Polite Suggestions

[bridgeburner18]

Ive been watching the dev of this mod for some time now and am pleased with its progress. I would like to offer some humble suggestions that i think will add some flavor and depth to the game. (lets turn it into chess instead of checkers)

1. Bombardment. As it is now stations are near impossible to take. they should be difficult not more difficult to take than a star system.
SUGGESTION= code star ships to be able to fire with +1 range in 360 axis at half strength. like artillery bombardment. If that is undisired a built in flanking should come standard on more advanced vessels (with a higher return perhaps 35-65% retreat chance)
2. Early Tech. it feels that advacement moves to quickly with ships, after 1 tech you move into another era.
SUGGESTION= I think if you combine a bit of your early earth scenarios into the main mod that might alleviate some strain on the small tech tree.
3. Tech and Promotions. So far so good, but it moves too fast, and overall the improvments arent that exciting. yes you can unlock cool new promotions but most ships don't survive long enough to get them.
SUGGESTION=Take a page out of the FFH modders and their "weapon equipment promotion" instead of researching "Phasers" and getting some combat promotion unlocked it should provide a passive +1 attack to all ships.
4. Barbarians. these guys should be considered an annoyance not a real threat. they should be able to smash up probes for sure but if i roll in with a constitution it should win hands down.
SUGGESTION= lower their spawn rate, but ultimatly that will do little. I think instead lower their strengths or give a passive ability to all light I, II, III etc to have +attack vs barbs. OR another page out of FFH they have hard coded a "fear" concept that causes enemies to flee from you, that could add a fun flavor as you become a "Pirate hunter"
5. Civs. So far you have alot of content as far as number of civs but what really makes them different? they all are relativly the same with different skins.
SUGGESTION= completly unique units, including strengths and weaknesses, not just a generic template with light I, II etc that all ships follow. Give the bird of prey a + to attack but - to defense. things to that nature.
6. Keep on truckin. so far your work is impressive and i am a fan of your progress since the first betas.
SUGGESTION= take time to enjoy your work and value it. know that you have fans out there that appreciate your efforts in bringing us the gift of Star Trek to Civ and keep on coding we are counting on you.

-cordially
-me

 

[solistus]

I've only played through a few games, but I agree with a lot of your suggestions.

The biggest issue, IMHO, is the tech tree. It just feels incomplete. The truly epic scale of the game feels diminished; it just doesn't capture the 'feel' of going from a just-discovered-warp civ to a galactic empire when I fly through eras in a tech or two. IT seems like I always tech pretty fast and build up all my good systems with not much to do with them. More techs and more building variety would make the builder/techer aspect of the game a lot more rewarding. It seems like the game is very much geared to warmongers now, and that's just not my style, so I feel like I'm missing out.

Civ uniqueness is also a big issue. The lack of civ-specific tech trees in the civ4 engine is part of the problem - GalCiv would work so much better for this mod, alas - but some new traits and unique units/buildings could help a ton. Seeing the Borg take a peaceful route is frustrating, as is the fact that they have nothing to do with the Borg beyond their ships looking like cubes. Special leader traits to grant civ-wide bonuses/penalties and increasing the number of UUs and UBs per civ substantially seem like a pretty good start.

I've never had much trouble with the barbs, maybe it's just the difficulties I've played on (haven't passed Commander). As for barbs, I haven't gotten into many wars, so not much to comment on here either.

 

[deanej]

1. All units level 4 and above have ranged bombardment. With 2.0 there will be 2 types of starbases, so late game they will be harder to take but early game they should be easier because the first one is now 20, not 30, strength (the second is 40).

2. 2.0 has earlier techs, hopefully that will help. I also increased the cost of some TOS/Movies era techs.

3. Those techs were originally intended to be planetary forces (I did the tech tree before BtS was even announced). Since Final Frontier they became the promotions.

4. Since I added the stuff at the beginning for 2.0 I did change the spawning. The start at lower strengths and the turn they start appearing is now influenced by game speed (I had no idea the Final Frontier code was overriding that; it's fixed). As per your request for weaker barbs they will never spawn Warp 7 Ships (which were previously put in at the same time as the barb Warp 5 ships spawn, but only 1/5 chance).

