be the need for another screen, just display the value in the research screen somewhere.

As for the sublight travel issue Mike, I'd say display the path in a dotted line, in red, but that's already used for out of range travel

Scanners:
Let me explain a little better how they work in LE:I. There are 2 kinds. Deep Space Scanners, that detect ships (those used in Sup) within their range. And Communications Scanners, which scan systems within their range. They are built automatically in any system, and their range simply increases by researching the respective techs. There's one system type, the Outpost, that has extended DSS range, and the homeworld hs both extended. The main difference between the 2 games is that LE:I does not have FoW, you can see all stars in the galaxy. What you can't see though, is what they have. For that, you have the CSs. Info on the systems you can see is only updated (every turn) *if* they fall in your CS range. In Sup, once you've scanned a system, you have access to its current info every turn, including pop and defenses.
Just an observation though, doesn't have to mean anything.

One thing I'd like to see. I've read in these forums about maps. So I know it's been mentioned already (talk about pre-emption ). The game is about ST, granted. But using canon all too much might make the game too predictable and ultimately boring. I mean, if I know that the Cardassians are *always* in the Alpha Quadrant and the Dominion in the Gamma Q, the surprise factor is greatly reduced. Especially in smaller maps. So, what I'm saying is that there could be either 2 modes of play, or simply a switch on the game creation screen, that would allow the player to play Canon Mode (majors and minors are placed according to their canon locations, maybe even have a fixed map size) or Random Mode (where locations are completely random).

One stupid question. Is there a reason factories use the Grade x classification instead of Type x, like every other base structure? It's a bit detracting, all the structures being grouped together in various lists, and factories always apart.

Actually Mal, and I'll be posting this to the BotE forum, in BotE the excess research is *lost* AFAICT! When you reach a new level, Progress is always set to 0%, regardless of how many points over the required you dumped into the tech.
I'm posting this here too because I'm not sure if it doesn't happen in Sup too. You see where the pool would be handy?

While at it, MoE, the first thing I did when I started going through research in the game, was to jut down the RP requirements for all the techs. So I don't really have to memorize anything, just take a look at a piece of paper Granted, it was just for testing purposes.

Deuterium

Collect Deuterium is working. The real problem is that it doesn't make sense Ships cannot Collect Deuterium when inside their Refuel Range... Can't see why. Being outside the range is no different from being inside.
The way I see it, the whole refueling thing is messy. You're using 2 different fuel paradigms in the same game - refueling range, and fuel tanks. Personally, I'd do one of the following:
- scrap the fuel reserves (they're more realistic, but the global nature of stockpiles in the game simply doesn't make them viable). But then, there's really no justification for the Fuel stat in ships, and ultimately, for the existence of Deuterium as a resource.
- scrap the Range stat in ships. Fuel would be actually spent from the reserves, and not replenished automatically. Ships would have to go to a system _with a Deuterium facility_ to replenish their reserves, which would be deducted from the global stockpile. No going beyond max range. Of course, the Fuel stats of ships (and their Deuterium costs) would have to be increased, but it would be simple. Just replace the current Fuel values with those of Range, basically merging the 2 stats (ships have enough stats as it is).

When I first saw the Collect Deuterium order, it was in a Transport. I thought it was a cool thing, Transports - as Cargo ships - having the ability to fill their cargo holds with Deuterium, making them quite valuable to have in a deep strike fleet, refueling all the other ships in the fleet. Then I was disappointed. Imagine these ships having a Cargo stat. They could have up to that amount of either Deuterium (when collecting it) or troops (if these were to be implemented in the game) for invasions. Or even Raw Materials, if Construction ships are indeed scrapped from the game, if you wanted to build Outposts and Stations; the first generation Transport would only carry enough Raw Materials for building an Outpost I, the 2nd generation Transport an Outpost II, etc.

BTW, Crystalline Gas Giants don't allow Collect Deuterium, but they do grant the 10 Deuterium bonus per turn. A bit of an inconsistency there.

Facilities:
Deuterium Plant (Gas Giant): cost 650, 40 Ene, +20 Deu
Aquatic Deuterium Plant (Oceanic): cost 1900, 80 Ene, +10 Deu
Not sure why the difference in tech levels (in a Gas Giant is actually easier?; also the DP requires Propulsion1 and the ADP doesn't? [though it's mostly irrelevant]), and in cost (in a Gas Giant is actually cheaper?), and in energy consumption (double with half the output).
Again, I'd remove the automatic bonus altogether, and make homeworlds start with DPs already built.


---

A couple of questions:

Aquaculture Centre doesn't have an Energy cost?

