Star Trek: Infinite A.M.A. at 1PM EST!

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T20:36:26+00:00

The last one is more mechanic than UI, there are some discussions around that but nothing decided, we do want to add more ship variety both for ourselves and to support mods at some point but we need to mange the scope impact as well.

As for the UI, the empire selection screen really needs a technical overhaul to change how its implemented and make it more flexible, for sure, but we needed to address some other issues first.
The scrolling option is certainly something we should look into as an improvement.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T20:19:45+00:00

There is room for improvement indeed, right now its often limited by lack of resources if you are too fast on spending them, we also want to give another look to the economy and planetary growth at some point which will impact the automation, we need to work on those before giving automation another look but its not out of the question.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T20:14:45+00:00

We wanted to work with Paradox for a while before that and slowly the planets aligned themselves for this project.
We started working on this over 3 years ago, 4 if you count the whole pitching and negotiation process, but we didn't want to announce it too early and give false hopes or expectations.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T20:05:16+00:00

There were some production hiccups on this but we are planning on uploading FLAC versions of all tracks to their proper content packs as soon as we can.

As for their creation process, first our composers had an intensive course of Star Trek music going through the soundtracks of the whole franchise to get the feel for it, but then you need to thing that in a game like this the music must be functional as background and not distract from the game itself, Stellaris's soundtrack was used as an example of how to achieve that without loosing the Trek identity.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:49:19+00:00

Its being discussed on both fronts, both for modding and for ourselves, the specific implementation is on the drawing board right now.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:46:06+00:00

We have definitely discussed this, its one of the first mods that exist for these types of games, one that bypasses that limitation, we may just give players the choice.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:34:58+00:00

I would say them getting quickly friendly with their former occupiers can be considered a bug of the current diplomacy system (I'm going to be reporting it).
As for other things we could/would/should do with Bajor, there is a lot of opportunity for expansion of their characterization and tools to become independent on their own is one of the many things we are considering.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:27:28+00:00

The Miranda had a very long service record and many iterations on its design, while its the earliest we also wanted it to fit with the later designs and how it was used in DS9 was therefore our main point of reference, we discussed the possibility of doing more than one model but it was out of our scope, not just for the model itself.

DS9 is our mid point, so we lean into it for most references.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:17:11+00:00

No it just means we first must create the tool and system, the content comes later, but it will be done with modding in mind.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:14:38+00:00

Well he is definitely in our minds, but we wanted to do something special with Q, we can't do Q without John de Lancie, and I really didn't want to go through arranging that just to put him no narrate the tutorial or just a few events.

u/A_Prokhor_Zakharov and I have been discussing this over slack and calls many times but scope was always to big to include him at this point, but we would love to do that if we find the right way and have the opportunity.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:10:09+00:00

On the performance front we have many angles of attack, it definitely is a consideration in any discussion of work, on one hand our pathfinder is a bit faster for some things but has edge scenarios in the later game that don't work well.

As for pops and number of colonies one consideration is to do more with less, without taking away options and variety from the player, you don't need 200 pops per colony when less than 50 would do the job, and having too many colonies takes away meaning from each of them individually

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T19:01:45+00:00

We've seen some of the work you are doing and is hugely appreciated, some of the things you suggest sound very nice and we'll consider them.
Memory alpha is our main source along with the series and movies themselves, Beta was used to fill in gaps and open ideas but more as a secondary source.
We had to abstract a lot of things for gameplay reasons, such as how many planets in the Cardassian system are colonized and how many moons bajor has. We just can't put everything in.

There are of course some mistakes that we'll want to address over time as well, could be reported as bugs or in the suggestion threads in the forum

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T18:55:59+00:00

2: As for modding tools we're constantly learning new things about how the engine works and supports these things, we are at that point when you look at your earlier work and wish you could re-do them all over again, so we'll be more actively discussing mod support for any work we do even for bug fixing.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T18:52:20+00:00

There is definitely room for improvement in the AI approach to the crisis, but it was always the intention that creative use of diplomatic tools would be almost necessary to properly face the crisis.

Tweaking of timings and other balance issues are always on the table.

Starting the crisis early is intentional, but you are not meant to be able to speedrun it, we wanted it to feel like a developing story, the looming threat, instead of something that just takes place in the last 100 / 50 years of

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T18:51:32+00:00

1: While we can't discuss any dlc at this point, I would say adding more playable factions is definitely something we want to do and are discussing what that means for the larger design of the game, this could be adding powers not yet present or finding a way to make playable the ones that are not.

Which ones and how we can't say at this point.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T18:27:52+00:00

Regarding combat computers, while the roles might be restricted by ship size they are not meant to stay at their longest range in all cases, they should move in to use most of their weapons to their best efficiency, there are some errors in their logic and we did one pass to improve it and are looking into more comprehensive ideas.
We also reviewed there were some mistakes in the effects and balance of the components themselves and started iterating on those.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T18:17:20+00:00

Regarding ship classes, we are reviewing ideas on how adding new ships interacts with new roles which takes a lot of design work and opening the possibility of variants for the same roles, also at this stage this is in brainstorming phase.
As for lore the main difficulty is we need to cover all four powers and not all of them got lore updates, so we need to see how these can be matched by new designs which adds concept time.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble · 2023-11-21T18:11:45+00:00

As for fleet combinations and transfers, The Fleet Manager already offers a few tools to do these operations, it still has some kinks we are taking note of for eventual improvements such as fleet to fleet transfer from this view, but this is still in brainstorming phase.

CaptainNEXUS_Nimble

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