[Alpha4 v0.62] Meinungen über die Refit Version

Bitte postet hier eure Erfahrungen mit BotE. Speziell Partien aus dem MP-Modus interessieren uns.
plasticpanzers
Junior Kadett
Junior Kadett
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von plasticpanzers »

i had found that Vista will not allow the change of the game difficulty as i posted
ealier. with the fix given i can change it by now putting the BOTE file into a temp
folder and there i can change it and simply click and drag it back into the BOTE folder.
must be the wonders of Windows Vista that you have to manipulate programs this
way!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
Plays alot easier now until the new and bigger maps are available. again thanks!
Tim
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Malle
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von Malle »

I guess it has something to do with the install path registry entry the bote installer creates in the registry. I could imagine vista tries to ensure all .ini files are not altered since .ini files in installation folders are mostly static and belong to the initial installation process and should not be altered but still it's a bit off.. ;)

Yeah, I had pretty much fun playing this map. I had a very challenging start with the evil Mozwar right next to me which declared war on me in turn 3. Thank god the minor race ship building is not implemented yet or otherwise I would have probably been invaded :lol:. But instead I had a rocket-like start and am tech 6 in turn 129 with 3000 research points and 1400 Credits per turn income. Still, I have only 2 scouts and 2 transporters as my fleet :lol:. But thanks to powerful mine fields and weak Rotharian ships I do not need more and can fully concentrate on further upgrading my systems. Theoretically I could churn out 3 or 4 heavy cruisers per turn if I reset all queues to ship building so I'm quite well-endowed there. Had much luck with the minors ;).
kruge
Junior Kadett
Junior Kadett
Beiträge: 6
Registriert: Sonntag 4. Januar 2009, 23:25

Re: My feedback

Beitrag von kruge »

First let me say i know a lot of work goes into this game; and while I have enjoyed BOTF for many years, I'm having a problem playing BOTE.

1. I agree the map is to big, and there are times that I "loose it" and have to restart it, just to be able to see the map.

2. The other races attack before I can build any defense and I am playing on the easy setting, and it doesn't matter which Race I pick the AI always wins.

3.Maybe you could give just a slight head start on your choice?
:)
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Malle
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von Malle »

there's an english manual preview that still needs help converting into readable english ;): http://botf2.star-trek-games.com/downlo ... php?id=243 . Maybe it helps finding some general hints on how to survive against the AI or keep map overview.

1. I'm not 100% sure what you mean with "loose" here in this context but if it's just the galaxy map zoom, it can be set higher and lower with the mouse wheel so you can zoom out instead of restart.

2. maybe try baby setting. There the AI is playing without any cheats. The cheats in the other levels consist solely of resource output and building cost reductions so the AI can build things faster and gain more resources out of a particular mine for example.

3. guess that will be part of galaxy creation like in botf where you could specify each race's tech level and expansion degree at the beginning.
kruge
Junior Kadett
Junior Kadett
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Registriert: Sonntag 4. Januar 2009, 23:25

Re: My feedback

Beitrag von kruge »

I found the solution to my Map troubles; but After playing 10 games on the lowest setting and still getting destroyed, I think I will wait for the new updates to play this game again. It is a shame because it has great graphics,ships, and buildings.

But I like to feel like I can get past 150 turns before getting whipped out.

Jruge
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Malle
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von Malle »

sure. Maybe one more thing, try buying a colony ship right at turn 1, 2 or 3 and terraform only <10 terraform point planets, i.e. class O, L, H and P and quickly colonize. Usually that helps the most in surviving the game since early expansion is vital and gains the most over the time.
plasticpanzers
Junior Kadett
Junior Kadett
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Registriert: Freitag 9. Januar 2009, 00:23

Re: My feedback

Beitrag von plasticpanzers »

I have changed the difficulty level to Baby or Easy but it makes no difference in game play. As the previous post mentions you can get (if your lucky) to about 150 turns before you are destroyed. With the map so small minor races are not much of an advantage when they join as it takes too long to get the biggest of them built up enough to build any decent amount of warships. Generally they simply become small forts of mines/orbital batteries that are pounded into dust by the extemely hostile neighbor races. The Omega Alliance appears to have superships. I build a level 2 outpost and place 24 crusiers and destroyers with it and all have maxium armor/shields i can afford and it appears just a couple
OA destroyers or crusiers wipe my entire fleet out without loss. The game play is far too stilted for a gamer to play with any fun against the AI (i enjoy playing when i can against ai rather than human opponents due to time constraints). I have
to go thru 20 or so setups before i have a map where i am in a corner and have enough time to build a small fleet but long
before i can get set up well (even with 3-5 allied planets) all the other AI players can show up with 20-40 crusiers and dds
and wipe my empire out in no time. Although i understand, from that i have read here, the desingers and those with major input like the game as is so far for its quick "lets fight" design it deviates from the Star Trek universe with the lack of real dipomacy and the hope of really building a stable and safe empire. its a slug fest right now and that really takes away some of the fun. I will play this a few more times and put it back into a "sleep" file until some corrections can be
done to improve the play. I do hope that the designers take my comments as helpful suggestions as i belive that they have done a wonderful job so far. I really hope that this game goes all the way to a finished one.
Tim
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Malle
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von Malle »