Planet habitability = Adequate (3% growth), was it scrapped? Don't recall ever seeing it.

Thinking about this again, why are there Intel facilities *and* Personnel (Officers, Internal Security, External Affairs)? This sounds very redundant to me. I mean, if Intel is used for defense too, then what's Internal Security for? Unless Intel is for offensive sabo/espio actions only, but that's a bit too many things and incoherently dispersed IMO. Local/global defense? It's just not making too much sense to me right now.




Can't the excess points just be added to the global research points for the next turn? Isn't that the way global research bonuses (from some structures) work? I may be missing something, but it seems as easy as it gets.

The Neutron Star and Quasar do not have a description.

Diplomacy screen
Maybe the Klingon speech should be a bit more aggressive?

Shipbuilding screen
New names of ships: it's not easy to identify the type of ship only by their class designations.
On the build queue, the longer names are cut off by the resource costs.

Minors
Malcorians: Affiliation=Malcorians, but in the system display they read as Humans (the old bug?). When they joined my empire, I could build the Fed basic facilities (intended), but the shipyard was the Klingon one (I was plauing the Klingons).
Minors that joined your empire, production is doubled? I built the Geo-Studies Centre, should take 20 turns, but the counter was going down 2 turns per turn instead of 1. I think the pop growth is also doubled. Maybe everything is doubled? Is it possible they're developing twice, as a minor and as part of an empire?

Pop growth
It seems it is calculated as the % of the most habitable planet in the system up to the max pop on that planet, and then it changes to the system's average growth. I' not sure this makes too much sense, as the system is colonized as a whole, and the average growth already takes the most habitable planet growth into account.
Sometimes it seems I get double growth (in some systems?). I'll try to check that.

The lack of descriptions for the Neutron star and Quasars is something i've mentioned to Mike in the past. Unfortunately I can't figure out *where* the description is supposed to go in the files, so I can't add it. For the same reason, I can't fix the typo you mentioned elsewhere with the Pulsars. I simply can't find these descriptions anywhere in the game files, so they are probably part of the non-human-readable database files that Mike started implementing recently to make the game load faster.

...

Making the Klingon diplomacy more aggressive is something that I *could* do, but I don't want to mess with the Diplomacy files until I know the Diplomacy is working correctly and is fully implemented. It's still at a very early stage at the moment from a programming perspective. I don't want to risk making changes to files whilst Mike is still working on that area.

...

The problem with the new ship names is definitely an annoyance. I made the change to make it easier to find ships in the editor; I didn't realise the race name would show up in the game as well. I'll have to go back to the drawing board with that one - the ideal would be to have both the ship type and the class name in the title, but that would be just as bad in-game.

...

I'm not sure what is going on with the minor races. The Malcorians are definitely not Humans in the editor, and the minor races don't have access to the Klingon shipyards at all, so there must be a rogue bug somewhere. I'll let Mike know about it.

...

Population growth is still a bit experimental because of the new population growth structures that I implemented duing my last structure overhaul. Prior to my update, there was a bug that prevented such buildings from working, so it may be the bug hasn't been completely fixed yet. I'll also mention these two points to Mike.

...

I've got another update on the way for you to check out, .Iceman. I've just implemented the descriptions for all of the Cardassian ships (But not stations), as well as fixing the typos that you've noted with the last update. Sorry i'm sending you so many files, but four eyes are better than two.

Ok, got it, and sent you more stuff to fix

BTW, I guess it's intended that the Shipyards of minors are *way* more power hungry than those of the majors? (100 vs 35)

Not intended. If anything, they should have lower costs to encourage the AI to build ships. Update five on the way...

The build costs are lower, but the power requirements are higher. Effectiveness is also lower, which is ok.


BTW, a suggestion about the names of shipyards of minors (and the Dominion). Instead of
Basic > Medium > Advanced
maybe
Basic > Improved > Advanced
would sound better? Just a thought.


---

More stuff:


Aquaculture Centre doesn't have an Energy cost.

The Meridians only have one tech in their tech tree, a race specific one (Planetary Research Station). Is this intended? Because of the phasing of the homeworld, maybe, even though I'm not sure it makes sense.

Is it intended that all races now have similar SpaceStations? The Klingons only have Starbases and the Science Station though, no Outposts.

Federation: Free Market upgrades to Agricultural Centres. But FM is not restricted in number, and AC is one per native system. Also, the Credits bonus of FM is lost, in exchange for 1 Morale (which also affects Credits, just checking).

Ferengi Franchise Office
Is not restricted to OnePerEmpire.

