Modding

[UesugiKenshin]

As ancient and venerable as Civ 2 (1996) and Civ 3 (2001) are, they had that much and so hundreds and hundreds of campaigns and scenarios were created fairly quickly.

[UesugiKenshin]

Ideally a modder is a selfless altruistic person who most often spends hundreds and thousands of hours trying to either recreate some historical battle or emulates some artistic milieu like Star Trek for the enjoyment of thousands even millions of people.

They are one in a million as most people are selfish. But even the rare modder cannot easily create a vast galaxy without rudimentary understanding of how the hex editing is set up in lieu of an absence of software tools.

[UesugiKenshin]

After sufficient infrastructure is built to facilitate mustering professional military units, then the best wargames allow for a serious battle every 10-20 turns.

To have a campaign requires serious planned logistical effort to deploy and redeploy the correct unit composition to an ever changing "front". A military tactician and strategist needs a mechanism that can get troops and air support where they are needed in a timely economical fashion.

And then you have occupation and staging areas...and badly needed recovery. The worst case scenario was WW2 in the Pacific Theatre where green soldiers faced fanatical troops and then too soon had to fight on a new island towards their objective.

Random attacks are moronic and induce attrition and accomplish nothing but monumental waste of resources and credits...and the lives of your troops. Don't be that kind of commander.

Doing so with high attrition means seldom gaining experience to ships and troops. That's foolhardy (completely being reckless and impetious to the point of being led by your emotions). Stone cold killer veterans are led by stone cold logical commanders.

I believe the AI will do fine if it's not relying upon random infrastructure and unit composition, but realistically difficult with planned presets to make it far more difficult to displace defender minor and major races as they are "ready" by careful modding.

Random design is total nonsense in a military perspective.

[UesugiKenshin]

Consider my model that each sector does not display a solar system but displays up to nine of the most significant strategic planets within many solar systems in that sector of space time.

Then consider that even upon completing level 14 that one still cannot do anything with gas giants.

If these two facts are so, then there is no logical rationale to display gas giants. Right?

Then it would be far better to eliminate the generation of gas giants and instead display more colonizable planets including M class and even Super Earth M class planets as we know they exist. Or display more variance so some seldom displayed but terraformable planets appear so the players have even more planets to inhabit and gain resources.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Earth
A super earth planet may be as large as 17 times the size of the Earth. One Super Earth might reasonably allow 136 billion people! Personally I really like that idea.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PaJe3ZNP0kQ
Gliese 581c
Or

You could say that while the gas giants are never inhabitable, the multiple moons of them are in fact inhabitable like Titan in our solar system might be colonizable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)

Or consider the likelihood that Europa could be colonizable as famously depicted in the film 2010.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=38EDhpxzn2g

That would be supremely interesting and for game mechanics they should be loaded with all resources especially deritium too. It's a grand payoff for doing tremendous research and then returning back to already taken sectors and focusing on THAT. This would then benefit all major and minor races as there would be far less competition.

To make that work means a program alteration for generating these new depictions plus adding the tech levels in and or properly programming Biolevel 13 and 14 which already allude to the plausibility, yet accomplish nothing useful that I can see.

[UesugiKenshin]

What is seldom seen are any grand race based projects that are artistically based or signoficantly add some biological diversity to the sector. When in fact, those should be included through modding as they add a sense of wonder. Everything does not have to be practical and can add morale boosts.

I would bet that by digging through all the possible configurations for buildings that some iterations are seldom used.

It makes sense that at higher tech levels and with the generation of lots of credits that these would be created. They don't add any military or even economic benefit, but have to add some feature or attribute so the AI or some players will elect to make them.

I would like several to add to the major race attributes and so affect the game.

GalCiv 2 wisely had "alignment" and by a series of choices on colonization, and often sparing some indigeneous lifeform, or electing not to expose the colonists to some harmful effects even when it had a direct profitability, then this alignment choice caused a shift that determined good versus neutral versus evil.

You see, the AI will always choose to ignore morality as there is no payoff, but BotE attempts this to have peaceful choices in game to alter how minor races perceive you diplomatically.

This is why every major race under the AI's control exploits their power and will always be evil. The only logical way might be to create good Omega as a choice as well as a general Omega that likely will end up evil under the AI's control. Or have some new major race choices that lack very negative choices and thus tend to cause good.

If you think about it, this intentional choice is far more difficult.

