Modding

[UesugiKenshin]

As BotE is currently, you have to very lucky or finally end up defeating the toughest minor alien race fairly late (#700+ turns although with luck it could happen incidentally by turn #400) and so acquire vastly superior technology. Then use the ship designer and expensively outfit the best capitol ships to become unbeatable.

You still have to invade with standard Level 5 troops and some minor races have extraordinary defenses.

So you could turn this on through advanced technology.
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... r#Bafliden

You would have the human player turn on this through the ship designer by outfitting the best "camouflaged ships" ie cloaking plus outstanding beam weapons (high intensity and fast rate of fire) and torpedoes (intensely accurate and powerful devastating damage) and some shut down engines so they are dead in the water.

A more fair way would be an advanced ship when say research level 16-20 is learned completely by any major alien race.

In the anomalous entities random events, a ship from the future is like that.

You would make a Command ship that was intentionaly the obvious flagship that was akin to a Borg Cube, but mixing and matching armor and weaponry plus manueverability. No matter what, there are limits to speed with a modifier to it. I guess you could keep modifying the modifer though theoretically. The idea of an incredible distance and speed like a transwarp conduit is appealing.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Transwarp_network

The fastest speed is 4 sectors per turn.
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... windigkeit

(To even approach the speeds in Star Trek on a 40x40 map without raising the rate of expansion, it probably needs to be 12 sectors per turn. I did a big calculation of this months ago.)

One of the "special techs" is an advanced modifier so plausibly you could maximize this.
Specialtechs.data

Source code description.
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... gramm-Code

[UesugiKenshin]

I'm thinking about the simple "delay sabotage mod" as an easier game that is more stable and realistic so the warfare is conventional until way late in the game based on research levels at 15 and higher, but altering it so espionage still happens.

Anyway, as a second mod, do a "minor tech and ships inclusion mod". What would happen is I would go through and figure out which minor race spaceships are the least to most helpful. Then at very advanced levels, then whichever major races get to that trigger point at level 15, they start researching individual minor race tech. So then they would get the various ships and some are fantastic in terms of speed, manueverability, armor, defenses, torpedos, beam weaponry and levels of cloaking. Then, maybe human players would mix and match in the ship designer.

You can't just turn on individual minor races, but what I could do is treat them as extinct species and archaeologists and anthropologists and exobiologists and exoengineers are resurrecting their tech. So you would have a lot of options as the standard ships are not always so great, but fit niche combat use.

But ship designers would make magnificent ships by combining the best of each in the best ship design. So this is the human advantage.

But when all the tech is learned by the ai and humans, the ultimate preconfigured ships are made. I think this would be hugely popular as a reward to players doing 1000 turns as they could have scraped the research buildings and just had their workers make more Level 14 ships and troops.

[UesugiKenshin]

The most fun game should be with all six empires and all the minor races, but what happens is the minor races get absorbed easily and straight away the major races get advanced ships. That ain't so great.

But worse, it means severe limitation on available systems as so many are populated. The galaxy is crowded so extensive terraforming is required to grow as all the type M planets are practically taken.

This means the major races attack each other as they are easier than attacking the initially strong "spaceman" minor races.

So it's better for growth and to delay conflict by a huge map and no minor races. Then all six major races could easily have 50+ systems, but the map would look like a patchwork quilt with heavily contested territory.

Theoretically 40x40 is 1600 systems, but realistically it probably isn't 1400 due to anomalies and empty space. That's a theoretical average max of 233 systems/empire. Plausibly monsterous levels of sabotage would happen and in testing one empire gets subsumed by turn #340. And it was surprising sometimes which it happened to.

[UesugiKenshin]

What I could do is mod the diplomacy so subversion would be much weaker, mod the sabotage for far later, and have the advanced minor race tech at level 15+ and scaled so the ultimate ships designs and tech are last. Then everything would be ideal.

I also could have a starbase in every major alien race home system so anyone could do the starbase scraping exploit for a faster start.

I could have several diplomacy modifying tech levels so after a high level, it gets easier to subvert.

So no graphics or music, but just text changes and turning on ships at supreme levels. You may win before this happens regardless.

[UesugiKenshin]

I like the anomalous entities that have special ships, but there isn't any scripting based on triggers like turn numbers. But what might prove amusing is the ability to recruit these at advanced research levels. So the random events are off, but you could send them against your foes.