Is it intended that the Quarren can build the Meridian Planetary Research Station?
Also, the Quarren Ministry of Health only has as Restrictions OnePerSystem and NonNativeSystem, is that intended?

Vissian Cogenitor Foundation
Only has as Restrictions OnePerSystem and NonNativeSystem, is that intended?

Vissian Scientific Survey
Only has as Restrictions OnePerSystem and NonNativeSystem, is that intended?

Feds:
Mining Corps doesn't require an Asteroid field in the system, but the next upgrades do (GeoSurvey, Harvesting).
GeoSurvey requires BioTech (3), but Mining Corps and Harvesting don't.
GeoSurvey's cost seems a bit excessive? (4150, vs 1100 for MiningCorps and 5450 for Harvesting). It only increases Raw Materials from 15 to 20% (and Harvesting to 30).

Aquaculture Centre doesn't have an Energy cost.
It never did in BOTF either. I've never actually even thought about giving it an energy cost...

The Meridians only have one tech in their tech tree, a race specific one (Planetary Research Station). Is this intended? Because of the phasing of the homeworld, maybe, even though I'm not sure it makes sense.
A few races are actually like that. From what I remember, the Meridians weren't particularly advanced, and seeing that the arrival of their planet was so predictable, they wouldn't really have a chance of defending themselves from an attack. Dafedz didn't give them any structures other than their research station, and I didn't see any reason that that should change.


Is it intended that all races now have similar SpaceStations? The Klingons only have Starbases and the Science Station though, no Outposts.
I changed the editor identities of all of the stations simply to make it easier to find them when sorting out the upgrade etc paths, or for when people wanted to mod the game - the game simply displays them as Outpost, Science Station, or Starbase that way. This change *shouldn't* have any effect on the names in the game though - I purposely gave them all different names for the same reason you just gave. The Klingons DO have Outposts, it's just that for some reason the Outposts were removed from the Klingon build list. I've readded them now. For reference, the stations are:

Federation Outpost I
Federation Outpost II
Federation Science Station
Federation Starbase
Federation Spacedock
Klingon Base Station
Klingon Imperial Armory
Klingon Sensor Platform
Klingon Military Starbase
Klingon Imperial Starbase
Romulan Naval Outpost
Romulan Imperial Outpost
Romulan Tal'Shiar Experimental Laboratory
Romulan Naval Station
Romulan Imperial Starbase
Cardassian Union Outpost
Cardassian Military Outpost
Cardassian Union Stellar Research Laboratory
Cardassian Union Station
Cardassian Nor Station
Dominion Jem'Hadar Incubation Post
Dominion Jem'Hadar Hatchery
Dominion Cloning Advancement Centre
Dominion Domination Station
Dominion Founders Station

If you want me to change the names to something else, just let me know.

Federation: Free Market upgrades to Agricultural Centres. But FM is not restricted in number, and AC is one per native system. Also, the Credits bonus of FM is lost, in exchange for 1 Morale (which also affects Credits, just checking).
Hmmm...I noticed that one myself, but I thought i'd fixed it. Oh well, fixed again.

Ferengi Franchise Office
Is not restricted to OnePerEmpire.
Fixed.

Is it intended that the Quarren can build the Meridian Planetary Research Station?
Also, the Quarren Ministry of Health only has as Restrictions OnePerSystem and NonNativeSystem, is that intended?
Not intended and not intended. Fixed.

Vissian Cogenitor Foundation
Only has as Restrictions OnePerSystem and NonNativeSystem, is that intended?
Not intended. Fixed.

Vissian Scientific Survey
Only has as Restrictions OnePerSystem and NonNativeSystem, is that intended?
Not intended. Fixed.

Feds:
Mining Corps doesn't require an Asteroid field in the system, but the next upgrades do (GeoSurvey, Harvesting).
GeoSurvey requires BioTech (3), but Mining Corps and Harvesting don't.
GeoSurvey's cost seems a bit excessive? (4150, vs 1100 for MiningCorps and 5450 for Harvesting). It only increases Raw Materials from 15 to 20% (and Harvesting to 30).
The Asteroids bit was intentional, but it's still not woking exactly as I intended. I wanted people to be able to build the second two structures, but not neccessarily the first, in most systems, whilst still having the Mining Corps upgrade to GeoSurvey; since the GeoSurvey and Harvesting structures say they can access more and more areas for extraction, they should be able to be built in more locations. I'll remove the Mining Corps prerequisite to see if that makes it work as I intended. If not, i'll rejig those three structures another way.

Perhaps one of the first two of these could be a Ketracel White Facility??

There already is a K-W facility, buildable on the Dom's HW IIRC. Not a SpaceStation type though, a regular structure.

