Modding

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UesugiKenshin
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Re: Modding

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So I spent all the 218,000 credits down doing upgrades. This drove up the ore and crystal prices up. I sold some outposts and now can make more. I can keep doing this. So far it's drove titanium and duranium as high as approaching 700 credits (when they were swinging from 100-200 credits) which allows me to sell them off in groups of 100 credit swing ranges.

It probably is totally sustainable.

It's an exploit that results from scrapping outposts and in what turn you do it in versus putting all the money in rushed infrastructure, then driving up commodity prices, profiting, and rebuilding outposts, more mined material sales, rinse repeat.

Eventually the mined materials will approach 900 credits and so the process gets easier as long as peace exists.

If I am ten times stronger in military vessels than the Khaoran, and I can construct military experience buildings too, then the gap widens even further.

Unless the Khaoran ends up finding strong minor race allies with vessels, then it's moronic for the Khaoran to challenge me.
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Re: Modding

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That is how players can afford monopolies. It's measuring the risk that peace will be sustained versus doubling mined material output for that particularly bought monopoly. I did it easily in a test for titanium,deuterium, and duranium. I could have done it for crystals and iridium.

It's a function of how many major empires you are up against, sabotage, and patience.

I'm playing long enough to encounter the Khaoran and to see their map and so determine if they were stymied by the 95% minor races test or if they have just as many colonies as I do. And see how many minor races they have as members too.
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Re: Modding

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The Omega Alliance, as they begin with a starbase can do this quite easily. It does seem to take about 300+ turns to pay off. Any major race could do it as well by constructing and scrapping a starbase.

It would be far superior to mod six empires and build up a rational variety of infrastructure and eliminate massive minor race vessels and instead protect them with starbases and defensive abilities.

Every beta test points to the same conclusion and would offer nonbuilder or nonturtler players a better gaming experience, as well as more logical ones.
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Re: Modding

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As a modder, the first thing you have to do when looking at the buildings is ask yourself questions.

Is that upgrade a reasonable price for the modifer it adds?
Is it plausible the player could attain the amount of money to upgrade as above?


Lots of adjustments need to be made. There is a big difference in creating a ready made modded scenario versus actually slowly building so these things happen, and many upgrades are not plausible for the two reasons above.

Deritium Trading makes sense as yes, it's very dangerous, thus would cause consternation among the workers and the colonists in general. But is a -2 for morale worth an extra 150 credits? It's a poor trade off.

Super Taxes should be great, but 150 credits again is terrible considering the morale loss, and not only that, you then lose 30% of resources that turn??? You would never build it.

As I have illustrated many times, anyone who understands the mining commodity system can make a fortune, and that is the very resources being penalized by the Super Taxes building. It makes zero sense.

Remember these things have an on going energy cost too.

The Omega Alliance has the very ugly prison labor camp ie the Internment Camp, which were very productive but hideous in the US in which Japanese American worked or else they didn't eat during WW2. Now compare and contrast that with German WW2 camp and although in the same category, they are nothing alike. And if raising the specter of the history of prison labor camps, you sure had better deal with the consequences, but make them justifiable under the circumstances. The Khaoran also have a prison labor camp in effect as well.

The benefits are so small, yet it costs so much or requires so much time, that it just isn't worth it. :roll:

These are meant to add a flavor and a tone to the major races. But they are tone deaf.

The point of the buildings or any tech tree, is to benefit those who are planners, and not give them all new problems. They already are struggling to get colonies going on harsh planets and face high levels of conflict that make no sense.

Unless the buildings make sense, then they are distractions that actually reduce how many vessels can be made, as if they are expensive, and confer little to no benefit, then that is a money pit as more ships could have been made.

Buildings should lower costs as they should improve efficiency, increase revenue streams, improve morale, speed up research, etc.

The goal is not endless micromanagement and to give more hurdles to the players. Someone playing BotE has a tremendous amount of patience as the pacing is very very slow. Don't make it worse.

Already there is a whole niche of players who refuse to play 4X games as they are painfully slow.

I would bet that I've put 1 million credits back into the Omega Alliance economy, but the returns are terrible. The mining returns are predictably great, but the systems are not making excellent profits Maintaining that fleet is killing the economy as that constant loss of 3500 credits is like dragging an anchor and creating massive inertia on the total economic system.

And the Khaoran are not buying and selling mined materials, so while they are making it, I know they are struggling. So it's me using every trick I can think of to keep the economy going. I bet most players really dislike the trade system as it's difficult to make money as you penalize those with excellent mining infrastructure every time they sell some.

