Types of computer/tablet players

[UesugiKenshin]

It's vital to understand the kinds of players of any turn based strategy game. This largely applies to some of those specific games that also imcludes rts elements.

• New players who struggle as they are just trying to grasp alien concepts as well as general common aspects in any wargame, as well as unique aspects of this particular game.

• Builders are people who enjoy the process of creating empires through improving colonies.

• Explorers who enjoy encountering foreign people and are not as interested in war per say, but "encountering strange new worlds and new civilizations".

• Turtlers are meticulous builders who slowly but surely hope to defend their empire and get wealthy and outplay the AI.

• Pop rushers build militaristic colonies as fast as possible to generate ships and troops to conquer and assimilate other empire's colonies. They want to attack as soon as possible when the AI is doing the heavy lifting on infrastructure construction, but have poor defenses and few military units.Their chief tactic is surprise guerilla attacks.

• Wargamers are people with limited time who want ready-made scenarios and campaigns so they can wage war against strong AI opponents.

• Modders like creating scenarios and campaigns so the above varied players have the most fun and challenging gaming experience. Some will improve the basic game so ideas are adopted in new patches. Some create historical battles. Some do total conversion mods.

[UesugiKenshin]

New players particularly struggle... as so far the documentation for BotE in a manual is limited as it's a port, and so things are in flux. Then documentation exists extensively on the German wiki, so you need an internet browser that does autotranslate. For me, Chrome does that well. Then there is a limited concise English wiki. Then new players can be shy and reticient to get membership and post, but that is the best way to get help that,can specifically answer questions.

I'm glad to answer your questions. Some questions may have already been answered. I may post a link to an earlier reply and clarify if you need additional information.

Builders may not understand how to best manage their economy by various aspects of trade, diplomacy resource mining, buying resources when they are undervalued, and selling them when they are inflated. There are many topics I created discussing these tactics and overall strategy to apply all of them in an orderly methodical logical manner with proven results. There is no need to "reinvent the wheel" and success is often achieved by emulating what someone else empiracally illustrated through achievement.

Explorers need a safer galaxy to explore largely populated by minor alien races as they can't leave their homesectors. They should play against only one major race in a vast galaxy at 40x40 size, and completely full of stars, with some stellar anomalies based upon how frequently they wish to see what happens when entering them...especially wormholes.

All three may enjoy the Omega sandbox #700 game as they are incredibly strong, thus you can make mistakes, and it's not unrecoverable due to errors.
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7294&start=75

It would be impossible to lose the overall game, and it's a perfect place to test basic and even radical ideas as you are sitting on millions like the most decadent Heyoun.
http://bote2.square7.ch/en/wiki/Heyoun_Trade_Union

In addition, you have a massive military force with unparralleled custom designed ships that the Khaoran would only dream of ever owning. It would be their idea of Heaven with an inevitable victorious total galactic conquest.
http://bote2.square7.ch/en/wiki/Khaoron_Empire

[UesugiKenshin]

http://bote2.square7.ch/en/wiki/Test1
To understand how diverse the minor alien races are, glance through the English and German wiki. They are not alike and some are fearsome and some benevolent. Some have even better ships than standard major races.

This means that if you subvert them by absorbing them into your empire, you gain powerful infrastructure. You also, if are creative, can use the ship designer, which raises the price of ships. And then allows vastly better ships.

But to do that, you have to manage the economy and prevent sabotage by jealous alien empires utilizing espionage with intelligence operatives. I have meticulously explained this and add links.
Managing the economy in an optimal way.
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7727

Preventing sabotage
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7085&start=75
However realize that if you learn in a sandbox game, your sectors are invulverable as minor aliens don't leave, meaning they will never attack and invade with ground forces. And so using that as an educational tool, means then raising your confidence, and then adding empires to fight against and to form alliances. Then you can learn to use counterintelligence. Then after winning,then raise the difficulty level.

[UesugiKenshin]

As you grow confident by completing the Omega turn#700 game by absorbing all minor races through membership using diplomatic pressure, and also crushing opposition through military conquest of ships and ground invasions, then you are ready to start playing a game as a stronger opponent with an established empire than the other major races.

This saved game as the Omega turn# 400 has zero minor alien races, but 3 major opponent empires: Khaoran, Terrans, and Heyoun.
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7712

You should be able to easily beat them as your counterintelligence ability exceeds theirs. They probably will join forces to oppose you by using sabotage.

This allows maximal colonization as the AI has plenty of open sectors to expand, with no competition from minor alien races, and so no need for them to conquer them. But eventually their borders will touch the borders of their neighbors...bringing collaboration and conflict.

What I did was ally with the Terrans and Heyoun, and was going to have a non-aggression pact with the Khaoran (they really are supposed to be honorable people, but also conquerors). But their goofy zealous low level raiders attacked Omega colonists killing billions. So that kind of bullying needs a vigorous calculated total response as bullies don't respect diplomacy.

So I clobbered them with sabotage. Then they kept attacking, so I annihilated their raiding. They kept attacking and I CRUSHED them. It set them back for 100 turns and only in turn #409 relented. They became the Omega's nemesis.

