The World of The Gunny

I have been going over the tech tree and have come to a conclusion that while it is great for an overview of the Trek universe, it does not have a great depth of detail. So if Flamand agrees i am going to revamp the tech tree. All suggestions are heartily welcomed.

This is the description of one of the early M/AM Warp reactors.

It will be requisite for certain light and early ships.

Subspace Warp Reactor IA

Although antimatter had become a popular plot device in "scientifiction" (an extinct literary genre) of the 20th century and had been produced in minute quantities by the turn of the 21st century, practical M/AM reactors were long considered no more than a dream. However, in 2139 researchers at the Vulcan Academy of Sciences and the UE Institute for High-Energy Physics at Tsukuba, Japan, jointly developed the Richardson-Tachikawa process for the mass production of antimatter. With this process, researchers could finally obtain antimatter in sufficient quantities to begin construction of Colossus, a prototype M/AM reactor, which came on-line at the UESN Propulsion Laboratory's Argyre Planitia research station in 2147. Although Colossus was successful, it weighed an estimated 250,000 tons and sprawled over some 5 hectares of Martian desert. Obviously, considerable refinement was necessary before an M/AM reactor could power a ship's warp drive. However, by 2152 a reactor (SSWR-IA) had been constructed with a weight of 30,000 tons and a volume of 4,000 cubic meters, just small and light enough to be mounted in a starship. On September 4, 2154, the M/AM technology demonstrator Little Nell was towed from Utopia Planitia UESN Yards to the Jupiter flight range, where it made Earth's first M/AM-powered warp flight.


Information provided by The Starfleet Museum and Masao Okazaki

Mentat, as promised here is a small tech tree concerning Tholian Webs and their usage.


Start-----------> Web Generators which lead to;

Web Spinner---->Web Anchor--->then with Freighters--->Web Tender--->Asteroid Anchors


Stronger Web--->Strongest Web--->with Ph Pen Web Casters---> Snare Refit

Web Casters--->Web Fist then with Snare Refit----> Next Gen webs


Globular Web--->Phaser Penetration--->


Web Generator; Tholian Ships that can use web generators become available, but only to lay linear web, point to point. Base and Planetary defenses are normal strength now. Note: Non-Tholian races can never research any Tholian techs, even if they have purchased or captured Tholian ships.

Stronger Web; Base and Planetary defenses are 1.5 times normal.

Strongest Web; Base and Planetary defenses are 2 times normal.

Web Anchor; May now construct Forts.

Web Tender; Unit that constructs forts now available.

Asteroid Anchors; Quicker fort construction.

Globular Web; Increases the defenses of Tholian Ships.

Phaser penetration; Increases attack strength while defending.

Web Caster; Ships using the Web Caster heavy weapons are now available along with ship upgrades to use Web Casters.

Web Fist; increases attack of Tholian Ships.

Snare Refit; Increases the defenses of Tholian Ships.

Advanced Webs; mainly in case others have ideas to expand the Tholian Web Techs.



All this is my first thoughts, so is no way set in stone. So suggest away.




Cheers, Thorgrimm

Hmm, very detailed Tholian Web development.
I like the idea of having a different Tech-Tree for all races.

But still I think there should be a Tech-Tree/Advances that is/are available to all, well at least to all humanoid species.

Some advances should be unique for each species, and probably run in a seperated development arm. Thus we could easily build up all species and their distinctive technologies around a core of standard techs, that apply to all humanoids.

I am going to search the existing Tech-Tree for reuseable Techs.
In a second step I will simply ask the bunch of BOTF2 creators aswell as the BOTE guys if they allow us to use parts of their Tech-Trees. Since IIRC most of their techs were researched from either DITL, Memory Alpha etc.

Additionally you should already have the rules with some special post TNG advances that I hopefully included with the Romulan shiplist. If not I will sent them to you.

Mentat, there will be a base core of techs for all the species. I just started with the Tholian special techs for them. One link you can already see to the base tech tree is Freighters. That is located in the base tree.

And sure anything you can get from other Trekkers is always great.

In my next post I will show what I have for the Rom Cloaking technology. Then after that I will post the Plasma Tech tree that the Roms, Gorn and ISC will use. Then I will post the ISC Plasmatic Pulsar Device, which is their main heavy weapon on their Cruisers and above.

