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Interesting, other games have done similar things to this. I think MOO did this by having features like Miniaturization; there was another game I played that did basically what you describe but I forget the name.

This would effectively remove the ceiling on the tech tree and not penalize tech-focused strategies in REALLY long games without needing to do an infinite amount of design work creating viable new technologies for players to research.

Technically there is no hard cap on the number of ships you could theoretically create, except being limited I guess by support from the number of systems you control (therefore being caped by galaxy size). So I figure why cap a tech-based strategy.

I agree with your direction and concept but I believe further work into the details will be needed. Though I like the combined Techs to factor into improvements (Nice thought).

Any idea if you want it to be flat rate bonuses or diminishing returns? Something like MaxTech+1 = +10% increase, MaxTech+2 = +9%, MaxTech+3 = +8%...etc. or just +10% for each level passed MaxTech). My thought behind that is improving upon an already improved idea is harder.

I believe that implementing this would need some big changes to the way the technologies and ship stats work. And whilst i'm thinking about it, why would this only apply to future technologies? Surely ANY advance in tech would improve your ships?

...But it doesn't, or at least, it doesn't yet. Having increasing ship stats is moving into the realms of customisable ships though, which Mike specifically decided against doing because this is what the Birth of the Empire (BotE) guys have as one of their main features. Mike wanted to differentiate Supremacy from BotE so that they wouldn't be in total competition with each other. Each game needs to have its own unique features.

I believe Mike will introduce some sort of future tech bonus in a future update, but this will likely be along the lines of the BOTF bonus - more food, energy, industry, and planetary shield strength. Still, that doesn't mean he will stick to this system. If enough people support this idea, then he just might decide to include it. But as with any idea it will need a large majority of people to support it first. Mike isn't in the habit of catering to the minority when the benefits are so massively outweighed by the costs (Development time) at the moment. There are just so many things that he needs to work on right now.

There's absolutely nothing stopping someone from making a mod and tripling the amount of ships in each race's ship list and including lots of upgraded versions of each ship type. Even 5 or 6 variations of late-tech vessels.....

I guess this would acheive the same goals....

Hey SOM, long time no see!

No, there's nothing at all stopping people from adding ships. But the fact of the matter is that I haven't finished implementing the current shiplist yet - I think i've still got another 150 or so minor race ships yet to add to the game, so that should at least be a start.

Hi guys, regarding the +150 minor race ships MOE mentioned, 3 questions dawned on me:
1) Will all of them be in the 3D combat engine as well?
2) How many ships will there be in total (in the strategy and combat parts respectively)?
3) If every ship has a 3d model (in .3ds format or similar I guess?) which is ~ 5Mbs, then say 150 shipd times 5Mbs ~ 750 Mbs just for the ships! This means of course that the game will be a huge download!!!

A quick reply or a pointer to a thread where these issues are discussed would be great

1) Yes. If a ship is in the shiplist, it will also be available in combat. Most of the minor race ships are upgrades though that reuse the same model but have different textures to differentiate them, but simultaneously reduce the amount of modelling work needed. You can find images of the minor race models Here. (Warning, will take a while to load, and loads best in Chrome or Firefox. Replace the 7 at the end of the url with a 0 if you want to see images of the ships of the Empires)

2) Strategy and combat are the same thing in this particular respect. However, when it comes to actual ship numbers, I don't believe anyone has actually counted every single design, because the shiplist is always in flux as new designs are trialled. Dafedz's database is the starting point of the shiplist though, so I just counted all the ships in there, which totalled 274 designs (146 Minor race and 128 Empire). Dafedz's database does NOT include colony ships for the minor races however, as these are a much more recent addition to the shiplist. So then I checked the forum shiplist and there are 68 minor race colony ships in there.

On top of this, Dafedz's database does not include aliens and entities - the Borg have 6 models, plus we hope to have another 13 different aliens and entities. Then there is the fact that the Empires all have four different shipyards each (The Federation have five shipyards) and the minor races have three shipyards plus their three special shipyards, so that's a further 27 models. Then each empire and the minor races have their own Orbital Batteries which also require models, so that totals 6 more models. And on top of that each Empire has four stations each, so that's another 20 models. Adding all these together means an additional 66 models on top of the 68 colony ships.

Adding these to the existing total means there are 408 models. However, I noticed further discrepancies when comparing the two lists. I'm going to recompile the forum list from scratch, then contact Dafedz and Kenneth so that they know of the differences. This recompile will likely mean more ships are added to the forum shiplist, so expect the final number to be even higher.

3) Kenneth_of_Borg is in charge of the models, so he will know more about this than me. I believe the current average filesize for the models is around the 2mb mark however, and they are still under development - there may be ways to shrink the file sizes down later on. I've got Starfleet Command 2, and whilst that is admittedly an older game with lower-quality models than some of the games that are out there today, very few of the models have filesizes over 1mb. I also have the Aftermath mod for Legacy, and the biggest model is a Borg shipyard, but even that model is less than 2mb. Most of the models are actually less than 1mb in fact, so it goes to show that even uber quality models don't necessarily have giant filesizes.

...Ok, yes that could still mean a big download, but I know of game patches that are gigabytes in size. (World of Warcraft for one) People are also willing to download entire films that they will usually only watch once, and these can be gigabytes in size as well, so it's not as if these large file sizes are too much for people to download. So if we take the current estimate of 408 ships and times that by 2mb, then that means 816mb. But then there's the fact that few of the models are likely to be more than 1mb when they are finished, which could effectively halve that or more to 408mb. Then there's the fact that we don't plan for the game to be completed for a few months if not years yet; and since internet speeds are progressively getting faster, downloading an additional 408mb might not be such a big deal by the time the game is released. Mike might even be able to set the game up in a way that the models will only need to be downloaded as you need them to reduce the download time, or he might use a compression method like Winzip to further squeeze the files.

The game could potentially even be released via peer-to-peer methods, which would spread out the download demands across the network instead of forcing it onto individuals as well. I therefore highly doubt downloading the final thing will be quite as bad as you might think.

Thanks for your awesomely detailed answer MoE

I agree that I overestimated the filesize of the 3d models and that even a ~500Mbs download is not that bad actually as many users already have DSL connections etc.

To be frank, I am really impressed with the number of unique ships you said... I knew that there were many already but not that many

Keep up the good work!

Cheers

My count on the models looks like this:
Borg = 6
Cards = 38
Dominion = 40
Feds = 45
Kling = 35
Rom = 39
Minors = 212 (counting each colonyship and transport as one)
Others = about 14
Total = about 429

There are a number of other ways to cut the download time. One I have been considering is having a base set of models where all scouts, cruisers, colony ships... are one model for the ship type and minor races share only a few ship models. For those with high speed internet you could download the full ship pack later.

I've now gone through the entire forum minor race shiplist and have corrected a number of mistakes in there. I've also given all the minor race ships the class names that Dafedz came up with, and have added in any missing designs. I've also sent PM's to both Dafedz and Kenneth with a list of the changes that apply to their own shiplists. There shouldn't be any confusion over the list from now on.

Very time we talk about the number of ships you add to my workload. I want everyone to remember not to talk to MOE about the number of minor race ships in the game.

Sorry about that Kenneth, I was just curious

Curiosity killed the cat (& its friends) after all

Again, there's *four* minor special shipyards, not three (Kazon, Axanar, Tellarite, Coridan).

And five stations IIRC, 2 outposts, 2 starbases and 1 science station.

Meh numbers, numbers. Just add six to my old estimate lol. Check out the first post in the model preview thread to see how big the update was.

Sorry for the extra work Kenneth.