Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

At least ten times, and probably 30 times, after turn #300...some minor races are in a dismal state where they are stagnant. Probably, I will go through and seriously empower the minor races so they start our powerful. Think about it. They are stuck in a sector, so it just makes sense, especially with the space faring minor races who have FLEETS that they should be strong. Some of the minor races have powerful races who should be TOUGH to beat as they are aquatic with specialized defenses and are really strong.

In a designed scenario, the player would begin in turn #300 with a sizable empire and be trying to expand and terraform and build up border defenses, not starting from scratch, and then have a fleet and strong troops so they could try to attack a minor race. This would be what many mods for Civ3 or Rome 1 Total War or Medieval 2 Total War did...to great success.

Very few players want to spend 300 hours building. They might only play a game 300-900 hours in total before moving on to something else...unless they are diehard turtler wargamers. That is a tiny niche audience.

[UesugiKenshin]

I probably will play this to turn #500, so I will load it as an advanced save game. About 31 people have downloaded the turn #300 on the turn#400 saves.

The other advanced save game which is a sandbox version has had about 73 people download it.

It makes sense to include these so many players can jump start their games rather than start from scratch.

[UesugiKenshin]

When you load the saved game, you may notice that the Omega are in 2nd place, which is absurd as they are so powerful. This is because they long ago completed research and the ones who are doing the most research heavily weighs in the formula on which empire in in the lead. So honestly the formula is incorrect as the Omega are godlike and lead in every possible way in turn #470, yet are in 2nd place.
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The wiki is unclear on how BotE for Android assigns attributes on ship creation. You can limit which empires can create types of starships and classes. If I do the Balancer mod, I want to be able to "learn minor and major race technology" at the advanced levels so even if some species has developed a superior beam weapon or torpedo or torpedo tube or type of shield or superior armor or better sensors, or cloaking then not only do I want generations within classes ie versions as upgrades, but I still want to be able to mix and match in the ship designer and create custom ships that would be tailored to fulfill some niche mission.

The way it is now in the ship designer, you pick a chassis and that starship is then customized by adjusting armor and weaponry, but not adjusting anything else.

When the natural thing players want is the best possible elements to be placed in starships so they are the fastest, most manueverable, with best scanning, and range, and have cloaking, and the best weaponry. For that, I have to go in and create many other ships or more likely have different generations.

What I really need are artists to create about 5 more starships times 6 empires so I need 30 icons for those starships. And I would like at least 4 troops times six empires so 24 new troops. Otherwise I can use the pre-existing troop and starship types even borrowing from the minor races.

A specialized starship might be extremely expensive and take a long time to build. Human players sitting on huge treasuries might just rush it into production as who cares how expensive it is? It might be totally badass and just for fun. The problem however is I tried that in Civ2, and the AI would slowly make them regardless that they took so long. That is an error in the AI as then they are gambling that when they have that ship, it will be so powerful that it will solve their problems, when what happens is that region is vulnerable for a long time without adequate defenses.

Just because you can make something, does not mean the AI can figure out its niche military role.

The Omega in turn #470 have 37 million in the treasury. They don't care if some fantastic starship costs 500,000. Who cares? If I wanted to, I could manipulate the mining sales and create whole fleets I don't need and make the treasury 100 million. The currency is meaningless at this point.

[UesugiKenshin]

New players may not realize how easy it is to rush research. If so, I encourage you to look through my several thousand posts on how that is best accomplished.

There is no benefit to doing research after it is completed as it serves no purpose. So what I do is scrap all research facilities (within reason as some empires gain special mixed benefits). Then in the manager set the workforce percentage to zero for research. You can spend a lot of time doing that and make significant gains, but I loathe all that micromanaging. That is very important in the first 300 turns.
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But when modded, what I hope to do is have many more tech levels so the player can continuously research and have better buildings, troops, and starship available. Likely better generations of starships, rather than all new starships...purely because I lack the graphics for those other starships. See I could probably find some, but artistically they would not match the current styles and would look out of place.

Any graphics tend to be layered and so you can mix and match layers, but after making inquiries months ago, I got no response on the original graphics. Otherwise I would use those to create similar graphic designs for future starships.
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I wish troops were like starships and so you would combine ground invasion units as you do fleets, and then based on the defenders and attackers doing this, then determine the outcome of battles. Then ground invasions would far more compelling.

[UesugiKenshin]

Based on how BotE is coded now, and how it might be changed, then research might do far more. It might improve diplomatic relations. New research might change the infrastructure in a sector that does not belong to your empire, likely as a gift. There might be some creative ways that research might significantly help another species as an act of beneficence.