Here is what I have in mind for the races I know about as starting techs;

Federation; Proximity Fuze, Type G Drone racks
Klingons; DEFRACS, Range 22 Disruptors
Romulan; Cruiser Cloaks, Extended Duration Cloaks.
Kzinti; Speed 12 Drones, A.D.D. Racks
Gorn; Plasma S warhead, Strengthened Hulls
Tholian; Globular Web, Phaser Penetration
Pirates of Orion; Stealth Bonus, Impulse Engine Doubling
Andromedan; Light Tractor Repulsar Beams, Power Absorber Panel Dissipation
Cardassians; I have no idea
Borg; I have no idea
Minor Races; none
Possible inclusions per decision of Head Honcho Flamand
Interstellar Concordium; PPD's
Carnivon; Speed 12 Drones, Suicide Shuttles.




Cheers, Thorgrimm

Romulan Cloaking Technology. Only the Romulans and Orion Pirate Cartels can use the Cloak technology before the Next Gen era, and after ONLY if the Romulan or Orion player trades it away. So for example, Klingon cloaking ships are ONLY available if the Romulans or Orions trade cloaking tech to them.


Start with;

Simple Cloaking---->Extended Duration---->Unlimited Duration---->Strategic Duration----with Fastest Fade and Dreadnaught Cloak-> Hidden Cloak----> Next Gen Cloaking

Simple Cloaking---->With Cruisers->Cruiser Cloaks---->With Dreadnaughts->DN Cloaks---->with Starbases->SB Cloaks

Simple Cloaking---->Fast Fade---->Faster Fade---->Fastest Fade----> With Multi Role Shuttles->Cloaked Decoy


Simple Cloaking; Only frigates and smaller ships can use cloaking tech. Defenses of early Cloaked ships halved while cloaked. Very inefficient version of cloak, easy to spot with motion sensors. Only Romulans and Orions can research Cloak technology. By defenses I mean actual hull points or strength points. Will be hard to hit but if hit not hard to destroy, to reflect no shields active.

Extended Duration; Defenses only reduced by two.

Strategic Duration; Defenses normal

Cruiser Cloaks; Cloaked Cruiser sized ships now available.

Dreadnaught Cloaks; DN sized cloak ships now available.

Starbase Cloaks; Cloak equipped SB's now available.

Fast Fade; Actual defense increased by two points.

Faster Fade; Defense increased by another two points.

Fastest Fade; Defense increased by another two points.

Cloaked Decoy; MRS Shuttle deployed with cloak decoy, Increases defenses by three points.

Hidden Cloak; the best defensive upgrade available to Cloak using races, defenses doubled.

Next Gen Cloaks; I have no idea what to do from here on as the Next Gen is not my strengths. So Mentat and others suggest away.




Cheers, Thorgrimm

Looking good so far, though a few things that come to my mind imediately.

1.) We should think about some special Techs for the so called "Minors", we should be able to cover Vulcans, Talarians, Andorians and so on.

2.) I am missing the Breen as a Major power.

Then about the cloaking.

All the way it sounds nice, but how do we implement it?
e.g. fading speed? or Starbase cloaks?

Regarding the fading speed: Did you mean that those additional defensive points are added to the existing ships? Thus we would have to replace the old vessels with basically the same design, but with 2 more points in defense?

Regarding cloaked Starbases: I do not see any positive effect in using those as of yet. How will we do the Starbases anyway? Will those work like Fortresses/WW2 Bunkers, that can pickup/release defensive troops, units?
e.g. Federation Starbase level 1 can pick up/release up to three units.
So one could stuff it with a starfleet unit, a phasor-bank(captureable like a catapult) and a Torpedo launcher. after some development, one might replace the phasor bank with a phasor array and add a quantum torpedo launcher instead of the old torpedo launcher.

But how to reflect the simple cloaking device?
How will the hide and seek work? Can we do more then giving a cloaking unit invisibilty, and the searching unit the spot invis features?
How to implement the surprise attack advantage of a cloaked vessel?

Well IIRC I have already provided a detailed description of an advanced cloaking device, that would be more or less Romulan only (untradeable).

I had a quite good discussion about cloaking/scanning development in another game development thread, which is unfortunately in german.
But to keep it short, the outcome was basically, that the cloaking advantage has to reamain in favor of the inventor, even after the latest(last) development steps in game.

e.g.
I.) Romulans develope first cloaking device(tachion emmisions). Their ships are invisible for other races.
II.) Federation developes means to track down cloaked ships with a good chance (tachion scanner)
III.) Romulans develope a improved cloaking device that doesn't emmit tachions anymore, but still some other residuals
IV.) Federation developes means to track down ships with the improved cloaking device to some degree.(advanced residual scanners, or what so ever named)
V.) Romulans develope a new advanced cloaking device. The new device has no more emissions and allows to keep up the shields when cloaked, thus eliminating the vulnerability phase when cloaking/decloaking.

I would stop here an make this the final installment of cloaking/scanning techs. But one could continue.

