BOTF Guide - by Aralon

BOTF Strategy Guide

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The_Nighthawk
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Post by The_Nighthawk »

New tip:

Getting your maximum pop the fastest.

Based on the mechanics Gowron has discovered, the fastest way to maximize your population is to terraform all planets in a system ASAP for the best growth rate. Once that is done, focus your population on food production until your food meets or exceeds your maximum system population.

Population growth is a function of current population AND available food, so you can multiply your system growth several times over if you focus on food first, then other production second.
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Post by RSE_Chris »

The_Nighthawk wrote:
RSE_Chris wrote:Just to add an edit to the RSE guide:

"When a minor race upgrades, it does not always terraform every planet. Therefore, terraforming all systems before a minor upgrades is a good idea to ensure a maximum system.
However, it's not a guarantee. At least, it isn't in BoP. It might be in Vanilla, but it's been a while. ;)
It's guaranteed in vanilla. :)
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Post by sean_west »

Have you also mentioned about the bonus of having a developed minor with good research structures, very helpful when starting on tec1
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Post by The_Nighthawk »

3) Phantom Dilithium
The phantom dilithium trick is based on the fact that dilithium is not really used during the construction of a ship, just in the last turn when the construction is completed.
That means you can build ships on more shipyards than you have dilithium.
Only in the last turn of a ships construction it really uses up one unit of the existing dilithium and can stop other shipbuilding during that turn.
Its important never to leave a system screen with a "not enough dilithium"-message displayed on it to make this trick work.
To avoid this simply leave a screen with the message on it and reenter.
Then the message is not shown as long as you don’t change something on the screen and you can leave it now and press turn.
This trick should be practiced in single player before it is actually used in an online game.
I need some help with this one. For the example of 1 dilithium and two systems building ships. Say one system is cranking out Scouts and TT's one every turn, and the other is building Heavy Warships each taking multiple turns.

I follow the instructions above, but can never get the warships to build. Is this because the 1 dilithium goes to the scout/TT and prevents any construction on the warship every turn? I thought the whole point of phantom dilithium was to advance construction on other ships while other ships are completing.

I guess I'm not understanding the limitations of the trick properly.
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Post by ketteringdave »

The_Nighthawk wrote:I need some help with this one. For the example of 1 dilithium and two systems building ships. Say one system is cranking out Scouts and TT's one every turn
Here's the problem - this system is using the dilithium every single turn.

To get two systems working together, your ships have to take at least two turns to construct. When one system is finishing a ship, the other should be in the middle of construction.
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Post by jonboylondon »

Basically it works like this -

If you have 10 shipyards and one dillithium and each ship takes ten turns to build-as long as only one shipyard produces one ship per turn (say shipyard one will build in one turn,two in two,three in three etc.... all ten can be producing!!

Your problem you mention is at some point the shipyards both had a ship ready with one turn left. When this happens the shipyards stall... You have one dill and a ship building at a rate of one per turn. I suggest you change the scout/TT shipyard to produce at a ship every two turns and ensure the other shipyard is building at an odd number say 3 or 5 or 7...

Also as mentioned never leave system saying "not enough dillithium"...

If it says this exit the system screen and go back in and in will change to showing the number of turns till built.

Hope this helps.... :wink:

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Post by ruthlessferengi »

The_Nighthawk wrote:
other ships are completing.

I guess I'm not understanding the limitations of the trick properly.
you need dil to produce a ship on the very last turn only, i.e. if you have 2 ships with 1 turn left to construct, and only one dil, you'll be stalled on one and produce only one... what you can do, is to slow down production of your tts for the turn you expect a heavy to graduate.

just like in real life, you can't produce shyte out of nothing... (unless you are the Big Bang Administrator)...

The reverse, however, may be true.. :) that's what happens to the fleet of 36 klingon scouts that falls into a neutron star... crap to nothing... in 1 turn.. on a personal level it hurt a lot...
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Post by The_Nighthawk »

I guess my example wasn't clear enough. I never got any production on the multiple turn ship. Period. 4 turns left every turn, and always the full price to buy it, so long as the other system was producing a ship every turn.

If I slowed the other system's production to two turns, then on the first turn both systems would get their production applied (provided I follow the correct steps as per the guide), but on the second turn, the small system would produce its ship, but the big system would not apply any of its production to the bigger ship and it stays at 3 turns.

What I concluded from this was that so long as you have one free dilithium that isn't tied to a ship finishing production, then and only then do all the other systems producing ships apply their production to their queue. So in the one example JBL gave with ten systems producing ships in ten turns, staggered so they all finish production on different turns, you'd need 2 dilithium to make it work. One for the finishing ship, and one to trick all nine other systems into applying their production to their queue. But if you screw up and suddenly 2 ships finished on the same turn, I guarantee your eight other systems would not apply any of their production to their queues.

The conclusion I have reached is you need to have 2 dilithium to make this work at its most efficient. With only one dilithium, every time a ship is actually built you will lose a turn of production on every other system.

Please try this out and confirm, because what I've actually discovered is different from what everyone else is saying.
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Post by Pigman »

Hi Nighthawk

I'm not sure if I'm really understanding what you are saying, but I have just been playing a game as Klingons in unmodified Vanilla today and only had 1 Dilithium system for first 30 turns but was building ships at three systems simulaneously

I didn't build the mining prison, so I genuinely only had one Dilithium and had no problems building at three systems as long as only one ship was due to be completed on any given turn

What sometimes happens is the estimated production time for a ship may change due to a number of factors:-

System may be growing (or could shrink due to a comet strike or an intel attack from another empire) either of which could change the number of turns to finish ship

Morale may change up or down, again affecting the number of turns to complete a ship

Also a possibility, although I'm not certain, is that you can get a boost or bonus in building through high morale and I think this is applied randomly. By this, I mean that if your ship building system morale is fanatic, you will have an expected time to build any particular ship, but you could receive this extra bonus boost in production at any time, which would then shorten the build time further

When I say I'm not certain about this, I am certain that this happens when building structures, but not sure if it also happens with ships. This bonus is mentioned in the original game guide if my memory is not faulty

BTW, this particular tip was new to me in the last few months and I've played around with it quite a bit to prove that it works

Regards

Pigman
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Post by RSE_Chris »

The_Nighthawk wrote:I guess my example wasn't clear enough. I never got any production on the multiple turn ship. Period. 4 turns left every turn, and always the full price to buy it, so long as the other system was producing a ship every turn.

