Ultimate Dominion Mod III - Beta Info

Post by **siggi** » Thu May 08, 2008 3:57 pm

The Galors are explicitly referred to as 'Destroyers' in several DS9 episodes. During TNG and early DS9, they were interchangingly called 'Warships' and 'Battleships', but since those are much more generic terms, we decided to make the Galors destroyers.

Almost more important is the fact that this allows the Cardie AI to build a good mix of Hidekis, Galors, Keldons and Hutets all at the same time, while previous versions of UDM had the Keldon upgrade and replace the Galors (if memory serves, that is. Boy we did so many versions of this by now with so many different things we tried it's kinda hard to keep track... ;-)).

Cheers,
Siggi

Post by **afc** » Thu May 08, 2008 10:47 pm

we have added it to the download section

Post by **Bert** » Fri May 09, 2008 10:11 am

the borg ar erelaly destroying the gameplay atm...

after abotu 100 turns the other powers are usulally soo boned by the bor
sucks so much i barely se emuch point in playing really...

Post by **DCER** » Fri May 09, 2008 10:53 am

The borg can be turned off in stbof.ini, find the line BORG=ON and change ON to OFF. You'll still get random events this way, but the borg won't show up.

You need to start a new game for this to take effect.

Post by **Bert** » Fri May 09, 2008 12:54 pm

i quite like having the borg about but the numbers of cubes is what appears to be th eproblem and they show up a bit early but nvm

i will tunr them off for the moment.

Post by **trevtones** » Fri May 09, 2008 1:20 pm

Well if you catch the borg when they first arrive they only have a single cube. It's when they start assimilating planets that they get more cubes.

Post by **sean_west** » Fri May 09, 2008 2:11 pm

If you use UE, you can increase the maintainance value for the cubes, this will slow their building.

Post by **29BQ** » Fri May 09, 2008 3:15 pm

Good Mod!

I am looking forward to seeing a final one.

Post by **crashpm** » Sat May 10, 2008 12:08 am

I know this is the beta meaning you're going to make a fair amount of changes to. I only have two suggestions you might consider. I absolutly love this mod and the massive Variety of vessels available (especially to the feds) my only problem with the ships is the Nebula Class, it's too weak a vessel. The Nebula class was designed around the same time as the Galaxy class and was designed to be a more compact ship that would be far more numerous. the nebula dhould only be slightly less powerful than a Galaxy class say (85% the strength) as in currently stands the nebula is even less powerful than the old excelsior class cruisers.

The other thing i really loved about this mod is the fleets are larger, in Vanilla, a fleet of 9 ships was decent and a Large fleet would be say 30 ships strong. In this mod almost all Major battles i fought were all between fleets of around the 100 area. these are lag fests and just mass production to win wars heh. (anytihng other than changing the 3d device thing to say software i can do to speed it up?). Anyways i was going to suggest that you up the ship maintainence costs just slightly so major engagements would be more around the 50-75 ships per fleet size.

just some random thoguhts i figured id spout out.

Post by **sean_west** » Sat May 10, 2008 2:58 am

I agree with the issue on the Nebula Class. They are the Strike Cruiser, but I use the steamrunners to bomb, as their weapons and shilds are better

Post by **Locustus** » Sat May 10, 2008 7:55 am

I can see a fault!!

Seeing the sovereign with 4800 shields reminds me of using the ship editor. The bigger the stats, the bigger the lag. You should really scale down all stats proportionately to at least the general level of stats in vanilla BOTF. That makes a huge impact on performace. You could even play with something like 9 damage for a final level torpedo, but I would take twice for better resolution, 18 damage.

Please, can someone tell me if I can use the ship editor to scale them myself? I might get playing UDM3 today if I finish my current game.

Post by **BioHaZZarD99** » Sat May 10, 2008 8:50 am

Locustus wrote:You should really scale down all stats proportionately to at least the general level of stats in vanilla BOTF.

I strongly disagree. The larger stats seems to have no effect on me, and it makes battles last longer... A battle that would normally take 4 or 5 turns in vanilla now takes like 10 turns in UDM.. It's also made me re-think a few strategies that I used in vanilla...