You can't penalize standing military units in a war game when the whole point is to fight huge battles. It's self-destructive.

You can make it realistic and include all the many income producing revenue streams that would also exist, or don't and way lower upkeep and ship costs. Likely the former so you merely add an income in many buildings to balance it out.
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Re: Modding

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Every building upgrade should produce more X and or require less workers thus improves efficiency. Therefore this automation frees up workers to do other tasks. Not every system has lots of planets, and the players are relying on this increasing efficiency or else many planetary systems are dead ends regardless of how much they upgrade them

Or defensive systems confer a greater defensive strength comparable to upgrading them. Starbases, shields, orbital batteries, and minefields have to be worth it with the caveat that such stationary targets cripple their capacity to defend.

The same is true for progressively better vessels and their offensive and defensive capabilities.

Otherwise upgrading is a waste of time. Don't waste the player's time. If someone is patiently playing 350 turns and dutifully doing upgrades, it has to be for some reason.

There is no justification for making things outrageously expensive. No government can operate on marginal budgets, let alone deficit spending. It's alright that the player has an increasing treasury as then they have "wiggle room" so they can be flexible and pay for things like a sudden increase in their standing military units.

The players have to have a budget surplus to pay for bribes, gifts, and sweet one sided deals, to get the more recalcitrant minor races to come to the bargaining table.

I don't know, but BotE is so stingy as if capitalism is a bad phenomena.

If the scrapping of outposts and starbases were to be removed, without major economic adjustments in the buildings file, the game would be unplayable. It's absolutely essential to making the economy run, which demonstrates that BotE badly needs modders to fix the economy.
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Re: Modding

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BotE does not care that the player is slowly building infrastructure after getting their systems in order so that they don't have to pay for it by accelerating each building. If you do that, watch the trade screen. The result is stagnation of mined material prices. The prices will be totally stable and there isn't a way to make money.

BotE is designed to see an influx of demand by paying off every building early. THAT is what makes the prices of mined materials soar.

So to manipulate and "game the commodity markets", you rush everything and this drives the prices up. And when you sell, it drives the price down. This cyclical predictable movement is how to make money, but it's wasteful. Terribly wasteful and causes inflation.

Either way the demand is identical, rushing is wasteful, but that is how to trick the system into progressively higher profits. A shame really...
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Re: Modding

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'Want to fix the BotE economy? Simple. Add income with buildings. Think of ways to reward the player for creating business. Bored colonsts would buy anything as they are stuck on a remote planet. Then the trade screen is just icing on the cake.

A long time ago, I was doing experiments on another AI in a strategy/RTS game. And what best helped the AI was predictable revenue. Then the AI became a planner and a thinker because it could organize and not have to deal with wide peculiar swings of the economy. This routine income by various means was fairly constant and scaled by the population. And it worked and the treasury was large enough that the AI was very strong and stable.
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Re: Modding

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By the way, test the auto-build in the queue of what is scheduled to be built. What you do is hold down on the line entry and it will toggle "auto-build". It's peculiar what the AI elects to build. I tested it today by having the AI build for many hundreds of turns and just worked with what the AI decided was the priority.

In my opinion, you should never auto-build and you should never "give standard building orders", as that then gets forgotten, and the next thing you know, you have chaos due to neglect. There is zero benefit to telling BotE to build 4 farms, 4 factories, 4 energy units, 4 titanium mines, etc. Don't be tempted. It will cause issues with overbuilding and famines and doesn't in any way help you.

It's like the Sorceror's Apprentice (1940).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3hKgEylk8ks

Things change and often because of insufficient income or you forgot the energy requirements, or ran out of deuterium, and so you build things that may not have the power to run them.

It would be wise to figure out that the energy is in too small a quantity and to scale it appropriately as it's annoying to build power that is insufficient amounts to be useful. You HAVE TO mod it.

What is really irritating is the manager function wants to be stingy with power. That could be fatal during an invasion.
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Re: Modding

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To me, I think it should take six transports to fully turn nothing to an increasingly strong outpost to then become slowly a mighty starbase.

They are way way too powerful given the minimal cost. And with many slowly racheting them up, it would temper their abilities, and also not allow so much scrapping.

Scrapping indicates economic issues, nothing more. Let's fix the economy and balance starbases or it's a game where you riddle the galaxy with cheap starbases, and that is ridiculous.
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Re: Modding

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There never has been a more appropriate time to use creative energy to develop something beautiful to experience like BotE.

