As an aid for me to experiment with balance issues is there anything that we can do to enable me to control more than one empire from the same PC. [I.E. hot-seat instead of IP play]

If, from the same PC, I could control multiple empires I could of course play them and see if I noticed anything that seemed terribly out-of-whack.

that's a good one. I think sir p. does this kind of testing with his developer version. He just copies the bote.exe into another folder and starts two instances of the game and so has multiplayer-mode on one pc (switching via alt+tab on the keyboard). Don't know if that's possible with the alpha2 cause you need an ip and I don't know if the program can handle two identical ip's. Maybe try and check it out.

Otherwise you could just plug a second pc on, but well it has to have the same "big" monitor screen so a notebook wouldn't be enough there..

I think, there's not much one can do to test it out on your own besides getting another somewhat identical pc in your room which is kinda "unhandy" I'm afraid..

Note: I'm only asking because I'd like to help

My main PC has OODDLES [4GB] of memory so if I can run 2 versions of the alpha that sounds like the way to go. I'll try it later tonight and let you know if that works.

If that doesn't work I was planning on using my main PC & laptop but I was hoping that I wouldn't have to burn the extra electricity to do that

FYI: I've done some testing on a laptop with a max screen res of 1024x768 and I'm getting by OK. I wouldn't want to manage a whole galaxy this way but it is dooable [at least with my laptop].

glad to hear.

of course i wasn't assuming something different than what you stated in your first line

well, I'm lookin forward seein some feedback from you. Feel free to give us any critic you want

I've been playing around with my first hotseat game and I don't have firm conclusions but I do have some observations:

1. I think that some tweaks to the "random" layout of the galaxy should be done in later revisions. Basically in my last game the CoPs had a great layout while the Rotharians were really put behind the 8-ball.

It might not be a bad idea to randomly generate some planets around one faction and then repeat a similar template for the other factions so one empire doesn't have a significantly better starting position than the others.

2. Minors that join your empire need to be guaranteed to be at least somewhat self-sufficient. I've had several minors join me with level 3 or 4 tech but no farms, industries, or mines.

As far as the game itself the Coalitiion's good starting position, favorable minors, and trade centers have put them way ahead at this point.

I'll have to play tons of games though before I get a feel of how much of it is random luck and how much is balance related.

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Has anyone else had similar experiences?

There would be no AI for the minorrace. At the moment the buildings on a minorrace system are build, if you get the system. So there are no calculations about foodproduction or something else before anybody ownes this system. But I can change the algorithm a little bit, so there are more farms in the system.

If I understood that right, the concept is the following:

we got all minors divided into subgroups, each of them linked to the current main tech level of all majors (the subgroups are shown in the MinorsDiploAnswers.data (financial, warlike, farmer, industrial, researcher,..).

According to these values, the minor will get his tech level from the current mean tech, so there'll be no AI needed there. (this might also be the problem that you experienced with the minors having no buildings or low tech cause the other majors obviously suck having no AI in the alpha2-version hehe ). Only thing you can mod is the subgroup membership of the specific minor race so that it gets a little more tech like the researcher subgroup. But those ones won't get that many ships as the warlike for example so be careful with that of course .

Only thing that is needed for a minor is a ship movement and strategic fleet placement AI so that the vulcans for example can explore the galaxy a bit and the tarokians defend their territory properly as well as the Sevar attack all their enemies (meaning the rest of the galaxy ).

btw. "extreme" minor races definitely need some sort of special treatment..

This MIGHT be a balance issue but I'm not sure. Of course it also doesn't matter at this point either ... but ...

I was testing as the Rotharians. I had a scout ship exploring the frontier and I found the Khaoron homeworld. The Khaorons killed the scout I assume with their scout and an armed colony ship.

I found the Heyoun homeworld in a prior game and won that combat so I assumed this wasn't really a big deal.

