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Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 12:59 pm
by Flocke
Iceman wrote:Stars! was one of the best space 4X games ever! A very primitive interface of course, by today's standards, but great gameplay.
Thanks for bringing this up, I guess I'll have to install it again and relive those days!
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/27002/Stars!.html
looks interesting!
but honestly ...a bit too old for me :lol:

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 1:23 pm
by Callahan
Iceman wrote: It will not solve much though. From the player's perspective I mean. All I need to do is free some pop, assign them to turbines, power up the SY, buy the ships (which is instantaneous, and I can buy as many as I can afford), power down the SY and assign the pop to their previous jobs. All in the same turn obviously.
Yes, but you would need around 30 pop to power up the yard for one turn, if there is no energy bonus at the system. So you would not be able to instantly expand from a new system unless you already have a lot of total pop to emigrate to that system fast. This should slow down expansion a bit early in the game.

For realism I actually tried to make some sense between industry output and the estimated effort to build one small ship.
I have the hell no idea of game creation, or how to generate fun. I have just stolen the ideas from other games and mashed them all together.

I'm not letting people choose where to go? The population seeding is random in the game. One can just claim the systems that are then a choice for those willing to settle elsewhere.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 8:10 am
by Callahan
In case anyone still cares, there is an updated version of BOTF-SFC available in the first post in this topic.
Got a few things fixed.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 8:37 am
by Iceman
Cool! I had been wondering when you'd release an update. Downloading it now, when I have the time I'll give it a go.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 9:15 am
by Callahan
I think I got this power issue fixed, and I have restricted ship building and buying to systems with an active shipyard.
Hopefully, it will soften down some of the problems related to ship buying that you mentioned.

Also, I am currently testing to restrict buying to a total equal to poulation per turn, limiting the use of stored credits to buy multiple large items in one turn.
I will probably include this in the next update.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 5:31 am
by Iceman
Some quick observations.

The new planet textures are cool, but they are only used in some systems? Also, there's a visual artefact (some red dots in the image border) when the animation (for some planet types?) restarts.

When I'm playing one empire, I can manipulate the systems of the other empires... namely, remove all population allocated to farms and industry :grin: The AI takes a couple of turns to realise it, it seems.

The Borg OP and SB still have the same firepower.

Good job with the improvements :up:

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 5:52 am
by Callahan
I knew there where some more issues on the list...
I will edit the stock ship database to correct those bases. And the forgotten debug function for the AI systems. ( I had to look closely for them not to behave too stupid...)

Yes, these new planets are Tethys planet animations. Since they look by far more realistic than the vanilla ones, I decided not to mix them unless necessary. Terraforming can bring some vanilla types in, however.

At least I will get a few things done from now on. For the last 6 months I had no time to touch this.
Feels great to be back to some fun stuff.

So heres the update to fix the things that Iceman has found. as usual, rename the .dat to .rar to be able to unpack.
http://d01.megashares.com/dl/i4Z2yCO/update.dat

Place the bigplanet.bmp and the database into the assets and replace your exe with this new one.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2015 1:58 pm
by Iceman
A few more observations:

In the empire selection screen, hitting any of the F* keys will present a blank galaxy screen.

Could there be an option to use only BotF races?

The Mintakans (bronze age civ) still have a Ground Combat value of 110.

If you press the Buy button when nothing is building, you get a message saying it costs 100 credits.

The game seems to generate lots of systems with zero max pop (lots of A and V class planets).
I saw a system with 8 max pop (single small volcanic planet) once. It's useless. The lowest population a planet can have should be 10 to prevent these (rare) situations.

Started a game with the Dominion, Omarion had 66/127 pop. Only 2 energy structures, which couldn't even power the shipyard!

The crew training facilities (Naval HQ, etc) can be built in several systems, is that intended?

At turn 4, I had a Plague event in my homesystem where 206 million pop died... I was left with 69 pop, the game was obviously ruined. These events should kill a % of the population, so that situations like these don't happen?

Half a dozen turns later, another event - "Planet 5 (B - 14) has undergone a rotational shift". What does the B-14 mean? It was a P type changing to L type.

The Dilithium Synthesizer is kind of useless?

The Farms building is kind of overpowered? You pretty much stop needing basic farms at some point.

Some minors like the Bandi should probably not expand?

Loading one of the saved games and then starting a new game (without terminating the application), I had -4569 credits and Economy 126. The build list had an upgrade to build, the intel screen had some espionage set, the research screen had some techs already at level 1, etc. Seems some data is not reset.

