Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

Energy dissipator torpedo I. 50 ReduceManeuver Omega Alliance , Brane
Energy Dissipator Torpedo II 100 Penetrating, ReduceManeuver Brane
Energy Dissipator Torpedo III 150 IgnoreAllShields, CanCollapseShields, ReduceManeuver Brane

See you want some starships to strike with energy dampening torpedoes too. Having the Brane as members is vital for galactic conquest.

[UesugiKenshin]

Based on every bit of technical data I have read and re-read, there is a limit of 4.2 sectors as warp speed that can be traveled in a single turn, though the time scale changes for solar date. I badly want to exceed that, but that means altering the source code. This is crucial for late game turns in giant galaxies. That would dramatically exacerbate the operating tempo of military conflicts as starships could surpass border outposts and starbases serving to screen new arrivals as they would fly right past them.

Then blitzkrieg attacks could then take place.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qej9DX28-xw
Here is an excellent discussion of what I am proposing where with upper level research, an empire could strike deep in enemy territory plus with this speed, then do flanking manuevers and power through sowing confusion.

[UesugiKenshin]

There is this erroneous idea that the outposts and starbases would serve some strategic defensive role, when that would be as ineffective as the Maginot line. Starships would easily navigate past them.

Instead, what outposts and starbases do in actuality is sharply affect the sphere of influence in a region. Placement drives back encroaching empire's sphere of influence and so then your empire can then reclaim that area by terraforming and then colonizing it. You doing that and occupying it with starships then flips it. It's a one, two, three punch combination.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-wa ... ginot-line

Instead of going for a new and ineffective Maginot Line defense, use it as a staging area to converge starships upon to then form up fleets and launch an invasion of your opponent's border.

[UesugiKenshin]

Turn #353
Technically the Omega have completed all the tech they need to do as everything they can plausibly can create through the tech tree can be done with completing level 13. The in game research database claims some of level 14 energy is required, but this is not actually so as they can already make Aleph II, level 7 power cells, and level 4 shields. I am within 23% of completing level 13 which should happen by turn #355, but just to avoid confusion with anyone playing the advanced save game, I will focus 100% on level 14 energy research. Then there is no valid rationale for finishing level 14, but will do so.

The situation is confusing which is why I am still playing as this programming discrepancy is precisely the kind of issue I wish to avoid between the research data and the building data and the ship data and the source code.

See the Balancer mod version 1.0 seeks to address issues like this. If this error exists, likely similar other minor bugs exist for the other 5 empires. If I hadn't noticed it, it would drove me insane thinking I had introduced a bug by making changes. The tiny bug is in the original unmodded BotE.

I am astounded that this advanced save game turned out so well as I was distracted throughout the entire process. I'm probably going to stop regardless at turn#400.

The Omega can make magnificent starships now. They just beat the Mogwar, and are in the process of doing a group invasion of the Brane and Deshant. Then I will custom design their starships as well.

They have 2.8 million in internal security. Recently, they achieved a treasury of 3.3 million. Many advanced types of infrastructure have to be completed though, so 1 to 1.5 million is continually being pumped right back into the economy.

An issue exists where the mining of crystal is inadequate despite my best efforts, and that has driven the cost of crystal between 2,000 to 3,000. I cannot sell what I have as it's the bare minimum to get continuous raw materials flowing in as needed to get everything rushed in the construction queue. I am rushing crystal mining to find an equilibrium point so to asset control over the commodity manipulation of crystal pricing.

Basically the Omega are 6x the average score in most categories: GDP, research, military, productivity. They are the sole superpower of the galaxy. The smart play is to take every unaffiliated minor race's sectors by send extremely powerful fleets of original starships. This has a 99% of success, but is time consuming. I would rather pay 50,000 and capture their fleets undamaged as I do not want to fight them. I want and have tried diplomatic solutions instead. When it proves impossible, then I invade.

[UesugiKenshin]

Because the research is so blazingly fast versus a normal manner of playing, strictly by applying my commodity manipulation method, then I had planned for this to happen by say turn#550 not 350! So I am madly rushing to get everything else done like reconfigured all the starships, built a rather large ground invasion force, and dispatching them way ahead of schedule. Otherwise the Terrans might have persuaded those space faring Brane, Mogwar, and Deshant to join their Terran Coalition.

Starships when maxed out are costly but magnificent. I made a few Vi and Daleth class ships and they are vastly more powerful than their base designs.

One of the unaddressed issues that I hope to remedy in the Balancer mod is much FASTER fleets as the slowest one drags the fleet down. Instead I want the ultimate ships to have excellent range, manueverability, armor, shields, armament, and SPEED at a maximum that is hardcoded to 4.2 warp speed. That fast speed equates to 4 plus special research gives a 20% propulsion speed maximum...thus 4.2 warp.

At some point I want to modify the source code for mods on maximum galactic size 40x40 grids, but maybe have 8.0 be the maximum warp. But that is with many expensive upgrades at level 20 research, not level 14.

I'm thinking that at very high tech levels, the ships would use time displacement to violate the known warp limits as it distorts the space time continuum and such warp distortion ends up leading to subtraction of mass with using both sublight and light speed. Thus with less mass, a vastly more adroit classes of starships exist that could dance around the flying bulky unmanueverable hulks in the prelevel 14 tech categories. Early ships would be no match for them, but especially an entire fleet of wonderfully disciplined coordinated and choreographed space vessels flying graceful but powerful manuevers.

