Research database and terraforming

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Special Research

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Every time you complete a level of all six technologies, you get a chance to learn special research. I would recommend you study what three choices are being offered, and choose one, and put the slider to 100% . That way you gain that special research tech pretty fast. I do that consistently as once I believe I missed out as a second special research was offered before the first choice was complete.

I now consistently get special research finished on every level and move on. It seems like level eight finishes about turn #325 and so research is about 31-33% finished by then creating an era of technology and ships and troops. It is well balanced. The ship types need some diversity and tweaking though.

I believe in retraining military units to get them experience. Realize in a galactic setting how bizarre everything would be against the unknown. It would be a wonder we could communicate whatsoever as we have no common frames of reference. We cannot truly communicate with even our pets so how could we conceivably communucate with extraterrestrials? It's illogical to imagine we could as likely we lack common values.

Retraining would be essential to military units as panic and shock would be ordinary...at first. You feel nervous coming into a dark house. You feel even more nervous coming into a locked dark house with a robber inside. Now imagine the unknown in the vastness of space time in a galaxy and with extraterrestrials. Some jump at spiders that are less than the size of the palms of their hands. What would soldiers do against aliens?

Strangely enough, so far they seem to all be bipeds with bilateral symmetry. There are two main theories in xenobiology. One is that bipedal beings with bilateral symmetry would be a common evolved species as an apex predator. The second theory is they would be so alien that no communication is plausible as our eyes and hearing are extremely limited in the electromagnetic spectrum. What if they are non-corporeal or can see radio waves and communicate with xrays?

As such for soldiers, other beings could attack and defend in radically different ways. And mechanisms and computer technology and weaponry exists as extensions of sensory input and as exaggerations of human's able to attack and defend as apex predator with adaptability being our primary weapon along with cunning. How is that for a run on sentence!

We're thinking phasers and torpedoes when actually there is no logical reason that their technology is identical. It could be based on transporter tech that removes the hull. It could alter the warp drives to implode.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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Race specific terraforming of some planet classes is logical. Even the minor races who cannot expand with colonization, may not be indigenous to their present home system.

This is a way to perhaps mod terraforming. They have a special tech, and buildings are created in a tree ie with levels, and thus special terraforming ships might exist, and so new planets get colonized by floating structures on gas giants.

Back in the late seventies, fururists imagined floating colonies at Lagrange points in geosynchronous orbits. There was something called the L5 society. That could show up with modding.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t3JfHp9ls8M
That is labeled "hard" science fiction as it's technologically plausible not space opera.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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The solution to irritating maps devoid of M class planets is to terraform a candidate in a system, particularly with many such planets, and so colonize that system.

BUT it's frustrating as at least initially it takes a long time.

It's counterintuitive, but if you terraform many planets in a system, you induce famines as your growth rate is unrealistically high (which reflects not the birth rate, but likely immigration of new colonists from elsewhere as the system has been established. See Ellis Island in the USA.

What happens is the growth rate exceeds the rate of creating farms unless you rush them. Which can exacerbate the famine.

Use wisdom and slowly terraform, likely the ideal strategy to modulate growth versus farming and terraforming is to move a colony ship from system to system, only terraforming one not all in that system. Then famines are easier to manage. So you colonize one planet, and ten turns later, a colony ship terraforms one other planet, then does likewise elsewhere. If that ship colonized all planets in a system, the growth rate versus farming rate might induce a famine.

Colony ships not only colonize planets, but might properly terraform by navigating from system to system, doing terraforming on one planet, then moving through a circuit of such systems. But that is annoying when it's easier to just leave a colony ship within a system and terraform them all. Then go colonize a nearby system.

This is a supposition, but I am getting ready to test a hypothesis that the most likely candidate is to terraform and colonize is an L class waterworld. Nothing makes terraforming faster in turn #1, but I bet the ability to grow food is easier in an ocean with algae. Interestingly a plausible solution to the energy crisis to avoid fossil fuels is biodiesel by using algae. In the USA, there is a scientific theory that enough algae could be grown in one of our 50 states to supply all petroleum needs through such algae based biodiesel. That might be the end of a dependence on domestic oil which internationally facilitates terrorism as petroleum sales fund terrorism.

I may mod that theory.

