\\\-- Balance of Power (v1.2c released)--///

[Gowron]

Is it me or are growth rates for minor races incredibly low? This makes the option of conquering them, or proposing membership to them very unattractive until the system is nearly fully population, and then you have the problem of dealing with a very developed orbit defence system for conquering. I'm typically saying each planet add 0.1% to 0.3% grow rate even for large terran planets. In my current games the Vulcan system has a in impressive maximum population of 500, but a growth rate of 0.7%

As Nighthawk pointed out, this is a side effect of smoothing minor race growth. Although it's a side effect, it was received very well amoung the players, since it balances minor races

The Romulans, and it seems the Ferengi also, neither builds extra farms.

This problem has been reported a few times. Romulan colonies will start with 2 farms in v1.1b. Haven't heard of the Ferengi doing the same. Their systems seem to grow all right. But Ferengi colonies will start with 3 farms in v1.1b, so if there's a problem, it will be gone as well

The Klingons do not expand. At all. They colonize the systems around Qo'Nos, and that's it. Those systems do reach max pop.

Sometimes the AI has problems trying to expand (not mod-related). I just loaded a test game that I did with v1.1a, and the Klingons had 15 systems (no minor races in that game).

There is still an issue with Cardassian battleships under player control not firing their phasers most of the time. I haven't checked to see if this was an issue in Vanilla or not, but the weapons are there.

Thanks, I'll check that.

The Ferengi are a little too strong (who am I kidding, way too strong) with their money. I think the income from trade routes could be dropped a little, maybe by 25% for everyone.

Income from trade routes will already be reduced drastically in the next update

And I really think they should only have medium range Colony Ships.

And why?

Lastly, the Klingons really seem to have the short end of the stick. They need higher industry or cheaper costing ships. Especially TT's. Until Battleships, the Klingons really do not have an orbital blocker.

Looking at the stats of the Vor'cha cruiser, the only problem would arise at tech level 5, where a (non-Cardassian) OB does 625 damage. However, since the lower Vor'cha upgrade levels will already be different in v1.1b, this "gap" won't be there anymore

Otherwise, think the mod is extremely well done. I had a lot of fun playing each of the empires, and can't wait to get a little multi-player action in for further review.

Cheers Gowron, thanks for the hard work bringing this to life.

You're welcome, and thanks for your review

[The_Nighthawk]

Thanks for the feedback, and I look forward to 1.1b.

I'll answer the 'why?' for Ferengi CS's having medium range instead of long.

With the advantage they have in money, and the advantage they have in long range CS's, the Ferengi can have most of a large map colonized by turn 150 starting from T1. The free trade routes with minors and non-warring empires simply escalates the money advantage to insane levels, while they buy more CS's, wind turbines and shipyards to expand their reach and colonize more.

Also, at the mid and high propulsion tech levels, the long range gives the ferengi a huge colonizing advantage over the other races.

In the early game the other empires are limited by money to choosing between expansion and infrastructure, minor race membering, or starship construction. The feds can usually pick two of the three, but the Ferengi can do all three, and they are fairly strong in all those areas. So they expand rapidly, and still have the resources to build up and protect those systems.

With the money toned down a little in 1.1b, maybe that will be enough. Hopefully they won't be able to expand rapidly, without having to pay the price the other empires would for over-expansion.

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

Although the Ferengi colonize well, I have *also* noticed that this colonization comes at the expense of other development. For me, at least, liberal colonization as a Ferengi exposes me to Romulan and Cardassian intel long before I have any hope to deal with it, especially since these colonies are much more expensive to get going than they used to be.

Am I just playing poorly?

Liberal colonization as a Romulan or Cardassian brings other troubles in this mod. As a Romulan, I have pathetic industry and a pathetic economy; founding a colony is expensive! Building Warbirds is also expensive, and Romulus cannot just churn these out the moment they are needed. On the other hand, my colonies do start off with +2 morale (Is the Imperial Senate one of the two or three best buildings in the game, or what?) and meeting people to spy on is always a pleasure. The Cardassians have awesome industry and also love intel contests, which can win them the game with a tech 8 or 9 start, but their ships truly suck, especially since their phasors don't work, so they need a lot of them; more early warships are probably a better investment than far-flung colonies.

