Modding

[UesugiKenshin]

Take a note of the energy topic as I discuss some unique energy intensive advanced projects that make sense and offer alternative ways to either protect a sector or have empire wide abilities.

Think outside the box so there are even other ways that war can be waged.

[UesugiKenshin]

You can't mod more money, not without understanding the encrypted hex addresses and values. That seems impenetrable.

What you can do is assign several initial starbases for players to scrap.

Ideally modders will figure this out as it normally it is extremely easy to do. 10,000 is way too low. If we only could boost it without scrapping, and for each empire, and had multiplayer,then straight away we could make a very powerful initial sector. That would be terrific and a huge improvement. It makes logical sense too.

But if we could hex edit more like starting tech level, resources, starting buildings, ships, troops, and starting credits, then players would be thrilled. Then it is more like an advanced major race then begins their expansion into the galaxy, rather than starting from scratch and struggling.

Think about it. The starting ships don't make sense for the underdeveloped starting sector.

[UesugiKenshin]

Three interesting things.

The Templar Castle Fortifications project can be done multiple times making ground invasions very unlikely to work as SIGNIFICANT defensive modifiers are added. I can't think of anything similar that I have found so far except orbital batteries and various minefields in orbit.

The Omega Homeyard is a powerful shipyard with significant additives to building large powerful starships, but it took everything I had to build it by turn 662+. That is unreasonable and largely irrelevant as many shipyards can build Omega battleships in 4 or 5 turns that even are enhanced with the best tech levels (14) and modified by many changes in the ship designer. That means the Omega Homeyard is poorly designed as it becomes largely suprefluous.

Likewise Deritium Trading is just now in turn 662 to pay off with 4 deritium available meaning it's only helpful for creating colony ships. Those built up maxed out large 50+ in population sectors with all the resources would be used by empires to build warships, not colony ships. That is taking way too long to be practically useful.

To mod well, you have to actually beta test to see if infrastructure pays off for the player and it takes a tremendous of hours to beta test well. Ideally you have a core group of very smart people to beta test, and likely they are all excellent players with different strategy styles so rush players and builder turtlers and hybrid players who are advanced and do both appropriately then can test everything.

Good ideas then when modded are useless in the field as there are easier ways to get around and accomplish the same goals.

[UesugiKenshin]

You want to mod so in stages tactics and strategy change and the modding facilitates the creation of various ways to war effectively. For BotE the deritium is intentionally the limiting factor as the paradigm. I'm not sure that is a good idea for a wargame as the whole point is to reward the player so they can launch invasions and defend against them.

You should help the player so they have deritium, not do the opposite or else how can they protect their sectors, much less wage intragalactic war???

For turn times to be practical requires less ships that do more. Many ships are weak even in fleets. Many ships would just slow down turn resolution on a giant map. So ultimately you want these massive capital ships that do huge amounts of damage and are juggernauts. Fearsome beasts prowling the galaxy like lions that are apex predators. You don't want lots of hyenas.

Think of the rush that viewers had when the Borg cube just annihilated scores of starships. And to think that any other race could similarly defeat even the Borg, like Species 8472, then makes players greatly desire to build something comparable.

Borg Cube characteristcs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R8YiwXU3wag

Species 8472 versus Borg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hMVVy0LsILE

[UesugiKenshin]

Ultimately the payoff to players is to make a ground invasion unit like the tripods from War of the Worlds. It's a terrifying unstopable unit unless germ warfare defenses exist. Even aliens from the Alien franchise or predators from the Predator franchise would be no match against disintergration rays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtM3UTktVWI&app=desktop

[UesugiKenshin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiuP8h1JbkE&app=desktop
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2005)

Otherwise you have an eradicator like this.

Planets cannot be destroyed in a sector, so we can't have the "nuke from orbit" weapon from the colonial marine film Aliens.

A very nasty weapon would be dirty bomb technology as that is cheap and makes the planet uninhabitable due to severe pollution at a fraction of the cost of standard nuclear weapon delivery systems.

It makes logical sense an EMP weapon would be employed as it would put any surviving inhabitants back to 1860 technology levels as all electronics and power generation would be toasted. It's easily remedied by countermeasures.

Chemical weapons are particularly hideous as it causes horrendous blistering so all the inhabitants would be inexpensively killed but likely ruin the ecosystem.

A low level neutron bomb is very nasty as it kills all the people, but leaves infrastructure intact.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8jtfGnYxgqU
Various Federation Borg-killer ship classes

[UesugiKenshin]

So far in a galaxy with 1600 sectors, I have only found one that could support 119 billion. You have systems with no useful colonizable planets. You have systems with one tiny planet. You have a series of many planets but having very low total population. And then regular sectors that have from 19-60 billion in total population.

Just because there are 1600 total sectors does not mean a star and planets are there. I haven't found just a star yet. Even when asking BotE to configure the maximum stars in a 40x40 galaxy, it does not do so. And even when that is requested and maximal minor alien races are involved, it does not do so. There still is a lot of empty space. I generally play with 1% astonometric anomalies and really these are waste of space. They would be wonderful in a campaign editor where you could place them, rather than be random. Say you had nebula you could truly hide in, well that might be worth it.

Anomalous entities would be great if there were scripting in BotE (as happens in Total War games like Medieval 2 and especially in the mod Third Age) as then on turn X, then Y happens. That would be smart modding.

I have not played with six empires on a maxed out galaxy as sabotage ruins the game way too fast to discern and truly explore it.