This is plausible. Algae grown in a region half the size of Maine would supply 100% of all petroleum needs for the USA. Then you could eat algae as well as spirulina is a superfood.
https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=466
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324027
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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Confirmed. The Omega Alliance scrapped their starbase, recouped the titanium and iridium deposits plus 20,000 credits. Then built routine infrastructure and colony ships. Then picked the best systems within the yellow zone for colonization. Then a second wave in any system which had a planet which could be terraformed, and subsequently colonized that too.

Doing so means two main things. First making sure the home system has lots of titanium to make colony ships, thus when selling mined materials, judiciously selling titanium from the homesystem or you shoot yourself in the foot (you sabotaged your capacity to generate far more colony ships that plausible). Second, such ill-advised terraformed planets likely will have poor agriculture. You can live in the desert, but history shows that unless there is riverflooding (like Egypt and the Nile which created a bread basket situation), then starvation through famine is likely without staying on top of it. Historically such agriculture caused high salinity in the soil which meant accumulated mineral salts eventually doomed what agriculture was plausible. There is no free ride.

Now colony ships seem to have a terraforming rate, and without looking I speculate varying degrees of terraforming ability. If so, then a modder should create classes of ships designed for better range, speed, sensor scanning, and that terraform faster. It's not a general.purpose colony ship, but specialized to terraform classes of planets with far more rigorous conditions.

Certain classes of planets terraform faster than others. A measely single planet surrounded by gas giants may be a terrible choice except for being thorough. It seems high level technology allows gas giant terraforming. If I was able to mod (see the difficulties encountered), I would specifically create whole buildings, troops, and vessels that benefit such infrastructure on gas giants as it takes so long. If it takes a long time to accomplish it, out of fairness, something spectacular should be achievable like fanatastic troops (due to high gravity and genetic engineering...like Superman) or extremely strong hulls of vessels or rare large credits due to a specialized building on gas giants, or unbelieveably rich deposits of detrium or iridium.

The analogy is akin to what desperate Japanese did by invading Hokaido,.displacing the Ainu and growing meagre amounts of food at first given the limits of agriculture in the Muromachi period circa 1350 AD but generally the great push came centuries later. Desperate tactics in desperate times that ultimately led to the Russo-Japanese War and Manchuria expansion prior to WW2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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I strongely admire BotE and the difficult programming that went into it. Despite its age, some remarkable aspects could still emerge especially as as a sandbox game or if highly modded. Some datafile changes would make the program 5 times better. Alter the incidence rate of planets in general to 9 system, and the program is 10 times better.

Add events and random events as storytelling and the program is 20 times better and not just as an economic simulation in a space milieu with 5% combat, but a fullfledged space roleplaying game.

Difficulty levels should make sense, and likely through an ease of making credits by various revenue streams. Higher difficulty reduces this. Higher difficuties would load different building tables thus restrict income and creation, and likely would facilitate loading prebuilt maps. Some maps are easy and diverting, and some are nailbiters where you would have to be brilliant to win.

Allow real prebuilt campaign maps, and the game is 50 times better.

In the Prose Edda, there is a myth of the Naglfar which is an entire ship made of the nails of the dead. As if they held on to some afterlife by their nails and refused to die. Partially it's a testament to the mettle of Viking sailors who refused to give up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naglfar
From the east comes Hrym with shield held high;
In giant-wrath does the serpent writhe;
O'er the waves he twists, and the tawny eagle
Gnaws corpses screaming; Naglfar is loose.
O'er the sea from the north there sails a ship
With the people of Hel, at the helm stands Loki;
After the wolf do wild men follow,
And with them the brother of Byleist goes.[4]
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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You certainly can terraform a P class glaciated planet and the colonize it. We always knew you could send a second colony ship and do so. But I don't think anyone has ever mentioned that being the primary colony site ,but rather finding a system with an M class planet, colonizing it, then terraforming other planets next.

In testing, I have found a glitch where a Q class colony site (Ascellus Primus) had no titanium. So I made a resource route from Omega Prime to get it to upgrade some. Later Acellus Primus 5 is a P class planet (and terraformed) and does have titanium, yet BotE won't let me create a basic titanium mine. And Ascellus Primus 4 is a C class planet with titanium (and terraformed), yet still no basic mine is allowed. The whole system has abundant natural resources of every kind, but this kind of colonization is not documented.

If you elect to do nontraditional terraforming, you might identify which planet is terraformable, and which has titanium (which is so essential as currently configured), and make that your primary colony site. Then see if you can create a basic titanium mine.

