Need help/suggestions regarding a starting scenario i am making

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

Hey guys making this post real quick to 1. ask a few things that other people might have more experience in and 2. to gather any suggestions or advice in creating this scenario I will be making.

Essentially what I am doing is setting up a database/save with the player in a certain starting situation it is based off my letsplay series's game and I will be playing in it for my next series, during the process I thought why not release it on the forums once I have finished it as I think it might be quite interesting to a lot of the players on here who want a different start premade and ready rather than just a boring earth start etc.

heres a few of the things already being implemented or that I have done

1. Setup ruins on various worlds that were destroyed in the last series (by invaders).
2. Ruined worlds have small populations and ground forces these are "controlled" by the player so that they only have ground forces, these factions are known as "humanities lost" and represent lost members of humanity that have fallen into chaos/piracy/feudal, these worlds will have to be reclaimed by the player, they only have ground forces and are very low tech.
3. Recreating the entire galaxy from my last series and 1.10 game in 1.13, this is a large effort but i have practically completed the home system, there will be small modifications to represent the impact on the worlds 15 years after the essential genocide/destruction of humanity in its golden era of space travel, these modifications include lots of nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere of populated worlds simulating the effects of nuclear Armageddon turning once pristine worlds into dangerous ones.
4. The setup will be quite low tech all around, with the loss of most technology in the bombardments and purge of humanity, the technology level dropped off massively, with the "wealthy" factions just barely reaching back to nuclear pulse (from internal fusion) and this scenario/series will be on 20% research speed meaning the player has to make the most of what they currently have, jump point theory is also not researched as the invaders "closed" off the jump points and isolated humanity into fractions, this will mean essentially reclaiming and finding settlements and people lost in other systems (think great crusade 30k)
5. There will be atleast 1 npr in the home system which will be next to the player, both the player and NPR have under 200 million pop each and the player must make do with what ships and forces they have, this includes salvaged weapons fitted onto shuttles, old relic class warships (based off the previous series)

Its a bit sporadic and i am still implementing and developing things but i think you can get the general gist. Now onto the questions and or advice I am seeking.

1. I need a way to transfer ships from one race to another ( i know 1.14 will have this) the reason i need this capability is so i can have a dev race tech up to what tech i had in the previous game and then spawn in those designs so that I can give them to the player faction without the player having access to those technologies. So if anyone knows how to (i think you can through database but i would need to be walked through how to do that)

2. Any advice regarding what I can add to make the world feel more alive or interesting as well as what difficulty level this should be aimed at I will be testing it extensively once done.

3. Anything else you guys have or can suggest or would want in a premade scenario such as this.

Heres a few screenshots of what i currently have developed


Home system map, its a binary star system containing habitable planets at the first star and habitable planets at the second, the player starts at the second star.


1st Stars bodies


2nd stars bodies


Armed rabble of Humanities lost

[backstab]

This reminds me of Traveller The New Era

[Garfunkel]

Can you delete non-racial techs? I know we could do that in VB6. Double-check that you can re-research them before committing. If you can delete them, then you can just SM them the techs needed, create the ships and then delete the techs. I can't think of any other way to do it outside of DB editing, which I don't know enough about to offer guidance.

Ruins and wrecks are always interesting. It sounds very ambitious so I wish you good luck!

[Vastrat]

Sounds interesting, the things people can do with this game are truly fantastic. I look forward to seeing your next video. Thanks and keep up the good work.

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

Hey guys thanks for the responses and garfunkel Il have a look into that, anyway quick update I have begun work on ground forces and have nearly finished with the players faction or "the confederate remnant", I have also implemented the first extra-centaur system from my previous game with surprises in wait for people. Below are some pictures of it.



Around 250kt total ground forces with unique battalion and regimental names for each, these represent the surviving army of the last war, while technology is not once as it was organisation still remained, I will have more on the factions in a future post as well.



This system contains the former world known as diligence, originally a fuel depot and thriving colony during the 2160s it fell into chaos due to the loss of connection to a centralised government, the population managed to get away from the conflict but famine and supply shortages set in and the world has fell into chaos with multiple techno-feudal lords setting themselves up as "leaders of the planet"



Let me know what you guys think of the ground forces and if i should reduce or increase the amount I want to find some kind of balance definitely imperfect but some kind, I felt 250,000 tons of ground forces was that balance, it allows you to engage in armed conflict immediately if you want but not so much that you are discounting how important these forces are as you dont start with proper ground infrastructure to just rebuild them easily

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

Can you delete non-racial techs? I know we could do that in VB6. Double-check that you can re-research them before committing. If you can delete them, then you can just SM them the techs needed, create the ships and then delete the techs. I can't think of any other way to do it outside of DB editing, which I don't know enough about to offer guidance.

Ruins and wrecks are always interesting. It sounds very ambitious so I wish you good luck!

