Modding

[UesugiKenshin]

Sure your species could eradicate all other lifeforms when at that level, or your specie(s) are so advanced (you are a species plus your member races), that maybe your species can do everything even as a single homesector.

Your species would be like gods to minor alien species.

That is how advanced you are. Infrastructure would produce extra mammoth amounts of resources cleanly. Maybe buildings don't need resources anymore. Maybe life is effortless. Maybe money has no meaning as it always was an illusion. There would be no competition and there would be nothing to fear...unless the other extraterrestrials were ahead of your own species. Then you are doomed if they want to eliminate you as insignificant and irrelevant even as a harmful galactic parasite.

[UesugiKenshin]

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... fentechnik
Here is my theory.

I think that this link which has an xls (Excel spreadsheet) lists 181 techs and that is where the number comes from. Each added tech is in a format that increments by one. And that number then is what goes in the building data.

If that is correct, then you have to be careful and add to the tech in a specific order and remember the numbers as they are not listed. I wish there were an English version. Then modders would add to it and it's a reference table.

[UesugiKenshin]

Similarly, there is an xls file for special research and who knows if these are up to date?

If you look at the GitHub source code in the BotE master, there is a, I guess Java applet, and it's a minor race editor. Maybe there is a research editor???

Modding is like explorers where you don't always have maps or "rutters" (navigation logs from those who went there before). So sometimes we are stumbling in the dark and at the edge of the world and don't know what we are doing.

[UesugiKenshin]

viewtopic.php?f=102&t=2670&start=345
This topic has nothing but suggestions, and there is a similar suggestion dream list on the German wiki.

So as modders, you could try to make these happen.

When making many more research levels for a mod good to turn #1000, then few people will get there as they will get distracted with other things. So the easiest way is facilitate it by playing the game yourself and building things up and mostly defending so your empire is not stronger than every other empire. And allying with underdogs to manipulate diplomacy to disempower whomever is ahead. Your empire stymies the rest so everyone stays about the same until turn #700. Save it. Now there's one save.

Now pick a different empire and raise the difficulty and do the same thing. Then keep doing that so the toughest major alien empire is the chosen one at the highest difficulty. Now the players have many save game choices, all very different based on the abilities of major races, but counterbalanced by wise modding. They all should be thrilling.

Otherwise 5% playing will finish.

You want to write documentation too explaining the rationale for changing things. The best documentation have pictures. Not everyone is a writer as maybe you are great reskinning ships. You genuinely need a team where people commit to brief achievable goals. The more people on the team, the easier it should be, but the coder needs pics, and artist wants a concept of abilities of the ship.

But the more people on dysfunctional mod teams, the more arguments as some never follow through and then oters have to swoop in to do what they promised to do.

The documentation should have a story explaining what happened so in some sense, a concise AAR (after action report) and how things ended up as by turn#700, empires choose sides or are isolationists.

[UesugiKenshin]

Every empire starts with certain infrastructure and troops and ships in some fashion. To make it easier on yourself, have a scrappable starbase. Then the first turn, scrap it, and then you have cash to start accelerating infrastructure.

Rinse repeat by changing the one with that starbase. You could just have every homesector have one to simplify things.

Ordinarily there are campaign editors and the first thing a modder does is set tech level, money, ships,.infrastructure, troops, and diplomatic stance between the various major aliens, and the ai level, and things like type of expansion as some would be very bold and some would be methodical/logical, and some might be not as smart but very aggressive etc.

We can't do that yet. If we understood the save games, we could hexedit these things.

[UesugiKenshin]

Just part of being on a mod team is someone writes the instructions on installation as a totally green beginner may load it. And someone does forum relations as some struggle with mod concepts and this has to be a diplomatic person willing to write clear FAQs so they don't have to answer the same questions over and over.

There will be communication issues as what something means in English is called something else in Germany or elswhere. People all are miscommunicating ideas. Some write extremely terse posts so what they want help with is unclear.

