Map speed of ships

[Iceman]

How bout increasing the warp speeds of ships as they progress through the tech tree? Something that was ignored in other forums.

Hi, bubbasynklayr.
What other forums are those?

I know you asked for this before, but like I said at the time, it's really easy to mod.
I'm assuming you do know that ships' speeds do increase with tech levels, so I'm (also) assuming you just want to increase the speeds overall.

Get Notepad++, and edit the following file:
\Resources\Data\TechObjectDatabase.xml

Search for the word Speed, which should take you right to the part where all the ships are listed. Change the values for the ships you want to mod:

<Speed>1</Speed>

Save the file. And voilá, done!

[Iceman]

What does everyone think about this?
I guess the point is to increase by 1 the galactic speed of all ships ?

What could be the consequences in gameplay terms, besides speeding up the game pace ?

[the6the]

I think the question was whether to incrementally increase the speed of all ships as the tech tree expands (by researching propulsion, I guess). I'm not a fan of this concept.
I'd rather it remain that the ship speed increase is related to the version of the ship itself, as they unlock throughout the tech tree. It will be great when we have the option to upgrade the old ships to the newer versions, though. Right now we have to scuttle them, which seems a shame / waste, especially since the resources are lost in the process. Or am I missing something?

---

But yeah.. ship speed should remain dependent on ship type/version.
Lots of worms would start crawling out of that can, if we open it.

[bubbasynklayr]

This is ridiculous! In the original game, all empires had incremental increases of warp speed from R&D. The Constellation Class DDA (Stargazer) was by far the fastest ship in the game! It was the Federations rapid response ship! Made for a great raider too. In your game, no matter how far I get in Propulsion tech, all ships are dirt slow. Why you don't change it, I have no idea!

[geordie]

I had to think over the speed increase proposal a little longer. There were other topics touch as well so I suppose I divide my response into some parts.
First - the ship speed increase.
Generally I would support that, because I think it would make the game more dynamic. And I am against any automatic increase based on the research, even if it is a part of the BotF heritage. But not a blind adding +1 to every ship speed, because we should look at its range as well. There are cruisers with speed range of 2/4 and a speed increase in such case would look ridiculous.
And I am against any range changes, at lease for now, because then we would get completely different game. I would leave that for modding.
The next case to consider is how it would change the game in smaller maps. Unfortunately I have almost no experience in smaller maps, probably I played a medium one only once.
My proposal is to have speed 1 for the tier 1 ships - the available area is usually too small to use more speed (of course we would need to move a scout somewhere sometimes, but too easy game is not a target I think). And respectively speed 2 for the tier 2 ships and speed 3 for the tier 3 ones (maybe with some exceptions).
It would allow to have real ship production centers as it would be slightly less dependant on the distance.
And - it's important for me - to include the ships of all minor races, because they are starting ship production as early as possible and after a membership agreement we get quite many somehow useless ships - the advantage is only in a deterrence of other major races to declare war.
I believe that eventually the minor races would offer unique ships so the speed would be still important. For example similar to the Vulcan survey ship which is the best in the game.

I would propose to get a test patch to check how any such concept works.

[Iceman]

In your game, no matter how far I get in Propulsion tech, all ships are dirt slow.

This is absolutely untrue, obviously.

Why you don't change it, I have no idea!

Well, first of all because you're the only one actually asking for this And vocally so.
Like I already said, you can mod whatever you do not like. Please do not insist on this, and especially with this "demanding" tone.

Ships' speeds are the exact same as in BotF (give or take). In Tiny and Small maps, which are ~the sizes of BotF's maps, there's really little difference. Ofc, Supremacy has some map sizes that are much larger, but I'm playing Medium maps (48x48) and speeds are just fine.

[Iceman]

I split the scrapping part of the discussion into a new thread, but some of the posts were about both topics, so I had to edit them a bit (moving text only, not changing content!).
This post is thus out of the original order.

I think the question was whether to incrementally increase the speed of all ships as the tech tree expands (by researching propulsion, I guess). I'm not a fan of this concept.

Ah, right, I should have read it better
I'm not sure I'm a fan either. If we were to do this, why only for speed? We'd have to increase pretty much all the stats.

But yeah.. ship speed should remain dependent on ship type/version.
Lots of worms would start crawling out of that can, if we open it.

Would it mean that a tier 1 ship would have +1 speed when the tier 2 ship became available? If so, then why would I want tier 2 ships if the tier 1 equivalent is much cheaper and has the same speed (and, assuming, other stats too)?
If the tier 1 ships would only get a speed increase by the time you get tier 3 instead, then 2 eras have passed, the ship is junk by that time.
I might be missing something, but not sure what...

[Iceman]

Generally I would support that, because I think it would make the game more dynamic.

It would also reduce your reaction time to attacks, and affect intercept, and probably some other aspects of the game. That's why I mentioned the effects.