See the modding topic. It's certainly possible to mod the buildings data file, and create alternative buildings which would in effect allow titanium production, say through transporter technology, or whatever our imagination conjures up.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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It's possible that the AI major empires might never do such a thing, so only humans would and therefore have an advantage. However it is not easy to do so, but risky as agriculture is much tougher until the higher level farms or replicators are built upon it.

What is possible is not always efficient or cost effective.

This was a special test to see how populated I could get the galaxy with minor races. And I intentionally set this to 95%. By doing so, BotE assigns them spots on the map that effectively reduces much of the colonization sites for the major races.

The point was to beta test the programming as I signed up to do so. In my opinion, the minor races are among the best features so I was trying to maximize them and still see if BotE was playable.

Regardless of this level of constraint of traditional colonization, the Omega Alliance has a full page of colonies with LOTS of minor race neighbors too. If it works, then the galaxy will be heavily populated.

If you don't like that aspect, and just want BotE to be a military strategy game, you can set the minor race % to something very low or even zero, but that would effectively remove diplomacy as a goal from being achievable. It would mean a huge number of colonies as the major races would be unrestricted.

If you want lots of minor races to conquer, this is certainly how to do it. There will be many ground invasions and many fleet battles...unless you are the Terrans using diplomacy, or the Heyoun using bribes.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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The next logical thing to try is to send a colony ship to Ascellus Primus 5 which has titanium, and add colonists to it, and then see if Basic Mining for titanium is allowed versus just theoretically allowed since it's colonized neighbor has access to it.

Sale of titanium are no longer being maintained at the desired price as the Khaoran may be stumped looking for colony sites. The price rose from 94 to 210 or so and stayed there, but I sold titanium maybe 4 times and the last time, the price did not recover.

Recovery of ore/crystal's price is a function of demand and active construction. Maybe only the Omega are able to do so???
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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Confirmed. BotE programming wants to see the first colonized planet having titanium to set up what can be constructed, and since the primary Ascellus Primus planet had no titanium, it then maintained that no mining was possible...even later when a terraformed planet in the same system Ascellus Primus 5 has titanium as well as Ascellus Primus 4 too.

But when I send more colonists there, now Basic Mining for titanium is allowed.

I think this undiscovered feature will add an entirely new wrinkle to the game. (Sorry another American idiom meaning add a whole new dimension or strategem).

I'm following up with Thisbe 3 which is a K type planet that has not been terraformed, then I will try to add colonists to it as it already had some on another planet in the Thisbe system.

When you have several terraformed planets, it's better to terraform them all in this nontraditional method. Or select the planets, one by one, and note which have titanium, and terraform that one, then add colonists.

Colonizing traditionally means colonizing an M class planet and then aubaequently terraforming and coloniats emigrate there.

Nontraditional terraforming alters say a K class world, then colonizes it. But if that planet has no titanium on it, yet other planets with titanium are subsequently terraformed, does not immediately update that basic mining of titanium can take place. You have to colonize on it too.

This genuinely alters gameplay,but the AImay not be smart enough to take advantage. There is no way to know which planets the AI colonized in what order...unless we had a logfile.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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I just had a rare example of a bug in BotE.

The way I do terraforming, I send streams of colony ships to new sectors and maximize my resources by doing multiple colonizations per system, rather than colonize the M class planet and wait for slow migration of citizens across the sector. Since I play on huge maps that are 40x40 where minor alien races make up 95% of the map, then the major alien races do not get the best start positions, but rather the minor races do. This means extensive terraforming is required, and that also means LOTS of fleet battles as the majority of those hostile minor alien races who have their own ship types then show up. This is an added challenge that means two things can happen.

1. The minor alien races maintains their autonomy as they are initially stronger than the major alien races.

2. A few minor alien races might become members and so major alien races get a significant boost militarily. This emulates the start of the Federation in Star Trek as the Humans had two significant warp 4 NX-01 class ships while the Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites had significant fleets as well as maybe six others.

Only a few with fleets will do so. The vast bulk of the galaxy ends up have these big dangerous fleets as late as turn 650+. That means you get some very tough battles at some point.

Now there are two rare bugs.

1. When you don't send multiple colony ships, then although there are multiple resources in the sector, the program does not recognize that all those resources are present,, and so they can't be mined. Sending multiple colony ships tends to remedy this.

However you have to send colony ships right away as the growth rate of colonies is unnaturally high, and so if they grow too fast, then they won't allow multiple colonization as the population would have no place to go.

