Modding

[UesugiKenshin]

Rome 1 Total War, Barbarian Invasion, Medieval 2 Total War, etc had a problem. They made an extraordinary turn based strategy game and RTS, but few players understood the tactical battle aspects. It was revolutionary.

Then totalwar.org and twcenter.net had players extensively explaining battle mechanics and posting youtube videos. That vastly increased sales of wargames to people who formerly bought action games. Ladies started playing these games who were not soldiers. It was great.

See a forum is extremely important to the documentation process as you need writers and players and a mechanism so potential players and new players end up improving and loving the game.

Many interested could make youtube videos as some prefer to watch how an expert plays. They want to watch the results, not the whole slow process. "When I do this, it solves this problem, and I win easier."

[UesugiKenshin]

Your average player does not comprehend how to wage war, but they want to learn. So youtube videos, the forum being searchable by Google, an improved English wiki, advanced saved games included in the next patch, more variety of ships and troops, better understanding of the economy, then increase the user base.

The most delicious fruit are white flesh peaches, but if no one knows they exist, then they don't get eaten or grown.

[UesugiKenshin]

So the ship designer can upgrade ships like transports, so why create 2 levels of freighters when we could just create advanced versions"?

1. The ship designer is complex and so may be beyond what a standard user will think to do to cope.

2. You want inexpensive transports as you need them to make outposts and then starbases.

3. You want at least slightly better freighters and then a seperate one who can fight back. Maybe they fly in fleets to a central hub for strength through unity, then individually fly from the hub to their destination.

4.And not every transport will be flying into border zones where they are prone to being attacked, thus the bulk will be the plain vanilla transport, with some better freighters (maybe faster) and some will be taking a significant risk to supply resources to a potential staging area that will ultimately be where fleets assemble for any probes and invasions.

5. Thus if we had a coder and an artist, they could create 2 levels of freighters for six empires so 12 freighters that need art and coded for new ships with requirements and costs.

6. Then maybe it works well and facilitates empty slots for trade/resource routes so way more trade to especially minor alien races and possibly to major alien colonies on the borders between empires. They may be potential allies. This would improve relations hoping to ultimately attain a War Pact against a 3rd foe.

Every empire against every empire is chaotic. You want diplomacy to add nuance to a war game. Then you have the Allies and the Axis powers. Then you have the Federation, Klingons, even the Romulans temporarily unified against the Dominion and Cardassians...or similarly something along those lines using the BotE major aliens.

[UesugiKenshin]

Excited passionate modders could sign up for membership here and make their own posts and offering "tips" and start creating a text edit for a ship and design a graphic that fits the file characteristics of existing ships so it looks "unified" and has the same "flavor" of the rest of the existing specific major alien vessels.

Then they could spread the word on science fiction forums and on game forums so more people are inspired to download BotE through GooglePlay and Amazon and directly through the developer sites.
https://www.amazon.com/Blotunga-Birth-o ... B011477JBA
https://blotunga.itch.io/birth-of-the-empires

That is as important or even more important than a total mod conversion.

[UesugiKenshin]

viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7300&start=45
Look at what I wrote about creating custom ship design according to tech levels and assimilating major and minor race tecnology.

That is a legitimate if cumbersome method for 5 levels of a ship class with the caveat the player has to write down every ship name, based on these design upgrades, as you cannot create a new ship class in game.

In testing, then one could see how they do and that would indicate a niche for certain new ship classes.

That won't work for offensive weaponry on a transport as I think there isn't a slot for that so you can't havean armed freighter, but need an escort until it gets modded and or patched.

Wargamers are good at figuring out where the deficits are where a few good ships with certain attributes would solve issues.

[UesugiKenshin]

You would deploy generational upgrades to various locations based on their abilities and so the heavy lifting might be done by later generations with stronger upgrades. And leave others to fulfill other lighter duty internal to the empire as they are not as defensible nor have the better weaponry.

Just like an old Android tablet wouldn't be used in mission critical roles.

What would be cool would be if we could name ships. See, then this generational difference could be part of the nomenclature. Then in the military screen, you can sort and that would be obvious.

The best modding is no modding. It's suggesting based on logic and reason and so it gets patched and BotE gets better and better.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason# ... d_to_logic

Then mods are about radical change like total conversion mods.

I have this wild idea that BotE could be a military 4x game with slight changes if you could create a field attribute that a unit is for air, land, sea, or space. Then units could be like any civilization style 4X game and advance over time. Then the galactic map could display terrain instead of space.