5. One really unique civ in 2.0 is the Vaadwaur - they can store food after growth with their Stasis Chambers and can take advantage of Subspace Corridors. In 3.0 I'm adding civ traits and unique wonders (example: Klingon units will start with 2 XP; only the Bajorans will be able to build Bahala).

Another thing I'm adding in 2.0 is another victory. I'm not sure if it will favor warmongers or builders more (hopefully builders). I won't say more at this point but players going for this victory will probably pick Bajor as their starting civ .

 

[bridgeburner18]

maybe my ranged prob then is just in the romluan war scenario when my fleet of 20+ daeds cant take out a romulan space station there is a prob(i honestly dont play the main mod much)
same with DS9 scenario, with the rebel base. i understand the idea of it biegn resistance on the planet but realistically it wouldnt cause the death of 15+ warships, maybe just make it to cause resistance for +20 turns if the place is captured.

all good additions. in my honest opinion, stay away from new civs and focus on making the ones you have truely unique. 8 solidly designed civs with completly different feels (again i refferece FFH) adds so much depth and charector to the game.

Units need to feel as unique as civs, with +Atk +def seperated so it encourages us to build more than 1 type of ship. as it is now its my 30 galaxies v your 30 galors etc. it gets kinda stale maybe a few units with submarine type attack abilities, or some sensor ships which increase the attack or defense of the entire stack.

looking forward to 2.0, when do you expect a solid beta for it?

 

[deanej]

Yeah, the scenarios don't have it. I hindsight I should have giving the scenario units ranged bombardment but I didn't think of it at the time (the only game of my own mod that I've played was Xindi Attack and that was to make sure the python events worked). I'll keep it in mind when making the scenarios for 2.0.

I was kind of hoping that cost/movement was balancing the units (eg: cheap, weaker units or stronger, more expensive ones).

For 2.0 I was thinking of going straight to release. The previews have some of the more sweeping changes (such as the new tech tree) for feedback. I really only have the new leaders and scenarios left to do (and some unit models from Jaydn, hopefully).

 

[bridgeburner18]

Yea without the bombardment it makes the scenarios kind of unplayable (i just avoid the maqui areas and settle elsewhere)

The real thing it needs is just some uniqueness. All the ships have relativly the same attacks, strengths, movements. In Vanilla BTS we have airships, naval, artilery, cavalry, armor, infantry- the mod has just one type of unit. Branch it out Trek itself has tons of different roled vessels

just some examples
Defiant (Escort) High attack/ medium-low defense/
Akira (escort) high attack/ low defense/ High movement
Galaxy (Heavy Cruiser) Med-high/attack high defesne/medium-high movement
Sov (Dreadnaught) High attack/ Medium defense /med-high movement

another great option which might expand on the stale aspect of combat, since we have bombardment already... make starhips unable to capture planets...you must have a (Transport Ship) low attack- low defense- low movement drop ground forces (you should also increas all resistance times by double, as any population that would be on the planet would likely not want to work for you until they are quelled/erradicated)
this concept would encourage much more fleet on fleet in space than fleet vs fleet at planet.

again just my thoughts, let me know what you think.

 

[deanej]

I'll add the ranged attack for the scenarios units (I'm re-releasing the scenarios around when 2.0 comes out, so look for it then).

The units are more complicated. Unfortunately to add more variety I would need a LOT more techs than I have now. Regular civ (and Fall from Heaven) covers a lot more time then this mod does. I can remove upgrading completely, allowing older units to stay around and continue to be built (this may be the best option). The hard thing with making them unique to each civ is that then you need every civ to have a UU for every unit or do massive workarounds in XML (which is what I did in the Enterprise scenarios as each race only had 1-2 possible units so it wasn't much of an issue). I've never really liked having every unit by a UU; it's always seemed sloppy and a cheap workaround to me (and it makes the civ selection screen unusable). I wish we could have civ-specific unit names in addition to art.

The last point is mostly AI. It's main strategy is to put everything in cities. It doesn't even know to build starbases for strategic regions (it will only do it for resources). Adding units specifically for capturing systems won't really fix this, just add another step. Increasing resistance times is a good idea, but I don't know how to do it.

