The 3.0 Development Thread

[openair]

@KittJT

1: Just because we didn't see something on screen at some point is no reason not to include it in this mod. Comparing the ferengi and breen with bajor isn't valid at all, and leads me to believe you dont know as much about star trek as you would like to think. The ferengi and breen are both significant powers with starships of the same size/power of many other races.

3: Just because YOU've never heard of them, doesn't mean they're not cannon. The raider with the Interpid saucer IS cannon. It is the USS Yeager, which is seen on screen multiple times during ds9. Many of the early Cardassian, Ferengi, and other units are borrowed from Birth of the Federation a official game. Most of the ships in this mod are cannon in some way (tv, official games, tech manuals, ect). Again maybe you're not as familiar with vessels from Star Trek as you'd like to think.

4: I would personally perfer to see the Borg as a normally balanced raced. Not overpowered, or removed. Similar to how Star Trek Armada handled the borg and 8472.

 

[nutz4dos]

I have a suggestion that could deal with the Unique Unit problem. In Star Trek we want every ship of every race to feel unique. So why not do that? The Borg every ship a unique unit idea has been suggested, why not expand that idea and pursue it to its logical conclusion? Rather than unique units, have none at all. Then have every race give every one of their units a single automatic upgrade. One that only they have access to. For example:
Borg: Adaptation. +25% strength.
Krenim: Chronoton Weapons. +25% vs. ships.
Dominion: Jem-Hadar Shock Troops. +25% vs. colonies.
Federation: Starfleet Ingenuity. Promotions for this unit cost 25% less.
Romulans: Improved Cloak. Unit may cloak and decloak for free, perhaps also reduce the cloaked ship movement penalty.

Well, that's a basic idea, anyway. That way every unit would be unique.

 

[TC01]

I have a suggestion that could deal with the Unique Unit problem. In Star Trek we want every ship of every race to feel unique. So why not do that? The Borg every ship a unique unit idea has been suggested, why not expand that idea and pursue it to its logical conclusion? Rather than unique units, have none at all. Then have every race give every one of their units a single automatic upgrade. One that only they have access to. For example:
Borg: Adaptation. +25% strength.
Krenim: Chronoton Weapons. +25% vs. ships.
Dominion: Jem-Hadar Shock Troops. +25% vs. colonies.
Federation: Starfleet Ingenuity. Promotions for this unit cost 25% less.
Romulans: Improved Cloak. Unit may cloak and decloak for free, perhaps also reduce the cloaked ship movement penalty.

Well, that's a basic idea, anyway. That way every unit would be unique.

Not sure what you mean by "cloaking and decloaking for free"...

These features would be best handled as "racial promotions", as are seen in Fall from Heaven 2, promotions that are applied to all units of a civilization, or as "racial traits", like in FFH 2 and in Colonization. Of course, those concepts would need to be added to Star Trek.


I think that this is definitely not the answer to making more unique units, though. We want units to be unique, not just from empire to empire, but inside that empire... All unique units would be giving, say, the Federation, a named UU for all units, and different bonuses for each. Not just making "Light IV" and "Heavy II" and "Exploration I" have the same bonus.

 

[jfby]

I did this for my mod on a ship by ship basis. Some races have many different types, like the Feds, Klingons, or Romulans, while others were a little harder such as the Dominion or Borg. I tried to use as much cannon as possible to rate each ship in terms of strength, speed, bonuses, but went for balance of gameplay if I wasn't sure.

I'm not playing right now until I get Windows 7. I had XP before on a much slower machine, yet the game ran about 2-3x as fast as it does on my far more powerful laptop. When I get Windows 7, I expect things to go far smoother.

 

[deanej]

Not sure what you mean by "cloaking and decloaking for free"...

Well, I kinda haven't been posting on this thread latley, so if people haven't been following a bunch of other threads they might not know what's been happening recently. Oops.

To fix that:
-TC01's cloaking modmod has been merged in with Star Trek. bOnlyDefensive has been cloned to Civ4PromotionInfos, so cloaked units won't be able to attack (except for the Bird of Prey and Scimitar)
-TC01's worldbuilder improvements have been merged in
-Wonders are always kept when a city is captured (via the new bAlwaysKeep in Civ4BuildingInfos)
-The python lists for buildings to always destroy and buildings that can be built only once in a system have been removed. This functionality has been taken over by bNeverCapture and bOnlyOne.

