Modding

[UesugiKenshin]

Future minor goals that deserve accolades.
1. 1st to totally explore the minor race portion of the galaxy.
2. Be at peace with all minor alien species.
3. First to accumulate 3 million in credits.
4. I think there should be super projects that act as missions and probably only by gaining memberships of minor races and if you do 50 of these, you are acknowledged.
5. Vassalage of major races would so gratifying. They "bend the knee" as they realize the extreme unlikelihood of winning against your majesty.

[UesugiKenshin]

It would be very interesting if nonspaceman minor alien races actually synergistically gave you attributes, that ended up being mutually beneficial and spawning new tech.

See the way it works now, some minor alien races are "spaceman" races, and so they have those starting fleets. But, it be interesting if somehow by mentoring a new minor alien friendship, something in their sector and something on a planet and something about a scientist there or their culture then gave a clue into new technology. And then several lead to all new weaponry...or an alternative warp drive or extremely valuable shield technology.

Scientific discovery is full of happy accidents and incredible good fortune.

[UesugiKenshin]

You can't retrofit existing ships, but what if an extraterrestrial species has higher order command of spatial relationships. That is crucial in fighter pilots and applied physics. They see ideas in their head and can make it happen to make all new tactics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Immelmann
Like Max Immelmann, the brilliant German aviator who invented the Immelmann manuever. An old WW1 biplane would intentionally stall and drop altitude rapidly, then accelerate and fly up in a curve, then flip at much higher altitude, and the pilot chasing him would fly right into his blazing guns, when formerly he was in a tight spot and being chased.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VU7v77kTs-k

So maybe some really great training happens there like Top Gun school as those extraterrestrials are naturally gifted even though they themselves never even developed air travel.

Or what if only in their sector a special ship can be built under rare conditions.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JrDcD_lcazw
A machinist or an architect or a fighter pilot or even a surgeon has to imagine how something is made and make judgement calls to construct something from scratch. Or in the surgeon's case, so intimately know the human body, that they know how to cut very little excess, and extract a tumor, and not harm the patient excising it, yet get all the cancer so the patient is saved. The smallest nick and the patient bleeds out and patients are sick and so don't tolerate anesthesia and so the window of time is small, and the clock is ticking. Not a job for chess players who take an hour a move.

Nobody can teach you that. There aren't classes on that. It's why they are so cocky.

Not everyone can pilot a plane or build a massive skyscraper with all that weight and be properly structurally sound. It's art and science.

So extraterrestrials with superior gifts in spatial relationships would be uncanny pilots.

Lots of people can't pass spatial relationship questions where there is a blueprint and you have to bend a piece of sheet metal and make a very complicated final structure. Most would create scrap metal and just ruin it.

Like an old medieval armorer had to have this ability and human beings are all different sizes and armor is custom-made.

[UesugiKenshin]

I envision a future mod where a parallel structure exists that posts new items of things that the empire hears as rumors, that are storytelling and not absolutely essential, but demonstrates how busy and dynamic a galaxy of space faring extraterrestrials would be. In some way, these characters would end up crossing the players' paths many times, even if just peripherally.

The extraterrestrials are too well developed to just be mechanisms to exploit for conquering. They are too compelling. You would imagine some ending up on spacecraft, as parts of crews or secondary characters, or trusted friends, not just giving hollow words of diplomacy. They would come to the player's aid through messages and give clues of larger stories unfolding.,

And that doesn't even have to be in game. The messages could be in the forum as obscure texts to anyone else reading it, except it has alphanumeric code, and links to a news item when a random event fires.

There are lots of clever ways it could be parallel to BotE. Modding doesn't have to change mechanics in a game or be about modifers. It can be literary and so descriptive and offer insightful details that explains the motivations of various major and minor races.

Like every planet in a modded save game could be described. Why not? And then, those who know things and read get benefits, but ignorance does not prevent them from having a good time just conquering sectors. Modding adds more. It doesn't have to fundamentally alter everything.

If there are 1600 sectors, what makes sector 05,12 better and vital to winning the game? Or is it just conquering to be conquering all 1600 of them? That makes no sense. You would want to visit there, meet the people, learn about them, and the story is what matters. Conquering in space battles is just dessert. You don't live on dessert.