The other idea is BotE could give attributes to flagships so they gain in some various kinds of tactics and so gain an increase in abilities with battles. Not just experience, but skills like formations. Then certain flagships become famous and have abilities that help entire fleets under their command. It's like being awarded military medals and citations for valor. Players eat that up like candy. It's a metric of a unit's history. You would fear some flagships as famous admirals were the commanders.

[UesugiKenshin]

It's better to make a case for a ship, and code it, and reskin it, and then present it as a resource.Then have several and maybe they get in a future patch.

The same is true for all new technology and buildings creating units. You do the same process so it ends up in a new revision. Then the resources are there and dormant and the players discover them and are delighted that their effort unlocked quasi DLC. It's undocumented on purpose...rewards for high income, achievements, high research, diplomacy. It tells a story, so the player has a history in the game, and is proud of their achievements, and committed to continuing. It makes the game have long playabilty.

Not many people would get these and so then people would get excited about some magnificent ship that can't be replaced so when you lose it, it hurts and that player then is connected to the galaxy that was created.

Maybe you do some heroic act and it impresses the Khaoran and their diplomatic stance towards you get very high as you earned their sincere trust? You saved them. That is more meaningful that hollow combat.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Kindle Fire 32 gb 8th generation is under $50 sometimes. You can't properly root it...yet. All you can do is disable a lot of bloatware. I'm not 100% certain you can download apks directly as it is their crippled Amazon OS. To get a genuine load from unknown sources and directly download an apk, you need it rooted. If you have a computer, you sideload via the cable connection.

Back to square one for me. With a compupter, and an SD card plus card reader, you can root some low end tablets, the software is free, but it's an unofficial release and you might brick the tablet.

Alternatively they used to sell a preloaded sd card made for individual tablets...if you can find them. You put that in your sd card slot, and it's probably 8 gb and so you have a dual boot situation as it reads the sd card first. So you can take it out and it loads normally. It's pricey at $40.

Maybe the tech heads figure out a root for the Kindle Fire 8 and the prices are falling as we approach Christmas?

I saw one method but that end up turning it into a Linux device. That ain't so great.

This is partially untrue. You can root an earlier generation of a Kindle Fire 8 (there are many). You cannot at present root a Kindle Fire 8 (10th Generation).

[Note the limited standard warranty is a year. Thus after a year, it makes sense to root it.]

So a Kindle Fire 8 (9th generation or earlier) could get rooted to a full bonafide Android OS and be a great tablet for not much money and would have zero bloatware. It would be good for modding or playing BotE.

Tech experts are working on a solution. It voids the warranty though. There are ways to restore or unroot a device that returns it to it's virgin state.

[UesugiKenshin]

Another option for hosting a BotE mod would be f-droid. See I think we have to extract the apk, change the pertinent text files, then repack the apk. Then load it to amazon or f-droid. But blotunga has to be okay with that.

That is very different than standard modding where you have a mod pack and when it unzips, you put the files in a directory, and then run it. See it's better to have seperate installations so people can run the standard BotE, the private beta multiplayer apk, and a modded apk.

Kindle Fire 8 can easily run from unknown source across the Internet, so you don't need to sideload from a pc. That probably is the least expensive and newest tablet that will get the job done. But there is no editor so it takes meticulous care text editting. It's just slower to do, not insurmountable.

And once the text files are for the BotE Android version, it's no big deal to do a windows version. The program looks for a newer data file so it should load that one. Again, I would do multiple installations so you don't overwrite an existing installation where you have ships you created or save game files.

[UesugiKenshin]

Some old tablets can only use the GooglePlay app. Unfortunantly I'm in that category. Which means I could do the minor edits, even load them to amazon and f-droid, but couldn't use them to install the apk. The only way is if blotunga loads the mod to the GooglePlay store. ARGH. Or if the changes are included in the next official patch.

All an apk is a rar archive. You unrar the apk to see what is there. Do the edit. Redo the rar. Rename the extension to apk.

[UesugiKenshin]

I got excited for 30 minutes as the GooglePlay store offers an Amazon store app. That means you can look at Amazon store Android games as well as anything offered for sale there. So I browsed over at the games and tried to download an app. It doesn't work. If it did, that was an old workaround to load games or any app through Amazon.

GooglePlay and Amazon are competitors selling apps. So while you can browse on the GooglePlay app for Amazon, you can't download! How crazy is that?

Old tablets have a proprietary OS and so used GooglePlay to load apps exclusively. Or you can sideload if you have a PC. Rats. Google made them "cripple" the most useful function.

