Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

If we had scripting and could add events, then based on a turn number or range of turns, for say the human player(s) being at a map coordinate , then display a text message. That is how we have stories in BotE. Visiting every map coordinate based on turn ranges, then the first time between a range of turns might display a paragraph, then visiting the same map coordinate at a later range of turns, might display a different paragraph. And so on.

It doesn't have to do anything, but it might. Thus exploring results in something there like the hulk of space wreckage. Visiting a sector with troops either through a ground invasion, or by creating troops, might also do the same process. Troops might discover a species like a survey team.

This adds so much richness to the galaxy of BotE but is possibly contingent on a modder being able to map, thus he or she knows what planet classes or star types or space anomalies or minor races exist in those map coordinates.

That is how BotE could gain a whole new audience. Certain mods could tailor those paragraphs to make some element horrifying, or exciting, or invoke pathos, or gravitas.

The helpscreens might do this task so it is entirely optional. See that icon might flash o make a sound effect play to tell you something has transpired. Due to scanning technology, or merely freighters or trade merchants due to luxuries, then these might be rumors or news that are communicated.

"Captain the isolinear scanners in map coordinate x,y have indicated that the presence of BLANK" and a whole paragraph displays or even a small graphic.

"Captain, a gold luxury merchant traveling through map coordinate x,y reports that Blank occurred in that sector and it alarmed her."

[UesugiKenshin]

I'm really dreading it, but if I write a little spreadsheet for the entire matrix of a maximum 40 * 40 galaxy an realizing there is some randomization, then recording every map coordinate's star type, planet class, size, and growth rate then is useful data. The right way would be to record the terraforming base time, and this varies based on the colony ship type (as they have terraforming points) plus experience weighs in to adjust how fast and that is also affected naturally by same of colony ships.

Then players would have
1. Estimated growth rates by planet class
2. And factored by size
3. Average terraforming time
4. What percentage of sectors have a specific planet class
5. What percentage of planets classes have certain raw materials
6. How frequently are various raw materials found (which should be a factor price)
7. How often do sectors have all six raw materials.

Your best case scenario for the least ill effects from mining as they are terrible at polluting the ground water would be asteroid mining. That would be a great addition and put all six resources in a section if an asteroid field was present.

I would do the same thing for moons around gas giants. You want more domestic raw materials and room for luxuries as that would solve many issues and luxuries add a whole new element to BotE with actual trade.

Wouldn't it more interesting to have set large minor races' homesectors with many planets and strong base infrastructure which would explain why they are strong enough to develop their own culture? Give them many planets and mines so they have lots of money to develop a so eventually have sector defenses and even generic troops.

Some minor races should have pretty great troops as they are designed that way, but it is not actualized yet. I think the Chamora Army would not be a pushover at all. If they dig in with several bunker types, and they are powered up, you would treat them with respect.

That kind of thing makes BotE interesting, otherwise it is just grindy for no reason as over and over again.

If it is open ended then diplomacy is more interesting. It it is a grand galactic Armageddon, then many minor races should be extremely tough to take so then victory is delicious and sweet.

[UesugiKenshin]

60-70% of the galaxy is terraformed already so to do it right means the next time I do a total multiplayer for all six empires, then taking the time to record all of that terraforming time which changes by research and ship type. Then posting the galactic analysis.

On a maximum galaxy, you are far enough away, that it's only after turn #300 that there is any jeopardy about colony ships doing team terraforming. In realistic practice, the Khaoran will attack them if no patrols are guarding them. That seems weird to me as it is not honorable, but a starship is a starship to them, and why their colony ships are armed.

On smaller galaxies, this would be a risky tactic. A smart player would swoop in and seize that juicy prize.

[UesugiKenshin]

Armed colony ships

The Herds class of the Herecletes


The Destiny class of the Khaoran (also called the Khayrin)

The Rise of Death class of the Khaoran

Those 3 are the only armed colony ships.


The Heyoun have the Tirax III and I 've been doing fast terraforming with them as they get 3 colonization points whereas most get 2 on the better levels.

The Cartare have the Carpawel II class colony ship which has a speed of 3 & 3 colonization points.

The Rotharians have the Cnutrix class colony ship and it has a speed of 2 and 3 colonization points.

The Terran Pittsburgh class has a speed of 3 and 3 colonization points.

The ships are well balanced, they just need subclasses. You can protect your colony ships, but this is raising the price based on time and raw materials and contingent upon research levels.

[UesugiKenshin]

Some outposts have the anti-melee atribute aka a dogkiller ship duty

Anti-melee ships are medium-sized ships whose main purpose is to destroy small ships.

20% bonus when fighting small ships
mediocre maneuverability

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... fsaufgaben


The Rotharian Sector Station outpost.

