Supremacy new release

[Blake00]

Looking forward to trying your new version! Was very impressed with the build I tried late last year.

[Blake00]

Wow you guys have been busy! The last demo I tried nearly all the races still had federation LCARS.. now they have nice coloured alien buttons. Voices in the main menu too.. Very nice work Iceman!

[Iceman]

Thanks Blake!
Things are going slower than what we'd all like, but they're moving forward nonetheless.

I've finished implementing sitreps and warnings for lack of resources when building ships, OBs and stations. I'm kind of struggling with the implementation of morale effects from battles (for victory/defeat) at the moment.
I'll try to finish garrisons and entrenchment next, while also looking into intel.

I'm thinking of reworking some of the bonuses, and probably getting rid of some of the ships stats.

[Blake00]

Sounds good man. I spent yesterday filming a large video showing off your game as part of a 3 part series I'm doing on the 3 surviving BOTF related projects (Supremacy, BOTF2 & BOTE projects). Then I'll post it in some of the big Trek facebook groups (thousands of members).

Will release it very soon. Hopefully it will bring some more fans and support here for the great work you guys are doing!


BTW one little suggestion that you can feel free to ignore but I think the Romulan's need a bit more Reman content... Eg in Nemesis we saw that Reman's were used as slave labour in mines and as shock troops against the Jem'hadar. I can see the cool Reman mine in BOTF2 but some sort of building related to Reman soldiers would be cool too. Also I really think the Scimitar should be the top dreadnought ship for the Romulan's. Warbirds are old and the new Romulan ships seen in Nemesis were cool (are they the Warhawks in BOTF2?) but got carved up by the Scimitar haha.
The guys behind the awesome Star Trek Armada 3 mod for Sins of a solar empire made the Scimitar the Romulan's super cap ship and in this youtube video below some guys unleash it's thalaron radiation weapon on the Borg homeworld.. looks epic haha!

https://youtu.be/3x8yzmfXLDw?t=1h5s
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[Iceman]

Cool, thanks!
All help is most welcome,of course.

Nice suggestions. I will look into the reman soldiers thing. The Scimitar, we would need an image and a description, for starters. If someone produces those, we can add it! I am thinking it could be a Tactical cruiser for the Roms - only the Feds have one currently.
Thanks!

[eNGy]

Hey guys,

Thanks for this superb game thus far. I've been looking into quite some versions of Supremacy and it keeps getting better and better.

While playing the last one there were a few questions popping up:

1.) Since you've now implemented random events I was wondering if there was chance to reduce their impact or even prevent them by sending surveyors / exlporers / ships with a high rate of generating science points to these systems and having them do "system surveys" there. Especially when thinking of events like supernovae or meteorite bombardments which normally would have a "lead time". This could be achieved by a certain amount of science points that would have to be generated within the impacted system in a certain amount of time to prevent the event from happening. Master of Orion 2 had that kind of "feature" if I'm remembering correctly.
In my eyes this would create a whole new need and purpose for constantly building ships and upgrading the fleet (especially Starfleet) / deploying it thorughout your empire as well as emulate and honor TNG since I think there were countless episodes which featured Picard and his crew preventing cosmic events from creating havoc on Fed colonies and so on. The applied scan strength in the system might also determine how soon you detect these events.

2.) Is there a way to limit science points that can be generated out of nebulas, radio stars etc. by doing survey missions? Because by some time everything eventually will have been surveyed and currently you can go on and on and on surveying these things. Maybe the amount of science points which can be generated can randomly vary from game to game?

3.) Since a lot of the spys / ambassadors currently in the game are bridge officers from various ST iterations I was wondering if they could be assigned to a ship / fleet and thereby boosting their respective skills in battle or while doing Research, e.g. Sisko might give a ship / fleet a combat boost (+15% damage or whatever) emulating his tactical skills.

4.) I find it somewhat odd that you have to build a shipyard to extend your fleet's range of operations as even a class I shipyard would be a vast building pretty much too big for new colonies to build. Wouldn't a kind of "service station" with "refuelling capabilities" but with zero repair and construction capabilities do the trick? You could replace the current class I shipyard with these refuelling stations and up the requirements for a class I shipyard to those of a class II shipyard, the class II shipyard to those of a class III shipyard and so on. This would decrease the overall amount of shipyards significantly and make (big) systems with construction capabilities even more valuable within the game.

Hope you guys find this to be a helpful feedback as I would love to see this impressive game to get better even more than it already has by all your hard work and wonderful ideas!

Nico

[Iceman]

Hey guys,
Thanks for this superb game thus far. I've been looking into quite some versions of Supremacy and it keeps getting better and better.