Such acts might be missions and accomplishing them adds points to the score too. That would be like most science fiction shows versus creating empires. The way BotE is now is not necessarily the most appealing for say the Terran Coalition, right?

Or research that persists might merely add points toward some goal of transcendence where you win the game.

Or research might allow terraforming gas giants.

All of that is contingent on altering the code itself as it is open source.

[UesugiKenshin]

It's about time #475 and alliances are coming to an end so the Omega has moved fleets to take out the important ones belonging to the Cartare, and are in position and in sentry mode. It's overkill as the Cartare have zero starships due to my overwhelming sabotage either blowing them up, capturing them, as well as keeping all of their at least important sectors with damaged spacedocks.

I'm moving level 6 troops in for a massive ground invasion of those territories. I don't have to use space support to soften up the ground targets, but it is wise to do so to reduce attrition. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

I calculate that on a 40*40 maxed galaxy which is 1600 sectors, probably at most 90% are populated, so figure 1440 inhabitable sectors and so if the game was balanced, each empire would have 240 inhabited sectors.

The Omega have 338 (but that is because I only half heartedly colonized after hitting 240 inhabited sectors. The other empires largely did not colonize aggressively, and then I elected to start actual military sabotage as at first I was attempting a bribery test. What I did was only diplomatic sabotage for quite awhile, just to make them prone to wanting a different major race as a patron.

That largely does not work for the Omega. I think I only managed to get to get 4 minor race memberships out if maybe 50 attempts. It is not balanced. Think about it: you can join the mightiest of the empires versus 3 who are total losers who cannot defend you and the Heyoun and Terrans who can't genuinely muster a military force. Yet they said no. That does not make sense to me.

Anyway the total inhabited sectors by all six empires is 539. So even by turn#475, there are 901 sectors that likely can be inhabited, and probably 800 good ones with at least a potential 10.0+ billion each.

Do you see why it's unbalanced and why even now by turn #475 there really should not be an impetus for galactic war? The galaxy is vast. If I played as all six empires to turn #400, I estimate it likely would take six months to properly build it where each had 240 inhabited sectors and proper infrastructure and large treasuries and had learned most tech and had late professional military units and starships. Likely about 1000 starships each.

That would be really fun for players, but dreadfully boring to configure and likely a 10 hour a day job for half a year.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Heyoun and Terrans have way more ability to gain minor race memberships through bribery and diplomacy. The Omega bent over backwards and finally just started invading the minor races that they wanted as they have a very weak ability to gain minor race members. I played the first 300 turns as if the Omega were saintly and it did not pay off at all. I spent a fortune and had little to show for it.

Honestly, the main reason I did so was to gain better ship technology and the vast majority of the time, it was not worth it. It would be far more interesting to make the minor races stronger and the space faring ones to be practically peers who are stuck in their sectors. Then mod the ships and buildings so each major race, on their own without having to invade, can create extraordinary ships. That sounds more interesting even with the maximum number of minor alien races.

You have to realize that all six empires in turn#1 are very weak and frankly it is illogical the major races would gain any allies who are space faring minor races, and maybe not gain any at all. Why would a minor race be so trusting when any major race is too weak to do anything to help defend them and there isn't a valid trading system? After modding it, most minors probably can make most infrastructure domestically as well, thus trade is irrelevant.

[UesugiKenshin]

The minor races have a serious handicap as they lack a full complement of starship classes, thus they cannot properly defend. At most they can make 3 types of starships, so that is very unbalanced and dooms them to failure.

If there were mediors ie minor races who can leave their sector and colonize, then it might be worse as they might leave their home sector improperly defended. Between a lack of a full complement of starship classes and likely not defending well if they are mediors, it probably won't work to have them leave.

BotE badly needs a campaign editor.

[UesugiKenshin]

The most interesting modded version of BotE would have the maximum minor races in a perfectly designed sector, and the six major race empires are fully developed. Only have a bare bones intel agency that the player elects to develop. Then each empire has a huge military force. Likely beginning in turn #300 or #400.

The Rotharians and Cartare race to build intel agencies as fast as they can so they can use subterfuge.

Then the player instead of building, spends most of their time with military logistics and only then begins tenuous careful diplomacy. The Terrans and Heyoun pick up a lot of minor races and upset the apple cart. This makes the Cartare, Rotharians, and Omega nervous and they attack nearby weaker major race sectors as the minor races likely are quite strong.

The Khaoran are quite different and are true scary conquerors...as they should be with superior military forces, but the others likely gang up on them as they are a serious threat. You probably can't reason with them as they love war.

The real threat is always the Omega because generally they are the best of all the empires.

BotE then would be largely a wargame rather than an economic simulation.