Ahh i must have missed it. time to go play more

My remark just comes from the fact that just about any non-base structure in the game does have an energy requirement, nothing else. Just checking.




Been checking the food generating non-base structures for the Federation, and here's what I found.

Private Farms are an OPS (OnePerSystem) structure (not really as many as you want). Grants Food.

Replicator is an OPNS (Native) structure, grants Food also, and %PopHealth. And, there's another structure called Replicators (see below), one of them should be renamed.

Protein Resequencers -> Basic Food Reprocessors -> Replicators-> BioReplication Net -> Domestic Replicator Network -> Advanced Replicator Network this whole upgrade sequence is build-as-many-as-you-want *except* the last two upgrades which are OPNS. I think this is a problem (energy considerations apart). Besides the fact that they're yet another food structure, being a % and with that output/cost ratio, they don't really look attractive at all to me, especially the first ones.

BTW, the Ketracel-White Facility doesn't have the One Per Empire Restriction.

Fixed. It didn't have the one per empire restriction because it was originally intended to be a structure that could be built on all systems but gave a very small bonus. When this changed, I forgot to add the new restrictions it would need.

I've begun working on the shiplist update. I've added in 20 minor race ships and their stats so far, and i've updated the stats of several of the existing minor race ships. None of the minor race ships have a description - and they may never get one, depending on whether they will be human-buildable or not. If only the minor race will be able to build them, they won't *need* a description.

I've also begun discussing with Dafedz the possibility of giving the Federation two science stations - one at tech 2 and one at somewhere around tech 6 - as opposed to the other empires which get theirs at tech 4. This would give the Federation an early and late game research advantage, but a mid-game penalty, which would actually follow canon in certain respects because the Federation became a bit complacent whilst their old enemies the Klingons were building up their strength after the Klingon Praxis explosion and the Romulans had retreated into a 70-year period of isolation. The Federation started experimenting with a lot of new ship designs and technologies once the Klingon Empire had recovered and the Romulans came out of hiding, which started happening at around the equivalent of tech 7 (Post-Ambassador level) in the game. By the equivalent of tech 8-9 level, this increased experimentation bore fruit just as the threat of war with the newly-encountered Cardassians started to become a possibility and the Borg had just made themselves known. This decision isn't finalised yet, and we *may* also give *some* of the other empires an upgrade as well. It depends on how the discussion goes.

My newly-implemented stats for all of the stations *may* also undergo some changes soon; the stats I implemented were also decided on by myself - but Dafedz had already worked out the stats on paper without my knowledge, so we will be discussing the differences in our stats and the reasons behind them. I will then implement the updated stats - if and where they are necessary - once we have finished this conversation.

There are a few other facilities that don't have the OpE restriction, probably the same issue. Actually, the TechObjectDatabase.xml still needs (a lot of?) work. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the Editor to work, so I'm basically going through the file itself, which is slow and unfriendly.

Some more stuff:

Card Phoenix Network, Cost 740, OPNS, 100 Intelligence?
vs Card Obsidian Order (which BTW is missing the OnePerEmpire Restriction).

Dom Quantum Simulators
No Restrictions at all?

Skrreeans
Geological Survey grants bonus Raw Materials, but the Skrreea system doesn't have the Raw Materials special.


---

A couple of observations:

Personnel starting numbers = 306/297/297, why not 300/300/300?

Dominion
System panel - Inhabitants: Jem'hadar Inhabitants: Jem'Hadar
Starmap - Omarion Nebula's name doesn't show; Uninhabited and Minor systems should show in different colors (both show in white).

The editor doesn't work? If the game works, then the editor will work. if however the editor is bringing up an error message that refers to not being able to load a specific file(s), then that's because the human-readable part of the database does not match the non-human readable part; basically you've performed an edit to the mentioned file(s) without the use of the editor. This has resulted in a mismatch between the data contained in the .xml files (Which are human readable) and the .sdf or .xsd files (Which are only readable by the game and editor).

The only way to fix the problem is to revert the files to a previous installation - which means losing my updates. Run the game, and allow the updater to run. This will revert your files to the Christmas update. Then, download the most recent update files that I PM'd you. If you've deleted the PM's, let me know.

...

When you say a structure has "no restrictions at all", this isn't technically correct; by default, ALL structures have a one per system restriction. This restriction is buggy at the moment though so it might not be showing up in the files, but it IS selected in the editor because I would have to physically turn it off first - and i've only tried that with a very few structures, such as the Orbital Batteries, which players need to be able to build as many as they want of. Mike knows of the problem, so we'll just have to wait for that particular bug fix.