Hey Nico
Thanks for the compliment!
There is still a lot to do, and time is a limited resource... but eventually, it'll get done

While playing the last one there were a few questions popping up:
1.) Since you've now implemented random events I was wondering if there was chance to reduce their impact or even prevent them by sending surveyors / exlporers / ships with a high rate of generating science points to these systems and having them do "system surveys" there. Especially when thinking of events like supernovae or meteorite bombardments which normally would have a "lead time". This could be achieved by a certain amount of science points that would have to be generated within the impacted system in a certain amount of time to prevent the event from happening. Master of Orion 2 had that kind of "feature" if I'm remembering correctly.
In my eyes this would create a whole new need and purpose for constantly building ships and upgrading the fleet (especially
Starfleet) / deploying it thorughout your empire as well as emulate and honor TNG since I think there were countless episodes which featured Picard and his crew preventing cosmic events from creating havoc on Fed colonies and so on. The applied scan strength in the system might also determine how soon you detect these events.

You can already reduce the impact of some of the events, namely those that kill population - by having an active Population Health building, or Medical ships in orbit.
The erradication type events (the ones you mentioned), well, I don't think you can do much about a star going supernova
There were provisions for being able to evacuate population from such systems (the EvacuationLimit stat, which I've been thinking lately to axe along with some others), but that's something that could potentially be more trouble to implement than it's worth it.
The "lead time" idea is certainly interesting, and it probably (can't recall) was meant to be implemented. At this point it would only be used in those 2 events, plus the Asteroids one - which were made very rare already, so as to not be too "frustrating" So we'll put it in the list, but with a low priority, as there are more pressing issues to attend to.

2.) Is there a way to limit science points that can be generated out of nebulas, radio stars etc. by doing survey missions?
Because by some time everything eventually will have been surveyed and currently you can go on and on and on surveying these things. Maybe the amount of science points which can be generated can randomly vary from game to game?

Hehe, that code is still unfinished. I said I'd finish it some time ago, but it was relegated to the low priority section. For now you're supposed to only survey each anomaly once. Actually, this last week I've been considering tackling that issue again, with a fresh build, because I'll have to touch some code that might have side effects that I might not be aware of. I'll have to rescale the scan strength values a bit, so it'll take some work.
It'd be much easier to make it so that if one player surveys a specific type of anomaly, noone else would be able to survey that particular type anymore. Do you think that that would be acceptable? It would certainly reward you for investing in surveying, but do you think it would be too limiting, and confusing (if you couldn't survey something because someone else already had) and not fun at all? I sure could use some opinions.

3.) Since a lot of the spys / ambassadors currently in the game are bridge officers from various ST iterations I was wondering if they could be assigned to a ship / fleet and thereby boosting their respective skills in battle or while doing Research, eg Sisko might give a ship / fleet a combat boost (+15% damage or whatever) emulating his tactical skills.

That's the plan the hard part will be implementing the UI for it. I've been dying to implement this for some time, but it requires time and focus. Officers should be assigned from the Task Forces tab in the Assets screen, which I have already created (the tab, nothing else) with that in mind. I'll probablt just implement assignment of Officers as a fleet order, for the time being, and then implement it properly later. Officers will have affects such as increasing CtH (like you mentioned), decreasing enemy's CtH, improving chance to retreat, etc (combat stats) according to their skills. We might have some that increase Scan Range or Scan Strength, Speed, Cloak, etc (non-combat stats), if that will not be imbalanced.
As for Spies/Operatives, we need the Intelligence screen up and running, which I'm already looking into; what I've been thinking for the last couple of days was allowing to assign an agent to a minor that is a member of another empire and that would degrade their relations over time, until the minor would terminate the membership (which is already implemented, and can happen for other reasons).

4.) I find it somewhat odd that you have to build a shipyard to extend your fleet's range of operations as even a class I shipyard would be a vast building pretty much too big for new colonies to build. Wouldn't a kind of "service station" with "refuelling capabilities" but with zero repair and construction capabilities do the trick? You could replace the current class I shipyard with these refuelling stations and up the requirements for a class I shipyard to those of a class II shipyard, the class II shipyard to those of a class III shipyard and so on. This would decrease the overall amount of shipyards significantly and make (big) systems with construction capabilities even more valuable within the game.

Me too, but that's how BotF had it I'd love to make SYs very expensive (I actually had them be a bit more expensive some time ago, but reverted SY I to BotF numbers) but I'm not sure how people would react to that.
As for service stations, that's what Outposts are! So if we would increase the cost of SY I significantly, Outposts would probably be more useful? The AI would have to be tweaked though, as right now it builds SYs in most systems, mostly to increase range and build defensive fleets.

Hope you guys find this to be a helpful feedback as I would love to see this impressive game to get better even more than it already has by all your hard work and wonderful ideas!