 

[nutz4dos]

I think that this is definitely not the answer to making more unique units, though. We want units to be unique, not just from empire to empire, but inside that empire... All unique units would be giving, say, the Federation, a named UU for all units, and different bonuses for each. Not just making "Light IV" and "Heavy II" and "Exploration I" have the same bonus.

Ostensibly yes, it would be better if you could make every unit unique, but the problem with that is that most of those "unique" units will probably just end up having the same bonus anyway. With the new and improved Borg is there any change save making every Borg unit stronger and faster? So is there really any difference between that version and an automatic upgrade that makes all Borg units stronger and faster by a predetermined amount?
You could also go the route FFH went with ships, the immediately alterable crew promotions. Possibly with every race having a collection of promotions they have access to, in addition to some that anyone can use. Which would literally make every ship unique.

6. Ship production/balancing.
One interesting departure from regular civ gameplay that i think a star trek mod could afford is the percieved value of materiel, and the inability to convert. to describe this, i'll contrast regular civ to ST. In real world, a new technology comes along, you hand your Longbowman or swordsman a gun, train them on it, and done. You've upgraded your unit for a couple bucks. In ST however, a ship is a huge construct, that constantly undergoes refits, and eventually, decomissioned.

I also have a suggestion for this, a very simple one. Have a couple different versions of each ship, then just upgrade the ship to the refit version.
Okay, example: Refit Constitution and Excelsior classes become available at the same time (or roughly same tech level) but the refit is weaker. Cheaper but weaker, and you can pay a flat rate to refit your Constitutions but can't upgrade anything to Excelsior class. Thus your existing Constitution fleet can be upgraded to a still useful ship, but you'd probably invest in the newer Excelsiors (unless you're directly under attack and want the faster to produce Constitutions). Make sense?

What we really need for a more appropriate feel is actually more Aliens. Not more races, there are plenty of those, but for the minor civs to be far more prevalent. I was thinking about this, and this is actually a really good place to make every unit unique. Pick an alien race whose ships we saw once or twice in an era, and make the barbarian ship of a class for that era that ship. Say every Voyager era light is a Malon Freighter, that sort of thing.
Also something that would give the game a very Trek feel is to make every system act like a goody hut, whether in addition to or in place of the debris fields. This would make entering the system for the first time a first contact scenario. Then give the barbarians a very good chance of spawning an alien colony then when first contacted.

 

[TC01]

I have an alternate idea on refits:

-There's a "Refit Ship" button. When you press it, it gives the ship a promotion like "Refit I" and changes the name to be "Refit 1" (so the ship would be called "Refit I (Light II)" for instance). If, however, the unit already has Refit I, it gives it Refit II, and the thing reads "Refit II". And the same for a "Refit III" promotion. These promotions would make the ship significantly stronger. So a Light II might then be the match of a Light III. But by the time Light IVs role around, they won't be, and you would need to refit again.

You'd have to make Refit Ship cost gold (the same as an upgrade to the next unit), only be available in solar systems, and require the Shipyard or something like that to be in the city.

 

[apenpaap]

^That's a pretty good idea. Even better would be if refit promotions for specific ships only got available in certain eras, for example the Constitution gets refit 1 available at Integrated Deflector, while the Excelsior gets refit 1 at Isolinear Chips, refit 2 at Saucer Separation, and refit 3 at Qauntum Torpedoes.

 

[TC01]

^That's a pretty good idea. Even better would be if refit promotions for specific ships only got available in certain eras, for example the Constitution gets refit 1 available at Integrated Deflector, while the Excelsior gets refit 1 at Isolinear Chips, refit 2 at Saucer Separation, and refit 3 at Qauntum Torpedoes.

Well, ideally, that would be how it would work. But then you might need to add an array (technically a "linked list") to CIV4UnitInfos.xml like this:

<Refits>
	<Refit>
		<PromotionType>PROMOTION_REFIT_I</PromotionType>
		<PrereqTech>TECH_ISOLINEAR_CHIPS</PrereqTech>
		<iCost>100</iCost>
	</Refit>
	<Refit>
		<PromotionType>PROMOTION_REFIT_II</PromotionType>
		<PrereqTech>TECH_SAUCER_SEPARATION</PrereqTech>
		<iCost>200</iCost>
	</Refit>
	<Refit>
		<PromotionType>PROMOTION_REFIT_III</PromotionType>
		<PrereqTech>TECH_QUANTUM_TORPEDOES</PrereqTech>
		<iCost>300</iCost>
	</Refit>
</Refits>

I made up the numbers off the top of my head, but this kind of array would be what we need to track refit data.