I don't blame them. War requires an enemy. It ain't personal. To a Khaoran, maybe such attention is almost friendly even romantic. The way alien species will think and what motivates them, is not going to be like a human. Their species is unique and their culture and society evolved based on a totally different history and the rigors of the climate and limited land mass and planet types in their homesectors. They will not have100% shared values with human beings nor the Omega. They may each have 0-100% shared values and the ones that do, like your empire more...or fear or respect or even admire yours.

See BotE is a thinking person's strategy game. It's profoundly deep. It's a game for Irish warrior poets and samurai and philosophers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oisín

[UesugiKenshin]

There has never been such a complicated strategy game with the level of micromanagement that I know about in computer gaming since the TRS-80 personal computer (1977) was created to present day. I was there long ago and would have heard of a peer and I can't think of any.

You have to admire BotE and the developers. Sure there are things which would probably seem exciting,but it's fairly difficult to make BotE as an rts game. And someday with modding and designing campaigns and creating ships and troops, it has enormous potential.

If it had more exploration with desciptions, it would be awesome.

It could use levels of battle tactics for fleets and ground invasions. That sort of is that built in by technology and infrastructure and defenses in space and on the planets.

[UesugiKenshin]

If you have played Medieval 2 Total wag Kingdom, especially in mods, you really don't want to try an rts game on the Android as it's complicated to use tactics with troops. So BotE wisely does not. Most space games do not. The computer could always win.

So BotE is elegant as based on ship or unit composition, plus modifiers, and tech, and which empire, then it's a game based on combat calculations. That is highly complex and gets the job done. And players can use attack, hail, retreat, and avoid, and sometimes it works. It can make the enemy come out of their protected sector (draw them out), and out of range of assitance of their supporting ships and fleets. Then you counterattack and muster multiple ships and fleets on that zone or where you anticipate they will relocate. That is how, in a nutshell, you defeat the AI.

This drawing out the enemy has parallels with furious defending aristocrats as cavalry, stupidly leaving a protected fortified keep or city. Then crushed by ambushes and converging opposition forces.

[UesugiKenshin]

The trutlers and pop rushers should use the 4 empire with no minor alien races to test their ability and get a feel for the nuances and game mechanics of BotE.

Then I'm loading an Omega #400 much harder 90% minor alien races with 6 empires. I'm to turn #100+ now. It should be ready in a week. Both turtlers and pop rushers would have more fun with that.
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=7737

[UesugiKenshin]

War gamers would find the Omega sandbox game too easy, but they would understand game mechanics better if they tried all 3 advanced save games. See it takes two weeks of building an empire before you really have much of a military as ships and troops cost lots of money.

I want to create many many scenarios with multiple empires as the human player with giant maps and at different difficulties and far more troublesome stellar anomalies to navigate around and with random events.

Note that with "pathfinding", very complicated stellar anomalies and pilot error could have your expensive ships and worse...FLEETS could enter a stellar anomaly and do all kinds of damage. Then you be forced to find a proper higher level shipyard to repair the damage. This could cripple your plans as those ship(s) or fleet(s) are out of commision.

The wargamers are very brilliant experienced players who require more challenges. Most don't have the time to create these. It can take a solid month to make one.

With a multiplayer version, you could play as the Terrans and Heyoun vs the Khaoran and Omega vs the Cartare and Rotharians. You could have true alliances.

[UesugiKenshin]

Modders have to wear many hats and are experienced wargamers who also are kind and so want to create scenarios so others who lack months to build empires can play these scenarios instead.

It's a big time commitment and unpaid and doing it for the mental challenge. I'm hoping some Android players already have some challenging save games and upload them.

Some modders are frustrated writers, and artists who create when they can, and others are trained or amateur musicians. I envision a repository where people could link to art that coud be resources to create vibrant complex galaxies.

[UesugiKenshin]

Bote Android for Android tablets (sounds redundant but there is a BotE Android for Linux, a BotE Android for Windows XP, and a BotE Android for Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10) has very low requirements. A bare bones Nook HD e-reader (so Nook OS 2.2.1 [analgous to Android 2.3 Gingerbread]) can run BotE and all it has is 1 gb and 8gb of storage.

The newer Kindle Fire 8 (10th generation) with 2 gb and 32 gb storage costs $50-60.

That is amazing really.

Ideally you want a true Android OS but that can be expensive and buying used can be buying someone else's poorly treated tablet. Better OS can more easily "load from unknown sources" and sideload via the miniUSB cable from your PC.

[Note you can remotely root and update firmware via sideloading, and load via sd cards, but some of the older ones are problematic to create a true Android OS.]

BotE can be downloaded directly at blotunga's site, at Amazon, and at GooglePlay.

Anyone with old 2012 tech on Android tablets is going to be out of luck soon getting newer apps to work.

For a Windows tablet, you are looking at $100 minimum to stay current, but there are plenty of old Windows tablets for far less like $30. It might fail on you though.

