Hi Guys,
I would just like to mention the awesome job you're doing with this game. I look forward to playing the final version.

Keep up the good work!
Thanks

Welcome and on behalf of all that have worked on the project thanks.

Hey BOTF2_forum_guy, welcome to the forums!

If you have any questions or constructive criticism about the game(s), please let us know. We are a community, so everyone's opinions count.

Supremacy Creators,

First, the game looks beautiful. The interface is snazzy and I like the layout, as well as the map. I really don't want to have a list of gripes because there is a lot of goodness to the game.

What I like:

1) Trade/resources isn't too complicated. I know Birth of the Empires is a different approach and I like where that's going, but found the multiple resources and multiple trade line strategies to be a bit cumbersome to manage. It almost forces me to write down notes on paper to keep up with that stuff! Again, I know - different approaches and the like.

2) Zooming capability. I would have liked to zoom even farther out, but that's because I generally play on huge galaxies.

3) No memory leak! Even more to the point, I never had hiccups. I click things and they respond, every time. It's nice.

4) Color scheme is nice on the eyes. It really is! Like I said, it looks snazzy and more professional than many professional productions. Be proud.

5) Being able to name the ships is a nice feature, although not one I think I'll use. I would like default names that you can double-click to change if you don't like them (a point to deviate from, if you will), but that's not a big deal for me as a user.

Game recommendations:

1) The biggest recommendation I have is for the Turn Summary to be color coded. Since I couldn't find an overall list of systems to tell me who's building things/starving and everything else, I use the Turn Summary to find empty production queues, starving people and that kind of stuff. Maybe blue for empty queue, red for starving... That would really help find things.

2) I would really like the AI to, when population grows, check if surplus food is >10. If it is, then it'd be nice if it put that production into food (unlike original BOTF that just added to food, period). Anyway, I ended up micromanaging a LOT on something that shouldn't require me to look into as frequently as I did. If I have excess food production sitting idle, I did that for a reason (I anticipated growth).

3) Populations seem too small or trade routes take too long to be able to be used. In the version I have, everybody will trade with me from the start, but I never seem to have planets that can trade.

4) I'm not sure if the bonus +12 trade route structures and things like that are really that helpful. Maybe I'm not realizing how big the scale becomes.

5) Please, please, please put in hotkeys. T=Turn (next turn) and S=Summary. Maybe it's my old BOTF habit, but I use those keys a lot.

6) Obsolete ships... I'd like to have the ability to upgrade them when I have the next. Scout I - Scout II for instance. Maybe on the build queue, add UPGRADE and then it looks to see what ships are in orbit? (That was the old school MOO2 method).

7) (you know this one) I, also, have been duped into thinking there are systems where there are not, because of the backdrop. That said, a mouse click fixes the misconception, so I'm not sure it's that big of a deal.

8) I could not scrap old ships - or didn't see how to do it. I looked under redeployment, right-clicked the group of ships and split to single ships to see if that would let me.

9) Please remove obsolete ships from build menus, as it got cluttered once I had the first upgrade available.

10) Take a look at structures and how much power they need. I saw upgrades that grant more power to the planet, but these come after the stuctures that need them. I could go either way with this (I opted to wait for most of them, rather than have all production dump into energy). Also, many minor races have tiny populations, like 50 in one case - they couldn't make enough food and still run their unique structures (or maybe I didn't play long enough).

11) Split volume preferences for music and for interface. The bleeops are loud and to make them quiet, I lose ambience. Tiny point, which is why it's last.

I'm not sure what the game is supposed to have and what it's not supposed to have. What I mean is that things aren't finished - I know that. What I don't know is if the bad guys (other races) are supposed to expand (they don't but I think you know that). Anyway, it would make it easier to give feedback if we knew that.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful and constructive. Thanks for working to bring BOTF-like fun to us.

Brisub

Hey Brisub, thanks for your feedback!

To my knowledge, the zoom is actually a relatively new feature, so Mike might be willing to make changes. I'll mention your comment to him.