EDIT: I should mention that a lot of the civ traits for 3.0 (9/25) involve free promotions for units (as do some of the unique wonders).

 

[phungus420]

Creating differentiated UnitCombats and roles would greatly expand the experience of this mod. In the Star Trek Universe there seems to be these set types of vessels, each with different fleet roles:

Fighter (Example: Runabout, Maqui)
Destroyer (Example: Miranda, Bird of Prey)
Cruiser (Example: D-7, Constitution)
Explorer (Excelsior, Galaxy)
Battleship (Exampler-very rare in star trek- Borg Cube)

Not every Star Trek civ uses all types of units (Klingons have never had an Explorer type starship shown), so you'd need to remove alot of units, using the unique unit method (set the replacement UnitClass to NONE). Also adding in different UnitCombat types correctly would require a large expansion of the tech tree. But that's what people want, the game expanded. Interestingly enough, with all the art available, you seem to actually have the art to make differentiated unit types.

You should really consider expanding the Tech Tree and creating new UnitCombats, the UnitClasses can be named generically, such as CruiserI, CruiserII, etc depending on the era. Of course, this would also require using the SDK to comment out the Unique Unit display for the civs, as leaving them Unique Units (the only real way to implement something like this) would make the civ selection screen unbarably messy. Also this would take alot of XML work. Though to be honest, you should find it easy to get help with XML. If I had the Art and the Buttons (Oh lord the Buttons, getting buttons takes 8/10ths of my time when adding units), I could knock out a complete Tech Tree and Unit Tree over the weekend.

 

[deanej]

Well, the current system was an attempt at unit differentiation, with the Exploration, Light, and Heavy classes. I've tried to use strength/cost/movement differences to make them distinct and balanced, but I'm getting the feeling that they somehow aren't.

 

[phungus420]

They need combat bonuses vs other UnitCombat types (you could have Siege units that get bonuses to star bases, You could have some units cause collateral, anit fighter type units, lots of places to go here), so they fill combat roles and a more robust tech tree to flesh out the progression. Also really think you'd get better differentiation if you just use the Unique Unit ability of CIV for the different classes, and then comment out Unique Units being displayed in the gamecore.dll I know it sounds like a lot of work, but I've always found getting the art to take up all my time when adding units. Once I have a button and the unit art, I can usually crank out a functioning (and reletively balanced) unit in 15 minutes. Tech Tree is kind of a pain though, because you have to check and double check the X,Y coordinates, but even that is still all XML, and it takes more time finding the button then just plunking in a tech to the tree.


Also the Excelsior is an Explorer, or agruably Heave, not a Light unit!

Edit:
If you want I'd be willing to do all that XML work for you, provided I have the art and buttons handy.

 

[gundam_guy]

When is 2.0 coming out?

 

[jfby]

This talk of unique units, while daunting, has gotten me really excited! I had to reformat (shutter) my hard drive not too long ago and haven't fully loaded everything back up. Before then, I was working on making unique units (the select Civ screen was terribly busy), but it made the game more diverse to see more than one unit class flying around. Thank you everyone for keeping this mod very interesting.

 

[deanej]

I've thought of a way to make the current class system more responsive. Here are some changes I thought of (let me know what you think):
-Exploration: all would have ranged attack, no other units would (except Bajoran UU), possibly rename to Light
-Light: +25% vs. Heavy, +10% city attack, possibly rename to Heavy
-Heavy: +50% vs. Starbase, collateral damage, put cost and movement in line with light units (maybe slightly higher cost), possibly rename to Battleship
-Barracks: grant free city garrison in addition to free city raider, requires Phase Pistols

I don't really want to re-do the units and tech tree completely (the main issue with techs is finding them - there is a large gap between TOS and TNG, and much of the tech wouldn't really lead to ship enhancements anyways). Hopefully the ideas I put out in this post can help. I'm not sure if the lack of collateral damage before Heavies will be a problem or if it is unbalanced so I'm posting it here first.