[UesugiKenshin]

Some players don't want to learn how to manage economies, but just have fun. I get it. I was young once. So people hack the source code so they have endless treasuries and can rush projects, but still need raw material resources to build infrastructure.

Endless cash is not enough.

Typically cheats are in the source code for 3 reasons.
1. Beta testing to accelerate changing various aspects that would take too long to set up.
2. Make sure calculation errors don't happen if some column of data is very large.
3. Modding to set up scenarios and campaigns. Maybe a species is weak and for balancing in a late turn, you use a cheat to spawn in 10 correct basic ships of a certain class. Then test how they respond to an attack.
4. Pure cheating because it's faster and the players don't have 3 months to play to get strong enough to wage war.

You are trusting that the hacked source code doesn't have flaws from doing that and that it's the latest version.

GalCiv2 Twilight of the Arnor had all kinds of cheats and so you could instantly terraform a planet to be perfect.

I wish we did have cheats so I could speed up setting up advanced save games.

[UesugiKenshin]

Turtlers are methodical. They intuit a strategy and it works and so replicate it. They minimize errors and tend to play conservatively. They like strong ai who nonetheless make errors and capitalize on those errors.

They tend to be defensive, so if the ai is not offensive, then all the beautiful defenses they constructed won't be challenged. They want to be attacked at the periphery of their empire so the ai wastes their strength against an unassailable fortified bastion.

This slowness tends to reduce their expansion.

[UesugiKenshin]

Pop rushers are rash players who aren't conservative at all. They exploit a strong base of operations and redeploy military forces to take new territory. As most have strong interiors to their empires, and weak exterior borderlands, then beating inadequately prepared military forces gains a better economically prepared colony. Then they laugh as the next conquest will be even easier as it's a younger colony so even more ill prepared regarding defenses and unit strength.

They swallow up weak empires controlled by the ai.

The problem is they tend not to protect their flanks well. Ordinarily then a successful naval invasion gambit can surprise them. BotE is a space 4x turn based strategy game, thus the invasion can surprise anyone as anyone not along a galactic map edge can suddenly have their flanks attacked. Also exploration of a wormhole might reveal a sudden weakness and route to send invaders to a weak or even defenseless flank.

Pop rushers end up defeating the ai too soon so can't feel the joy of fighting an evenly matched or even superior military enemy, and defeating them. If every ai empire is strongly defended, they may expend their too early invasions, and they perish by the impetuous commander.

[UesugiKenshin]

Wargamers often are veteran soldiers, some of which have combat experience. They have been playing tabletop and computer games for a long time. They understand game mechanics and know how to muster forces and deploy them. They understand how to defend, ambush, invade, hammer and anvil, do pincher moves,etc. They never have a single attack, but multiple simultaneous withering attacks. They attack in waves and breaking the enemy's resolve as they hammer and chip away.

They need challenging foes, at various levels, and worthy adversaries. They don't want to have hollow victories. They want a practical gain, not just territory, but some invaluable infrastructure that was solely on that planet, that they don't have to build now. They want new ship designs that could not be researched.

They are very dangerous enemies and worthy allies. Never cross them or the brilliant tactics and strategy you witness which saves your butt, then is used against you.

They rarely make errors, but all the logistics may have their forces committed in multiprong attacks, so if backstabbed, and their forces are far away, they may be vulnerable to the unexpected attack.

[UesugiKenshin]

Modders are highly creative people. They enjoy the act of creation as much as winning, but need the logical challenge and require the innovative, experimental, and artistic outlet as it gives them pleasure.

They want to reskin ships and create new troops designs.

They want stirring musical scores that inspire players and invoke emotions.

They like scripting so a sudden unexpected challenge twarts players from defeating ill prepared ai.

They have all kinds of ideas about random events and new stellar anomalies and planet terraforming even of gas giants and new buildings and advance level 15+ research.

They create maps to set the tempo of the game ,and restricts expansion, and makes regions defensible, and treasures exists where resources are abundant. Thus there are strategic advantages to places on the map.

Some are writers and want to add compelling dialogue during diplomacy. They want to have players swept away by descriptions of grand vistas. They want players to feel immersed in a virtual world. They want players to connect with the extraterrestrials not just oppose them.

It's very difficult to create a whole total conversion mod as few people have ALL of those abilities. And many modders are trying to do it all, thus slows down their progress. They can make minimods, and if successful, then combine them into a single mod, which is faster.

They can provide resources to the community and then other modders add resources and suddenly this allows a coder to combine resources into a mod. Such resources might get absorbed by developers into new patches or whole versions.

They get frustrated by a lack of praise or recognition as that is their currency. That is how they "win". They have to have a way to easily allow their creation to be played and distributed. An artist isn't a coder so they need editors for buildings, mapping, ships, troops, race attributes, and ways to populate colonies under the control of empires with treasuries. A coder needs those tools too as editors greatly accelerate versus making meticulous text edits and hex editting. Coders often can't create art, so wait on others in a mod team which creates delays which frustrates them. Art requires inspiration and not every artist has a muse.