We've actually already compiled a big list of ship names for the empires (Except for the Dominion), so having pre-defined names isn't a problem. I believe Mike's already been asked this before, but i'll pass it on in case he's forgotten.

Colour-coded Turn Summaries have already been suggested - in fact I believe Mike liked the idea, so chances are it will be in the game one day. Remember Mike has a million and one things to do though, so whilst it might not necessarily be in the next update, it will be in the game *one day*.

The game doesn't have an AI yet, so it's not doing what you ask simply because it doesn't yet exist! You never know though, it may just do exactly that once Mike has implemented it...

The population size problem is already well known. The game works out populations based on a very complex equation, rather than simple pre-defined tables like BOTF had. This makes it much harder to mod this aspect of the game. I've suggested a way to make it more flexible to Mike, but it's up to him whether he implements it or not. There is relief on the way though; i've just implemented the moon colonisation structures, so that'll be part of the next update. They're a tech 7 structure, and since the moons are completely random each game will be different; small systems may actually be gigantic once moons are taken into account. I tried playing a game after I implemented the structure, and Sol's population went from 195 to 390 after I built the structure! Small moons give 1 population, medium moons give 2 population, and large moons give 3 population. These numbers are per moon, so 10 large moons for example would increase the maximum population by 30. A full system can potentially have up to 50 moons, since each system can have 10 planets, each with 5 moons - so that's a potential maximum of 150 population from moons.

The bonuses from the special structures aren't set in stone; if we later find that a bonus is too small, too large, or simply useless, then we can easily change it later on. Remember though that trade routes generate income; more income means you can support more ships. Ships don't yet have maintenance costs, but i'm working on that, so money will be much more useful before long...

Hotkeys HAVE been implemented; Mike actually wants people to suggest more hotkeys for addition to the game. I believe they're all tied to the control key though, so you've got press ctrl + <whatever> to use them. I'll mention your shortcuts to Mike; if he implements them, they will be Ctrl + T and Ctrl + S if those combinations aren't already in use as other hotkeys.

Obsoletion and mothballing will be in the game - it just hasn't been implemented yet. Each of the races have access to a mothball yard which will allow you to get more resources back from mothballed ships.

As you've said, we know about the background problem. There are new game options on the way that will help alleviate the problem.

Obsolete ships will be removed soon - it's one of the updates i'm working on as part of the shiplist update. Ships will generally obsolete ships that are two generations older or more - so you can build Ambassadors next to Galaxies for instance, but Sovereigns will obsolete Ambassadors.

I know of the energy problems. .Iceman has been bugging me about them lol. I'm doing updates, so you'll just have to wait for the next release.

I imagine Mike will be able to add some new sound settings. I'll mention it to him. We've definitely got new music on the way though.

Yes, races are supposed to expand, but they don't - yet - because they don't know how to. This is one of the things that the AI will take control of. It'll unfortunately be a looong time before the AI is complete though because it is such a difficult-to-implement part of the programming.

Keep posting any comments you have, a fresh pair of eyes is always a good thing.

I've seen some home systems that have the potential to have more than 10 planets (in HomeSystems.xml, for minors), are they capped on generation?



Who, me?!

Jiga-lee-ee puff ♪, Jig-a lee-ee-ee puff ♫

Couldn't resist!

Thanks for the reply - I didn't expect such an in-depth response but I appreciate it. I guess I thought the game was a lot more mature than it is, as it really is put together very well and 'feels' very close to complete. What I mean is that, from moment one, things are smooth and working.

I didn't play long enough to get the higher tech levels because I'd colonized everything and was just sort of done. I'm glad most of the ideas have made it into the queue of the many things that Mike is working on. I didn't think of asking for a system status screen, but that might be a nice add. Maybe it exists but I can't find it, which is possible.

Brisub

A minimap is on the feature request queue, though with a low priority IIRC.