Modding is not just the mod, but player relations so they have a great time, yet a challenging game.

[UesugiKenshin]

Someone should take screencaps. And then, you generate excitement by posting them. Some end up in documentation. A writer carefully explains what is happening. Someone explains the map and the size of empires and strategic locations.

It's not just modding.

Someone shows the military stats like weaponry and rate of fire and type of torpedo tubes and armor and manueverability. Someone explains new troops.

Players want to know how many inhabited systems and see a screen cap showing infrastructure and describe cashflow and research points.

[UesugiKenshin]

Imagine when you first played BotE and struggled with a few colonies.

Then imagine a new player, who maybe is frustrated as he or she wants to do more.

Then hears he or she can play with 200 colonies and has 12 fleets and every kind of ship and 150 troops. Then has huge mining reserves and 200,000 in cash that is growing. Talk about excited. That is a huge difference.

[UesugiKenshin]

That is an excited player who isn't going to fail and has many things they can do that they only dreamed of doing. They probably are too rambunctious and lose troops by prematurely attacking.

That is okay as they can reload.

The best way to learn is this way as you have a big buffer protecting the player from failure.

Then they can take risks and can learn. They try all the advanced save games and discover they like one major alien race more, and it may surprise them as who that is may be some major race they dismissed prior.

"I never would have picked the Rotharians! I love cloaking!"

That person likely then plays a whole campaign...start to finish as they feel emboldened.

Some will end up modding.

[UesugiKenshin]

Nervous players may not use the ship designer as there is a potential to make ships that are too expensive, and they didn't write down the settings.

But you should encourage this as when they do, the ships they make are extraordinary. Yeah, they are expensive, but you are making money to SPEND not save. They can make these dreadnoughts that are twice as expensive, but are glorious. They would be scary to fight.

[UesugiKenshin]

When taking screencaps, there is a limit on your account. And you should resize them to something far smaller. And mostly you want off site image screencaps. You probably post about your mod elsewhere so the images should be elsewhere. And you can cut and paste documentation so your mod team member doesn't have to rewrite something 20 times about the same subject.

Essentially you are doing a marketing campaign.

It's vital you archive everything 3 times as if you lose your project, you are sunk. Have backups..have the files organized and have save games and a pdf manual.

[UesugiKenshin]

Everybody wants to do certain projects, but doing anything even with a whiff of breaking copyright gets you shut down. You simply can't do it. People create something private and share it with fools, and then it goes viral and you will be blamed as it reflects poorly on BotE's developers. Don't do that. Never share internal mods with your buddies as if they release it, you are monetarily responsible.

This is not 2005 when lots of those mods happened.

People share what they should not share. Make something original.

[UesugiKenshin]

The best mod is open ended and a player could play for years as all the empires and trying every way to win. That person will get hooked on modding.Probably they end up wanting a multiplayer scenario (to play with their buddies) over 40 turns where it is a Battle Royale...and see who is still alive at the end.

[UesugiKenshin]

viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7326&start=15
The player can manage to be so incredibly successful in a sandbox game as there is no true threat, and so at some point, the game has to create a threat.

That is what happens in the Omega turn#700 save game. The minor alien races are losing morale in some regions and will probably revolt despite it being a utopia and one these minor races could never create themselves.

Why? Because all people want to be free not subjects.

So I can appease them with wonder buildings, but it won't last. The People are distracted by grand gestures, but then get bored...just like every American was glued to tv sets to watch the Apollo moon landing, then gradually didn't even watch.

Maybe revolution is a good thing in game design as no human being wants perfection. Humans want conflict and obstacles to overcome. Some guys despite marrying gorgeous beauty queens, then get bored and have affairs. It's confounding self-sabotage.

[UesugiKenshin]

Please thank rainer as he created a modding topic for us to facilitate a place, seperated by areas of interest, to ask questions and reply to posts.