Preview: Star Trek Mod 2.0

[nutz4dos]

I don't mean to say the Borg are currently overpowered in terms of being Borg, but rather in terms of being a remotely playable race in a fair game. The goal should be to give them something unique and distinctly Borg, but without making them more or less powerful than, say, the Romulans. Transwarp conduits may not be the way, but I think it's a step in the right direction....
Actually, I have an idea in that direction. Why not give the Borg their single most feared ability? Assimilation. This could be done in a number of ways. The first I see is by simply reducing the time it takes for captured bases to convert from their original race to Borg. The second is by using tech stealing: the Borg, and Borg alone, would be able to steal an enemy's technology after stealing an enemy's base. The third is enslavement: a defeated enemy ship would have a change of being captured rather than destroyed. Maybe even all three.
Assimilation would make the Collective a force to be feared in war without making them unbeatable in combat.

 

[deanej]

I like the idea of having the Borg assimilate ships; I'll add a poll here about the rest.

 

[Agent327]

I like the idea of having the Borg assimilate ships

That most certainly seems like the way to go.

 

[deanej]

I've finally finished The Eugenics Wars scenario (only a week late). It probably needs some work especially with regard to tech rate (and I think I need to add more barbs at start as they just get obliterated within 5 turns and don't really affect the game).
Download here!

 

[apenpaap]

That sounds cool. One thing I'm going to do for 2.0 is create a huge galaxy map with all the civs and a few more, even including wormholes (how to get the AI to use them I have no idea).

I have just thought of a way to make them understandable for AI, though it will not look pretty and both ends of the wormhole will have to be near the edge of the map:

First, you add a new terraintype called "Wormhole interior", with as properties:
Costs 1/1000th movement point to transverse (or something similarly low)
Can't build improvements or cities here.
Now you can make a wormhole by drawing a line from each of the exits straight to the edge of the map, and then connect the two along the edge of the map. To prevent ships from entering the wormhole halfway, put a layer of Nebula on each side of it. To show what I mean, I attached a drawing. Each of the red dots represents a solar system, the green stuff is the "Wormhole Interior" terrain, and the brown is nebula.

 

[apenpaap]

I've finally finished The Eugenics Wars scenario (only a week late). It probably needs some work especially with regard to tech rate (and I think I need to add more barbs at start as they just get obliterated within 5 turns and don't really affect the game).
Download here!

I have tested it for about 20 turns as Khan, and it looks like fun. I have easily waltzed over arabia, which gives me some much needed oil. (You should maybe put an Oil resource in India, as Khan played by the AI may never become a threat if you don't.)
I haven't played any of the other playable empires, but it looks like they'll hav a pretty hard job, as they all start out with 1 or 2 cities. O, and America switched to slavery in the second turn

.

 

[deanej]

They all start with units (Hunyadi and Morrison should have a good amount of units, but they might need more). Seven is probably the most difficult (Khan's naturally the easiest) if you play the way Seven would actually do it as he would (as in no conquering) it's probably the hardest but due to the transporter (and starting spies/great spies) if you do conquer with them it's probably very easy.

Balancing research could be tricky, as it's slow from the start but likely goes up significantly as cities get conquered. I probably need to increase the number of barb units as well as they should be causing mayhem in the areas mentioned in the intro. I hope it isn't too difficult to start an empire with the other leaders. Oh, and the space ship for the space race victory is supposed to be the Botany Bay but this isn't mentioned anywhere.

Some things on the map are technically wrong (such as the locations of Istanbul and Morrison's start) but were done to keep the cities from being too close together and chocking each other with culture.

 

[apenpaap]

WOW! I was playing the scenario, and nuked someone, and it razed the city!

That's an awesome surprise.

 

[Arakhor]

I've just conducted a Romulan game on Lieutenant to try out the Star Trek mod. Here are some things I've noticed:

Captain Picard is misspelt in the Cloaking Device tech, as are the Tachyon Detector promotion and the Ideological Pluralism civic. B'Elanna Torres is missing her E as a Great Engineer.

Why are the barbarians called that? Couldn't they be pirates, as in Jeleen's MoO mod?

Why is Captain Picard a Great Prophet? I'm sure that Ben Sisko and any of the Vedeks/Kais would fulfil that role far better. You could take the names of the genetically-engineered experts from TNG's The Masterpiece Society if you wanted more names (if you haven't already). Perhaps Sloane could be a Great Spy?