To effectively colonize a sector with a huge total population gap, you send many colony ships at a time as resources may be spread across many planets and sometime BotE will stop allowing new subsequent colonization. So you en masse terraform without colonization, then all at once colonize every planet in a single turn. It will allow that. Otherwise such systems would take a long time to fully max out.

Occasionally there are oddball sectors that won't allow spacedocks due planet class composition.

[UesugiKenshin]

If you had a computer and a tablet, you could push the BotE program to your PC, and then extract it, then only edit sabotage to some rational but very high tech levels. Then compress it and submit it as a mod to the forum. Then those in similar situations could then load it.

This alone would fix the worst problem. Most people could not run it as most have a security feature that disallows 3rd party programs and have to use Google Playstore as a security function. Some tablets have a setting allowing this if they are newer tablets. Otherwise you have to have a PC and your tablet.

It would be a fine minimod and I bet then such a small change would get included in subsequent beta versions. You would have to alter every intel building that adds to sabotage bonuses and that includes minor alien races.

It wouldn't take 48 hours to do this. If then it turned up in beta versions, we could look for flaws in it, and everyone could play with 4-6 major races. It would be terrific.

It would be better to have complex empires at the start, but that might not ever happen unless a talented Java programmer has the time to commit to creating a campaign/scenario editor. It would probaby take less time to create a save game editor.

[UesugiKenshin]

Similarly a modder could add tech levels and create all new ships and units. Submit that as a minimod. And maybe it's good enough to be a new beta test.

See you don't have to recreate the wheel. A mod could be done piecemeal with minimods and then cumulatively and synergistically become the next beta test.

Newer ship class art and unit art and building art and music are just eyecandy and earcandy. They are wildly appreciated,but few have those skills. Think about it. Such things are rarely seen and likely unheard unless running music in an mp3 player. BotE plays only one song.

[UesugiKenshin]

I don't know if it's possible, but an interesting mod would have many special projects that a major race could build in their homeworld, that would either raise the empires attributes across the entire empire...

OR

...special projects that would benefit likely future allies, and thus act like "diplomatic missions". It would be a way to sway minor alien races or even act to sway major alien races, though conflict is inevitable with the latter.

I've been racking my brain trying to think of a way to create "missions" to help minor alien races as the vast majority of the time, that is what the Federation did on Star Trek.

What I would also like is called "locked alliances" in other 4X strategy games. Then you would be paired off and fight other paired races. Like the Khaoran and the Terrans vs the Omega and the Cartare. Alliance would actually mean something. You would rush to your ally's borderlands and help defend them, as would the AI. In a perfect mod, either make it three versus three in a locked alliance or have three pairs battling each other.

[UesugiKenshin]

Alliances right now with minor alien races don't mean squat as they can't leave their home sector. You can actually change this so their ships can leave and can colonize, but they likely will then lose sectors since they probably will leave their home sector defenseless.

I don't know, maybe you even facilitate an effectively vassal minor race empire within your own? Allied and protected but then unlikely to lose it...and most likely never become a member of your empire.

You might then create a"confederacy" which is basically what the EU has become.

Alliances with the major alien races don't mean squat either as every major race backstabs in the worst way.

[UesugiKenshin]

This is hypothetical, but I'm wondering if I can configure a special project at very high levels of tech and with energy requirements that would set the diplomatic value extremely high and maybe that would lock an alliance with a major race until the the other races were eliminated. So best of three or four major races, then the game ends because you want it to, or you continue with your ally then backstabing you and eliminating them. Winner take all.

If you can mod the antipathy or even hatred of a major race toward another very high, and set the sympathy very high between two others, then you might be able to lock alliances.

You can do that in Civ2 and it will hold until it's down to the last two standing. That means you create rivalries or even nemesis.

[UesugiKenshin]

Every major race based on tech levels and every minor race should have routine buildings to raise resource routing. And at very high levels, a way to locally acquire deritium.

I believe, given enough time, that any alien species could develop starships. That cannot happen if they lack deritium and can't easily locally create basic buildings because they lack iridium. This is hugely important with iridum double hulls.

Otherwise alien species would refuse to trade deritium to block their neighbors (other nearby sectors) from gaining starships.

Why? Because hundreds of hours of micromanagement of resource routes would be saved, in creation and then canceling them and creating new intelligent resource logistics from nearby sources.

Or imagine that piracy would happen to any freighters in such confusion and who would ever be able to untangle that mess?

If you want very large numbers of starships, practically made, rather than at scattered places in the galaxy where they may be too far away to truly defend. Even with better modded speed, that alone will not fix the problems.

Once colonization is done with 4-6 empires and many minor aliens on a huge map, I'd like to routinely see 1000 starships which is really not that many. That is 166 per empire ie 40-50 in fleets. Then fighters. Then transports. There would be many starbases per empire like 50 too.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Federation alone had 800 starbases And 6,000-9,000 starships of various classes. Think of the battle of Wolf 359. That had 39 major warships.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Wolf_359

BotE couldn't handle huge numbers but can probably handle 2000 max. I think modders can make 1000 happen routinely at high turn levels like 800+. At turn 1000, I could see 1500 total starbases and starships over six empires with intense industrialization to support them (upkeep) and maintaining an economy. And think of attrition too and repairs.

They brought everything to the Dominion War and that had 31,500+ ships. With 1500 total ships/starbases, I think we could emulate a scaled down version.