What would you have done different with Vanilla BOTF?

[DS9]

I'm not talking about big changes that would involve recoding like the memory leak bug or turn slow down or AI, I mean little decisions like ship values.

For me the cardassians were too underpowered and their advantage in intel was not a useful compensation.

I also think the ships were too weak. One bad turn and you'd lose an entire fleet, I think unless totally outgunned you should have been able to limp away from a battle you'd lost with a good proportion of your fleet albeit battered. It also made combat a bit lopsided because the best tactic was to have a massive fleet to intimidate a small enemy fleet into retreating immediately and destroying it.

Sensors (both planetary and ship based) were never quite as useful as they should have been.

Ship upgrades were annoying when starting from low tech.

The economy side of the game was also a bit off leading to the scrap for credits exploit.

[slickrcbd]

I'd have had a way to find any given system on the map, or at least display the coordinates for the system you are viewing on the build screen. Too often I'm left wondering where is that planet again?

[thunderchero]

I'd have had a way to find any given system on the map, or at least display the coordinates for the system you are viewing on the build screen. Too often I'm left wondering where is that planet again?

we have that now.

viewtopic.php?p=53039#p53039

[cusack171]

With UE, I would reconfigure to make my own "god mode"; would you ever consider making it a mod?

[cusack171]

I would have also not have made the federation request tributes, seems counter the UFOP

[slickrcbd]

I would have also not have made the federation request tributes, seems counter the UFOP

Have you ever actually gotten more than a 1-time tribute from the AI of any major regardless of which major you are playing as?

That said, back on the OT, I know this has to do with licensing, but I'd have included older-era ships like the Constitution-class and the Daedalus-class that are part of Trek lore. They had the Miranda-class, why not the Connie or the Excelsior?
Heck, the upgrade for the Constitution-class could be the Excelsior.

[Axis]

I would have liked those two too, but, if you refit constitution to excelsior, you'd have to rebuild the entire ship in the "real world", so it does not make sense in that way.

It needs a rearrangement: constitution could have been light cruiser, excelsior cruiser, ambassador heavy cruiser and galaxy-x a heavy command cruiser.

[eber3]

As slickrcbd said, I'd have liked the TOS era included in the game, ships and minor races. It always bugged me as soon as I started playing, the "Birth of the Federation" didn't happen in the TNG era. The other thing I never liked was the Ferengi as a major power. Just seems out of character for them to be building fleets of ships and expanding territory when all they really want to do is expand their profits. But being stuck with only TNG races, there was no other good option. If they'd included TOS in the game, maybe they could have gone with the Gorn instead.

[slickrcbd]

It's amazing how much the Gorn get used, considering they only appear in one episode of TOS. I know Starfleet Battles and by extension the Stafleet Command games make use of them, but we never hear about them again after "The Arena".
If anything, they seem to be a minor power with slightly better tech (than TOS Kirk as for all we know they advance slowly and by Picard's time the feds are on par with the Gorn) like the Sheliak.

The Tholians would be an equal contender for another power, and they have just as much screen time as the Gorn.

I'm frankly surprised they didn't include The Dominion instead of the Ferengi, but I guess the license was restricted to TNG and didn't include DS9.

[Deimos]

I agree with Eber, they should've started with the TOS era and they shouldn't have added the Ferengi as a major race.

Should've stuck with UFP/Klingons/Cardassians/Romulans, that's more than enough for the game.

They could've added more ships to strong minor races, like the Ferengi and others seen in the Star trek TV series, such as the Tholians and Tamarians (As their ship seemed to be more advanced/powerful than even the Enterprise D).

The whole AI for diplomacy needs reworking, especially the stupid demands and instant "Enraged" statuses, not to mention the "Here's a peace treaty, sign it", then 1 or 2 turns later, "We're declaring war!" issue which I run into quite often.

I always though the Borg cube in the vanilla game was WAY too powerful, a single shot takes out multiple small-mid ships, even capital ships.