All feedback is helpful, so keep it coming! Feedback helps the motivation to keep working on the game.

[Blake00]

Hey Iceman.. sorry for delay.. been busy busy busy!

I've completed the video about Supremacy in my 3 part 3 BOTF2 projects tours (Haven't done p2 BOTF2 & p3 BOTE yet though):
[BBvideo=560,315]https://youtu.be/82ZexhdDFJk?list=PLZqn ... i9Z9XwL-A_[/BBvideo]
I posted in some of the huge trek facebook groups (80 thousand, 30 thousand, 20 thousand member groups etc) about the STCiv4 mod and some people mentioned they were big BOTF fans and they went nuts when I told them there were 3 BOTF fan projects out there as no one had a clue. I posted the video of your project and someone said they were so impressed they'd join your forums and help you design a 3D battle engine! Not sure if he's joined here yet but wowzer! Once I've finished the other 2 parts I'm going to post all 3 videos across all these big Star Trek groups which will hopefully bring you guys lots of support!

Right as for the Reman stuff!

I’ve re-watched parts of Nemesis and also checked the various star trek wiki sites eg:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Scimitar
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Scimitar_class
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Scimitar_Dreadnought_Warbird

It’s hard to find a full body shot from the film lol but these are some good pics of the Scimitar:
back http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/mem ... -prefix=en
front https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/743/23170 ... 605b_b.jpg

However I notice a lot of the other ship artwork in BOTF has a more drawn/cartoon/fake sort of look to them so maybe this one might fit in better (plus it’s a better angle):
https://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/sto.ga ... arbird.png

According to the Nemesis film the Scimitar is actually a Warbird class oddly enough and had 52 disruptor banks, 27 torpedo launchers, 2 layers of shielding (primary & secondary) and a near perfect cloaking device that cannot be detected by tachyon & anti-proton scans. It's roughly twice the size of the Enterprise and was able to overpower & essentially defeat a Sovereign with 2 of the latest Romulan Valdore class Warbirds all at the same time. So presumably it would roughly 3x as powerful.

Considering the amount of weapons on other ships in BOTF2 giving it 52B/27T weapon stats would be too overpowered haha. But it should clearly have more weapon mounts then others in its class and also more shield points to account for 2 layers of shielding.

I put the Scimitar in the command/dreadnaught supership class (STOnline puts it in a Dreadnaught Warbird class) like the big dominion capital ship seen at the end of DS9 which was apparently twice the size of a Galaxy class ship and 3 times as powerful. I’m guessing that ship is your Dominion Messiah class Command Ship 3? I noticed that ship isn’t 3x more powerful than a galaxy in the game though presumably for balancing purposes heh.

I had a look in your ship xml file to gage the strengths of the other famous cap ships.

Fed Galaxy Command - 680S/270H with 8B/5T
Fed Sovereign Command - 760S/360H with 8B/5T
Rom D’Deridex Command - 620S/230H with 8B/5T
Rom Valdore Command - 700S/300H with 8B/5T
Dom Messiah Command - 820S/370H with 6B/8T
Kling Negh’var Command - 640S/300H with 10B/6T

So I’m thinking for balancing purposes you can’t make it 3x a sovereign but you still make it very powerful and compensate for that power with the ‘Borg trick’ of making it very expensive.

So many something like..

Rom Scimitar Command - 1000S/350H with 10B/7T

That shows off it’s amazing double shield tech and also its many weapons giving it roughly similar firepower as a Negh’var. I know you guys haven't implemented the Borg in Supremacy yet but assuming you take a similar approach to the BOTF2 team I’ve looked at their Borg ships and considering the Sphere has 5000S, a cube 7000S and a TCube 8000S that doesn’t make the Scimitar’s shields look too overpowered haha.

Obviously we can’t really put the ‘fire while cloaked’ and thalaron radiation planet killer into the game though as that won’t really work in BOTF & it would be too overpowered compared to the other races.

BTW personally I’d give the Dom Messiah more shielding too (say 950). Compensate for that by making it more expensive too.

As for a description I’m not really good and writing sexy descriptions haha but it could be something like..

“The Scimitar command class Warbird is a product of advanced Reman engineering designed to fight against entire fleets of enemy ships. Scimitar’s utilize the most advanced Romulan weapons and cloaking technology rendering them undetectable until they strike, ensuring that no enemy ship survives to report ever seeing one.”

Yeah not that great I know but it’s a start lol.