My top level rotharian ship at the time was some misc. destroyer. I went into Research -> Ship Design and maxed out weapons & shields. The only thing that I didn't max out was hull material and hull type which I left at defaults thinking that I wouldn't need to bother.

To make a long story short I made 2 of my top end destroyers, formed a task force, cloaked them, made sure they had attack orders, then sent them to the Khaoron homeworld.

They were defeated again.

I would assume that 2 maxed out destroyers SHOULD have been able to beat the Khaoron starting forces but they lost. Is there something that I overlooked? I assume that the Khaorons can't make more ships nor could they upgrade the ships they have .....

Lol...

There is a huge Khaoron armada stationed in the Khaoron homeworld. Most of their ships are cloaked, so you can't see them. But there are a lot of Dreadnought-class ships. These ships are techlevel 10 ships. To defeat this Khaoron fleet you need much more than two destroyers.

It is like a goal to defeat the Khaoron fleet in this alpha version. Try it

guess whose idea this was...

I guess that's something in the "I overlooked it" category ... heh

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OFFTOPIC: I listed 2 bugs in the bug report thread. I thought the klingon thing might be a bug. There is another POSSIBLE bug though at the end of my post about research .....

Rotharian Outposts feel a little weak to me. IIRC a Montgomery is a tech 4 starship [maybe tech 5]. If it is a tech 4 starship then the outpost seems a little weak to me when such a low tech starship can defeat it with minimal damage taken.

I suspect this is intentional but what is the reasoning behind it? Basically is the game designed where an outpost/starbase isn't strong unless also defended by ships?

That is a balancing issue. I want the outposts to be stronger too. But at the moment we have less feedback about shipbalancing, including stations and outposts, too. I think we need some time to find the right values for every ship. Scav (our shiplist creator) is doing a hard work.

If you want, you can modify it by your own. Download the shipeditor and you can change some values. If you want, you can post your modified shiplist as an attachement in the modification part of our german forum (or here).

I was thinking of doing the same thing but I have to play through a lot longer before I get a better feel for balance. In addition I'm not even sure that I have enough knowledge to know how things are supposed to work yet.

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How much of an obstacle do we want outposts and starbases to be? Should they be considered more "speed bumps" or "fortresses"? Are these objects upgradeable? [Like Outpost 1&2 or Starbase 1&2 in the original BotF] Should these installations be like artillery .. I.E. they can do huge damage and are possibly tough IF they have guards [like ships] but are easily overrun without those guards?

What do you guys think?

My guess would be is that outposts should be significant obstacles at tech levels 1-3 by themselves. Above that a couple of "tech level 4" ships should probably be able to take one out without having to worry about it. I'm thinking that outposts should be tech level 1.

My guess would be that starbases should be significant obstacles at tech levels 1-6. After that three or so tech level 7 ships should be able to take out a starbase. I'm thinking that Starbases should be tech level 4.

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In the future [not soon] I'll play around with the editors and see what I can come up with.

I believe the key was that I had trained my ships for a while. I don't know the XP needed in BotE for ships to become "Legendary" but I suspect that most of my ships were Legendery when I attacked. I also did some special research projects along the way that I'm sure helped.

I understand that you don't want to give out the exact combat and/or cloaking formulas. Would you mind giving out the training formulas and XP amounts required to hit each level [assuming that you have discrete levels that is...]

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EDIT: I think I got the tech levels of the ships wrong. I suspect that I was one tech level low on the above.

I.E. The Montgomery class ships were tech 4 or so ; the weaker ships were tech 5 or so ; the other stronger class ships were tech 6 or so ... With better techs come better shield and weapon systems if the ship designer is used.

Has anyone looked into ship balancing with the Rotharians?

While I haven't really done ANY real testing it seems like the Rotharians have an ENORMOUS advantage by having their special building that produces 2 Deritium per turn.

With ships having large resource costs in Deritium it's obviously advantageous to any race to be able to create more than double the dilithium that other races can.