The old BotF Diplomacy problem - possible solution?

[Darth_Windu]

please, ppl, think a bit more about those three little steps i spoke about. it seems none of u grasps them quite yet.

That's because your steps make no sense

Anyway anyone think this might be a doable solution?

[goodone]

please, ppl, think a bit more about those three little steps i spoke about. it seems none of u grasps them quite yet.

That's because your steps make no sense

ahhh, let me rephrase those steps then , for those w/ cheaper tickets in this theater [no pun intended]:

1. make friends with another major empire , gaining additional ship range , and
2. use ships with now additional range to introduce urself to every single minor race of ur friendish major empire u made friends with in step 1, then
3. break friends with the major empire u previously made friends with in step 1, to b able to
4. bribe and steal every single minor race of now ex-friendish major empire u just broke friends - simply to get hold on newly discovered without-this-little-steps-unreachable tasty little minors.

cardassian questions, anyone?

ps. i am sorry i had to use four steps in this presentation. i understand it must be quite confusing.

[ahhh, irony, what would we do w/o it...?]

[Pigman]

Unless I'm missing something here Goodone,

2. use ships with now additional range to introduce urself to every single minor race of ur friendish major empire u made friends with in step 1, then

Step 2 is the problem. If you've made friends with another Major Empire, you can't meet their minor races, even if you visit their systems. At least that's what I believe happens, some, if not all of the time.

I got so fed up with this situation in the early days of playing this game when it first came out, that I gave up on entering into any agreements with Major Empires, just so that I could meet all of the minors.

Now, if I'm wrong about this perhaps someone will correct me, but to be fair I haven't tried it out lately for the reason mentioned above.

Regards

Pigman

[thunderchero]

The problem can not be fixed at this time.

If someone knew how to fix this they would offer info.

this also happens without treaty if minor is subjugated.

bug or not most people would like it fixed so why are we debating about it?

thunderchero

[Pigman]

thunderchero said

The problem can not be fixed at this time.

If someone knew how to fix this they would offer info.

this also happens without treaty if minor is subjugated.

bug or not most people would like it fixed so why are we debating about it?

I couldn't agree more thunderchero, in fact I already did in my earlier post.

I think we're getting into semantics here and to be honest, it doesn't matter if it's a bug or not, it's very irritating, particularly if you like playing as Feds in single player mode and using their more peaceful means to grow your empire.

It doesn't sit well to have to subjugate these minors that cannot be seen in the diplomacy screen, even if you've walked over their systems!

So for most people this ones a case of live with what can't be changed and Goodone, if you like it the way it is, good luck to you, but you're in a minority, so let's not waste any more time on this unless someone finds a solution.

Regards

Pigman

[goodone]

don't get me wrong, m8s, i agree it's not a very nice feature for the entire diplomacy subsystem.

all i did here is offer some info about what programmers’ idea was, imho.

having minded that:
1. game was released in time when sp gameplay dominated,
2. federation as the dominant choice for race selection,
3. star trek series ethics rather forbid stealing minors as a series story,
4. game was released according to license with tng series, and on premise of not disturbing series image,
it is my opinion that this diplomacy feature was intended, as to present the original star trek look and feel, especially compared with some other popular tbs names, like smac and civ.

most of the imbalances, crippling-features and all the stuff we had to deal with in the last decade come from the fact that the game is optimized to federation look and feel, standards, morale and gives federation great advantages by default.

i'm sure ppl from microprose were not so blind not to see how much unbalanced the entire game is, and this diplomacy thingy is simply to disable one of the most probable gameplay misuses players could do.

having said all this, let's, by all means, call it simply a bug.

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

Well, this issue (not to confuse with the independent minor race Bug) appears belong to empire trade, not to the actual treaty levels (see Ferengi free trade).
The possibility to trade with a system of an unkown minor race, apparently corrupts a kind of internal diplomacy list (coincident or causal?), needed for first contacts. But of course it’s just speculation.

Not so long ago, I searched for the ferengi free trade code. But the actual task becomes harder because the AI / human-player trade between empires strongly differs : e.g. as soon Ferengi AI meet another major, it can trade with all systems of this major, even the unknown/ never visited (assuming no war declaration). On the other hand a Ferengi player can even trade with an unknown empire if the systems were known before they were colonised/conquered by the unknown empire.


Therefore instead of the trails to localise sources of bug, I searched for the diplomatic first contact code itself.
Diplomatic contact in BotF depends on ship movements(exclusively).

Beginning with sub_46B800 (military_turn_process) there are three paths:

1.) sub_46A460 -> sub_46A560 -> sub_46A770 -> sub_46A8F0
2.) sub_46FD80 -> sub_470F50 -> sub_47612C -> sub_46A8F0
3.) sub_46B1E0 -> sub_46A770 -> sub_46A8F0

Sub_46A8F0 seems (at least partial) responsible for first contacts:

mov eax, 300 -> set internal event code
mov edx, 0A8000 & mov edx, 8000 -> set “cosmeticâ€