Time

posted on November 12th, 2009, 11:20 pm

Yeah, it's only subjective when considering it in the vernacular. Kind of like looking at what theory means in the vernacular versus the scientific . An amoeba is no less or more "evolved" than a chimpanzee  .

posted on November 12th, 2009, 11:21 pm

Yeah, it's only subjective when considering it in the vernacular. Kind of like looking at what theory means in the vernacular versus the scientific . An amoeba is no less or more "evolved" than a chimpanzee  .

Indeed... Which brings me to my favorite quote, "No matter where you go, there you are."

posted on November 13th, 2009, 9:32 am

Actually, a chimpanze has passed more evolution stages than an amoeba. The amoeba's environment has not changed in ages, and there is no need for the amoeba to evolve, except for conquering new environments. It's perfectly adapted to where it lives.

I'd use a human and a chimpanze (or gorilla). The man doesn't come from the monkeys: monkeys and men share a common ancestor that is neither, but could become both.

Back to the subject, the only drawback I see is that whoever designs the "timeline" will have the surprise spoiled or be able to act on "privileged information". First case is something I wouldn't like to impose in a fellow gamer (I hate spoiled surprises) and the second could become a lowly cheater.

posted on November 13th, 2009, 6:26 pm

Actually, a chimpanze has passed more evolution stages than an amoeba. The amoeba's environment has not changed in ages, and there is no need for the amoeba to evolve, except for conquering new environments. It's perfectly adapted to where it lives.

There are no such things as "evolutionary stages" though: even if an environment has not changed, the organisms living in that environment will still evolve. The only condition for evolution is variation in genetics and any sort of pressure. Hardy-weinberg equilibrium cannot exist because no environment and no genetic basis is static. For instance, take the oft quoted horshoe crab. In the vernacular people will say "it has not changed in millions of years", but scientificially that is wholely inaccurate. Although it physiologically may look the same, the genetics of the population have changed and it is a different species now then it was 100mya (same genus though). Incidentally microbes, amoeba, and other small uni-cellular organisms will undergo quite a bit of rapid evolution due to horizontal transfer, even in the absense of very little "natural" base variation. One last thing - nothing is perfectly adapted to where it lives

posted on November 13th, 2009, 6:30 pm

Anyway back to the subject 

posted on November 13th, 2009, 6:31 pm

... so who volunteers to make it happen is the question  

posted on November 13th, 2009, 8:38 pm

... so who volunteers to make it happen is the question  

We'd need people to volunteer for candidacy, then to democratically elect a timeline counsel!
'Cause otherwise, the temptation to concentrate more on certain things than others could be too great
...And there's always the other way around - more people (up to a point, maybe three?)= more ideas, better thought out.

posted on November 15th, 2009, 7:04 am

The big problem i see with this is enforcement -- how do you make it so that all players get the new timeline "patches"? Fleetops isn't exactly designed for this...

On a side note, i vote that the developers do the timeline, after all they hardly play online do they?

posted on November 15th, 2009, 10:45 am

The easiest way of enforcing it is to simply set up a stickied topic which outlines the updates and have them released as mini-patches in the downloads section.

However, the better way of presenting this feature would require more work to produce a Mod Manager, which loads before the game and provide "news updates" for what has happened and then automatically connect to the internet (or provide the option to update for those that don't like auto's) to update the game. The Mod Manager would then have the additional bonus of allowing each player to better track which mods they have installed.

In terms of how the Manager would work, I guess it'd run off my previous idea for having the game referring to a config file for which files to look for. You could have all the raw mods installed as they are now but as you enable and disable each mod, then the Manager overwrite the config file with the new settings and stuff.

Even better, would be to have the ODF folder divided by mod rather than by type of odf. So rather than having one ships folder with everything bunged in, you could have the default ships folder and in the main ODF folder for example; a folder called "Tyler's converted ships" etc. You could expand this to any of the new mods that are being produced, with the advantage that you could keep better track of where everything is, allowing each user to quickly enable/disable mods via the Manager without the inherent risk of borking everything up.

The Timeline Updates might not necessarily have a folder (unless a particular moment in time involved one or more of the races gaining access to some special stuff for a limited time). Instead the Timeline Updates could be incorporated directly into the config file as mentioned.


As for WHO would do this... Well, the FO Team are already somewhat tied up with producing bits for the main game so I'd imagine this would be managed as a mod for the game itself but it most definitely would require some of their expertise to help produce a mod manager and modify the game to use it. They've already proved that key aspects of the game can be changed with a little digging but these kind of changed probably wouldn't be an over night thing.

Would be cool to see what the devs think...

posted on November 15th, 2009, 11:14 am

i guess the generic mod manager found on a2files would work ok as a mod manager.

but anyway back on subject and the first thing first you will need to decide wot time period to start from and then decide wot the time scale should be. you dnt want the scale too long (eg 2 real months = 1 game year as what single armada game lasts that long.) or to short (eg 2 real minuets = 1 game year as that may make the game progress too quick) alternatively we could have an humongous map that takes ages to travel through and a vast tech tree (reference: galactic civilizations 2)

One final note if we ever want this to happen we will need answers to the noted points as soon as possible and the community would need to help the devs by producing some of the ships/stations, and the required files as this would take a lot of work considering the balacing and the features ppl will want to be added

posted on November 15th, 2009, 11:45 am

Well i nominate myself as a member of the council as this idea was effectively started by me, sorry that sounds so arrogant 

But yeah, I'd love to have discussions with other players as to how the Trek universe evolves.

posted on November 15th, 2009, 2:42 pm

In terms of the council, I assume it would work something like this:

Candidates put there names forward (much like I have) and people effectively vote for them. The council then from there discuss new technologies for new races and how the FO Star TRek universe evolves from there?

I have a feeling the developers aren't going to like this, it devolves a lot of there creational power if there say a few other people saying hold up, thats a bad idea... 

But anyway, if the developers agree to it (OBVIOUSLY THEY WILL HAVE TO BE ON THE COUNCIL), then I'm by all means up for attempting to make this work.

I'm a huge Star Trek fan and have always wondered what the Universe would like Post-Star Trek Nemesis (Yes i know FO is effectively an alternate universe (in some respects).

posted on November 16th, 2009, 3:34 pm

As for how other players can receieve timeline updates, it could be on the guide or upcoming wiki....wait, did I say something?

posted on November 16th, 2009, 7:10 pm

Hehe Unleash, which wiki are you talking about?

I think a mod manager is planned for the future, but probably fairly far in the future. I'm still not sure how this project would work out, because it just sounds like a tremendous amount of work - would it just be for singleplayer, or multiplayer too... and how would that balance out? To me it almost sounds like a thing best suited for a minicampaign, or something related to that.