[UesugiKenshin]

To appeal to the most number of players, such modding then should be an option with a payoff for doing so as it handicaps such players greatly for the first several hundred turns by intentionally not conquering, but since the map can be so gigantic, there is no valid reason to wage war in every sector not under your control. In history such fanatical militarism meant the despots themselves were overthrown and so forth causing tremendous instability.

[UesugiKenshin]

Even with a configured 40x40 map in sandbox mode (no major aliens except the player) and with 95% minor alien races, then still the Delarians did not show up. This surprises me. They apparently have a magnificent torpedo technology.

There is a "Midway" class battleship that is magnificent, fast, has excellent manuevering, long range battleship. It's unclear when that shows up, perhaps as an anomalous entity? I want to witness that in action as it sound horrifying like a Borg Cube.

I'm guessing that is a nod to the WW2 Imperial Japanese Navy Yamato.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WI-Z-cwPrU8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=et0-T2H0y3k

Because those exist, then some extraordinary ship classes could be modded and activated by say Level 16 tech+. I thinkthat would thrill players are battleships while powerful are NOT nimble, so one being so would be lethal in combat: a fearsome predator.

If we had an excellent scenario or campaign editor, then we could "activate" the minor races and place them. Then coupled with a map designer, then create genuine scary parts on the galaxy map where even advanced technological major races would DREAD going into.

Some minor races have astounding defenses and if you also gave them great ships, even though they are defenders, it might take multiple armadas to displace them. That would be thrilling to test and build up to.

[UesugiKenshin]

It might be a sound strategy to develop a mod where there are fleets for every minor alien race and then have a wide continuum where some are very weak to some being like a defending Borg sector. And so, even if the AI does not pose enough of threat for advanced players, then on a huge 40x40 galactic map, taking any sector held by minor alien race requires careful sound military tactics and strategy.

I think that sounds very enjoyable versus using diplomacy to absorb sectors and entire fleets. It sounds more interesting and realistic too.

So the default would be 95% minor alien races in a huge galaxy and it would be very "grindy" where the player and AI major races fight for every sector. Such a mod would take several thousand turns to utterly defeat in all totality.

[UesugiKenshin]

And to do that does not mean having lots of new ship classes as many alien races could use existing ship types but variations of configurations. Otherwise a mod team needs artists to design many hull types.

Think, every country on the Earth does not create their own ships,but buys them most often. Some would be using older weaker hulls and with far less expensive defenses and weaponry, but be respectable for defensive operations especially coupled with local troops (essentially militia from the citizenry, minor race specific troops, defensive tactics for that minor alien race by attributes, and starbases.

[UesugiKenshin]

Your average player lacks the time they want to play strategy games, so starting in turn 1000 with every sector "tricked out" with infrastructure, ships, and troops, and 75% of tech already researched, they can wage war in the next ten turns.

LOTS of people would play that. They want to wage war NOW.

The premise of Civ 2 and Civ 3 historical battles and many scenarios is based upon that principle. Not build infrastructure and unit composition, but strictly deploy and build units based upon predictable attrition.

Think how much more fun it would be if 500 to 1000 ships and troops were already made for every major race plus a large fleet for every minor alien race defender. Talk about Dominion Wars.

[UesugiKenshin]

I don't really understand what "deterium trading" does. I have lots of deterium refineries at various levels and I have lots of deterium trading. In my opinion, after all that trouble, I should be able to route the dangerous deterium to all of these and so create ships easily at these very carefully planned powerhouse industrial sites that have huge caches of mined materials. Millions have been spent and energy sourced to power them up and still it's confusing.

The whole point of BotE is creating warp capable starships so why add even more hurdles to prevent that from occuring? It takes enormous patience to play BotE before it pays off with warship creation.

Let the players enjoy themselves. The longer you dangle a carrot, the less interesting it is and the less anyone wants to eat it.

I can easily make the very best cruisers, heavy cruisers, and battleships, but all deterium trading generally does is send a small trickle to some place that allow them to make colony ships. That is absurd after 400 estimated hours creating millions possibly billions of ore transfers across the galaxy. That is not pleasant but irritating.

Deritium ain't that special and if it were, then why bother creating fleets of starships? Sometime as a modder count up how many steps are needed to make starship creation work. I have never seen starship creation be so complex.

It's very cerebral and so initially interesting but give the players a break.