So GooglePlay restricts such app stores like f-droid. I'm looking for a work around so anyone can load a modded version in some manner even if they lack a pc and have an old venerable Android tablet.

Why do I care? 5 million Nook tablets were sold. Kind of a large market. Finding a workaround means a large user base who have limited strategy 4x choices, but can easily play BotE as the program has small requirements. How many other old non-rooted tablets are there. Millions and millions. Some would be dirt cheap even free so if you wanted, you could have an ordinary tablet that you could just run BotE on plus do standard things like browse the internet, check email, be an ebook reader, and watch movies/tv shows.

So if the mod can be loaded in some manner as a seperate app, so the standard BotE is a seperate app, then changes to the text files won't adversely affect the standard settings.

Maybe the Tech-15 mod can be ported to Android and loaded as a seperate app so you would have multiple versions, plus my own fine tuned mod for better resource routes, deritium, and greatly reduced sabotage (and later higher research and ships and troops), plus the beta BotE multiplayer version. So 4 BotE apps.

As I asked back in April as I anticipated the possibilities, this is a legitimate way to have mutiple versions and not interfere with the standard BotE version.

This was the established way to safely do modding to ensure players did not mess up their original installation, or if patches were "pushed" as updates, it wouldn't scrub their modded save games.

[UesugiKenshin]

I would say as GooglePlay was the original proprietary mechanism for loading apps, that ensuring that mods can be loaded to the GooglePlaystore is the most important BotE modder issue. It solves the problem.

Some of those owners just tossed an old tablet in a drawer and use it as a backup device as they never rooted it and it's too much work to root it for most of them and a waste as they are just 1gb mem 8gb storage devices.

The rest are still using them. There is nothing wrong with them. Other than the battery, they are good as new. You can even run old school DOS and low level Windows and nondemanding Windows XP games through emulation.

[UesugiKenshin]

VANKYO Matrixpad S7 7 Inch Tablet Android 9.0 Pie 2gb RAM 32gb Storage 5mp
$65-75
This model is a full Android and so you won't have to worry about bloatware from Fire OS and later rooting it. You won't have any issues with loading from unknown sources. Figure you can get a Kindle Fire for about $50-60, but will have the rooting hassle and accidentally bricking it. Why bother for $15?

It should be perfect for modding. I'm hoping to do an experiment tomorrow emulating Windows on an old Android. If it works, the changes could be done easily so less error checking, and then make changes to a BotE apk, repack it, and maybe it could be uploaded and others could beta test it. I won't be able to without sideloading it.

The modding coud be done piecemeal just to address sabotage, more resource routes, and deritium. This would totally change the game and unleash the Khaorans from being bullied until post turn #700.

Then later add some ships and more research...and maybe some troops. I'm thinking a minor rebalancing mod before Christmas.

In my dreams, I want random events that would modulate morale and diplomacy. The morale on minor alien member homesystems and your own colonists would fire random events. Some would be just storytelling. Others would raise and lower morale. Some would affect your diplomatic relationships.

See the topic here.
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7110

[UesugiKenshin]

So espionage would happen but probably slower. But real sabotage missions could not until probably turn #700 based on acquiring technology.

So the same major races get the same benefits, but way later and with higher level intel agencies that get turned on later.

So now the rest can't count on limiting Khaoran ambition. So they would become very popular in my opinion. If players applied the tactics I've discussed, then the Khaoran can cope and if they get wealthy, make lots of research buildings...providing very lethal weaponry and armor.

Some would want to appease them. You wouldn't want to cross them. Then things get harder and harder if they don't conquer the Cartare and Rotharians and Omega as then sabotage comes online. They would worry that the Khaoran are the biggest threat to the galaxy.

[UesugiKenshin]

To do that I need graphics. Tech would unlock special ships and there would be this RACE to gain the tech right when sabotage starts furiously happening. Meanwhile probably since turn#550, the Khaorans are on a wild rampage as they know they have to cripple intelligence operations As Soon As Possible as the clock is ticking. They cannot delay. This is their golden opportunity to rid the galaxy of the worst saboteurs: Cartare, Rotharians, and Omega.

They can't possibly obliterate them, but could severely damage their economies by embargos and damage their ships. Take minor alien members who confer sabotage ability. Maybe take special ship designs and re-engineer their own.

It's a much more complicated game to play them.

I can recycle some ships if a graphic designer can reskin some. Maybe I can get some troop graphics from another mod or existing ones get reskined. I need tech level graphics too even it's just minor alterations and generic tech names until they can be properly be named after Christmas.