IIRC, it's about ~150 pop needed to create each trade route, that value varying with race (you can check these numbers in \Data\Tables, in the definition files). Those values might need to be reviewed, because of system pop levels, if trade revenue per route is found to be lacking.
Notice that anything diplomacy related, the AIs will accept. For now, as diplomacy is still not working fully.



I already had suggested creating a sticky thread with this, or making it obvious in the thread that has the download link. But then MoE would have less to do in the forums (j/k)

Are you sure? It seems rather straightforward to me, and based on probably the same tables. IIRC the pop limits for each class of planet are defined in the definition files, in the Tables folder. They're fixed values, according to planet type, size, and native race. Starting pop on the homeworlds is a fixed value too, something like 44.5% max pop. Growth rates are also fixed, and dependent on planet type and native race. Global growth in a system is a weighted average.
Haven't tried it yet, but you can probably change all this in those files. Assuming the game is reading them of course, which would be desirable in a modding perspective.

But my life would be so empty without needing to post...





If that's true then Mike has been fobbing me off about the planet issues. Matress angry now, and an angry Matress is not a good thing.

Heh, I think he might have Maybe he just doesn't want moons and the like?
It seems pretty easy, I figured it out within minutes of playing my first game. Try changing the values in the definition files, and that'll tell you if they're working or not.

BTW, the systems I mentioned that can be over 10 orbits are:

HomeSystems.xml
Bre'ellians 10~11 orbits
Coridan 3~11
Kaelon I doesn't have a Type or Size set

Is 5 the max # of moons per planet, or 4? Haven't really payed too much attention, but I don't recall seeing 5.

I'm pretty sure i've seen five moons before. I can't check coz I still haven't got my graphics card (The manufacturer for the company I bought it from let them down so my order is delayed ) but it's possible that i'm wrong. I'll admit my memory isn't always perfect.

Where a system has the first planet set to a random size but the second planet is defined, it's probably set that way because we know the race inhabits planet II of the system but we know nothing about planet I. It's also a workaround that I use to get around a bug in the editor - you can't set a "group" of one randomly generated planets; you have to set it to a mimimum of one and a maximum of two. Setting an undefined single planet wis the only way around the bug. Kaelon I is an example of this; the Kaelon are known to be from planet II and nothing is known about planet I, so this was the only way to set up their system canonically.

Oh, ok, I just saw it being named (which the game does automatically) and found it odd.

BTW, some minors' homesystems are really low pop, so they probably cannot have trade routes with empires. Some systems only have the homeworld, usually ~90 pop. I think the default (which probably includes minors) value is 150 pop.

Hej guys,
i think it´s long enough watching your forums without saying anything.
First of all, i LOVE your game. Even playing without AI remembers me of the good time i had playing Botf. I am am very thrilled until next release of the newest version. I wish i had some kind oif timemachine but i hate temporal paradoxy at all.
Nevertheless i would like to report some probs, i encountered during playing the game.
First of all my system crashes everytime there was an update. After downloading the new stuff the programm asks to restart the game and then nothing happens anymore until i finsh the game via task manager. The odd thing is after i have done so supremacy restarts.
I donßt have so much time to play all time long, but last time with the newest update the rakosans were shown with a picture in the first contact screen but not in the diplomacy screen there their field was blanc.

Greetz V

Hey Viceadmiralv, welcome to the forums!

Supremacy does have an occaisional problem where ist doesn't close correctly - but like I said, it's occaisional. I've not heard of it being a constant problem for someone before. I'll PM Mike about it, but I doubt he will need to fix anything - he's working on a major programming update at the moment, which is aimed at fixing several known but elusive bugs, and also speed up the turn processing of the game. With any luck, this update will solve your problem.

Unfortunately, I don't know when Mike is going to release the update. He sent me a beta version of the update last week though, so the release date must be getting close now. There is an option in the game options to temporarily disable the updates though. Obviously it will stop the game updating, but it'll at least stave of the problem. We'll post an announcement on the forums when it's released so you know it is safe to re-enable the option.

Hi Viceadmiralv, and thanks for your kind words about Supremacy .

