Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

Let's extrapolate that 62.1825% to smaller galactic maps for modding.

Example
One/9th of a maximized galaxy (40*40) would be a matrix of 13*13 or 169 sectors.
This means if a modder puts two major races in there, the maximum (and realizing variance due to random map generation of that galaxy) number of available sectors should be about 105 sectors though minor races may occupy some of them.

This is how basic modding begins to create balanced scenarios as you have some realistic numbers, whereas before it was a guess.

[UesugiKenshin]

Once you have some kind of astronomy constants in BotE, then you can start inserting stellar anomalies in some logical pattern as you know how many sectors need to be available for terraforming and colonization versus already populated.

Then assumptions and ranges for this astronomy within BotE can determine the frequency of star types and planet classes and population ranges and even estimate terraforming averages based on particular major race's best available colony ships. It is technobabble, but is logical technobabble.

Heyoun captain "Ensign, give me an estimated length of time to terraform this entire sector versus the galactic average."
Heyoun ensign (nervous) "Aye aye, Captain. I will get you that information in minutes."

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/aye_aye,_sir
(The interrogative is understood and will be obeyed with all haste as the captain needs that information and the entire starship is the captain's responsibility and so failure puts everyone at risk. Maybe that is 6,000 crewmates.

In fact on radio comms, they will say "interrogative" so there is no miscommunication where something is a statement not a question.)

[UesugiKenshin]

If you put six empires in a maximum galaxy already populated by maximal minor races then this microcosm in 1/9th of the galaxy is what happens as overcrowding begins as zealous colonization begins to encroach upon a competitor's sphere of influence. You can easily expand in your 1/9th subsection, but then less and less are viable due to issues like proximity and maximum population and resource availability plus the current range of your starships versus their speed.

BotE is wonderfully elegant and logical versus many space strategy 4x games.

[UesugiKenshin]

A spiral galaxy like the Milky Way seems evenly distributed, but actually the center or galactic hub has an intense stellar density. Thus whoever is there has a higher likelihood of colonization versus those on the periphery.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxhzaiO0umc

Galactic mapping matters and that is why the very first task is generating a workable interesting map.

[UesugiKenshin]

If you have that kind of spiral galaxy with stellar density in a predictable pattern, then you reward those explorers who venture away from that. In GalCiv2 that was by random events in empty space where the wreckage of a starship, or a crystal might be an ideal starbase and then promote influence or research or trade or income or be an artifact site.

Otherwise there is no reason to explore, yet you want to encourage exploration and stumble into other explorers from other species doing "survey missions".

In the old days, navigators had "rutters" and they wrote down what they encountered by mapping and making copious notes so another "pilot" could replicate their journey in a safe manner. Otherwise they are just sailing largely blind in the vast unknown. Magellan circumnavigating is rather a huge deal, though plausibly the Chinese may have beat him to it (as they germinated soybeans so had a source of Vitamin C so did not face scurvy). Surveying and scurvy went hand in hand. The British were limeys as they learned Muslim crews had dried limes to deal with the same issue.
https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/ ... Pass=false

What is the depth here?
What are the winds like?
What is the current like?
What is the weather like and how it does it impact on the above and create turbulence?
What are the nearest safe harbors so if one of the masts breaks, where do we get a new one?
What are the various people like? Will they trade or do they hate strangers?

[UesugiKenshin]

Imagine you are on a clipper ship and reliant on steady useful wind, or later fuel availability. Aviators who were the first had the former and latter issues as they work in tandem to affect efficiency of the plane. You could easily run out of fuel and be forced to consider landing where a proper airfield did not exist, or worse ditch the plane and maybe drown trying to bail out and not be pulled down by the sinking plane.

BotE has range to illustrate this issue.

The original idea for starships was nuclear reactors and ram scooping up interstellar hydrogen pockets and called a Bussard ramjet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RQjq5E8RWkg

Even now there are solar sails.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OHCHWDVjTZ4

[UesugiKenshin]

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... _(Content)

STARMAP_SECTORS_HCOUNT; /// < Number of sectors horizontally external int STARMAP_SECTORS_VCOUNT; /// <number of vertical sectors extern const int STARMAP_SECTOR_WIDTH; // 80 /// <width of a sector in pixels at 100% zoom extern const int STARMAP_SECTOR_HEIGHT; // 80 /// <height of a sector extern int STARMAP_TOTALWIDTH; // 2400 /// <total width of the view in pixels at 100% (= 40 * 30) extern int STARMAP_TOTALHEIGHT; // 1600 ///

80*80 galaxies
6400 sectors!

At one time, BotE Alpha in some version had a massive unparalleled galactic map potential that as far as I know exceeds the wildest expectations of space gamers, but still likely had the same uninhabited sectors limitations plus minor race and normal major race maximums.

This would totally change the game as range by starbases and space docks and military shipyards would be desperately required to traverse an immense galactic map that would be full of empty space, random alien monsters and stellar anomalies. That percentage of inhabitable sectors be halved or more. Plus realize the maximum speed is 4.2 with special research, thus on a maximum map, it might take 18 turns to go from one extreme to the other map coordinate point. So imagine 36 turns+. If might take as much as 72 turns. Help is very very far away.

On the minimal 2 weeks per turn solar date scale, it takes 2.77 years to go from one end of the galaxy to the other.