VI.) Federation developes subspace scanners, allowing to track down ships with the advanced cloak with a good chance.
VII.) Romulans develope an interphasing cloak, rendering the ships undetectable (and possibly allowing them to fire when cloaked).

A nice concept, but hardly possible to implement into the CIV3 environment.

Mentat,

1. I agree heartily, but do not know enough about them to be useful in that area. So you folks with more knowledge of the minors will have to come up with their specials.

2. Yeah I forgot to list them, sorry. But others will have to come up with thechs for them, I do not know much about them. My areas of specialty is the Pre-TOS and TOS areas.

3. Unfortunately the only way to show the Cloak is by modifying the defense of the cloaking ships.

4. Yes they fade speed would be an upgrade that you could send the ship back to upgrade to. And the defenses would be upgraded as per the tech.

5. To be quite honest, I am in a conundrum about Starbases, Only way I can see them used is as a building in the Colonies. If anybody has a better idea, by all means suggest.

6. I suppose we can give them the invisible tag, but early on that is going to be one hell of an advantage as without the detect invisible ability, nothing can attack them. But I guess we could give scouts the detect invisibility tag. But not sure if that would allow other ships to attack the invisible unit.

7. Sounds good. Can you post it here so I can see the description?

8. I like what you have there, but as you surmised the civ 3 environment is not the best for it. Only way I see is tinkering with defensive stats and tags.




Cheers, Thorgrimm

You guys got a nice start there...

The problem with cloaking is that only an “all or nothing” approach is possible within Civ III. While in the real world a cloak would be a great first strike offensive advantage, in C3C we will probably have to settle for a 1 or 2 point increase in attack stats.

The way I see it we should limit ourselves to three kinds of cloak:

1. Primitive cloak: higher attack and lower defense points as the shields need to be switched off for the cloak to work. Run animation is invisible (empty), attack A includes decloaking and victory includes recloaking. A short de- and recloaking can be considered for fidget as well.
2. More advanced cloak: the same, but higher defense settings as the shields can still be kept on.
3. Most advanced cloak: no need to decloak anymore for attack. Same as no 2, except now it has the invisible flag. The tech allowing to detect these should be very late in the tech tree.

I think we should concentrate on getting the techs for the big civs (Feds, Roms, Klingons, Borg) first. Later we can add others.
I propose to have exacly the same structures in tech trees for all civs (more comprehensive and graphically nicer), but each filled in with the techs they need. Maybe like 5-6 linear branches:

1. Economy: trading structures, communications, agriculture etc (this one is not very linear obviously, with several “government” and “secret service” branches)
2. Propulsion: linear, no branching
3. Shields: idem
4. Weapons: idem
5. Special abilities: cloaks, webspinners, multivector attacks, etc...

I like the idea of the Klingons having to trade for cloaking technlogy, but I have two problems: you can only trade for techs that you can research yourself and if the Rommies are eliminated the Klingons will be stuck in the TOS era while the others will have much stronger ships... In that case a “Klingon-Romulan alliance” tech would make more sense

The Head Honcho has spoken...

Umm, no and yes Flamand ;)

I think Thorgrimm meant, that if the Klingons do not manage to trade for the cloaking device, they just wouldn't have ships with cloaking ability, the ships though would still advance respectively with new standard/klingon techs. But if the Klingons aquire Cloaking technology, those ships would be replaced by cloak designs, which might have some increased attack values, but at the start also decreased defense values, since it would be a crude cloaking tech that they aquire (the advanced ones should be untradeable).

Then I do agree with you regarding the cloak tech, because what will we do for the other CIVs. What if the Federation aquires the cloaking tech from the Romulans or Orions? Will we have to make cloaked Fed ships too, or will the Fed simply not have such ships?

If we keep the cloaking tech an advantage limited to a few races (e.g. Romulans, Orions, Breen and Klingons) its for sure easier to add a specific tech advance into the racedestinctive tech branche, that allows to research some cloaking technologies at some point. But more advanced cloaking techs should be exclusively Romulan.

Regarding your animation/cloak implementation solution I am quite sceptical to be honest.

I think that cloaked ships should have the submarine feats! To counter this, all races should have spedific scouts able to detect them. But those scouts should be quite expensive, but still weak. So neither a Player, nor the AI will massproduce them and thus kill the advantage. Mabye we find a way, that when a certain advanced cloak tech is researched, all existing scouts with detect abilities get obsolete and are autoreplaced by a vessels with the same stats, but no more detection ability. To reflect this I was thinking about a building/small wonder that autoupgrades units for every empire. New detection scouts would become available to the respective empires as soon as they have researched a new scanning technology.