Also I just checked and it seems you can, thanks that will really help out so we can have some relic like ships that you dont even have the tech for

[nuclearslurpee]

Let me know what you guys think of the ground forces and if i should reduce or increase the amount I want to find some kind of balance definitely imperfect but some kind, I felt 250,000 tons of ground forces was that balance, it allows you to engage in armed conflict immediately if you want but not so much that you are discounting how important these forces are as you dont start with proper ground infrastructure to just rebuild them easily

Were I to play this I would have one big concern, that being that the ground force OOB does not play nicely with the game's commander auto-promotion rules, which for ground forces enforce a 3:1 ratio between ranks. This means the auto-assignment won't really work well with this OOB which causes a player extra micro to manage their formations and leaders.

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

Let me know what you guys think of the ground forces and if i should reduce or increase the amount I want to find some kind of balance definitely imperfect but some kind, I felt 250,000 tons of ground forces was that balance, it allows you to engage in armed conflict immediately if you want but not so much that you are discounting how important these forces are as you dont start with proper ground infrastructure to just rebuild them easily

Were I to play this I would have one big concern, that being that the ground force OOB does not play nicely with the game's commander auto-promotion rules, which for ground forces enforce a 3:1 ratio between ranks. This means the auto-assignment won't really work well with this OOB which causes a player extra micro to manage their formations and leaders.

Mind elaborating what you mean by a 3:1 ratio, from my understanding the OOB should work just fine with the auto assignment, and if not could you explain what would be a solution to make it work properly?

[Platys51]

You could make few races for ground forces, each with different tech lvl.

Would force a bit of caution out of player and simulate splintered colonies losing tech at different speeds.

Also, boarding or I'm pretty sure you can just delete normal techs to rereseatch them again.

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

You could make few races for ground forces, each with different tech lvl.

Would force a bit of caution out of player and simulate splintered colonies losing tech at different speeds.

Also, boarding or I'm pretty sure you can just delete normal techs to rereseatch them again.

Thats basically what I will be doing, each system is gonna be slightly different in what you will find and the tech level will also be different, for example a system that contained numerous military outposts may have some actual ships lying around etc.

also I have figured out how to make the relic ships work and so the player will start with advanced but limited vessels, and it will be their job to utilise them to their best abilities, they could even take them apart and utilise their components on either other ships or for tech boosts if they wanted.

[nuclearslurpee]

Let me know what you guys think of the ground forces and if i should reduce or increase the amount I want to find some kind of balance definitely imperfect but some kind, I felt 250,000 tons of ground forces was that balance, it allows you to engage in armed conflict immediately if you want but not so much that you are discounting how important these forces are as you dont start with proper ground infrastructure to just rebuild them easily

Were I to play this I would have one big concern, that being that the ground force OOB does not play nicely with the game's commander auto-promotion rules, which for ground forces enforce a 3:1 ratio between ranks. This means the auto-assignment won't really work well with this OOB which causes a player extra micro to manage their formations and leaders.

Mind elaborating what you mean by a 3:1 ratio, from my understanding the OOB should work just fine with the auto assignment, and if not could you explain what would be a solution to make it work properly?

If you play with automatic promotions, the game will always promote ground force commanders to maintain a 3:1 ratio of officers between ranks (or close to it). So if you have, for sake of discussion, 40 GU officers, the game will automatically maintain 27x MAJ, 9x LTCOL, 3x COL, 1x BG for instance.

Auto-assignment will, as far as I know, only assign officers to command a formation which has the same minimum rank requirement as their own rank. If you have, say, 30 battalions requiring a MAJ to command, the game will not assign LTCOLs to command these.

This produces a significant, annoying result when dealing with any OOB that does not have three sub-formations per superior formation, which is that one formation type or the other will either (a) not be filled with commanders or (b) not be numerous enough and many commanders will be left jobless. Of course manual assignment works around this but this means micromanagement for the player which defeats the purpose of checking the box.

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

Let me know what you guys think of the ground forces and if i should reduce or increase the amount I want to find some kind of balance definitely imperfect but some kind, I felt 250,000 tons of ground forces was that balance, it allows you to engage in armed conflict immediately if you want but not so much that you are discounting how important these forces are as you dont start with proper ground infrastructure to just rebuild them easily

Were I to play this I would have one big concern, that being that the ground force OOB does not play nicely with the game's commander auto-promotion rules, which for ground forces enforce a 3:1 ratio between ranks. This means the auto-assignment won't really work well with this OOB which causes a player extra micro to manage their formations and leaders.

Mind elaborating what you mean by a 3:1 ratio, from my understanding the OOB should work just fine with the auto assignment, and if not could you explain what would be a solution to make it work properly?

If you play with automatic promotions, the game will always promote ground force commanders to maintain a 3:1 ratio of officers between ranks (or close to it). So if you have, for sake of discussion, 40 GU officers, the game will automatically maintain 27x MAJ, 9x LTCOL, 3x COL, 1x BG for instance.