It sounds like the problem is that Supremacy is, for reasons unknown, unable to close itself. The good news is that the update process seems to be working fine--once the download is completed, the updater kicks off a new process in the background that waits until the game exits, and then copies the update files into place and restarts the game (because the game files can't be updated while the game is running). Since the game does restart itself, the problem seems unrelated to the update mechanism. The good news is that there doesn't appear to be any risk of the game getting corrupted.

I've been in the process of completely overhauling the game client (SupremacyClient.exe), and hopefully those changes will take care of this problem.

Thanks,
Mike

Welcome Viceadmiralv,

You also mentioned about not having the time to play long games. I have wondered about Birth of the Federation III and options to keep a long multiplayer game going.

It would be nice, for multiple players, to enter your turn one day at a time. I see setting up a server to run the game and players have 24 hours to make a move for one turn. If you do not enter a move the AI moves for you. Something to think about over the next five years.

For now we will have to play long mulitplayer games or set up times to meet again.

I would also like to see a 3D map but that is another stroy.

Methinks we should revive the old BOTF5 thread with ideas like that, Kenneth. Perhaps the creator of this fabled game could think about basing the map off Sins of a Solar Empire?

...Then again, if we're going for a full 3D map, perhaps we ought to go down the route of Newtonian Physics and ubergraphics? If the guys behind Infinity: The Quest For Earth are able to make something like that with today's technology, just imagine what would be possible when BOTF5 is on the drawing boards...

Hej guys,

thanks for the information. I can handle the problem with the crash after the download and when the crash is the price i have to pay to play your game, i am more then willing to risk it.
But i am sure your next update will fix that all. You are doing a realy great job, even if it´s not your job.

And what i ment with "not having time to play long sessions" was, i only have time for tiny galaxies.
But even in a tiny galaxy there was no pic of the rakosans in my diplomacy screen, what i´d liked to mention.

The missing Rakosan image is an easy problem to fix - you already have the image in your game files, it's just named wrongly so the game doesn't know to display it. I've fixed it in my files so it will be part of the update, but if you want to fix it yourself, this is what you need to do:

• Open up your Supremacy folder, whever you've put it.
• Open the Resources folder.
• Open the Images folder.
• Open the Races folder.
• Look for the file called rakhosan.png.
• Rename it to rakosan.png (Ie. remove the "h" from the name. If it's already named rakosan.png then add the "h" to it instead. The "h" isn't supposed to be there, but if the image isn't showing up then the game is set to look for an incorrect spelling so you will need to spell it wrong for it to work lol]

I just downloaded Supremacy and started the game (and it installed an update), so I have not much feedback to give yet.

Just one suggestion:
It would be nice if - after installing an update - it would drop a "whatsnew.txt" file into the supremacy folder, so that one could track new features / bugfixes / etc. and test them specifically.

One more question: What happened to the Ferengi? (I know it takes quite some time to implement a new race, but I liked to play the Ferengi in ol' BOTF.)

Edit:

Thoughts:
* Solar System (and generally the Home Systems of the major races): Are the moons hardcoded or given randomly?
I see 1 small moon at mercury, 4 small moons at Venus, 1 medium and 3 small moons at earth, 1 medium and two small moons at Mars, 3 to 5 (medium and large) moons at Jupiter (4), Saturn (5), Uranus (4) and Neptune (3), and 1 small moon (Nix? Hydra?) at Pluto.

Suggestions (only applicable if the moons are NOT given randomly to the Home Systems):
- Take the medium moon from Mars and give it to Pluto (Charon).
- Three small moons and a medium one at earth? "Merge" the medium and one small moon to one large moon (Luna isn't that small!) and give one small moon to Pluto (so that he now has Charon, Nix and Hydra.). Move the third small moon to Neptune (which has three moons)
- Move all small moons from Mercury and Venus to the Asteroid Belt. (There are enough large rocks there, like Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Hygiea, Davida) to "justify" that.
- Would it make a difference in max. population to make Mars a medium sized desert planet (now large) and Venus a large sized volcanic planet (now medium sized)? In reality, Venus is almost equally-sized to Earth, and Mars is much smaller than Earth.
- Is Venus (in reality) really a "volcanic" planet? I thought, such a planet would much more look like Io?