I know thats somewhat lame in respects of upgrade costs etc.. Alternatively such detecting scouts would could become Obsolete/unbuildable from that point and the remaining functioning ones wouldn't last very long, because of their low defense values and constant border duties.

Finally, I really like the branches as you have proposed them.

@Thorgrimm

ad 1.) and 2.) I will gladly add any knowlegde I do posses

ad 4.) Aye thats how I understood it. Its a good solution.

ad 5.) I think workers should be able to build fortress alike starbases in the vicinity of planets aka solar systems (some sort of land based terrain).

ad 3.) and 6.) Adressed above and below. I do not see such a huge advantage even at early stage. Especially not, if the early claok comes with a considerable reduced defense value as you proposed. We could consider giving the capitol building of any Civ a detection abilty (I can't remember if thats possible, else we could ad a static unit to reflect this).

ad 7.) Unfortunately the info is still hot in regards of an ongoing ST online game. Since other empires could fetch the info of this thread and counter those "inventions" in their own shipdevelopments. If you could limit access to this tread to forum-members it would be more relaxing for me to post all the infos. Else simply PM me your emailadress and I'll send the respective documents to you.

ad 8.) Aye, I think basically the increased attack/decreased defense and later on increasing defense values are the best way to reflect the cloaking device.

I guess one thing is out of dispute, the eras:

1. ENT
2. TOS
3. TNG
4. Post-TNG

@Flamand, Mentat is correct about the Klingon ships. They would still evolve and get better, only not be cloakable. For example they would have a non-cloakable and cloakable version of the Vorcha, and depending on the status the Klingons having cloaking tech or not.

@ Mentat, it can be set up for a tech to need a non tradable tech, for example, the Romulan cloak tech would require a Romulan racial tech that only they would ever have. Then for example, the Klingon tech could require the Simple cloak and the Klingon Racial Tech. That way when setting up a tech tree you can hook whatever tech you wish to racial techs and no one can research, for example Fed Cloaks, a tech that is not allowed them. That is how I set up the Martians in my War of the Worlds Scen, along with all the civs in the Fallout Mod. It works quite well.

I like the idea of cloaked ships acting like subs, but the question that needs to be answered is if a scout has detect invisible, can other units attack the detected invisible unit? I can't remember off hand, but I don't think so. IIRC, only the unit with detect invisible could attack. And if that is the case, we can't give them the invisible tag till later when some specialist units with detect invisible can be used by the non-cloaking races.

@Mentat, If Flamand does not mind, I will add you to the ST Mod playtesters group, that way you will have access to the Playtesters forum and can post your items with complete assurance nobody but the playtesters can see those items.

and as for your era list, Flamand knows my thoughts on that revolting and 'a-historical' ST show produced by that Bastard Berman and his ST wrecking crew.




Cheers, Thorgrimm

@Mentat you have been added, so you should be able to see the hidden tester's forum.


Plasma tech tree

Start with---->Plasma-F Plasma-G which leads to--->

Plasma R Torpedoes---> with rest of plasma tech tree----> Next Gen plasma Torps

Plasma-S Torps--->Plasma-D Torps--->Plasma-D Racks---> Starbase Plasma-D Racks

Minor Plasma Enhancements--->with 4th level ECCM->built in ECM--->Pseudo Torps--->Self Guiding Torps--->Destroyed Launch Tubes Launching---> Swivel Mounts

Minor Plasma Enhancements---Major Plasma Enhancements

Major Plasma Enhancements--->Plasma Shotgun--->Enveloping Torps--->Plasma Bolts



Plasma F & G; Ships can have either Plasma F or Plasma G, but not both till larger ships and refits are researched

Plasma G; G type torps can now be upgraded to Plasma S Torps

Plasma R; Ships using the Plasma R Torps are now available

Plasma D; Refit that increases a ships anti-air strength

Plasma D Rack; further upgrade to anti-air strength

Starbase Plasma D Racks; Starbase upgrade to anti-air strength.

Built in ECCM; Increase plasma using races attack strength.

Pseudo Torpedoes; Increase plasma using races attack strength.

Self-Guiding Torpedoes; Increase plasma using races attack strength.

Destroyed tube Launch; Increase plasma using races attack strength.

Swivel mounts; Increase plasma using races attack strength.

Plasma Shotgun; Increases anti-air strength

Enveloping Plasma Torpedoes; Largest increase to plasma users attack strength.

Plasma Bolts; small increase in attack strength

Next Gen Torps. I have no idea what to do after this.


NOTE: The 4th level of ECCM is ONLY required for the Built in ECCM for the trop, not the rest of that branch.



Cheers, Thorgrimm