I don't understand what your problem with the Obsidian Order and Phoenix Network is. The Obsidian Order increases research output by 20% Empire-wide and can only be built in Cardassia. The Phoenix network increases Intel output by 100 points per system. I've fixed the OnePerEmpire problem with the Obsidian Order though.

Dom Quantum Simulators
Now have a NativeSystem requirement.

Skrreeans
They now have a raw material bonus.

Personnel Starting Numbers
I have no idea. These are part of the programming, and have not been set by me. Only Mike can answer this question.

Dominion
This has already been fixed; I haven't sent you the update, that's all. And the Omarion Nebula name does show, so either i'm misunderstanding you or i've fixed that problem already as well. You'll need to ask Mike about changing the colour scheme of systems. Whilst there is an option to change the colours in the editor, for some reason this option is locked; I can't edit it.

The game works, the editor doesn't. I haven't touched the files, besides loading them up (the .xmls) with IE. Can't recall the error though. Only thing I did was replace the old files with those you sent me. No reason for any mismatch, if the files work for you.


BTW, regarding Orbital Batteries, I've wondering about that lately. Haven't tried yet, but I'm guessing that upgrading them to the race specific ones (and I think this applies to other structures too, and that's what I'm analysing) will most likely result in a big increase in power consumption, leading to the need to possibly scrap some. The upgrade system again.




Research output? You mean Intelligence output. It was just a note I made in my files, I didn't get to elaborate on it for lack of time, and eventually forgot to before posting it. I also meant to check those 100 Int vs the base intel structures output (8+ /str). I'll check it again when I get the time.
My reasoning was something like, being a %, you can really exploit it by turning it on one turn, invest everything in intelligence, and then go back to other business. The cost is quite steep for general use, compared to the other sources of Int.




The one I'm talking about is Mike's field. I'm not really separating things between you and him, just throwing it all here. You guys do the sorting Not that I don't know what goes where, I do. I just don't want to be dealing with the logistics of having 2 threads, one for each of you Maybe I should use some sort of color scheme or something... hehe.
What I mean is that in the *starmap*, the system names that are displayed under the star? It doesn't show for the Omarian Nebula. It doesn't show for any nebula, sure, but this one is a special one, being the homesystem of the Dominion. IIRC, there's also at least one minor race whose homesystem is another nebula (it was mentioned earlier in this thread), it'll probably have the same issue.



Hmm, I guess that is what I'm doing, by posting the suggestion here

So what happens when you try to load the editor then? Does it crash? Does it simply not load?

...You are trying to use Editor2 and not Editor3, right? Editor3 is incomplete at the moment.

...

The Orbital Batteries are a BuildableByAll structure, but are obsoleted by the Empire Orbital Batteries, so there isn't a problem there. What is a problem is how they are handled in the game, and i've already sent a PM to Mike about this. In BOTF, you had a bar just like the facilities/population bar that you get on the production screen. it didn't matter how many Orbital Batteries you had in a system, all that mattered was how many were powered. Seeing as they were only needed when a system was under attack, you could usually just turn them off until you knew you were going to need them, allowing you to divert power into the other structures, or allowing you to move the extra population into another production area. I believe that it was also intended for the Orbital Batteries to have some effect against enemy raids as well, because the raiding message always mentioned the number of Orbital Batteries detected. In practice though they never did anything, and they certainly didn't ever destroy enemy ships when they raided a system, so it was probably yet another example of an incomplete feature in the game.

...

Yes I did mean Intel output. Sorry about that, I was typing a PM to someone else at the same time.

The Intel structures have a larger output than you suggest - the Phoenix Network is a tech 4 structure so you're comparing the Phoenix to the wrong structure; you should be comparing it to the Type 4 Intelligence Office, not the Type 1. The Type 4 Intelligence Office has an intel output of 36, not 8, so the cost isn't quite as steep as it seems. The Cardassians also had the 20% bonus in BOTF as well, and whilst this certainly made their intel extremely strong, i've not really heard of people exploiting it because the Obsidian Order structure has such a high energy maintenance cost. (300) Using it means your energy supplies will be rather stretched for other structures.

...

With the Nebula names, I thought you were referring to the missing names at the top of the screen. The Ba'Ku are the minor race you're reffering to, and yes, they do also suffer from this problem, although they do have the correct system names showing at the top of the screen now. Mike already knows about the missing Nebula names on the starmap itself problem.

...

Mike isn't on the forums anywhere near as much as me, so I usually write him an uber PM if there are any important points that he urgently needs to know about....so your best bet is to direct suggestions at me or to Pm him yourself.