Civ3 had privateer ships and so no one knew who owned them, and you could attack without declaring war. So what would be awesome would be if you could create these as "privateers". Not the time travel one of course. That is probably the last ultimate ship.

[UesugiKenshin]

It would be interesting to have some minor alien infrastructure technology as some significantly help with trade/resource routing, though I seriously doubt you bother with trade as the profit is small. Resource routing helps, but is a time waster. See other posts on how to make millions as that only minimally requires resource routing.

What would be truly useful would be defensive bonuses to prevent invasions. In a perfect world, you would not invade systems but planets and certain planets would have special defensive bonuses like an O planet wouldn't be so great without minor race aquatic defenses.

What this does is alter the unit composition as some advanced units would fight better on different planet types. That is the kind of advanced BotE I think about where war is complex even when autoresolved as there would be tactics and strategy for different planets. Then invasion on that O world would have underwater fortifications and require US Navy Seals type units and actual ships and submarines and whatever gets dreamt up by modders.

Some worlds would be too hot like young geoactive worlds as there are many volcanos or freezing cold like P class, and so special units would need special suits and designed for waging war on those kinds of terrain. You would not invade generically.

Some minor race tech might have tactical advantages or cause genetic or bionic advancement.

In GalCiv2, the ground invasions were autoresolved, but you employed tactics as choices or defenses. It wasn't just superior numbers and abilities of troops.

[UesugiKenshin]

The fun would be invading planets where that had a special energy source. You shut it down. Now the enemy on other planets in that system now has no power to defenses! You send SpecOps to deal with that.

That energy is crucial so defenders would create defenses to protect the energy sources.

[UesugiKenshin]

Activating minor alien tech would likely produce special units you would not otherwise have and it also would add deritium so systems could create more ships. That would be equivalent to playing for 16 hours a day times 60 days to get that far (960 hours of play).

This is why modding really facilitates as instead players can load a mod and an advanced save game. They may never play 500 hours in a campaign.

There has to be a good reason as a reward to keep doing research.

I like the idea of very advanced ultimate warfare in turn #1000 where it's a battle of giants or Titans.

[UesugiKenshin]

To create an advanced save game at turn #400 takes me about a week, but to create a turn at #500 takes two weeks. That's the length of time progression, so imagine turn#700 as I did prior. It took a month with 4 hours of sleep a night.

Modders are selfless people...unless there is hexediting and or a map and campaign editor and a ship and troop editor. Doing coding using notepad is cumbersome and likely to introduce errors. On a mod team, someone is double checking the map and the text changes and coding. It's meticulous work.

Imagine doing an accurate map based on some pre-existing land and ocean mass.

[UesugiKenshin]

That is like creating sound effects, or music, or art, or troops, or ships. Imagine how long and how many edits it took to make just one. And unit or ship art has unifying thematic elements so they all fit the flavor of a game. Months could go by for people to be creative and starting from nothing but a blank page.

[UesugiKenshin]

A dedicated mod team can generate a mod in a month if it's just text editting. But it has to be beta tested, right? That could take a month and those beta testers aren't just playing the mod, but looking for problems, bugs, grammar and spelling errors. Incomprehensible descriptions or purple prose. It can be 3 months for a release.

With graphics and music, it can take a year of your life to complete.

[UesugiKenshin]

To create one historical map might take a whole month. Getting the scale right is a huge issue so war can be waged and not then have to edit the range of troops and ships. You can have cascading issues.

[UesugiKenshin]

You don't really want to emulate some real life cultural phenomena and make it a mod. There are too many copyright issues, and it creates headaches for the developer. Make something original. Never borrow art or sound effects or music as you can't distribute it.

Such mod are enjoyed by everyone, but create such issues that no one wants to host them. Be original and save yourself and your mod team a lot of grief. Then there are whiners who argue about the strength and defenses of ships "not following canon".

[UesugiKenshin]

Imagine someone gets the bright idea (probably a graduate astronomy student) to create a somewhat accurate Milky Way galaxy map scaled for a 40x40 map (1600 sectors). It could take a whole year and there is no way it's accurate. It's nonsensical to even try. You would give up in frustration.

I did a Star Trek scaled map of the alpha and beta quadrants. It made me irritable.

[UesugiKenshin]

If you have six people on a mod team, then have each have buddies helping them so everyone stays on schedule. Otherwise two will be late and holding people up so a month takes two months and spouses complain, "Why are you spending all this time and not getting paid for it?"

Don't try grand impossible mods. If you do, the six of you will hardly be speaking after a year.