At such speeds, collisions could easily occur, so every kind of technology is necessary to achieve such manuevers. Energy and weapons lock and propulsion and construction...you get the idea. It's wonderful but horrendously expensive.

[UesugiKenshin]

It would be a fatal error to send green recruits to try to do such manuevers in tight formations. Not to mention darting dogfighting and anti-dogfighting fighters trying to take each other out lest they try damage the destroyers and cruisers.

And with huge withering attacks of particle beams and torpedoes, without extraordinary missile lock, you might end up shooting down your own fleet members who strayed even a little from the manuever region.

[UesugiKenshin]

The issue is morale of colonial sectors. The longer peace is maintained, some minor races grow disenchanted as they want battles and conquest to take place. So each empire should have many more types of beneficial buildings which unlock at progressively higher levels to restore morale loss.

This placates them as I'm imagining what each minor race hopes to achieve, and how an empire can facilitate what they not only desire, but address issues like longstanding pollution or being crippled by wearing exoskeletons their entire lives. Every minor race wants different race specific goals and they should be nuanced and diverse for storytelling reasons.

Probably the major empires will also need morale boosting buildings as well. It's a shame that the base attributes cannot be modified by buildings as every empire will have succeeding generations who are the new leadership. I have discussed generational theory before as the desires of Boomers is not at all like Gen Xers who are not at all like Millennials who are not at all like GenZ. So it would interesting to witness a sea change where the ethos of empires would alter from their original design.

[UesugiKenshin]

BotE would not have static empires that are one dimensional, but what was important in turn #1 is not the same in turn#300 and is irrelevant by turn#500 and may be the antithesis by turn #800. Philosophically you would see ideological and ethical drift over time and motivations would change.

[UesugiKenshin]

Example
Vi Dreadnought
Beam: 3,360
Torpedo: 18,000
Shields: 10,000
Now has
Beam 4,042
Torpedo 45,000
Shields 12,000
And has a double iridium hull and maxed out shields.

Da'Unor Fighter Supreme now does triple torpedo damage. Imagine how lethal such nimble dogfighting ships would be and hard to take it out it would be with a double iridium hull and maximum shields.

Then it becomes an engineering issue. " Is it smarter to have three standard inexpensive Da'Unor Fighter Supreme craft or one that can pack a LETHAL WALLOP?"

[UesugiKenshin]

I wish this advanced save game existed at the end of March when I began playing and trying to learn. It would have been so much easier to understand BotE game mechanics and concepts by seeing how it looks when some sectors are nearly 100% developed.

For a very intelligent experienced wargamer, this is the best way to learn as straight away you can do practically anything. By turn #400, you should be able to do everything in 220 colonial sectors....on a totally populated giant galactic map with all major and minor races. The galaxy is densely populated. Roughly 160 inhabited systems are held by the combined other 5 empires.

[UesugiKenshin]

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... itle=Alien

If you read this carefully, the appearance of space monsters is based upon the size of the Galaxy and of the average tech level all of the empires who are present in the game. It's an interesting idea, but in my experience appears at moments when it distracts from the overall game. But with a little bit of fine-tuning I think would add an interesting element to BotE.

Obviously, a space monster appearing randomly could set back a space empire that is not prepared to deal with it it all. Some are quite powerful and so would set back struggling empires. It probably should affect the human players only and in a measured fashion.

Typically in Star Trek, whatever they thought was a space monster, was not something they just eradicated but typically was an intelligent species that might need assistance. So just killing everything that appears randomly does not seem enlightened.

The fact that this exists in the code, does allow for the potential for some kind of missions that serve in some some beneficial fashion, so in the future this could be a very useful aspect of the game.

Similarly Stellar anomalies are interesting but they're usually just avoided and so they're more like obstacles except for rare circumstances where an alien of some kind usually a minor species ends up leaving their sector to retreat, ends up intersecting with a stellar anomaly. I have seen that happen several times, when they probably would have avoided them.

[UesugiKenshin]

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... Races.data
Here's where each of the six major Empires have default attributes. It defines whether they are researchers or farmers or industrialists or sneaky or hostile or whatever. And so what probably would have happened over hundreds of years would change as their ethical alignment changes and their motivations change. We're not static creatures at all. As we age and get married and have children, or as we get older and our bodies change and we face death from serious illness and encounter hardships. So imagine that multiplied by billions of people.

People largely act out of a desire to correct shortfalls in their life deficits that then create compulsions to satisfy those deficits. But as an entire Empire begins to assert its dominance, and have more and more wealth and security, then their motivations would change.

[UesugiKenshin]

By turn 400, the Omega could defeat all five empires. And so since they are 6 times stronger in every aspect, conquest holds little allure. It might be exciting for someone else, but it would be far more interesting to help them achieve their own goals and get along diplomatically. I'm not really interested in conquering them as it's not really a challenge. If they were my peers I might fear them and so wish to eliminate the threat. But they aren't.

[UesugiKenshin]

This is why creating a map and balancing each of the six empires, plus setting up all of the hundred and fifty minor alien species, would balance the game and make it far more interesting and compelling. See if I could do that then there would be peers and so the Galaxy would be a dangerous place as all of them could be threats.

I could just as easily create some advanced races and some silly ones and some benevolent peaceful ones and so there would be a series of missions and puzzles to solve. To me that's far more interesting and it's also having the flavor of various science fiction TV and film scenarios.