I see the overwhelming "I win" intel advantage that Romulans and Cardassians bring to bear at the beginning of an advanced game as a greater balance issue than Ferengi finances.

(On another note, when I play as Cardassians, I have also noticed that my phasors don't always fire. Specifically, if my first order to a battleship or cruiser is Charge, the phasors don't fire; Assault works.)


Anyway,

Ken

[OllyG]

Hi Gowron and everyone,

Firstly, a big thank you to Gowron for Balance of Power: I really love it. Playing the game on "Impossible" is now a real challenge, at the beginning in particular. I had been playing UDMIII for a long time, which was good, but I missed the Next Generation feel of the original game, which BoP has restored and enhanced.


A few points / questions:


1. Ref. reports of problems with the Klingons, they are working fine from what I can see. On one game (impossible; medium universe), I had to face a fleet of no fewer than 130 ships!

2. Why does the AI never seem to invade star systems? They build troop transports, big fleets and starbases, but, even when I've lost all my ships and basically been defenceless, the AI never sends in the troop transports. I didn't notice this so much in the original. Any thoughts as to why, or is this just me?

3. What precisely do all Future Techs do in BoP? I've seen the reference to it in previous posts, but would be useful to have a definitive list of things it does / does not do.

4. Why does the Federation, throughout most of the game at least, build almost exclusively Cruisers, and very few Destroyers / Science Cruisers? This happens nearly all the time, except in one game, where they had reached nearly top technology, when, after I'd wiped out their fleet, to my delight, they used a neat cycle of Dreadnought, Heavy Escort, Cruiser and Science Cruiser to rebuild their fleet...

5. I've also noticed that Cardassian Battleships rarely fire beam weapons...

6. How about making the Federation's ship line a little more interesting? I mean, keep all the stats / upgrade progressions, but introduce a few other classes? Eg. Destroyer 1 Oberth, the rest Mirandas; Cruiser 1 Constitution; Cruiser 2 Excelsior; Cruiser 3 Ambassador; Cruiser 4 Galaxy; Cruiser V Galaxy-X; Science Cruiser 1 Constitution, the rest Nebula; etc.. This is a little tweak I've made to my game...

7. Do you know when the next update will be released? I'm looking forward to having the Romulan AI back up to scratch...


Many thanks again,

Olly.

[OllyG]

6. How about making the Federation's ship line a little more interesting? I mean, keep all the stats / upgrade progressions, but introduce a few other classes? Eg. Destroyer 1 Oberth, the rest Mirandas; Cruiser 1 Constitution; Cruiser 2 Excelsior; Cruiser 3 Ambassador; Cruiser 4 Galaxy; Cruiser V Galaxy-X; Science Cruiser 1 Constitution, the rest Nebula; etc.. This is a little tweak I've made to my game...

PS: I also changed Frigate 2 and Frigate 3 to Excelsior, so that, even by the end of the game, Excelsiors are still there (they're my favourite...).

[Gowron]

2. Why does the AI never seem to invade star systems? They build troop transports, big fleets and starbases, but, even when I've lost all my ships and basically been defenceless, the AI never sends in the troop transports. I didn't notice this so much in the original. Any thoughts as to why, or is this just me?

Sometimes the AI is just lazy ^^

The AI players did invade quite some systems during my recent test runs.

3. What precisely do all Future Techs do in BoP? I've seen the reference to it in previous posts, but would be useful to have a definitive list of things it does / does not do.

There you go:
viewtopic.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=96
(scroll down a bit)

Keep in mind that BoP features increased tech level bonuses, +25% per tech level instead of +2% per tech level. THis applies to future techs as well.

4. Why does the Federation, throughout most of the game at least, build almost exclusively Cruisers, and very few Destroyers / Science Cruisers? This happens nearly all the time, except in one game, where they had reached nearly top technology, when, after I'd wiped out their fleet, to my delight, they used a neat cycle of Dreadnought, Heavy Escort, Cruiser and Science Cruiser to rebuild their fleet...