And I am against any automatic increase based on the research, even if it is a part of the BotF heritage.

Propulsion research does affect the speed of "ships", but only those that carry envoys

But not a blind adding +1 to every ship speed, because we should look at its range as well. There are cruisers with speed range of 2/4 and a speed increase in such case would look ridiculous.

Yes, we would have to rework all the Range values too. And with higher Range values, for one, outposts would probably be made all but obsolete. And, see above re attacks and intercept.

And I am against any range changes, at lease for now, because then we would get completely different game. I would leave that for modding.

Absolutely agree.

The next case to consider is how it would change the game in smaller maps. Unfortunately I have almost no experience in smaller maps, probably I played a medium one only once.

Think of playing BotF with higher speed values.

My proposal is to have speed 1 for the tier 1 ships - the available area is usually too small to use more speed (of course we would need to move a scout somewhere sometimes, but too easy game is not a target I think). And respectively speed 2 for the tier 2 ships and speed 3 for the tier 3 ones (maybe with some exceptions).

But that's not very far of what we have now!
Notice that Cruisers have lower speeds than Destroyers so that the latter are not absolutely irrelevant.
If all ship classes of the same tier have the same speed, balance is shattered.

It would allow to have real ship production centers as it would be slightly less dependant on the distance.

Production centres should (have to) move to the frontline. This is only a real issue in large(r) map sizes.
I'm not saying it's not important! It's just that the range of map sizes in Supremacy, while allowing flexibility, has the disadvantage of creating these issues, as there isn't a magical solution that fits all sizes.

And - it's important for me - to include the ships of all minor races, because they are starting ship production as early as possible and after a membership agreement we get quite many somehow useless ships - the advantage is only in a deterrence of other major races to declare war.
I believe that eventually the minor races would offer unique ships so the speed would be still important. For example similar to the Vulcan survey ship which is the best in the game.

That's the plan, yes. Scouts and Surveyors of minor civs already have unique advantages. Destroyers and Cruisers are harder to do, as they can easily unbalance the game - because they're built in massive numbers, unlike Scouts and Surveyors.
Some time ago I was going to increase the speed of the Tellarite Cruisers, for example, but in this particular case, their Cruisers already have extra Hull (because of their engineering skills, and their construction expertise); increasing their speed too might make them OP. Sure, it's just one system building them, but they also have their unique fleetyard, that's 4 docks pumping out these Cruisers!
But yes, the plan is to make minor civ's ships have something that makes them attractive. Suggestions are welcome, ofc.
Some have cloaking capabilities, some have better hull, or better shields, or more weapons, or better pop health, or higher range, etc. We need to be extra careful with speed though.
(I basically applied the Cardassians' template for Hull, the Klingons' for weapons, the Fed's for shields, etc.)

I would propose to get a test patch to check how any such concept works.

No need for a patch, just some modding

[Iceman]

My proposal is to have speed 1 for the tier 1 ships - the available area is usually too small to use more speed (of course we would need to move a scout somewhere sometimes, but too easy game is not a target I think). And respectively speed 2 for the tier 2 ships and speed 3 for the tier 3 ones (maybe with some exceptions).

What we have now is something like, for the 4 eras:

Code: Select all

SCO: 1 / 2 / 3 / -
DES: 1 / 2 / 2 / 3    ;  [Fed/Kli 1 / 2 / 3 / 4]
CRU: 1 / 1 / 2 / 2    ;  [Dom/Kli 1 / 2 / 2 / 3]
STK: - / 1 / 2 / 2
COM: - / 1 / 2 / 2    ;  [Dom - / 1 / 2 / 3]
HCR: - / - / - / 3
non: 1 / 1 / 2 / -    ;  [Dom/Kli TTs 1 / 2 / 2 / -]

(The Romulan STK II's Speed was wrong, increased it to 2)


Only the Feds and the Klingons have a ship with Speed 4, their era IV Heavy Destroyer. Do we want speeds over 4 Cloaked ships.

Do we want era II non-combat ships, especially colony ships, to have Speed 2 Faster expansion, economy, research.
This (COL II) might the less troublesome change (low impact on early game of Medium- maps); maybe not change it for the Kli/Dom, since they have faster TTs already (an incentive for aggressive expansion rather than peaceful expansion)

Changing a single value might require changing most/all of them.

Concrete suggestions (as in, values) are welcome to start a productive discussion; operative word here is concrete.

@geordie, I still have it in my notes that you want CRU IIs to have Speed 2. Will that not make DES all but useless?

[bubbasynklayr]

In your game, no matter how far I get in Propulsion tech, all ships are dirt slow.

This is absolutely untrue, obviously.

Why you don't change it, I have no idea!

Well, first of all because you're the only one actually asking for this And vocally so.
Like I already said, you can mod whatever you do not like. Please do not insist on this, and especially with this "demanding" tone.