 

[JareshInyo]

I like nutz4dos's Idea of the civilization wide promotion. It seems to me like a simple way to give each civilization uniqueness.

 

[nutz4dos]

Aren't those two systems, from the player's perspective, basically the same? Either way an upgraded version of the ship must be purchased for gold, only at a base, and only becomes available at a certain point.
Which system would be simpler to implement?

 

[KittJT]

@openair,
now you don't need to go around and pick apart my words to find a loophole, and you don't need to start making comments about me. Lets not do the whole iternet "i'm smarter than you" thing, and have a discussion.

I was just trying to make a point, however i might have been misunderstood. I may just speak for myself, but my opinion might be shared by others as well.
When i look to play a star trek game, i enjoy pitting myself (as say the feds) against the main protagonists (or antagonists) of the series. Kind of in the same thing as "now can I do as good as picard" kind of thing. That said, IMHO, having say eight complete races, detailed to the max with tons of UUs per race would be bettter (in my eyes) than having 20 underdeveloped races. Pitting feds vs roms vs klingon vs dominion vs cardassians would be more fun than having feds vs breen vs ferengi vs bajor.

As for what I have heard of... i have not seen every episode (and yes i have seen the yeager, i was just making a kitbashing point), but i have seen most. If i have not heard of a race or a shiptype, its a pretty good bet that it doesn't play a large role. to illustrate my point.
Great, iconic ships:
NX
Constitution
Miranda
Excelsior
Defiant
Galaxy
Intrepid
Sovereign
Akira

Now, I have no idea how many UU's you are planning on having for each race, but if you have that many^ i will be impressed. That said, that will probabaly not happen, so which of those would you sub out for a Yeagar. There's my point.

As for the refit subject:
I don't know how much work any of this is, but in my (somewhat limited) view, the easiest way to do this would be as such:
Basically copy the information (including model) of the existing ship as a new ship, and change the strength (and maybe movement) values.
Rename the ship say (constitution II), and make the tech pre-req down the road a little voi-la, you have your system. Now, just the upgrade trees will be very fragmented, but yeah. correct me if this is a modding nightmare however.

 

[openair]

If you only want to play with certain races the option is there. Create a custom game and only include the races you want to play. Not including those races in the mod leaves us who would like to see them with no option. The mod also includes a Dominion War scenario so not including the Breen would be a big problem for that scenario.

As far as complete... Have you actually played the current version of the mod? (or maybe only one of the period specific mods, and not the overall "Star Trek," "Galaxy," or "Expanded" versions?) All of the ships you listed are included. They may not all be UUs, but the models used in game are on your list. UU's for all units isn't nessary in a game where there's all of 3 important stats per ship. An early Miranda is very similar to a early B'rel (for example) as far as movement speed, strength and build cost are concerned (even more so for balance). Same for say Galaxy, Vor'cha, and D'dedirex (other then cloaking devices, sensors, ect, which can/are handled by promotions).

NX - "Warp 5 Ship"
Constition - Constition (UU) - Light I-II
Miranda- Exportation I-II
Excelsior - Light III
Defiant - Interceptor
Galaxy - Light V
Intrepid - Exporation VI
Sovereign - Light VI
Akira - Heavy I

Ambassador (Light IV), Prometheus (Heavy II), Constellation (Exporation III), Nebula (Exploration IV), and Nova (Exporation V) are also included.

EDIT: And all are UU's in some of the period specific versions of the mod, such as the DS9 scenario.

 

[deanej]

Just as a quick update, I've made some changes to the base game that should make things work better. Namely, an AI bug has been fixed, building overflow now works, stuff in a couple python callbacks is now in the DLL, barbs should now build cities, the barb world option from Assimilation is now enabled, and I'm looking to make CvAI work with UBs (instead of being hacked to allow them) as well as merge in the python mod helper so I can make some AI routines to make the AI cloak and build sensor posts (it won't be great, but better than nothing).

I hope to get to the civs soon, but I could use input on a couple things:
What player color should the Voth and Species 8472 have? I'm hoping to have something that doesn't conflict with any existing civs and new ones. Assets\XML\Interface\Civ4PlayerColorInfos.xml has all the choices - not all can be used as the 1.0 civs have custom colors that are very similar to some of the ones in the file. Civ4ColorVals can also be used (there are some colors that have not been adapted into a player color). The new civs with colors are:
-Xindi (Light Yellow)
-Maquis (Light Brown)
-Orion (Dark Purple)
-Suliban (Pink)

If anyone has flags for these civs that would also be very helpful.