Auto-assignment will, as far as I know, only assign officers to command a formation which has the same minimum rank requirement as their own rank. If you have, say, 30 battalions requiring a MAJ to command, the game will not assign LTCOLs to command these.

This produces a significant, annoying result when dealing with any OOB that does not have three sub-formations per superior formation, which is that one formation type or the other will either (a) not be filled with commanders or (b) not be numerous enough and many commanders will be left jobless. Of course manual assignment works around this but this means micromanagement for the player which defeats the purpose of checking the box.

I see that is a  bit of an issue, well one way around it is I can set it up manually at the start of the game since past the start its all up to the player what decisions they realistically want to make.

Edit: I fixed the automation by adding enough officers in key positions for everything to be automatically assigned properly, now all formations will have a commander from major to Major general

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

Heres an example of one of the "lost" worlds, each world will have a different tech level and components so the player cant assume every world is the exact same. Of course since am using player races to do this, the player could always just switch to their race and see what they have but like steve says theres plenty of ways to cheat at solitaire.





Heres one of the Relic ships the player will start with, this will be the flagship of the remnant fleet, its pretty high tech compared to the current level of tech across the system but you cant make more of them, also something else i want to note is that a lot of these designs will be made "bad" on purpose to simulate the conditions of the day, also the fact is these are my designs and so there will be flaws, but again this will be part of the "player has to make do with what they have in reuniting humanity"

[idefelipe]

Simply amazing. If you share the save, I will play it for sure. And I'm eager to see your new series in YT

I'm thinking in some funny things you can make.. for example:

- One of those lost colonies could be a bunch of Orbital Habits that are surviving in an asteroid field or something.

- What about a mobile fleet? I know that requires a bit of work for the player, but it could be nice something like the Battlestar Galactica Fleet (a few civilian / colony and some military protection).

- I like the idea of different warlords in a world, but.. what about a small civil war in a system? A couple or three splitted colonies spreaded along an unique system.

- You can also create a "stelar highway" that was not destroyed by the invaders. Maybe that highway does not arrive any important place, and because of that it was left untouched, or maybe one of the systems it has inside is important for resources or a lost colony.

- I would spread in different small planets / moons, different pieces of equipment. Not as an old abandoned colony, but something like a moon where a ship or a bunch of ships were crashed and different materials and components can be recovered (as background maybe a big stellar battlefield happened in orbit and the wrecks or ships destroyed went down to the land crashing).

- A small, lost and independent colony with an elite unit (or two) inside.. a big deal for the player. I imagine that a military unit in a frontier world survived somehow to the invaders and remains as a monastic / isolated / religious / independent colony. They have a huge ground technology that have survived to the pass of time.

I will think more things.. there is an universe to fill!

[SpaceMarine (OP)]

Simply amazing. If you share the save, I will play it for sure. And I'm eager to see your new series in YT

I'm thinking in some funny things you can make.. for example:

- One of those lost colonies could be a bunch of Orbital Habits that are surviving in an asteroid field or something.

- What about a mobile fleet? I know that requires a bit of work for the player, but it could be nice something like the Battlestar Galactica Fleet (a few civilian / colony and some military protection).

- I like the idea of different warlords in a world, but.. what about a small civil war in a system? A couple or three splitted colonies spreaded along an unique system.

- You can also create a "stelar highway" that was not destroyed by the invaders. Maybe that highway does not arrive any important place, and because of that it was left untouched, or maybe one of the systems it has inside is important for resources or a lost colony.

- I would spread in different small planets / moons, different pieces of equipment. Not as an old abandoned colony, but something like a moon where a ship or a bunch of ships were crashed and different materials and components can be recovered (as background maybe a big stellar battlefield happened in orbit and the wrecks or ships destroyed went down to the land crashing).

- A small, lost and independent colony with an elite unit (or two) inside.. a big deal for the player. I imagine that a military unit in a frontier world survived somehow to the invaders and remains as a monastic / isolated / religious / independent colony. They have a huge ground technology that have survived to the pass of time.

I will think more things.. there is an universe to fill!

Loads of really great ideas, though there are some limitations, in that this is supposed to follow on from my previous series so if it wasnt there then, then i cant really do it, but I can see ways to implement many of the ideas, your starting system is effectively like a "civil war" but more cold, theres one NPR with equivalent tech to you nearby and then in the inner system you have two former colonies that descended into chaos and are ruled by techno-barbarian like warlords, I love the idea of placing minerals and secret stuff around for players to find but it may be a little difficult but il have to see, I have stopped working on it for today, tomorrow I will continue and you guys should see more updates.

This will be the first ever premade scenario so I expect it to be rough and balance to be off but this opens the door to many scenarios all in one DB for a player to choose from which will be the eventual goal.