[UesugiKenshin]

Much of BotE is about micromanaging, and players will do that to achieve something amusing and entertaining and to have a sense of adventure. That takes risks as fortune favors the bold.

Actually...

audentem Forsque Venusque iuvat
Ovid
Venus (Romantic erotic love) like Fortune favors the bold.

That is juicy and delicious. Micromanagement is not that. Winning a space battle can be that way,but these rarely happen. So BotE needs more story to fill the gaps.

[UesugiKenshin]

Everything in life comes down to philosophical puzzles.

Everything has a cause and then that affects the outcome of everything. Sometimes a single cause has a primary effect that we are made aware of, but genuinely a single cause can set into motion a series of multiple simultaneous effects as well.

Determinism is the belief that human beings have no free will, and choices are an illusion. We are slaves to the universe and beyond as cause and effect then affects us and everyone else like an infinite number of dominoes. We don't love or hate or like or dislike, but persistently think we do as we are actually no different than viruses and just more complex machines acting as automatons.

Thus the universe did not have a first cause, but the Big Bang ultimately is just a chain of reactions as a collapsing universe which imploded, then exploded dispersing matter into a newly created space time. It's an endless cycle that caused the formation of stars, that develop elements in their nuclear and chemical core, and just physics and cosmology, that then gves rise to planets and the formation of water and amino acids just like the Urey Miler experiment. Life will come to exist through a grand overarching complex scientific process.

Free will is the belief that every human being makes constant choices or even refuses to choose as a choice to just drift like a leaf caught in an eddy in a stream. Humans are responsible for their choices. We were created by some prime mover, whether the prime mover did so intentionally or accidently. The prime mover exists outside space time and doesn't live in 3d space and time, but is likely to be a higher dimensional being.

Every choice means morals and ethics exist as there is personal responsibility. Love and hate and like and dislike exist. Not only that, a multiverse manifests in infinite ways as infinite universes exist where only one small phenomena changed like what the reader ate for breakfast,or the entire universe is radically different and everything known about physics does not hold true in that universe. It is pure chaos.

Modding BotE comes down to choosing along a continuum what you believe to be valid. It's a commentary on reality if you believe in free will. Or you mod, not by choice, but it's your destiny as no one has choices, so in a way, modding is a parody where gamers think they make choices, but are all automatons who were meant to play BotE and think they like or loathe BotE. The latter are just curious manifestations of this cycle of the Big Bang followed by an inevitable Big Crunch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr0dr31ySI8

[UesugiKenshin]

Consider the problem of evil in philosophical thought.

Free Will
Each of us has choices. Some are mentally disturbed and reject personal morality and corporate ethics. Maybe some choices are innate due to genetics, and some choices an effect and consequence of nurture by parents. Thus some who choose evil, may not have done so completely, but began the process in a tainted way without normal parenting to transition from infancy into adulthood.

Determinism
Evil does not exist. Neither does the idea of good. No one has any choices. People do not even act, just appear to do so, as inevitable collisions of molecules then direct a movement of another molecule.

The small percentage of sociopathic and psychopathic abberations then allows civilizations to exist, either as consequences of free will or determinism. Large amounts of the former abberations end civilizations by war and mayhem as morality and ethics never develop fully.

[UesugiKenshin]

4X/rts space games

This genre of games then allows a gamut of choices to gamers where maybe..
1. No one has choices, so the appeal is that each gamer is even less encumbered by reality and choose to be an Emperor, and do as they will, either benevolently, scientifically motivated, economically motivated, or the appeal of victory is writ large on a cosmic scale by space battles. They pretend to be free as in reality they are biological robots.
2. Everyone has choices but not empowered, and if only "the player" were in charge, this absurd galaxy would work out correctly.

[UesugiKenshin]

Irony at the galactic level.

The estimated galaxies in the universe are 2 trillion. In our galaxy, 40 billion planets alone are Earth sized. 11 billion orbit a star of our size (a white dwarf G2V class).

An atheist who denies God exists ie a prime mover who is omnipotent, outside of space time, and eternal, then believes on faith a universe exists that is essentially omnipotent as it removes free will choices, existed due to some unknown action (logically outside our space time) that created the Universe prime ie the first one, then is eternal and never runs out of energy like an infinite perpetual motion machine.

Which provokes incredulity more as one is more illogical?