About homesystems being spawned in adjacent sectors like mentioned before, in savegame2 the homesystems of the Klingons and of the Cardassians are contested sectors...

Tethys' textures: gas giants are really nice, the rest less so (especially the Y class with the red thing in the center - savegame4).

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2015 4:59 pm
by Callahan
An option for Botf races only? Should be possible. Put on list.

The Mintakans should be lower valued now. Try to start a new game without loading one before to check. Some values like ship designs are stored in a save as they can change during the game.

The low pop systems are not totally useless. You can always build a biosphere to increase pop by 10. There are systems to only serve as outposts at best by increasing range by one. Sometimes terraforming can make them more usable later.
(Took the idea from Moo 2, where uncolonizable systems are quite frequent)

The events do not yet care about the game turns. It is planned to lock out some events like this for the first 50 turns.
It is on the list. They can really ruin your empire early.

Races with ship training should be able to build them on any system.

The B-14 is a map indicator like in Botf. B is the second row, line 14. The sector info also shows this info for every selected sector.

The dilithium synthesizer should produce dilithium independent of system source. In case there is a shortage it can be usefull. Especially once the warp damage caused by shortage will be permanent during combat.

The (powered) farms are not so powerfull. You need a good planet for it and it generally never produces enough for even this one world to feed.
The expansion of minors will be extended from yes/no to none/all/those who should. But there are other things on the list. (Mainly things you found)
Which leads to the next issue. Yup, starting a game with one in progress seems to jeopardise ships and fleets and other data. This will be fixed.
Thanks for your findings and ideas Iceman. There will be another update in a few days.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2015 1:29 pm
by Iceman
Callahan wrote: The dilithium synthesizer should produce dilithium independent of system source. In case there is a shortage it can be usefull. Especially once the warp damage caused by shortage will be permanent during combat.
50 dilithium for 100 energy, well, even a 1 dilithium system will produce 99 dilithium for 30 energy with the Refinery. Most systems have some dilithium.
The (powered) farms are not so powerfull. You need a good planet for it and it generally never produces enough for even this one world to feed.
There are numerous food bonuses, and the Farm even duplicates the Food system bónus (with regular farms). Find a couple Food systems and that's all you'll need.
Thanks for your findings and ideas Iceman. There will be another update in a few days.
No prob!

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2015 2:16 pm
by Iceman
Callahan wrote:An option for Botf races only?
The low pop systems are not totally useless. You can always build a biosphere to increase pop by 10. There are systems to only serve as outposts at best by increasing range by one. Sometimes terraforming can make them more usable later.
(Took the idea from Moo 2, where uncolonizable systems are quite frequent)
A Biosphere costs 5000, which you have to buy since there's no pop available to put in industry. 5000 for going from 8 to 18...
And if you go with only being able to buy stuff limted to the amount of pop per turn, it'll take a while to reach 5000 pop. Why not restrict it to 1 item per turn, and only available the next turn, like in BotF? Seems like it would solve a lot of issues.
Even terraforming doesn't seem very viable.
Also notice that in MoO2 you could build Outpost ships to build outposts in GGs and asteroids, to expand range. They were not actual colonies. Brown dwarves had no planets but usually had a system special.
The events do not yet care about the game turns. It is planned to lock out some events like this for the first 50 turns.
It is on the list. They can really ruin your empire early.
Even if it's not early, 200 mil pop is a bit harsh?
Races with ship training should be able to build them on any system.
I asked because a Naval HQ in multiple systems sounds kind of odd. It kind of sounds unique.
The B-14 is a map indicator like in Botf. B is the second row, line 14. The sector info also shows this info for every selected sector.
I guess I'm not used to seeing the sectors names displayed like that: B - 14. Sorry.
The dilithium synthesizer should produce dilithium independent of system source. In case there is a shortage it can be usefull. Especially once the warp damage caused by shortage will be permanent during combat.
Systems without dilithium are generally small (since most planet types generate dilithium, or at least one planet in the system, and it is cumulative). Late game I'm also not sure a few more 50s will help?
The (powered) farms are not so powerfull. You need a good planet for it and it generally never produces enough for even this one world to feed.
I mentioned this because "habitable" planets can go as high as Food 200. With the bónus to regular farms, plus the Farms bonus, and the unlockable food techs, there's a lot of food.

and I have restricted ship building and buying to systems with an active shipyard.
You can activate the SY, buy the ship, and deactivate it? Doesn't seem to help much. You can buy the SY for 500.