The game seems to generate lots of Great Engineers. No complaint: just an observation.

There aren't that many techs, but I see you've got more for v2. Good

 

[deanej]

I've done the text fixes except the civic one (it seems to be spelled the same way you have it).

I think of the barbarians as misc hostile alien vessels (the "alien of the week"). In Final Frontier they were pirates (as that universe didn't have aliens in it), and they probably got carried over that way in MOO2Civ (or may be left that way deliberately).

I've tweaked the prophet names. I think of them as spreading their ideology rather than a religion so he still fit there, but like you said, Sisko fits better. He was already a general, so I just swapped the names. I changed a couple others as well.

 

[Arakhor]

Why not simply go with "Alien vessel" rather than barbarian then? After all, barbarians in Star Trek refer to people's culture, rather than their tech level!

I hope that good old Garak is in as a Great Spy and his hapless friend Julian as a Great Scientist

 

[Agent327]

In Final Frontier they were pirates (as that universe didn't have aliens in it), and they probably got carried over that way in MOO2Civ (or may be left that way deliberately).

They probably did get carried over that way when NCCSavage started MOO2Civ; ideally, they should be transformed into the Antaran race and be referred to that way. (One of the many things on my To Do list...)

 

[deanej]

Scenario Preview: The Tomed Incident and The Cardassian War

These scenarios are both set the the era between The Undiscovered Country and "Encounter at Farpoint". The Tomed Incident is based on the Lost Era book Serpents Among the Ruins (if you haven't read it the only thing you may want to know is that Harriman did become a good captain after Generations) and The Cardassian War is based on the Terok Nor trilogy.

 

[Vrenir]

Would it be possible to rig this up like they did in FFH2 4.0, where you have the mod itself with separate scenarios embedded inside? I think it would really work for this.

 

[deanej]

I also do a lot more custom XML for scenarios than they do; they just have leaders, I have leaders, civs, units, techs (usually just for the units). Most of their changes from the epic game are done via python, while most of the ones I do don't use any more python than the rest of the mod (less, actually).

And I suspect the mod would break if I so much as tried to do it. I based it off of the Final Frontier mod (this is where the solar system code and all the space stuff comes from); I can't even begin to comprehend how the solar system code actually works, and it already breaks if some XML stuff is used (bNeverCapture, unique buildings without an XML hack to make the number of building classes and number of buildings equal, corporations don't work, some random event code doesn't work, etc.).

 

[apenpaap]

I think the genetically enhanced factions in the eugenics wars should get stronger units. I haven't read the Khan books, so I don't know whether they had genetically engineered soldiers or just generals, but I think either way would make the unit a lot stronger.

 

[apenpaap]

Also, the Serbian Augments' only city revolts to Europe sometimes, after which they are defeated.

 

[deanej]

I've made the following changes to the release version of The Eugencis Wars:
-Added Genetically Engineered promotion (immune to first strikes, can heal while moving, 1 first strike, +25% strength)
-Added Genetically Engineered trait (free genetically engineered promotion to all units)
-Gave genetically engineered to needed units and barbs
-Changed some units to the attack AI (was city defense (!))
-Some more barb units
-City flipping disabled
-Removed Khan's large stack of units at start
-Removed the large Chinese stack at start

In the books, Morrison actually ran a terrorist cell instead of an empire. He had regular people fight for him. I don't know about Hunyadi. Khan had a mix. I think it would be better for gameplay for them to have stronger units, though.

With these changes Khan is probably more balanced. The barbs are actually a threat now and should take cities (in my test Lima and Nairobi fell, Chengdu did not, this is the reason the Chinese stack was removed (they reinforced Changdu and destroyed the barb stack)).

 

[apenpaap]

That sound like some good changes. (Though it's a shame that I won't be able to immediatly roll over ababia anymore without the stack)

 

[Imrahiel]

I think you also should add some modern unit models like the ones from the Nation in War mod.
They are verry great except the Bismarck, that I deleted.
Also some units like modern infantry( I hate the unrealistic mechanizied Infantry) would be great.
I also could offer to make a bigger world map I the next weeks, if you want( I started making a good one, but never finished)