Edit 2:

One more idea: Are there different types of moons? I am thinking of volcanic (like Io), rocky (like Luna), arctic with ocean (like Europa and maybe Ganymed), arctic without ocean (like Charon), with toxic atmosphere (like Titan), with breathable atmosphere (no example in the solar system), and maybe more types. These could give bonuses and malusses for things like max. population of the moon, population growth rate, resources and such.

Edit 3:

By starting a new game I just noticed that the moons are randomized even in the main system. So my suggestions about moons above are kinda useless.

BTW: When I am in a game and go back to menu, the button "load game" is grayed out, so I have to exit completely and restart Supremacy to load. (this could be annoying if yo just reload because you forgot to do some things).

Edit 4:

Why is the game (when I end the turn) "downloading updating game state from the server" when I am playing in Single Player mode?

Hey Andi47, welcome to the forums!

A whatsnew.txt file would be a nice idea, but currently there is soo much that is changing between updates that this would be unfeasible. Whenever we release an update for the game though, we do endeavour to post the most important aspects of the update in an announcement, usually in the Supremacy Pre-release Download Thread.

The Ferengi ARE in the game - but only as a minor race. They've been replaced by the Dominion as an empire. BUT, the Ferengi will be a particularly powerful minor race - they've got multiple special buildings, and have considerably more ship designs than most of the other races. The economic bonuses that players will gain from the Ferengi special buildings are also especially large, so you'll really want to make them join you:

• Ferengi Commerce Authority (FCA): +25% Economic Security AND +5% Economic Sabotage
• Franchise Office: +15% Trade Route Income
• Tower Of Commerce: +15 System Trade Routes

The Moons are completely random; it isn't even possible to ensure that Earth only gets one moon. This CANNOT be changed without major changes to the programming and the time requirement vs benefit means Mike (The developer) is extremely unlikely to ever make the change. Every planet can have a maximum of five moons, and the moons come in three different sizes. They also come in several different colours, but they're otherwise exactly the same; they don't have different classes like the planets do. Try loading starting a new game; the number of and position of the moons will be completely different.

The moons are a requirement of several special structures. They are also colonisable at tech 7, although the structures that allow you to do this have not been implemented for the Klingons or the Dominion yet. When you colonise the moons, the system gets +1 max population per moon size, so each small moon in the system will give +1 max population, each medium moon in the system will give +2 max population, and each large moon in the system will give +3 max population. Since the maximum number of planets per system is 10 and the maximum number of moons is 5 per planet, that a potential 50 moons per system. So if each moon is large, that's a potential max population increase of 150. Obviously most systems won't have a full moon complement though. The moons also don't currently change the growth rates but this is because there is no option to set the growth rate in the editor - this may change in the future.

I am personally working on a game content update, so some of the things I have mentioned above may not be immediately obvious in your version of the game. Mike plans to release an update around Easter time, which as you may have guessed from the Christmas tree on the Supremacy logo, is the first one since Christmas. In that time, i've been working on this content update, but it isn't yet complete. However, Mike told me to stop performing updates until he has released his own update to prevent incompatibilities. For that reason, I can't currently continue doing the content update, but I sent Mike a copy of my files last night over MSN, so my current game files will at least be included as part of the Christmas update. I've so far added in about half of the minor race ships, fixed many prerequisite/upgrade/obsoleting problems for the existing buildings, changed some of the stats, added several new buildings and minor races, and updated the building descriptions or rewrote the first contact/encyclopedia text for the minor races and empires.

I've also got a whole host of new images to add to the game, but these won't be included in the Easter update; the update is likely to relatively large, so I thought it was more important to allow people to download the core update files rather than the eye candy.

Thanks for the welcome.