Oh and as for the Reman shock troop centre.. maybe switch the current Reman mine to this pic:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/667/22767 ... 57b2_b.jpg

Which then means you can use either your current reman mine shot or this more distant planet shot as Reman troop centres maybe?:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/609/23313 ... 0f11_b.jpg

BTW I made the same suggestions to the other BOTF2 project as I’m a big fan of both which I hope is okay. Obviously you guys will each interpret my suggestions in your own unique ways so in the end everyone’s a winner especially us fans haha!

[Iceman]

Thanks for all your help! It's very much appreciated!
I'll check that video asap! Good news about the battle engine too! That's awesome.
I'll also check out all those links you posted.

Re the ship artwork, I agree on the cartoonish look of some of them, and it certainly would be great if we had replacements! If you can help with that, or know someone who can, please do. Also, ships stats are still a WiP, any suggestions for changes are welcome. If you want to completely rework them, go ahead! I'll make the changes you suggested. Without a combat engine, some of the stats are still a bit up in the air...

Oh, and the Borg *are* in Supremacy already! You can even play as them Their ships' stats are still placeholders though, haven't had the time to address them yet. Again, if you would like to take that task up, please do feel free to do so.
viewtopic.php?f=300&t=3489

I'll reply in more detail soon, as soon as I can digest all the info. Again, thanks for your precious help!

[Blake00]

No worries man. Glad I could help!

Sadly I'm no artist though.. my Star Trek Doom level is about as good as my artistic abilities get and that's basic as haha.
The point about the various ships having a fake cartoonish look was no criticism though as the original BOTF used a similar style so continuing that tradition works nicely! My STDoom level is very cartoonish too haha. In fact it actually looks weirder when you mix a real photo in with them eg I think one of your Cardassian Strike cruisers is a photo of a Galor from the show and it just looks out of place compared to all the other Cardassian ships.

Oh wow! Yup I can see the Borg in my main menu now! I wish I'd known about the Borg before doing my video. Oh well I'll make sure I mention that you guys have a preliminary version in my Part 2 video I'll make soon!

[Iceman]

Blake,that video is great, thanks! I do agree with you on the less than stellar aspects, we really need a better Dominion voice, better ship images, yards and bases. We need help with those.
The Scimitar has been added BTW ;-) and the Dominion`s top battleship beefed up.
I will increase the cost of SYs.
Minors do build ships, they dont start with any though. That can be easily changed.
Again, thanks!

[Iceman]

Those shield values for Borg ships you mentioned, they are actually Supremacy`s, BTW. Are they using the same values? Thats cool. Curious to check your 2nd part to see the differences.

[Iceman]

BTW one little suggestion that you can feel free to ignore but I think the Romulan's need a bit more Reman content... Eg in Nemesis we saw that Reman's were used as slave labour in mines and as shock troops against the Jem'hadar. I can see the cool Reman mine in BOTF2 but some sort of building related to Reman soldiers would be cool too. Also I really think the Scimitar should be the top dreadnought ship for the Romulan's. Warbirds are old and the new Romulan ships seen in Nemesis were cool (are they the Warhawks in BOTF2?) but got carved up by the Scimitar haha.
The guys behind the awesome Star Trek Armada 3 mod for Sins of a solar empire made the Scimitar the Romulan's super cap ship and in this youtube video below some guys unleash it's thalaron radiation weapon on the Borg homeworld.. looks epic haha!

So, the Scimitar is now the top ship for the Roms, a Heavy Warbird (set as Tactical Cruiser, will see how we can implement special weapons like the Thalaron), the Valdore remains as the last Command (Warbird, not sure where the Warhawk designation came from). I've used the stats you provided, and upped the cost to 40k (or 50k?), with a huge upkeep (200). The rest of the stats (Cloak, Speed, etc) have been beefed up a bit too. Did the same for the Fed Prometheus. Not sure if the Messiah should also be converted to Tactical (but at the same tech level), and have the Dominion only get 2 Commands?

The reman shock troops building, how should we call it? Reman Shock Troop Centre? And we need a description for it. The Scimitar one was really nice, so if you'd care to take a shot at this one too, it'd be great I'll add the pics you provided, thanks!

I think I might use some of the names for the Borg stuff in that video for their production facilities, like the Assembly Matrix, Interlink Node, etc
I'm currently trying to get assimilation working properly, with the natives being turned into Borg drones. I'm also considering if assimilation should be a multi-turn action (if warranted of course), as opposed to as it is now, a one turn action.
On a similar topic/note, I've started working on a Contaminate System fleet order, so that you can use bio attacks on colonies, with Medical ships - as it is now, there's little point to their existence. It comes with a heavy penalty on relations obviously Bombardments and invasions will probably be revisited, so that contamination should be the fastest way to eliminate a colony.

[Valcoren]

I think we may want to consider looking at Endless Space 2. and get some ideas from the game

[Iceman]

Anything in particular you have in mind?