I never understood why ships have tens of phaser banks/torpedoes in BOTF, surely that adds to the lag experienced in the battles?
The borg cube for instance apparently has 74 phaser banks! That can't be accurate.

Another pet peeve of mine is the map speed and scan range, the Galaxy-class for instance only has a short map range, a speed of 1 and a scan range of 1
This is the federation's flagship, it was built to explore, from memory, so why would it only have a slow speed and limited range?

The colony ship should have, in my opinion, a long range vs a medium range.

The max level Fed Starbase 2, the big mushroom-shaped one, has a hull strength of 274, the same as the Sovereign class?
That makes zero sense as well, the starbase could probably house 10+ of those ships inside it, the starbases were just way too weak in the game, in both defensive and offensive capabilities.

[slickrcbd]

I kind of give the diplomacy system a pass given that it isn't much worse than that in Civilization I-III. Granted III was slightly better, but the diplomacy with minors is about the same as diplomacy in Civilization II.
The diplomacy with majors on the other hand seems messed up to the point that I rarely seem able to make alliances with majors even in Vendetta where you are supposed to have a "natural" ally and an enemy.

[KrazeeXXL]

Not sure if I'd change anything about Vanilla. I guess it'd be nice to have stuff from the other shows but we all know what kind of clusterfuck the ST licencing is.

As eber3 wrote, the Ferg as a major power seem a bit off. However, it makes sense for them to expand and exploit and they make a good filler, leaving the BORG as a major, and not-to-be-balanced threat/event. It'd be cool to play as BORG but they'd needed to be balanced somehow. Armada 2 had an interesting approach but the BORG lost a lot of their "oomph" there because of these balancing reasons.

Have you ever actually gotten more than a 1-time tribute from the AI of any major regardless of which major you are playing as?

Yup, I remember some mp games where the Fergs gave me some 400k Credits multiple times. They had sectors with over a hundred ships in them but were scared after I started cleaning house to speed up the game. Just the usual. Be powerful enough so they don't risk going to war with you, send huge fleets to their borders and voilá. At some point with over 190+ morale it's useless to make new friends anyway.

[DS8]

The Ferengis are the only major that I ever get serious credits out of and they're the only one that make a fleet of 120+ ships that obliterate planetary populations in one turn. They're usually the AI race that does the best or second best against me.

[slickrcbd]

Another few minor thought, though they require major code tweaks.
I'd do better stacking of the ships, given you when you do a planitary bombardment if your transports are first they get wiped out, but if you make your dreadnought or strike cruisers first you take fewer casualties.
Either make it so the order they are arranged doesn't matter, or automatically sort them to an optimal arrangement.
However, it seems to randomly shuffle the order every move and changing it around is a PITA. The individual fleets might stay the same, but what order the warship fleet vs the transport fleet changes.
Also the way the game labels things encourages you to make homogeneous fleets. If you include a scout/science vessel in with your heavies, it just says "X ships" so if you have one fleet with a scout and 8 dreadnoughts and another with a scout and 8 destroyers, it gets hard to tell which is which at a glance since it just says "9 ships", where if you had the dreadnoughts by themselves it would say "8 dreadnoughts".

That should be tweaked if you are going to have an advantage to taking a scout with your dreadnoughts.

[thunderchero]

Another few minor thought, though they require major code tweaks.
I'd do better stacking of the ships, given you when you do a planitary bombardment if your transports are first they get wiped out, but if you make your dreadnought or strike cruisers first you take fewer casualties.
Either make it so the order they are arranged doesn't matter, or automatically sort them to an optimal arrangement.
However, it seems to randomly shuffle the order every move and changing it around is a PITA. The individual fleets might stay the same, but what order the warship fleet vs the transport fleet changes.

"optimal arrangement" this would never work for all player/all games. sometime I would rather sacrifice TT's and other time I will risk losing assault ships.

and once you understand how the game sorts ships, it becomes easy to move whatever ship to top or bottom. (just can be a long process when it evolves many ships/fleets)