This sounds like it has something to do with
http://armadafleetcommand.com/onscreen/ ... opic&t=707

6. How about making the Federation's ship line a little more interesting? I mean, keep all the stats / upgrade progressions, but introduce a few other classes? Eg. Destroyer 1 Oberth, the rest Mirandas; Cruiser 1 Constitution; Cruiser 2 Excelsior; Cruiser 3 Ambassador; Cruiser 4 Galaxy; Cruiser V Galaxy-X; Science Cruiser 1 Constitution, the rest Nebula; etc.. This is a little tweak I've made to my game...

Addition of new ship models will still take some time...

7. Do you know when the next update will be released? I'm looking forward to having the Romulan AI back up to scratch...

It's almost finished.

[Gowron]

Version 1.1b is now available for download
(for the download link see the first posting)

Some features:

- There's now one additional starting system on the first starting level, two additional systems at the second level, and so on. These additional starting systems will ALWAYS consist of three class M planets (pop 140 each) and one Gas Giant, so except for possible food bonuses, they're 100% fair.

- Free star systems will now have up to 9 planets, and 4 planets at the least, with maximum populations ranging from 150 to 590. Same goes for minor race starting systems, except the upper limit is 390 (not 590), and the home planet goes on top of that.

- The reference values for the relative star frequency have been increased, and theanomaly ration has been reduced a bit (it's 10% now).

- The free ship suppport value now follows a nonlinear formula, favoring smaller empires.

- The scrapping revenue has been increased to 1/8. Trade goods 9/64 of the industrial output, that's about 14%.

- The impact of trade routes has been reduced. Now each system can only get one trade route from population size. Franchise Office and Acamarian Clan Hall give +2 routes, respectively.

- Cardassians and Klingons get their "mobile scanners" earlier.

- Better upgrades for the Miranda, Constellation, K't'inga, Tokorn, and D'ridren

[thunderchero]

Gowron,

Thats great news, all the changes sound great.

To add Update to Multi installer BOP 1.1a.
Add res file to stbof.res in BOPE\G folder as normal and use exe from file below.
BOP_Multi_EXE_english_german

only change was to path exe uses to find files.

thunderchero

[The_Nighthawk]

Man, I haven't come and checked the forum for a few weeks, and apparently chose exactly the right moment to catch up.

Thanks Gowron

[stardust]

Well 50 turns in and in spite of the AI's best attempts to drive me nuts with random events i'm still going.

I started a t4 game as the Romulans and within the first 15 turns i had one of my systems go nova (wase arsed PC decided all my starting systems except Romulus were red giant systems) and i had a large amount of energy research go missing

I've run into the Klingons, they've got hold of 14 systems and 2 minor races already and are launching random Negh'vars at me right now.

Sytsem wise, I'm happy to report I've seen a couple of 8 or 9 planet systems, though curiously, starting systems aside i've yet to see a system with anything less than 7 planets.

EDIT: Is it just me doing something wrong or are the textures for the sovereign class, as well as some of the explosions not right?
I can sort them out, it's not that big a problem, and it doesn't seem to affect anything in game.

[Martok]

Gowron,

Thats great news, all the changes sound great.

To add Update to Multi installer BOP 1.1a.
Add res file to stbof.res in BOPE\G folder as normal and use exe from file below.
BOP_Multi_EXE_english_german

only change was to path exe uses to find files.

thunderchero

Any idea when you'll add the self-installer version? As always, I cannot get the update to install (am currently playing BOP 1.1a with your multi-installer version).

[thunderchero]

Martok,

It will be first or mid of week just waiting ti see if any small patches are needed.

thunderchero

[Martok]

Cool cool. Thanks thunderchero. Can't wait to try it out!

[thunderchero]

Martok,

I have seen you checking back, I am waiting on a small patch when it is out multi will be released.

But if you can't wait here is prepatch version.
Multi Balance of Power 1.1b

These files only work with multi installer only.

thunderchero

[Martok]

Thank you very much, thunderchero! Truly, you are a prince among men.