The Terran 378 outpost

The Terran 489 outpost

The Cartare Isjat outpost

The Khaoran Wrath outpost

Omega Outpost II

Omega Outpost III
Heyoun outposts lack this ability.

Anti-melee duties are to help negate fighters. Some fighters actually are dogkillers. One of the mistakes I made (not that it mattered) was not making this type of ship with that duty.

[UesugiKenshin]

All starbases have the command duty.
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... 29_.283.29

Command ship (ship command) (3)
All maneuvers during a battle are coordinated from command ships (assignment = 3) . They form the heart of the fleet and are equipped with large shield generators for defense.

All ships under their control receive a bonus to their hit rate

Some starbase levels have significant beam and torpedo damage capability.

Note that while you can redesign your starship weaponry, you cannot redesign your outposts and starbases.

The Heyoun have crappy outposts and starbases with half the weaponry. Be careful.

But here is what is weird: the Khaoran have abysmal outpost and starbase weaponry. That really makes no sense. The maximum torpedoes on the Khaoran Apocalypse (strangely named, right?) is only 16,200. It probably should be 116,200. As it is now, you would be foolish to just put up a starbase as the Khaoran without significant starships around it.

The maximum torpedoes is often 90,000 on the best starbases of empires, but the Terrans Starbase 40 class has 115,000 torpedoes.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... _Imperiums

[UesugiKenshin]

The most militaristic major race ends up being the least threat due to sabotage vulnerability, weaker troops due to less levels, weaker outposts and starbases. It seems intentional and illogical in my opinion. The Khaoran should provoke fear instead. It should be that you want them as allies and not as enemies.

[UesugiKenshin]

Most of the time, you want bare bones colony ships and transports as they get used up in the process of colonizing or becoming an outpost or starbase. You want some specialized colony ships doing terraforming in risky areas and then going to the next sector and keep building up experience and getting better and better. It can be a race to en masse terraform in a sector and colonize but one Khaoran cruiser then can devastate 10 experienced colony ships. You want speed not protection but for ground invasions, this is inherently risky so you want shields and strong hulls and escorts to protect those ground invasion forces. Later you can justify weaponry on subclasses. Some transports are can take 6 troops versus 2 so are very useful, but it would be disasterous if they got shot down.

[UesugiKenshin]

Troop training and starbase training rewards planners who pile them up in those sectors as they can gain enormous experience. The longer they sit there and train, the stronger they are by high experience which largely affects repairing damage. But the earlier you make them, then is costing a very large amount of upkeep. If you follow my system, this is negligible.


http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... -Erfahrung

Impact of the crew experience

The existing experience makes a difference: A (e.g. stolen) ship with X experience has a better chance of winning a fight than a ship with identical specifications and less experience.

Effect in combat

Source: CombatShip.cpp

Each level of experience brings a 20% bonus on repairing damage. In addition, the probability of being hit is higher.

I presume that latter statement means to say that higher starship experience results in higher accuracy.

[UesugiKenshin]

It is likely that some players would enjoy conquering all six major races and all 143 minor races, which means I should create a 100% minor race game. This series of advanced save games is built upon 90% although in practice by random galactic assortment, it falls to less than this amount. I presume this is a function of stellar anomalies. This means despite whatever you do, you are unlikely to ever see all 143 minor races.

I set it to 90% because there is a galactic setting in which you can minimize galactic neighbors or maximize them. Why? It creates conflict early as in testing, one is likely to eventually get along, while the other hates you.

It is useful to set either no minor races or maximal minor races (say some high setting of minor races like 90-100%). Why? Minor race modifiers are the main most reason for conquering as this modifier has a tremendous effect, while minor race ships are useful but can only make one per turn at maximum so not typically all that influencial for most races except the Heyoun. The Heyoun are horribly crippled in starship diversity.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... nen_Völker
This is a very important page of the German BotE wiki page as it lists the 32 space faring minor races who can make ships. If your race has a missing ship class, you have to overcome that omission.


The Bothasiori make the Tairi which is one of the few cloaked ships that is fully cloaked (camouflaged 6) but it is only a frigate class.

I could go thorough and point out all the great ships, but you really should study that yourselves and figure it out. That is the most rewarding aspect of BotE: seeing all the little clever design aspects on your own.


The Threndomas have the Moroph fighter class that is one of the most manueverable, so you can imagine if you made many in a squadron, they could outclass many others.

If your enemies gains the Zhordanians as members, they can make the Exocren battleship class, which has one of the most lethal beam weapons available. That is one starship you do not want your enemies to possess.


If humans are all playing a multiplayer game together, and they are all using the ship designer, these ships can be devastating to fight against. Look at the ship designer. When you gain all research and can mix and match torpedo tubes, you can make awesome starships where even a scout class ship can be incredibly deadly. Therefore you can go by the minor race's ship weaponry prior to this optimization begins as once tht threshold is crosseed, they can be maximized from that point on and their combat power can be many multiples of their base values.