If I slowed the other system's production to two turns, then on the first turn both systems would get their production applied (provided I follow the correct steps as per the guide), but on the second turn, the small system would produce its ship, but the big system would not apply any of its production to the bigger ship and it stays at 3 turns.

What I concluded from this was that so long as you have one free dilithium that isn't tied to a ship finishing production, then and only then do all the other systems producing ships apply their production to their queue. So in the one example JBL gave with ten systems producing ships in ten turns, staggered so they all finish production on different turns, you'd need 2 dilithium to make it work. One for the finishing ship, and one to trick all nine other systems into applying their production to their queue. But if you screw up and suddenly 2 ships finished on the same turn, I guarantee your eight other systems would not apply any of their production to their queues.

The conclusion I have reached is you need to have 2 dilithium to make this work at its most efficient. With only one dilithium, every time a ship is actually built you will lose a turn of production on every other system.

Please try this out and confirm, because what I've actually discovered is different from what everyone else is saying.
You shouldn't lose any production. When you go into those systems, make sure if doesn't say "insufficient dilithium". If it does, re-enter that system so that it doesn't say that and come back out.
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Post by The_Nighthawk »

RSE_Chris wrote:You shouldn't lose any production. When you go into those systems, make sure if doesn't say "insufficient dilithium". If it does, re-enter that system so that it doesn't say that and come back out.
The guide is pretty clear on that point, and I do that, so when I leave each system screen I have a turns remaining showing. Definately not a bright red 'Dilithium Shortage'. :)

Also I'm not working off of turns remaining, but off of credits remaining. I'll check what is left to produce on the bigger ship, make sure the screen's aren't showing a dilithium shortage, and hit end turn. The scout produces fine, then I click 'Buy' on the bigger ship to check on its production, and it's costing me the same to buy as it did the previous turn.

As long as I have one more dilithium than ships finishing, I'm fine. But if I have two dilithium, and two ships finishing, my third system won't apply any industry to its queue.

I don't disbelieve you guys, but I'd like you all to make sure it is working the way you think it is, because I can't get it to work like that, and I'm following the guide to the letter.
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Post by The_Nighthawk »

I just ran about 100 tests with 1 and 2 dilithium scenarios and 3 systems making ships, and what I've asserted holds true. I need one more dilithium than ships finished that turn to get all systems producing ships to apply their industry that turn. As soon as my ships produced that turn equals my available dilithium, every other ship producing system stalls.

I made sure all systems showed turns remaining. I tried altering each screen to make the dilithium shortage message pop up, then move back to make it go away. I tried buying ships. I tried buying partially finished ships. I tried letting construction through without buying. I tried all of that one dilithium and two dilithium. I can't get it to work like you guys are describing.

So I'm either doing something horribly wrong (unlikely as I'm doing everything right based on what's written about it to this point) or there is some small, nearly insignificant step that everyone else does unconciously and I'm not doing it.
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Post by Pigman »

OK, I think I get what you're saying and I've now seen similar problem

If I've got this right, let's say you've got only one dilithium system and are trying to build at 3 different systems. If the ships that you're building are due to be completed in say 2, 3 and 4 turns, after you press the turn button this will reduce to 1, 2 and 3 turns

However, on the next turn, the ship that was due to be completed will be built and you would expect the other 2 to now be down to 1 and 2 turns. What actually happens is that they are still on 2 and 3 turns!

Is this what you are saying Nighthawk?

If so, then yes I agree, but I've noticed that the game doesn't always stall both of the other systems on the turn that a ship is completed, This maybe due to a change in build time however, as described in my earlier post where I mentioned the effect of morale changes or random events etc.

Perhaps the reason that no one seems to have noticed this is that you will usually have more than one dilithium system pretty quickly and depending on which version of the game you are playing you may have mining prison or some other dilithium bonus

I've just played a game with only 9 dilithium systems in the whole galaxy and that included the 5 empire's home systems, so dilithium was very scarce and I had to rely on this technique to produce a decent number of ships

Even if we have established that you are correct about what you have discovered, as long as you are building ships with long build times this is still quicker than only building at one system and in any case when game was originally designed, if you only had one dilithium you were only supposed to be able to build ships at one system

Hope this helps....if nothing else it proves that you're not going mad....or if you are then so am I

Regards

Pigman
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Post by The_Nighthawk »

Thanks for the confirmation Pigman. I'm glad to hear I'm not going crazy. :)
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Post by ruthlessferengi »

9)Intel stockpiling
A very important method to prepare for an intelligence war later in the game is to assign populace to intel structures from the start on.
The gathered internal security builds up over time and creates a security shield that the enemy has to wear down with his offensive intel before he can start to succesfully sabotage you.
A good intel shield can give you the time you need for an attack against your opponent or it enables you to sabotage him while you only have 1% assigned to internal security and force his intelligence into the defensive from the start on.


end of quote...

so.. what the guide is telling me, if i assign folk on intel even when i haven't seen anybody, it will help me when i meet the dreaded cardies? am i right?
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