Is it also infeasible to create a whatsnew.txt or something like this, which contains (only) major changes (and summarizes the small ones to a phrase like "multiple minor tweaks and fixes")?



Nice to hear!




OK, in this case forget about my "moony" suggestions.





BTW: I guess that you were already writing your reply when I did some more edits in my previous post - did you see my Edits 3 (the "BTW") and 4?

BTW2: is it / will it be possible to buy buildings (quick completion for money)?

LOL I just did some edits of my own post before I read your last post! No I didn't see edits three and four because of that.

There are several known bugs with the menu that Mike is fixing at the moment - the Easter update *should* fix them. Starting a new game after you retire from a game also causes the game to crash.

The "downloading updated game state from the server" is NOT what it sounds like. I've actually explained this to people several times on the forums in the last month or two, but basically, the game is actually contacting itself - it is NOT attempting to access the internet. The game works on a client-server basis. The server is the part of the game that does all the turn processing, whilst the client is the part of the game that the player actually sees - it's the bit that displays the processed information so the player knows what is happening. When you complete a turn, the client packages up all the current information and sends it to the server (Which is on your computer). The server then does all the processing, then packages up the information and sends it back to the client, which then updates the screen so the player has the latest game information.

This might sound like a wierd set up, but it's actually how most games work - they just don't happen to display it in the obvious way that Supremacy does, that's all. So when the game says "downloading updated game state from the server", all it means is that it is processing and updating the game information ready for the next game turn.


It isn't unfeasible to include a file with recent updates. In fact, we've actually discussed changing the way the game updates so that it tells you what has changed whilst the game updates itself. I don't know whether Mike actually plans to go ahead with that change though. Our personal preference is to continue doing forum annoncements with this information though, as this is where all the relevant game information and download links are held anyways.


It won't be possible to instant-buy buildings anymore. Instead, we're going to have a system where you can pay your workers to increase the build rate by 10%. We've discussed this particular game feature on the forums for about four years now, and this was the general concensus of what people wanted. This particular feature hasn't *yet* been programmed in though. It will be coming as part of a future update, but I don't know when that will be.

One more thought: Can you please add a note to the summary if a newly built facility is unpowered due to lack of energy? It could be look like:

Dilitium refinery built in Omarion Nebula (unpowered)

It would also be nice if the summary window popped out when something like this happens.


Edit: I just noticed: I had a (Dominion) Scout which was set to avoid battles. I moved this ship a bit outside the "yellow line" and then collected some Deuterium in a system with a gaseous planet. After refueling, the Scout was set to "Engage".

It would be nice if a ship remembers if it was set to Engage or Avoid before it did some "special" mission (like collecting Deuterium or attacking a stellar system).

Colour-coding event messages has been discussed before, and Mike is currently working out some possible ways to do this. Having a new message for when buildings are unpowered is a new suggestion to my knowledge though, so i'll pass this on to Mike. Someone else posted a question yesterday because they didn't understand why their shipyard wasn't working. The shipyard was turned off, and the player didn't know that they *could* be turned off. Without a warning message to remind you, I imagine this could become a frequent problem, especially for people new to the game.

There are a couple of bugs with the ship orders, and the system isn't fully developed yet; we're planning to add a couple of new orders in the future. I've never noticed the changing orders before, but it's likely another bug. I'll pass this on to Mike as well.

The "(Unpowered)" annotation is a good idea--I'll work it in the next time I'm working on that of the code. As Matress said, I'm also planning to improve the summary screen with color-coded categories, filters, etc.

By default, when a special order is completed, it falls back to the default order for that type of ship. However, special orders do have the ability to override that behavior by setting a different order upon completion (or restoring the previous order). I'll modify the refuel order so it restores the original order.

One more thing about the summary screen: Do you plan a list where I can look up what each system is currently building? This would make it MUCH easier to detect empty build queues, especially when I missed one of these in the previous turn or forgot to fill the queue of a newly founded colony.

A summary screen is also something that we've discussed on the forums before, Andi. Mike agreed that such a screen would be useful, although I don't know what his plans for one are.