[UesugiKenshin]

See that would be balanced versus as BotE currently is designed as you just about can't lose as the Cartare as it's a sabotage game mostly and largely an economic simulation. Few people will spend 300 hours on that.

If I wanted too, I could wreck the entire galaxy by focusing on sabotage and maximizing workers in intelligence and the other five would be entirely helpless. Instead I'm testing everything like maximizing far more mining than I require. Or making lots of redundant infrastructure like farms.

[UesugiKenshin]

Turn #480
Something that you should watch out for is sending a very strong experienced fleet to an inhabited system and if you elect to "soften up" the enemy as they may have defenses on the ground, without meaning to, you could accidently eradicate the inhabitants. I nearly did. I sent in 7 level 6 Omega units and they took it with zero casualties as they have gained an enormous amount of experience. There are no ships in orbit as the Cartare are defenseless due to extensive military sabotage. But since it's a test, I also issued orders for the fleet to attack, and remember that my starships are maxed out and do devasting torpedo damage.

So I get a message that empire morale is +4 due to benevolence, but then the air bombardment kicked in, when actually I issued that attack first, then the ground attack. Anyway it killed 60 billion people and luckily Voltaire has 62 billion.

See that could be ruinous. The AI devastates through bombardment and several times just caused the extinction of several species as then it can use lower level ground invasion forces. But what if that minor alien species has some very valuable building or starships? See that can be RUINOUS. Certain torpedo tubes can only be made by some species and those can be incredibly valuable, but the AI does not take that into account.

In the ship designer, then when you have those minor races as members, you can mix and match torpedo tubes, and it would really mess up later configurations if that particular tube is unavailable due to genocide. Or what if you lose minor race cloaked ships when most major races can't do cloaking only lower level stealth tech? That would be extremely upsetting.

This demonstrates why it is a mistake to configure the minor races too weakly. It should take quite a military force to take a minor race. You really don't want any genocides. Well maybe there are a couple who have such negative traits that controlling them as subjugated people actually ruins certain traits. Like the Epirel as members reduces the effectiveness of sabotage.

I need to go through and reconfigure or at least really balance some of the minor races.

One minor race is space faring, and when you get them, they have six colony ships so straight away you can exploit that. See that is not balanced as why would that minor race who are sequestered in their sector have colony ships? What they need are a defending force against major race attackers.

[UesugiKenshin]

You need strong fleets against strong fleets in space, and you need air support (space support) to weaken embedded ground forces. Like the Templar have a special ground defense and you can make 3 of them plus bunkers. So you would blast away and they would be somewhat protected. So you need a weaker fleet for that role.

My strongest fleet has 18 ships on it and I never thought about the full brunt of the torpedo barrage. I'm going to replay this turn as otherwise I would have to send many colony ships to Voltaire.

In a modded version, I plan on even strong generations of some classes at higher than level 14 tech so you could accidently just wipe out everyone on the planet like the eighties' neutron bombs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron ... t%20itself.

Those weapons were monsterous as they did little physical damage, but a full on lethal dose of radiation, and the idea was to use the enemy's infrastructure and not have to deal with occupation issues.

[UesugiKenshin]

So with higher and higher tech, and with the upper echelon of starships, and if in fleets using the formula for additive/cumulative effects, there is that risk of just having a tabula rasa where everything is wiped out including infrastructure and the populace.

You could effectively have a single command dreadnaught with such awesome power that it alone is a like a fleet in armament, but never regarding the full additive effects. It would be like a DeathStar. It's amusing in a gallows humor sort of way. It would be like sterilizing a planet.

[UesugiKenshin]

The estimated firepower (as we have no idea how many hit targets) is:
Beam 25,312
Torpedoes 208,450
And that isn't my strongest fleet.

Consider that one has no idea what military force is necessary to use to invade an inhabited sector as it might have hardened defenses and an outpost or starbase with multiple orbital batteries or mines and shields. There is no formula on how many of which level of troops are needed to conquer billions of people (in this case 62 billion and Cartare citizens). And we don't know if every citizen has the identical value, which would be weird as the Minimali are diminutive and the Herakles are quite strong. Some live in exoskeletons.

[UesugiKenshin]

With such powerful fleets, one could just use a withering barrage on most of a major race to exterminate them. I guess you could conquer one inhabited sector, see if you could make say Cartare ships. Go to the starship designer, and max out the attributes, and see if it is better or comparable versus your current ships. One would expect that each empire has some uniquely good ships as it is more manueverable or has a faster engine when fully maxed out.

But this is theoretical as you likely have experienced starships that are ready, and even if you can make these new terrific ships, they won't be experienced for awhile.

It would actually be amusing to see an older but very experienced starship beat a newer and more heavily weaponized starship...then lose.