okay, let's get that solved won't we ;). Below is another screenshot of a game I played yesterday. You see me (the dark blue coalition player) in an alliance with the omega alliance (pretty fun at the beginning because they really got hot ships (mainly the Sajin battleship class that is one hell of a ship) that qualify as superships though they are beatable if you know how and that's what I'm gonna try to show you in the following). This game you see is one of the most stable ones I ever had. Nearly all empires are allied with each other, only Khaoron and Rotharians are maverick-type warmongers:

Bild

I've uploaded a series of save games of a game I played a while ago here: http://birth-of-the-empires.de/phpBB3/v ... 710#p12710 . I played that one on HARD but you can have a closer look at what I did cause I saved pretty often. Download all the attachments and extract them to your bote folder. Now you can load up each save game and see my progress. You can also start with turn one on BABY and try to play some turns and then compare to one of my save games. If you then got questions on how I did it I'll try my best to remember ;). You'll see that I do not have many ships at the beginning either. On HARD it's not possible to keep up tech development with the AI and simultaneously produce a lot of ships. That's why I kept away from their borders and din't colonize too near to enemy territory. Sometimes it's just luck that a big enough gap of next-to-no star systems, i.e. empty sectors, lies between you and the AI players. On BABY, EASY and NORMAL, that's another thing, I'd play different then. But the first 50 turns always remain the same so there you can have a look at how I use to do my early expansion moves.

Again just to make sure, if you handle the game right, it has real diplomacy.

When integrating minors into your empire, try to wait until their population level reaches 80% of their max system population or turn 100 at last. The advantage comes from the fact that minor systems get their buildings once they are incorporated and accepted membership with your empire and at that turn, those buildings are calculated and you have the more buildings the more population in that turn the minor system had. So you don't need to build a minor system up yourself if you wait long enough with membership. There's nothing more to be done wrong in the game than too early membership and too early means when for example the current minor system population is 15 billion whereas the max system population would be 40 billion. Then you get only very few buildings and are struggling to build the rest of the needed buildings just like with a regular colony. Generally, the longer you wait with membership the better cause not only the number of buildings is higher but also their tech level depending on the type of minor (a middle-age minor won't advance much in tech levels compared to a research minor). But beware of waiting too long cause other empires are not sleeping and might get the minor for themselves ;). You will experience the effect of waiting a little longer quite soon I'm sure of that.

It mostly appears that less ships have attacked you than actually have since scan strengths are mostly too low since only planetary scanners and scouts are actually contributing enough to having a nice scan value. When you build ships, try to have 5-10 scouts in there too per fleet and don't forget to mix your fleet. 24 cruisers alone are not as effective as 24 cruisers with 50 destroyers and 15 scouts (that seems obvious but I refer to the effectiveness of the 24 cruisers alone in terms of how many hits they perform). That has something to do with the AI building lots of smaller fighters that are harder to hit for those clumsy cruisers. In order to keep them away from your bigger ships, you need destroyers and in fact more of them than you have cruisers. But if the enemy has only 50 fighters against your 24 cruisers, then the cruisers of course win. But you've got more losses than otherwise with more "escort" ships for your heavier fleet.

After you've taken a quick look on how I play we might play a quick one as two allies against the AI on any difficulty level you choose :).
plasticpanzers
Junior Kadett
Junior Kadett
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Registriert: Freitag 9. Januar 2009, 00:23

Re: My feedback

Beitrag von plasticpanzers »

i just played my last game of this for awhile. i just sent in 24 good quality crusiers with about 12 destroyers and frigates and had the entire fleet lost with no damage to enemy. until a combat system that allows you to detimine what is occuring is added the game simply cannot be played to its potential. i have been wargaming since 1961 and have quite a bit of playing of historical as well as Scifi games over the years. This game has very grand and elegant systems but they become irrelevant as the game stands now. I will wait to see if their is an update to this one down the road over the next year or so before playing again. too much time involved with very little real gameplay to show for it at this time.
Thanks for the info. i will check back in here in a few months and see whats happening.
Tim
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Malle
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von Malle »

do that ;).