Could there be a way to auto-calc battles? Some are annoying, and I lost one game because in desperation I hit ESC and terminated the game... shomething could be done about that too.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 5:41 am
by Callahan
First here is the update to fix some of the bugs. I did run a very few tests on it and it seems good.
http://d01.megashares.com/dl/AvlFtFd/Update2.dat
It's a rar, just rename the .dat extension.
Since the database has been extended to fix the restart the game bug it will not be able to load old v1.02 saves.

It is possible to quit any battle hitting backspace. Currently it is not autoresolved then, but it seems to be a very good idea to add this. Thanks.

For outpost systems you have a choice. You can just build a relatively cheap orbital outpost like in Botf, but it can be destroyed by hostiles even if not in war. A planet based outpost may be more expensive, but it is a more stable settlement to claim the system and the adjacent sectors.

Yes, there is a lot of food. But there are also many planets that cannot generate large amounts. It should be the way a few food systems can supply the empire.

And you're right ( again ) I should rename Naval HQ to Naval sector HQ.

The dilithium structures can be build multiple times on the same system, effectively turning energy to dilithium.
So you can build up a lot of dilithium at the cost of workforce directed to power generation. If it does make sense after all or is usefull is another question. i need to run a few games for testing.

I plan to limit buying to the total pop per turn. Maybe tied to economy. Other worlds are helping to construct XY at the location by importing finished modules or something like that.
Therefore, I do not plan to restrict buying to one item per turn. It would take forever to build up a new colony.
This will depend on the overall ability of the empire to import and place new structures to the colony.

Edit: Try to attach file...
Update2.rar
(174.48 KiB) Downloaded 148 times

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 5:41 am
by Iceman
Can you attach the file here, since it's small? Megashares is giving me a runaround... it's probably because of Ultrasurf.
For outpost systems you have a choice. You can just build a relatively cheap orbital outpost like in Botf, but it can be destroyed by hostiles even if not in war. A planet based outpost may be more expensive, but it is a more stable settlement to claim the system and the adjacent sectors.
You mean OPs and SBs can move? I haven't built any TBH, I'll have to check that.
And you're right ( again ) I should rename Naval HQ to Naval sector HQ.
There's also the Starfleet Academy, and Central Command, etc.
The dilithium structures can be build multiple times on the same system, effectively turning energy to dilithium.
Pretty much what the Romulans have in BotF, I know. But theirs is OpS.
I plan to limit buying to the total pop per turn.
My question about this was, won't this make it impossible to buy the stuff that costs 5000?
Therefore, I do not plan to restrict buying to one item per turn. It would take forever to build up a new colony.
Or maybe reviewing the way colonies build up? ;) The whole initial building up is a drag anyways, so much so that it requires you to use shortcut keys to cut down on the steps required to make something that should be simple. Just saying.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 3:07 am
by Callahan
File attached in my last post - I think.

No, Starbases cannot move, but any fleet can construct them using the construct command. Ships with more troops are building faster. Cost is deducted from credits during construction. ( And since troops get replenished in owned sectors starbases can even be left alone to build themselves after starting construction )
You can even define new types of bases to choose from using ship design. I commonly design cheap supply stations for rear area expansion into quiet regions. No need for a fully armed outpost.

It will be possible to buy big stuff in steps, since buying will then just put into the build what is possible to accelerate.

For colony buildup, I am not sure if it would be an option to set the starting buildings ( once there will be some ) to the current tech level. But I am sure I want it to be possible to buy/build several structures per turn. Even in Botf population growth on large systems was able to outrun structure building. That was impractical, too.

But currently I am refining the politics. It is way too easy to get minors joining.

Re: Yet another Franken-Monster-Stein-BOTF-Whatever

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 9:22 am
by Iceman
BotF only races doesn't seem to be working correctly. What you get in F3 and F5 (the SFC races are there) is not what you see in the starmap (they're not). The BotF races themselves don't coincide.
Also, you can start a game with a non-BotF race.

In the race selection screen, maybe moving the Borg to the place after the Dominion, so that BotF races are together?

In case you want to fix some details:
Lissepains -> Lissepians
Qo'nos -> Qo'noS
Antedians -> Antedeans
Tangua -> Tanuga
Tanguans -> Tanugans