And about the neb/gal issue, I don't use nebulas anyway, so I haven't had a chance to look. Instead I'll use 2 Akira class cruisers with 7 Steamrunners, that seems to work fine for me, unless they have more than 6 orbitals, then I bring in another task force to compensate

Post by **matress_of_evil** » Sat May 10, 2008 9:02 am

Course you can use the ship editor yourself, Locustus, if you want to do so. There are two programs that you can use to do this. The first one is The Ultimate Editor, which amongst many other things, allows you to edit ship stats. To use it, open your stbof.res file in the Ultimate Editor, (File -> open just like any other program) then go to edit -> ships -> ship stats. You can edit each ship manually this way. You'll have to do each ship individually though. Don't forget each ship has three pages of stats, so remember to click the arrow buttons at the bottom of the Ultimate Editor. Once you've made your changes, remember to save them! (File -> save or save as)

If you want to edit the entire shiplist, then i'd recommend using botFED v1.4. This program allows you to do group edits, although i've found it is slightly less stable than the Ultimate Editor. The Ultimate editor doesn't have group editing functions though, and the other ship editing programs don't work, so this program is the only one that will be of use to you.

To use botFED, download it, unzip it, and install the program. You will need to open your stbof.res file and extract the file called shiplist.sst into the same folder that botFED is stored in. Once you've done this, load up the program.

To make group edits, click on the group edit button, then select all the ships you want to edit from the list on the right. (Monsters, Entities, the Borg etc. are at the bottom so decide if you also want to edit them) In the boxes on the left, there are two things you can do. You can either enter percentage numbers of the strngth you want those systems to be, so 1 means no change, 0.5 means a 50% reduction in strength, and 2 means double the strength, or you can enter physical numbers. If you chose to enter percentages, you must then click on the 'multiply and save' button, or if you chose physical numbers, you must click on the 'add and save' button.

Once you've done this, you will need to add your edited shiplist.sst file back into stbof.res with winrar or an old version of winzip (Do NOT use Winzip 11 as it will break stbof.res due to changes in the way it zips files. Winzip 10 or below works correctly)

For simplicities' sake, i've saved a copy of shiplist.sst already for you with the stats of ALL ships (Including Borg etc) reduced by 50%. I kept the build costs and maintenance costs the same though to ensure the AI doesn't just double its' shipbuilding output to compensate. You can download this file from Here. Again, you will need to add it to your stbof.res file with winrar. If you want the ships to have different strengths then you can do this by following my instructions above.

Post by **Locustus** » Sat May 10, 2008 9:05 am

BioHaZZarD99 wrote:
Locustus wrote:You should really scale down all stats proportionately to at least the general level of stats in vanilla BOTF.
I strongly disagree. The larger stats seems to have no effect on me, and it makes battles last longer... A battle that would normally take 4 or 5 turns in vanilla now takes like 10 turns in UDM.. It's also made me re-think a few strategies that I used in vanilla...

There is no need to have large stats: weapons are reduced in number and scaled down as well as shields. What's the problem? And I am certain that stats and number of weapons are decisive in lag, maybe crashes too.

It's just the "Ooh, it's so cool, look at the 4800 shields!" That is completely irrelevant, all game elements are relative to each other. Keep the proportions. And I agree that weapon power needs to be much weaker than vanilla.

Strike cruisers might get a bonus for assaults and batteries shouldn't ask you to bring your hardest shielded starship type. I think battery damage was moddable.

Post by **Locustus** » Sat May 10, 2008 9:15 am

Wow, thanks for the large reply, matress_of_evil.

I think I used some version of botFED in the past. Thanks for the links and the edit. I think I'll play a little with the editors just because it's fun. I'll be able to see all stats and think about them.

While I'm at it, I think I'll triple ship costs and maintenance. That will make ships matter more and be less numerous (more fun, less lag/crashes

)

Why do you think Ultimate Editor is more stable? They should both merely change some numbers representing stats. What does Ultimate Editor offer more, even without group select? I think I'll try and see.

......

Well, this isn't good: Vista says botFED can't run on 64 bit systems and UE seems a bit overwhelming. Am I supposed to "make a mod" in order to make the changes?

......

I played a little with UE and found that it can open save games or stbof from the same menu. Opening stbof solves my problem it seems. There actually IS a group edit for ships.

Thanks for the help, after I finish this game I'll be on to UDM, it looks extremely promising.