Ships' speeds are the exact same as in BotF (give or take). In Tiny and Small maps, which are ~the sizes of BotF's maps, there's really little difference. Ofc, Supremacy has some map sizes that are much larger, but I'm playing Medium maps (48x48) and speeds are just fine.

More take than give!

[AlexMcpherson79]

More take than give!

Dude, there's more give here than take, simply from the fact that the ships can be modded with freaking NOTEPAD, unlike, well... basically most games out there, where there's use of proprietary file formats, obfuscation of where the data we want to mod is, encryption of that data, and so much more!

and some MODS to games that DONT have ALL of those are guilty of adding it in for their changes, because "Waaah this aint for casuals you can't just modify the normandy's fuel reserves or use rate so the SR-2's not running on fumes by the time you get to the next system no matter how straight-a-line you managed it waaaah!"

(Paraphrased, but the intent and meaning of the mod's reply is right there is not written in proprietary language, unobfuscated and not encrypted unlike how they modified Mass Effect 3's galaxy map system to ignore a users' modified coalesced file values.)

I could, if I wanted, make a mod that refers to the Cardassians as a bunch of misunderstood good-hearted people who just wanted to make friends, and the Bajorans were the militaristic lot who somehow let them into their beds then cried Grape afterward.

Or a mod that poses the idea that Starfleet promotes the least skilled to the captains chair and their ships are made of paper so the first shot always causes a mess (by way of reducing all the stats) but also the ships have speed of plot, so they can go get destroyed on the otherside of the galaxy no matter how stupid it sounds.

Or that Romulans are just Vulcans on most days, it's just that time of the month when they show emotions.

Or that the Klingons respond well to being fired at and would immediately want an alliance. (... I have the feeling, modifying certain values would allow this?)

Nevermind that to me, the Cardassians, circa TNG/DS9 pre-WYLB are probably secretly as individual as many, its just that so many of the individuals in-the-military really are brainwashed into taking the whole Nazi metaphor beyond Eleven in an effort to make Spinal Tap jealous, and the civilians are just that freaking scared of their government that really, I'm surprised the bit from Way of the Warrior even happened, though not the later s7's Resistance Against The Dominion Overlords thing
"Yeah, Damar, what kind of people would do that?" hits harder when you have either experience (nope, thank god) or a overactive high-detail-capable imagination like me.

Nevermind that I did have moments of fun watching the newer stuff but just... for god sake Starfleet is supposed to be a semi-military semi-civilian organization where the military part really shows in the senior crew being freaking professionals and acting like it. If I can like Sisko and like Janeway as the respective captains of their series then the argument that I'm a racist misogynist immediately fails but that's all anyone on the side of "DIS being nothing but good" can cry out about those of us who just, don't think its the best thing since sliced bread.

Okay to me, the few times romulans appeared, a lot of them managed "stoic" fairly well until pressed, but that's more down, in my mind, to the idea that the ones we're seeing are usually, you know.... Spies, Subcommanders or Senators, and you dont get to be good at any/either of those if you can't act like a professional. I mean, there's, somewhere in the Lore, Romulans that managed to pretend to be Vulcans for years, so its not that they have that-time-of-the-month instead of that-time-of-the-decade. (also now that I just realized the other reason I used that: Vulcans are Werewolves. I literally wasn't thinking about women, but recently someone rec'd a fanfic of a story that mixes Marvel and Twilight. And dammit I hate the latter. stoopid sparkly stuff and what the hell is all that bond crap for the werewolves. But there it was, making me kinda interested in Twilight. I need a shower.)

... I might have a problem with Discoveries' "how Vulcans met Klingons" and "ever since then-" thing about 'so we fire first. You should fire first.' B.S. It probably really was part of why I went into the following episodes with 'okay whats wrong with this show' instead of 'how much can I switch my mind off to have fun' like it was with Voyager.

[Iceman]

More take than give!

I'm assuming that you know that BotF, being about the TNG era, has its equivalent in the Advanced start level, tier 3, in Supremacy.
Check the values I posted above for tier 3 ships, please.

If you are not going to post anything actually constructive, I'm afraid I have nothing else to say to you - you don't seem to be able to offer anything but "I want you to increase speeds".

[bubbasynklayr]

Forget it. You people are hopeless...

[Iceman]

Very mature.
I guess you've shown that there was actually no (intention of a) meaningful contribution from your part.
Maybe you can find some other "people" to listen to you.

[Flocke]

Forget it. You people are hopeless...

Dude, chill down and make it better. Supremacy has a huge code base and it took these guys many years to get that far, and all you have to say is rant?
I keep modding BotF myself and despite that nowerdays I am an experienced software developer, and have lots of experience modding the game, in lack of time I didn't get any close to what Supremacy achieved and possibly never will do. Still I keep trying hard in my free time to mod BotF the way I like, and so do the Supremacy developers!