The entire world will likely fall into not just a severe recession, but due to Covid-19, the experts are calling this phenomena the Greater Depression. Massive unemployment will follow, and likely hyperinflation as governments create money from thin air to prop up a destroyed economy.

Already inflation had just about wiped out the middle class compared to say 1990. Then a single man made twice as much money and benefits compared to what a young couple makes today. Don't just believe that, be a good critical thinker, and look it up.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl ... ar2=202003
$45,000 in 1990 is equal to...
$91,170.92 today.

And now, it will be worse.

BotE offers the distraction of science fiction, and it's a meaningful free imaginative distraction.

Regardless, the entire world needs new paradigms, and likely wholesale debt forgiveness, because if history is repeating itself like the 1918 influenza pandemic, then the 2nd wave will be 4-5 times worse that what is transpiring. This sickness won't be over for 2-3 years.

You need something like BotE to inspire you and to mod it to make it even better.
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Re: Modding

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Advanced techtrees and buildings are the way to go to remediate some buildings intentionally designed to create conflict like the Malodan and the Hanachec. Their buildings produce their own demise, or would in reality.

All wake up and realize that maintaining the status quo is repulsive as it's the antithesis of egalitarian thought and perpetuates aristocracy.

The purveyors of culture may claim to be anti-establishment, then reap the economic benefits of supporting the aristocracy and even themselves become the aristocracy. See the music industry, banking, politics, entertainment, etc.

BotE needs higher levels of tech and largely to solve the very problems it creates to challenge the player by encouraging conflict...often pointlessly. Unless BotE exists to create ethical lessons...which seems to be the goal.
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Re: Modding

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Natural rights, as largely constructed by the brilliant John Locke, does NOT propose that all people are the same or even that all are equal. He proposed that all were created equal. They are not identical concepts whatsoever.

Only a fool believes all are the same and equal. The more your perpetuate the pretense, the more life becomes a total absurdity. Human culture is intended to foster benefitting a few by penalizing the most merely based on appearance. What a cosmic joke.

Some excel and through hard work despite their innate circumstances. Others like advertising agencies intentionally perpetuate the nonsense that appearance is a metric of success. The most grotesque suggest that such appearance by a few confers sexual compatibility and even superiority. The unspoken conclusion is that some should not reproduce because they are so inferior in appearance.

Regardless, most problems happen as economic benefit comes at ethical costs as some deserve misery.
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Re: Modding

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The Omega Alliance has internment camps to greatly increase industry and add experience to the troops,but penalizing those declared criminals to achieve this labor and training for the soldiers. Well, that is reprehensible. Eventually I doubt any empire could keep doing this without being overthrown.

The slaves revolt. But BotE only has 14 levels of tech and so this is easily remedied...unless you wish to repulsively celebrate malevolence.

Be honest. You know that eventually when soldiers realize they are being exploited, then a strong one among them would merely seize power and likely throw the top of the food chain into the very internment camps they created.
http://bote2.square7.ch/en/wiki/Omega_Alliance
The Vi know they are doomed.
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Re: Modding

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The USA historically had issues with prisoner labor as the potential for abuse was huge. Few American would argue with prisoners raising food in gardens to lower the tax burden as it's not a government sponsered hostel/food bank for the homeless.

We're appalled by say the treatment of North Korean Christians who are imprisoned, sometimes whole multigenerational families of Christians, and get sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered in prison labor camps. Or the very same issues by the Uighyrs in China who are jailed for being Muslim and then sent en masse to work in factories so Chinese don't catch Covid-19.

But now the situation is so out of hand that a variety of indistries hire US prison labor where they make an average daily wage of $3.45 per day!

You know those annoying robocalls that then end up being a human with a sales pitch? That person very well might be a prisoner and you had no idea that the caller taking your financial details is incarcerated making slave wages.

The US prison system began to be privitized and then you have to wonder if the people are really guilty, and if so, is the law just or not? How can you say you are in favor of natural rights and support and defend the US Constitution, and then jail or fine someone violating unconstitutional laws like say social distancing due to Covid-19?

So on BotE, do you allow internment camps and very similar situations in other major empires and on minor race systems?

BotE provokes critical thinking. It's not mindless entertainment.
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Re: Modding

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https://www.space.com/asteroid-2020-hs7 ... ction.html

An asteroid the size of a bus passed within 9,000 miles (14484.1) of the Earth. Eventually one will hit and may not just burn up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU1QPtOZQZU&app=desktop

So think how implausible it is that a tiny scout ship is interdicted when navigating through 20 light years.
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