2. Now the rarer bug, I sent 3 colony ships straight away to Alpha Tauri. One ship colonized and the maximum is 20 billion and 8 billion are in place in a colony. The program properly saw all the resources but it would not let the other two colony ships take over the other two planets.

It's just an annoying bug as when you do rapid colonization, that means lots of labor and faster industrialization, and so you save money as then rushing infrastruction building is not so necessary.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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Why does this matter?

The way BotE is written, the typical sector will only allow 2-3 trade routes/resource routes per sector. Now that is a game flaw as what that does is severely limit resource routing and trade, thus in the first case, slows rapid infrastructure building. The in the second case, sharply reduces trade income.

You can make an abysmal trade income by diplomatic negotiation by creating traderoutes, but I don't recommend it. Diplomatically, this is moronic as it helps the minor alien races build ships when you desperately need those resources. And I have excellent diplomatic relations, so there is no need to "prime the pump" by selling them my ore. A few diplomatic gifts cause a rapid rise in the minor alien races' attitude and accetance. That is wiser...and ultimately cheaper.

You can end up making MILLIONS in a staggered sale of resources instead by manipulating the resource prices by rushing infrastructure. Then your sectors are heavily industrialized, but only if you carefully plan your mining and that all takes resource routing.

This is how you win the game.

Secondly BotE artificially limits mining by imposing a cap on how much mining you can store at 125,000 per resource per planet. So even if you have 10 titanium mines, rather than 4, there is no economic benefit as you just fill up the storage cap faster in the former case. This is why you want to build only 4 mines and do upgrades even if they are expensive

Every time you do rapid upgrades, this causes a exponential rise in the value of a resource. Then you sell ore/crystals. Get it? It's a major difference in profit pontential.

To build large fleets of the best warships past turn 640+, you have to do this or you will have a lesser military.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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If you do all these ideas, then you end up with extremely efficient industrialization and large projects get done routinely in less than ten turns, and so rushing projects is largely not needed. Very often given only 4 factories but at high upgrade levels, then many projects get done in 1-3 turns. Even starships and the best level units get done FAST. To wage effective war, and given a maximum sized galaxy, and slow speeds of starships in BotE, you NEED rapid construction of starships so they can be deployed way across the galaxy in a timely manner.

There is a method to the madness in military doctrine. There is nothing unplanned in waging effective WAR.

Think about the delays of logistics and how you outsmart the AI and be ready and that means you planned to have starships and troops in place, and the very best ones at that, so your fleets can crush them.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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There are two main kinds of players.

Builders/Turtlers who are usually new players who try to build extensively and with high defense, and old pro wargamers who do this somewhat so they have very strong defenses and extensive infrastructure for a WAR MACHINE.

Pop Rushers are young players who exploit by first strikes and typically neglect defenses. That may work with one opponent, but when they do first strikes, they are vulnerable to an attack on their home sectors by a 3rd smart opponent who likely is also using rush techniques. They become victims of their own tactics.

Old battle veterans do both/and not either/or. They use high defense with careful strategizing and blitzkrieg attacks as first strikes, but largely because they are ready to seize the intiative, while not engaging in pointless war that does not allow occupation and actually seizing amd controling new sectors.

That is how to truly win in war. Pop rushing is an exploit against weak AI.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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There is also the pillager as a rare subtype. In games that allow tearing down infrastructure and recouping profit, knowing they can attack, but not successfully occupy an enemy sector, they launch a first strike, sell all the infrastructure, run off with all the money, and use that to buy new ships and new units. In history during the Dark Ages, the Vikings and the Russians did that extremely well.

The sacked region then cannot muster new soldiers and disintergrates. Then since so weakened, a second occupation works, but man it's expensive to rebuild.
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Re: Research database and terraforming

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I just terraformed a sector with 2 tiny planets, one a P class which is an icy world and a K type which is barren. The total population cap is under 7 billion. The rest are gas giants. It allowed one colony ship and then no more and no spacedock is possible and not all resources are available.

The other time this happened that I can recall, there were 3 O class planets which are oceans and so no space dock was allowed.

Be careful terraforming. I have a LOT of colony ships terraforming or moving into place, and I suspect this bogs down turn times. For modding reasons, if we can discern the save game file hex addresses, then set save games so very little terraforming is needed. Just enough for flavor. And this mght speed up turn times on giant maps after turn 650+.
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