yea the annoying climate shifts
one of my negative favourites, too.
Some of my experiences about how to play and deal with RANDOM=ON
I found out, but can't prove it, that if I play "good" it seemed that I got some gifts in the form of positive climate shifts. In my last games I finally adapted and often got some positive ones. Before, I got 'em never or most rarely. I remember an almost perfect game in which I had 5 positive and not a single negative climate change!
with "good" playing a game I mean that you are better compared to the ai and this in all sectors (ships, researches, buildings, growth and so on). So it means to be really good in the overall-average. Perhaps it is connected with the graphics-overview (statistics). I can't say but it's a gut-feeling as I have often.
If I expanded too fast and had to disregard some systems - I often got negative climate shifts then. So it is allways the primary goal for me to colonize every new system competely and ASAP. It seems that if you have more planets available and systems with more planets in it then you are able to better your luck a bit.
So it is also good to colonize some of the "not-so-good-systems" to broaden the spectrum of planets you own. But if you have them you have ofc to evolve these systems to not loose the better average-value compared to the ai. This isn't a big problem but slows you down a bit. But if you get lucky the random events just happen on one of the crappy systems that you can spare.
My xp is that random events often happen on one and the same system or even planet!
Sometimes they occured on 2,3 or 4 different systems/planets - in many other games only on one and the same.
So, if I don't played a good "allround-game" and concentrated too much on one specific section (research, ships, buildings aso) and disregarded one of the others I often got one of those nasty results.
There are things in game which seem to be easy goals and gems in a long term sight
edit:(f.e. mass-replicators or minors) but too heavy for you in short-sight. Be sure that they aren't too heavy for your empire and you can reduce some of the nasty results like impacts, too.
It's important to keep the balance and not to lean out of the window then you'll allways be successful, even with the "bad"
RANDOM=ON
edit: and
obviate stagnation! don't do everything in a hurry and at the same time. F.e. leave some systems uncolonized if you want to play a longer game w/o much bad random events in later stages. This includes not to upgrade all the systems at the same time. If you have 40 systems then upgrade "big stuff" like research centers and mass replicators only on 20 and on the rest keep building single buildings and/or ships
edit2: I've forgotten the unemployees. Don't get too much of them over a mid period of time (ca 20turns). Can be a problem with the "mrbb"-minor-race-building-bug. If you reduce the unemployees with one building (-1 person) per 1-2 turns/system you shouldn't get into trouble. But this should be allways top priority to prevent bad random events to happen on you.
That is what I meant with balancing. If you don't play with random events on, you can set your grow-rate on all systems to maximum not caring about the unemployees you get.
So for me random events are some kind of punishment for a "bad" game you play - and have lesser to do with coincidence - means you did something wrong. It takes some xp to deal with the random events and it is very hard. No one likes to see the systems destroyed in which very much time was invested.
So, if you think you know anything about this game I can say that nothing is better and more challenging. Promised. Without random events I'm totally bored in this game. Nothing exciting happens and except mp everything is very boring, predictable and imo a little bit stupid
So try to play BotF this way, you won't regret it. As reward you'll get the best bonus of all: some bigger better planets. Perhaps this thingy with the "unknown technology found on planet xyz" we know from MoO2 and we can see in the stbotf.res can be included, too, to make the random events more funny in the future.
I hope I was able to season you to play and deal with the random events.
What I wrote above is nothing I can prove, it's just some of the
Borg-XP of some hundred games I played over the time with following settings:
T1/T3, big+irr, hard, many, Random=ON, Borg=ON in UM1+planetmod+ one or two cloaked Defiants
That, Gomtuu
and ofc the Borg were my only intention why I played with random=on.
as mp games aren't played with random=on (as yet) I had no problem to share some of my knowledge with all of you
and my last edit#3 for today goes to Gowron:
I recently started BOP and was stunned about the mega systems I got in the first 5 turns. two 420's with 3 class m and 50/70 percent bonus of food and another system with one class m planet in it and 7 or 8 uncolonized.
Due to the big map I can't imagine how I should get the micromanagement done with such huge systems. Good, the random events are uninteresting now as you can easily swap your shipbuilding to another planet. Then almost every system is now able to do which leads to another point.
I'd like to see things a little bit more defined. I did not have big fights within the large maps in the past which might be a reason that it was almost very stable. But now as you're able to build huge ammount of ships the possibility to crash is slightly enhanced. Just think about the redeploying-bug which leads to crashes and the a.i. which redeployes in its cleverness the ships all the time.
So even if it is unpopular I'd like to see more of those "crappy systems". The only thing I do now in the beginning is constant terraforming and AISIWIG. :/
I have to admit that it is boring to do this with 30 systems and finally meet the first minor. (meeting the minor this late isn't the problem)
Space is a big place, it might be crowded but sometimes they have to travel weeks to get to the next habitable system.
So reducing the ammont of systems plus the reducing of the ammount of top planets would help. F.e. the problem with the money and research I mentioned before. I was glad to read that you changed the money and research but I can't imagine that it should work with this huge ammount of ppl in all systems. Tbh for me it is too much - Ich fühle mich etwas erschlagen
As it is now, it is hard to play and increases the time you need to play a game exponential. And as we all know isn't BotF the most stable game. So it is more then twice as hard if I can't continue playing in fact of bugs (redeploying f.e.) after investing that much time into micromanagement.
So it would be nice if you could change it.
Would make it much easier to test it, too, especially with a small ammount of time per day.
Thanks in advance,
one of your warriors