When you have maximal minor race neighbors, what then naturally follows is when your major races begin, there is a shortage of sectors with good planets as the galaxy creation has to place minor races in homesectors on the map, thus 143 sectors are taken out of 1600 (on a maximum 40*40 matrix) plus 6 sectors are major race homesectors. This means many sectors that begin with M class planets are taken, and much more terraforming is necessary to get them ready to colonize. See? It has a major effect.

[UesugiKenshin]

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... pedo_Types

Effects

(not sure! Source TorpedoInfo.cpp ShipEditor)

Penetrating .............. shield penetrating torpedo
DoubleShieldDmg ..... Torpedo does double damage to the shields
DoubleHullDmg ......... Torpedo does double damage to the hull
IgnoreAllShields ........ Torpedo ignores all shields
CollapseShields ......... Torpedo hit can cause shields to collapse
ReduceManeuver ....... With a hit there is a chance to reduce the maneuverability of the target to ZERO.
Micro .......... Can only be fired from "Only for Microtorpedos" tubes
Torpedo dampening effect
Torpedoes lose their efficiency if they hit shields that are still relatively strong. The less of the shields are still active, the more powerful the torpedo is (but this does not apply to microtorpedos).

Shield value> 75% -> torpedo damage only 25%,
Shield value> 50% -> torpedo damage only 50%
Shield value> 25% -> torpedo damage 75%
Shield value <25% -> torpedo damage 100%.

Beam weapons are not affected. The shield attenuation only works with torpedoes.

Certain torpedo types can reduce manueverability to ZERO which would make starships to be sitting ducks. Those types of torpedos are:

Positron torpedo 400 ReduceManeuver Zhordanians , Andromedans
Energy dissipator torpedo I. 50 ReduceManeuver Omega Alliance , Brane
Energy Dissipator Torpedo II 100 Penetrating, ReduceManeuver Brane
Energy Dissipator Torpedo III 150 IgnoreAllShields, CanCollapseShields, ReduceManeuver Brane

That is significant military intel. You don't want your enemies to make Brane starships and put them in fleets and rendering your starships to zero manueverability, right?

[UesugiKenshin]

The natural inclinations in mythology is to have elements in which anthropomorphism plays a significant part of the myth. The gods and demigods in those myths act like human beings.

Pet owners are misguided and do the same thing. Even some zoologists like someone studying primates or elephants (family:Elephantidae and order: Proboscidea) or great predatory felines will do so.

Likely doing this with extraterrestrials or interdimensionals is incorrect and actually causes confusion when the whole point is to bring clarity to such encounters. They developed in entirely different ways under very different circumstances, so why would they develop the same rituals or behavior or desires?

Old style games are made as competitions to then quantify the winner of such games by income or territory or power, when actually these ideas are meaningless to science fiction fans. Humans live in one of the most insignificant regions of the galaxy and notable largely due to the presence of water and likely ideal weather conditions and gravity.

The science fiction fans care about...
How are those sentient species different than us?
What is their world like?
What do they do and what is their history?
What other species live on their planets?
What have their experiences taught them?
Are those experiences something we can learn from?
What technology do they possess?
Are our people in error regarding science or are they in error?

Conquering largely is not relevant. It will always play a role, as conflict is inevitable due to differences, but all the juicy interesting parts that make up the largest parts of serialized scientific fiction are largely about the other story elements.

The entire basis of sandbox games is exploration and discovery and dialogue.

[UesugiKenshin]

This picture is misleading.

The Vi are plants of some sort. The illustration is of the Da'unor in which a Vi lives within symbiotically. Looking at the graphic, it is plausible that they and elephants have many similarities before branching into an entirely different path as a species with bilateral symmetry that is also bipedal.

So for writing purposes, would there be any common elements between the two? That could be a launching point of inquiry to develop stories about the natural culture of the Da'unor.

They have eight limbs, with the largest as something akin to legs, and powerful arms, and two pair or vestigial arms used for likely fine motor work. The presence of which would entirely affect weaponry and martial arts and craftsmanship and art. Some a creature encountering a human would automatically view them as handicapped as humans would be missing many limbs.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Rotharians have many more sensory organs than humans and likely would see them as handicapped as probably these confer superior depth perception and peripheral vision and specialization of detecting different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. All of which might make them vastly better at combat or maybe they get so much sensory input, it delays analysis.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Cartare have more sensory organs as well, but they are binocular and the presence of a nose is immediately noticable. Both glow red. Maybe they largely see in the infrared spectrum? It is plausible. Maybe they are colorblind?