What should the Vaadwaur have as a UU?
They presently don't have one to compensate for the subspace corridors - in 3.0 this will be done by not have a trait. I'm thinking of giving them a super-UU that is limited in number (and is extra, rather than replacing something) and has a high strength but beyond that I haven't thought of something yet.

 

[apenpaap]

J
I hope to get to the civs soon, but I could use input on a couple things:
What player color should the Voth and Species 8472 have? I'm hoping to have something that doesn't conflict with any existing civs and new ones. Assets\XML\Interface\Civ4PlayerColorInfos.xml has all the choices - not all can be used as the 1.0 civs have custom colors that are very similar to some of the ones in the file. Civ4ColorVals can also be used (there are some colors that have not been adapted into a player color). The new civs with colors are:
-Xindi (Light Yellow)
-Maquis (Light Brown)
-Orion (Dark Purple)
-Suliban (Pink)

If anyone has flags for these civs that would also be very helpful.

I think that so far, the only green civ is the Ferengi, so maybe you can make them different shadings of green? White might work too.

What should the Vaadwaur have as a UU?
They presently don't have one to compensate for the subspace corridors - in 3.0 this will be done by not have a trait. I'm thinking of giving them a super-UU that is limited in number (and is extra, rather than replacing something) and has a high strength but beyond that I haven't thought of something yet.

In my modmod, they've got two UUs: One is the Stasis Pod Operator, replaces Great Artist. Settling gives +3 hammers, + 2 food, + 3 science, + 3 gold, + 3 espionage, + 3 culture, Making a Great Work gives much less culture than a generic Great Artist. This is basically supposed to be a guy who revives people from their stasis pods, thus granting all those bonuses. The other is the Vaadwaur Fighter, which replaces the interceptor but has 25 range. (Because it uses those subspace corridors)

 

[deanej]

I think I've gotten the color situation straightened out. I'm going with the green for one but I'm afraid I might have to tweak it as it appears too good to be true. I've invented a light brown for the Voth.

For the Vaadwaur UU I think I'll go with the fighter. Thanks!

 

[jfby]

I'm very excited about this mod still, but haven't put any major time into it because of the time between turns. On average size with 6 other races, the time can get to over 60 seconds.

It could be hardware related, but I doubt it. My laptop by every measureable means is at least 30% faster than the desktop I had that I used when 1.0 was out, yet the desktop ran 1.0 with the longest wait between turns being 20 seconds on a map size larger.

The only thing I'm thinking that could be that the laptop has Vista and the desktop had XP...

I have added many new unique units and corresponding civilopedia entries, could this be causing it?

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[deanej]

I can't think of anything specific to 2.0 that would cause this, but having more units/cities on the map certainly makes it slower (it's possible that the longer tech tree is allowing civs to get bigger before victory). 3.0 should be faster, as I've disabled half of the python callbacks. Some of the traits/wonders do use python, but I think it's all in less costly areas (anything that isn't will be reconsidered).

EDIT: I might need a new trait for the Kazon. Even though the XML theoretically allows for a trait to give +1 food/production from trade routes this does not appear to actually be the case.

 

[deanej]

I've merged in some code and now there's a capture system. When defeating an enemy, all units have a 1% chance to capture the ship. The Assimilator promotion (available at combat 3 and for free to the Borg and granted by the Tholian unique wonder) gives the unit 30% chance to defeat the enemy and the Resistor promotion (available at combat 2 and free for the Borg, Bajorans, and Species 8472) allows the defeated unit to resist capture (60% chance).

Also, if anyone has ideas for a Species 8472 flag I'm open to them.

 

[apenpaap]

I have a couple of suggestions:
In Fall from Heaven, combat produces twice as much XP then in vanilla. I think this would be a nice idea to implement in this mod too, as it would allow for much more specialized ships, and make even the promotions far down the promotion tree reachable.
I found a youtube video of the Federation anthem without the applause and other sound effects. I think it would make a great addition to this mod.
In my modmod, I made the religions have different effects each (Warrior's code, for example, gives XP to units built in the city, while Total Logic increases the amount of ). I think this would be nice to have in the main mod too.