[UesugiKenshin]

Every extraterrestrial species, either as a major race or a minor one, then is an aggregate of the culture and ethos based on the current philosophical ideas in that sector. They all seek to control their environment by their conscious choices.

Their unique outlook is what drives:
1. The types of major races
2. The types of minor races
3. To divert and amuse and entertain players and partially driven by overcoming obstacles so "winning" in some metric is achieved and satisfies the player's or players' ideas of what a good space game is all about.

A modder is modifying an existing game to better satisfy or be more accurate or offer better amusement more players.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow' ... y_of_needs
All personal ideas of satisfaction and corporate ideas of what is satisfying are driven by Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

First, people have to survive and so need air, water, food, fire, and shelter. Then more complex variations of that to then feel stable and secure.

Second, people need safety, and by having accomplised basic survival, then seek to protect themselves to perpetuate that by agriculture so seasonally surplus is generated and stored. Then protect themselves from a small percentage who would steal what they have.

Third, people need to belong and identify with like minded people and live in tribes to achieve the first and second points. Then civic organization fosters specialization like professional soldiers instead of militia. Not everyone fights, and some heal, and enforce laws so morale is improved.

Fourth, people need fame, prestige, or accomplishment. They want to know if they are "winning" based upon a corporate "metric" and so attain a score and try to improve it.

At the fifth level is self-actualization. Having achieved all four, then some further educate themselves just for the love of learning, travel to personally explore and have journeys, learn alternative ways of living, challenge assertions and adopt a sythesis of their old philosophical ideas plus parts of other systems, and embrace spirituality.

[UesugiKenshin]

Choosing to mod is an inherently altruistic choice to amuse, entertain, and satisfy gamers. A modder has an innate high level of understanding about spatial relationships. That is how they understand and expand all the complex cause and effect of major and minor races in a galaxy of 1600 sectors with starships and troops arriving and invading those sectors.

A modder is not motivated by money, fame, any recognition...whatever. They do it to be kind as they at least admire the game...and want to give back in some manner.

They see something small can be changed and produce more contentment. Some have grand ideas, but the detail people are what bring dreams to fruition.

[UesugiKenshin]

One of the most useful additions to BotE beyond mere modding is the following.

Between turns X and turn Y, if this diplomatic relationship between this major race and this major race is this level, like say friendship or cooperation, then display a text message, or fire a random event between the next 15 turns, or play a sound or music file, or add credits to major empire X's treasury, or give research level X to this empire, or give X number of ship class Y to empire Z which have A experience.

This is scripting. That runs within BotE and that made Medieval 2 very powerful. You then can conditionally "spawn" starships and troops at the homeworld. Even Civ2 had this.

If the AI is too weak, and the difficulty is at a certain level or higher, then it's not a total blowout or rout, but some difficulty challenge is maintained. It's akin to the tension between two excellent dancers. If either was relaxed, the dancing looks sloppy. The muscular tension is created so they are taunt like a bowstring which then adds finesse to their movements.

The player can be given a reward for doing X like maintaining an alliance and fighting to help them so the illusion of a true relationship is maintained by something actually occuring in game.

You can have a give and take relationship between major or minor races. They never can leave their homesectors, but could seemingly give a valueable technology that the human player can never research on their own.

Otherwise you can have 142 alliances between the human player and minor alien races and they do nothing.

If a human player gets an old antiquated ship, yet it has cloaking technology even if only camoflague level 4, then a major race that only had strealth 3, now has cloaking 1, and can use their ship designer to use that new ship class attribute, increase the shields, put in a double iridum hull, and the best weaponry, and now have a significant customized ship with cloaking technology.

Just displaying a text file can offer clues for storytelling. It may or may not do anything. It could allow a special project to be built on a planet under the human player's control. It could do so for the AI major or minor race.

It can display a picture of the enemy's ship class with tech data.

You can allow after turn 150 a new technology upgrade that adds trade routes or resource routes if buildings are constructed plus energy.

[UesugiKenshin]

Mods commonly use scripting to merely place experienced units at certain map coordinate points. Then the numbers vary based on difficulty level. Or money or starting research.

So one mod could have levels of presets in them based upon difficulty. That is way faster that two modders setting up two empires in multiplayer olds and configuring them. You give the human and AI races starting amounts that vary.