It is so ambitious and amazing and likely almost no one knew this even existed in a computer game. Perhaps even to this day Distant World Universe 2 cannot achieve so much.

Why did no major game magazine review BotE Alpha? It is perplexing.

[UesugiKenshin]

I think it's in Aliens 1986 that Ripley asks Corporal Hicks, "How long is it before the colonial marines send a second ship to investigate," and the squad is just screwed as it is hopelessly long and they will be dead unless they can figure out a realistic way to cope. It is grim and definitely FUBAR.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5tQXrw1-hPc

Having a gigantic galaxy takes enormous planning to garrison and have starships in starbases so they can render assistance There is no hurrying anywhere.

[UesugiKenshin]

In Civ 3, some mappers figured out how to make very realistic huge 256*256 Earth maps and made some varieties that must have taken meticulous care as the terrain was a decent approximation. But the problem was that has a 512 region maximum, thus the AI has issues sending an invasion force so far away based on this same Japanese maai concept. The distance is so far away, that there is little threat potential.

The number of declared regions has to be significantly high so this distance shrinks as empires colonize and established world wide garrisons as military and naval bases. The British and Spanish and to some degree the Portuguese did so post-Reinassance . Today, mostly the USA has done so.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Army_(Civ3)
There are real limitations in Civ 3 with 512 total regions (which could be solar systems) but it is fraction of the inhabited sectors in BotE. Not only that, the combat is extremely complex in BotE and simplistic in Civ 3. On top of this, "armies" are limited to 3 perhaps 4 if you have the Pentagon (meaning it is not balanced across empires), but a miniscule amount versus BotE. Fleets can be huge in BotE. Ground invasion forces can be huge in BotE.

BotE has a vastly better combat system. The problem are the limitations of depicting combat in BotE and then limited ways one can use diplomacy and win. This is why adapting some space mod to Civ 3 is a dead end, while BotE could still become the most wonderful space game playable on a modest tablet. It is an unusual melange of strategic elements not found in any other wargame.

[UesugiKenshin]

Unciv allows for a complex map of 31 opponents (not that you would ever have more than 6) plus city/states which are just like minor race aliens (who have missions so that is a plus for diplomacy). Then you can have generals for land based units and admirals.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Gr ... ral_(Civ5)
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Gr ... ral_(Civ5)
One could reconfigure naval vessels coastlines and ocean to depict as "space", but there is no way to have an air squadron (that I am aware of), thus despite all kinds of great elements in unciv (as it is a Civ5 clone), and facilitating mods through github, the combat systems is a fraction of the complexity of BotE. So it is a dead end...though interesting. And it has extremely limited graphic ability truly cartoonish versus BotE.

But unciv is being worked on constantly and has the potential for Lua scripting while BotE is silent on this possibility.

BotE is in the lead in most respects but needs some refinement to become popular.

[UesugiKenshin]

Medieval 2 Kingdoms is brilliant as you have a turn based strategy game AND have an RTS game combined as a whole 3D representation exists for each map coordinate point. But good luck doing this on a tablet, though Rome Total War looks awesome on a better 3 gb ram tablet, so it is for high end tablets. I don't think you will be happy to execute smooth tactics as you would do on a PC as it is unlikely on a tablet. And there is really no way to do 3D space combat in Total War games.

So making a space mod in that engine is unlikely to ever happen.

What BotE can do is pretty amazing given its limitations and forcing the player to use their imagination for combat.

[UesugiKenshin]

Strangely enough, unless patches are issued in BotE, then BotE for Android is restrictive to modding more buildings, units, starships, and research as Android apps are designed to auto update. Likely the best solution is a patch. If not that, one would run a parallel app so you had both the BotE for Android app plus on the parallel space, have a modded app with enhancements. So they do not conflict with one another.

Or worse, but easier to implement, you load a Windows emulator as Windows XP is officially free now, and then run BotE as a Windows application. Now that is modable. It may be slower though.

Any kind of secondary BotE apps that are mods are problematic to explain to users so they understand installation. The best solution is patching so it is mod friendly or incorporates elements like subclasses of starships.

[UesugiKenshin]

Leaving BotE as is, I could build any kind of scenario with prebuilt subclasses of starships, but it would likely confuse the player as say one scout would have the same class, but have very different armored hulls and weaponry and shields. You would have to click on starships as there would be some variance based on what turn it was built.

I could load the beta multiplayer, and by brute force create smaller galaxies with limited opponents and balance them all, and so create much faster 8-100 hour scenarios with large treasuries and with most things complete. But the time needed is huge. It's months instead of days to build such things as there is no editor. It is really time consuming.

Unciv has a map editor. But lacks a scenario editor, thus unciv players who want to be modders are in the exact same situation as BotE players who want to be modders. The potential modder has to create by brute force playing as all empires but they can immediately rush construction and have a map editor.

BotE has no map editor and the modder has to construct everything by hand per turn or empire meaning months to make a single scenario.

[UesugiKenshin]

I want to reduce micromanagement and vastly increase your amusement by wargaming. Most players do not have 400 hours for a single scenario but they likely have 8 to 100 hours. Statistically they spend up to 40 minutes a day so need much shorter scenarios and that is consistent with multiplayer mode as people cannot commit 400 hours with six player to wage galactic war.

But if I build a major galactic war scenario so it begins in turn #400, then likely they could play it on weekends; they could finish it in six weekends with their friends.