The first aspect to mod deritium is whatever is in a colony ship should be scrapped when a new colony ships deposit passengers and so deposit recycled deritium. So straight away a balance would exist in every populated sector. This means that deposit of deritium would in turn lead to new colony ships 50-75 turns later from that sector. If deritium is the most precious glactic resource you can bet every alien race would be recycling it like crazy.

The second thing would be generate deritium easier through special projects (some are amusing and even recycle them from feces).

The third thing is deritium trading should generate transfers in much higher amounts per turn or heck, just create levels of this.

Players play BotE to wage war not because micromanaging is entertaining.

[UesugiKenshin]

Two of the finest wargames ever made are Rome 1 Total War and Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms and in my opinion even Shogun 1 Total War was so revolutionary that it deserves to be included. Creating infrastructure and units is a breeze by comparison.

The same is true for Civ 2, Civ 3, and Civ 4.

The same is true for GalCiv 2.

Nobody likes lots of micromanagement. They want to wage war in a reasonable amount of time.

Every 4X strategy games, and some RTS games that combine 4X elements, has a techtree. You learn more by funneling income and so can make better units. The goal is to fight and defend, not just build.

A building game is something like SimCity and never as popular.

This in game mechanics rewards smart students of military history by making them think but rewards them truly by fighting battles. Just the process, however interesting, does not thrill them.

[UesugiKenshin]

If you were to look at all the mods in the games I listed, what the modders chiefly did was remove micromanaging from the process by creating infrastructure, improving the economy,generating units, and so in 10-20 turns, the players began fighting.

So what happens is the players play the mods not actually play the original games. The game designers often want to create a building a civilization/empire experience. When what players want is a wargaming experience.

The modders lack the technical ability to design game software, but every modder began as an ARDENT player. The impetus for modding was to speed along the process so the players did not have to micromanage as much.

Maybe 5% play the original game as they are purists and want to create an empire from scratch.

[UesugiKenshin]

What NOT to do when modding the techtree.

All 4X games have some incarnation of a techtree. This allows the player to learn technology by applying income and resources, and in BotE's case also "energy", and then get some benefit and gain some ability like training troops or creating units.

Good techtrees are easily understandable by the descriptions so the player easily understands what is gained and what requirements are needed. BotE complicates this by forcing the player to either mine resources in sufficient amounts and or transfering those resources from the main trade screen, or through "trade" with other major or minor races, or "resource routing.

That is a TON of hoops and practically the most rigourous techtree requirements I have seen since the sixties in any wargame.

But that is okay as long as the player gains some significant payoff for all that rigorous trouble as that is a lot of work.

Super Taxes for the Omega Alliance is the absolute worst example of what NOT to do. Not only is it asking a lot, but it causes a penalty to morale, and then causes a ruinous 30% drop in resource production,then requires energy, and then has a miniscule income benefit. Bad bad bad.

The player on a giant galaxy map is juggling tremendous amounts of micromanagement and spending hundreds and hundreds of hours and likely building everything as they are distracted as they have hundreds of sectors under their control as well as moving hundreds of ships around and resource routes.

Give them beneficial rewards.

The way you make income in BotE is not by local taxes, trade to major and minor races, but through sales of ore and crystals and manipulating the economy by modulating the value of ore and crystals. Even this is extremely demanding as your mines can only make up to 125,000 units and then cut off. And you can't mine resources unless they are in your sector and not every sector (which would be like saying there is no coal or iron in 50 planets in multiple solar systems)!

Come on. Get real. It would take not trillions of dollars, not quadrillions, but septillions of dollars in such an economy. Don't be stingy.

If you have many requirements, what should happen is empire-wide benefits, not localized sector benefits.

[UesugiKenshin]

Think about some industry that requires a complex process using lots of technology and raw materials and logistical issues for delivery...like the pharmaceutical companies. Well, after all that trouble, with all those employees, it better be profitable, or else no one would bother making new drugs that are needed for billions of people.

The techtree is like that. It has to pay off for the player so they then can make some fantastic warahip, or some delightfully powerful troop unit, or suddenly gain major ways to resist spy sabotage, or make a cash windfall, or now have the ability to terraform a whole new class of planet, or something big!

Now locally within the sector, every major and minor race would have "goals" and those are milestones, and creating/building those goals is a selof-congratulatory effort that says, " we are succeeding and this construction is a monument to the people, and thus implies immortality."