I uploaded a gameplay video showing me playing 22 turns in the german version (it's not that different, you can see the symbols I click on and neglect the language), so maybe you want to have a look if I do something different: http://svn.star-trek-games.com/birth/Bo ... meplay.avi

the zero-losses effect you described is one of the things currently programmed on so you can kill at least some (more) ships when having a fleet like that (our current target selection algorithm is a bit too diversive, i.e. it doesn't concentrate fire of all your ships on one single ship or a smaller group of enemy ships, that's why the zero-losses battles are occuring that often if the enemy is overwhelmingly powerful).
Still, basic things will never change and that is that you won't have many choices when the enemy is overwhelming. Even when retreating is an option it's only slowing down your in-game death so to speak.
Also, you won't see the enemy coming and get surprised pretty badly if you don't have enough scouts in your fleets. In some cases where the enemy is cloaked, you might also not see the full fleet even if you engage into combat with let's say a handful of scouts only. In that case only a small fraction of the enemy fleet will uncloak and open fire. No way the scouts could have seen the rest of the fleet so the data sent to your headquarters prior to their death or retreat will not be showing the whole enemy fleet. This is wanted since it's a valid tactic for an attacker to do so.

In short, if you have that many troubles to survive right now, it probably won't get much better although you certainly can monitor your being-wiped-out a lot better, i.e. get more possibilities of combat control but if the enemy has a substantial economical and military advantage over you, I'm afraid that won't help much in the end. There are only that many sectors to retreat to and it's likely for him to bombard you out of the way system-by-system and you can only sit there and watch cause your build-up strategies aren't matching with the AI's. Btw. if you want to see how the AI is performing, save each turn and load as a selectable AI player. There you see exactly what he does to get that powerful over you.
kruge
Junior Kadett
Junior Kadett
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Registriert: Sonntag 4. Januar 2009, 23:25

Re: My feedback

Beitrag von kruge »

Although I am not happy to see others with the same problem; I am glad to know I'm not the only one with problems with the game play.
This would be a fantastic game if these problems could be address.
Maybe the AI should be toned down a lot for build play?
Not everyone playing games wants to be in compitition-play; I've played Botf and Bote and these are very good play games.
This one would be right up there with them if it wasn't so hard to play.
The "baby" or "easy" setting is not good, I would dislike to see the other settihngs,

Can the be fixed????

Kruge
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Malle
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von Malle »

We could actually implement a "softer" AI in about no-time. It would get handicaps instead of cheats. Maybe that's not that bad of an idea. We could name it "Panorama mode" ;) and make the handicap factor available in bote.ini so people can choose values greater than 1. Puste?

btw. you have watched my gameplay video? It might help.
kruge
Junior Kadett
Junior Kadett
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Registriert: Sonntag 4. Januar 2009, 23:25

Re: My feedback

Beitrag von kruge »

Sounds good, I really want to be able to play this game and not give up.
Let me know when the adjustments are made. :D


Kruge
Orco
Kapitän
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Registriert: Montag 29. Oktober 2007, 11:21

Re: My feedback

Beitrag von Orco »

I also would like a not so wormongering mode of bote. I'm also the type player that dont want to fight and just build up an empire.

In bote you are only abel to live in peac if you either have a real big economic advantage, or a big fleet to match with the other empires. Even if you pump every credit and resource into diplomacy and make it to gift to the other empires you cant live in peace with the other empires if you dont have these advantages.
The AI should make more demands and dont consider war if you match these demands. But also the demands shouldnt be so ridiculus high like they are now. You nearly never can match one of these and have to reject them even if you would like to stay in peace and give them something.

Also i almost fight the AI back and annihilate them mostly even if i dont have such a big armada, but it thinks I am too weak to be a friendly partner in the galaxy. So its kinda sad that those empires start a war with me and loos it and then dont want to keep up peace so i have to annihilate them.
I know its hard for the ai to calculate if I'm a easy target but i think they should just start war then but try to exploid my weak beeing with demands, but demands i can match. Would be much more worth for them if they can get the credits and resources so peacefull and make war with other empires that are more interestet in expaning their borders violently.


sry for my bad english ^^
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MTB
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Re: My feedback

Beitrag von MTB »

Malle hat geschrieben:We could actually implement a "softer" AI in about no-time. It would get handicaps instead of cheats. Maybe that's not that bad of an idea. We could name it "Panorama mode" ;) and make the handicap factor available in bote.ini so people can choose values greater than 1. Puste?

btw. you have watched my gameplay video? It might help.
Why not implement a slider that allows the player to choose AI advantages / disadvantages?
Like:
-100 --- 0 --- 100
-100 AI get's -100% bonus on ressources
100 AI get's 100% bonuson ressources

and "BABY" etc. are just preselection of the slider setting.
Besser ein lebender Feigling als ein toter Held
Gesperrt

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