As for when 2.0 comes out, the best I can say is "when it's done". I learned with 1.0 that how long you think something will take is not how long it will actually take so I don't want to say something and then have to delay it. Keeping that in mind, if all goes well I hope to have it done around April. Feel free (read: encouraged) to contribute leader diplo text at the thread for it on this forum.

And it's worth noting that the main menu (including the civ selection screen) can't be modded. It'd done in the exe.

 

[bridgeburner18]

Have you thought about the weapon and defense promotions via tech yet?

example: FFH
axemen 5 atk
warrior 4 atk

with copper

axeman 5 atk +1 with bronze weapons
warrior 4 atk +1 with bronze weapons

this would kill two birds with one stone, it would help you expand the tech tree by changed some of the "Possible to get" promotions with "free upgrades, or refits"
it would make the older vessels still valuable provided you have the right tech.

example

constitution 4 atk
excelsior 5 atk

with type II phasers tech

constitution 4 atk +1 with type II
Excelsior 5 atk +1 with type II

the same could be applied to seperate defensive scores should you ever go that route.
i really liked this part of FFH and think it would really fit with trek cannon
a "refit" old ship can be at par with a new ship
you would just have to space the techs accordingly so that techs for improvements followed its own progression line to avoid the monster techs of
new weapons/shields/ships in the same tech. we should try to avoid any UPGRADE mentality as it doesnt fit with trek lore, so focus on refitting old ships to get the most use out of them

a constitution with type II phasers and type II shields should be able to stand toe to toe with a more powerful vessel

 

[Imrahiel]

Yes thats is really canon, we have seen it in TNG and DS9.I did the same in my mod-mod. I changed the upgrade to refit. So no shipclass
was replaced by a other ship class.

 

[deanej]

My skills with SDK modding are very limited. I suspect that the FFH code is very complex so I don't want to try merging it in.

I have tweaked the upgrade line (there will now be two ships available per class at any given time, like the light ships are now at the start of the game). Unfortunately I can't eliminate upgrading completely (I thought about it) because:
1. The AI never disbands units, so it would hurt it too much.
2. There is no other way to make a unit obsolete, which means that if it was removed you could still built Warp 5 ships even when you have researched the entire tech tree.

Maybe something more will come to mind later, but completely re-doing the units would mean that I would have to re-design ALL the UUs, as well as the art styles, and a bunch of python (the sounds are hardcoded). I also don't want endless "Upgrade ___" techs; I should mention that this is how the Rise of Rome scenario in Warlords worked, and people didn't really like it.

For now I'll implement the ideas I outlined in my last post. I won't rename anything unless it's requested because even though the suggested names fit better, the existing names have been use for a long time and I don't really feel like changing it.

 

[bridgeburner18]

upgrades them selves should never be completly gone i agree but the main focus should not be to upgrade ever ship, it should cost too much to do so but not be impossible.
with rise of rome i agree a constant upgrade line of the tech tree was not much fun as it really bottle necked your research

the difference would be that this "refits" come as a promotion so the existing unit does not change with the research of Phaser type II, he only gets a promotion that adds +1 atk. Rise of rome was all Upgrades, praetorian II upgrades to p III for X amount of gold.

AI is stupid, and that limits alot of possible changes i agree so as you said all ships should still retain the ability to upgrade, perhaps increase the cost if you add in this refit system(which i think the game needs)

the tech tree doesn't have to be siloed into a refit specific line, you would just try to limit any tech that gives both a refit and a new ship class.

And yes FFH is a very complex mod in terms of coding and they had a team where its really you and a handfull of contracted laborers that help. But FFH is done with its current build and they will be spending time only tweaking the game, perhaps you could reach out to them for some python advise, or apeal to the inner trekie that im sure atleast one of them have and get them on board with this project. unfortunatly im limited on skills beyond XML coding.

 

[deanej]

Gold is easier to come by in Star Trek than regular civ, so I probably should increase the upgrade costs (is a 50% increase enough?). The unit scale in 2.0 is more fair than 1.0 was (there are two more units but the ending strength/movement is the same so the difference between each unit level is less).

 

[bridgeburner18]

50% should be adequate, with the speed that you can move through the tech tree i yield gold quite fast at still a respectable research rate.