As for periods of struggle for a race I was thinking just limiting the amount of tech while increasing its cost verses the other times. In addition I think that any tech that does exist should help reinforce things that occur during that struggle that may help them.

For example let us take the EA isolation period: during this time the EA basically kept to itself and developed more advance technology with the help of the shadows. However they greatly hurt their economy so tech in that period could look like this:

Civilian: Treaty break (reduced trade income), Night Watch (Increase resistance to other cultures (requires treaty break))

If possible these upgrades could be tied to ones in the military branch that allow better weapons/armor ect. This way the player is forced to take the economic hits before being able to gain the militaristic rewards of this period.

Pre-checks are entirely possible.  It'd work just like any other prerequisite for later research. Heck, you can even have multiple pre-reqs to gain something, though it may not necissarily display them properly beyond the first.  I've made ships that require both lvl 5 capital ship count, and level 3 total ship count (...I forget the actual names for these...), and it worked fine, but only the first one on the list was shown as unlocking the specific ship.  And obviously those have no relation to the ship itself.  Any of the research should be the same, and which tree it's in doesn't matter.  What you will NOT get, at least automatically, is the little arrows pointing across the trees at the paths.  Those are part of the background, and you'd have to create it yourself.

Btw, the idea of taking hits to economy, or other things as the case may arise, is actually a rather amusing and interesting way to go about getting those much better later upgrades.  You *might* wanna consider trying to counter balance them a little, just so they're not ALL bad (like perhaps the reduced trade income also comes with a slightly resource gathering bonus), but if it doesn't honestly fit the theme of the particular research/timeframe, don't bother.

Sigh if only the game engine had a more evolved or more complex event engine where periodically events throughout the galaxy happened besides Artifact discovered, pirate raids, ect... ect... ect...

What that would mean is as our friend above has pointed out, if a Civil War breaks out and such and chaos ensues that the event that likely leads up to this brings the said increases and unlocks something while in another way your hit hard in one area

Hmmm gonna keep it simple eh and not use any of the fancy modded planets other mods have?

Received an ability from EvilTesla-RG which I requested and he made in record time! I still need to test it, but this ability should allow a ship (we still have to specify) to tow a starbase around in the gravwell. This ship should be slow as hell, and the starbase is not operational while being towed, but this would end the idiocracy of destroying a starbase on one side of the planet to rebuild it on the other side.

I don't know, they are very small so I cannot verify that the details are correct. The Explorer for example does not look a bit like that on the show. (but I could mistake one ship for another here)

Here are miniature pics of orestes, cronos and apollo

http://www.agentsofgaming.com/ofaea.htm

Here are picture of many a ship in good resolution (I would prefer that versions - Delphi and Apollo from Mongoose - as they look more EA like than the ones from B5Wars)

http://www.star-ranger.com/ACalltoArms.htm

Wow that one site has some ships for EA that I have not even heard of before!

Also another idea that I wanted to recommend was the use of planet bombardment. I think that missile animations should some how be changed to look like landing craft because with the exception of the mass drivers and the planet killers actually landing troops was way more common in Babylon 5. As stated in earth minbari war there were tons of battles fought on the ground and I think it would be interesting to see this mod reflect that. So for example things that improve planet health say that they improve ground defenses and station additional ground troops.

In addition I would like to suggest a new idea for planet health restoration. What if there was a way to some how land your own forces on your own planet to help it regain health faster. This would be sort of like bombing your own planet except your dropping reinforcements instead of bombs. I do not know if this would be possible but it would affect the game tactically in the following way:

Enemy attacks a planet with “landing craft” this ability does damage to the planet over time so that even if that ship leaves the planet continues to take damage until the effect wares off (ie the army that landed was defeated). This could be accomplished by giving the ships that would attack planets a special ability that allows such a thing to occur every so often, perhaps reliant on anti matter. However such ability is not required as you could possibly tie some other effect into the normal “weapon” of the given ship.

If your planet is taking heavy damage and you do not think it can hold on or if it is at low health you can use your own “landing craft” to help boost planet health and thus recover or negate the effects of an enemy attack.

Let us take for example two ea landing craft attack a planet one from team A the other from team B. The planet from team A is attacked by team B using a landing craft. The planet will now take X damage over the course of X time. To negate these effects team A uses its own landing craft on the planet and restores X damage over X time. This assumes that both have the same upgrades for ground combat training and ground based weapons.

I am not sure if such a thing is possible but I think that it will greatly impact the combat in the game and make it more similar to how things work in the Babylon 5 universe. Some races like the vorlons and shadows would not be really affected by this and that would also lead to more dynamic tactics as they have no way to negate landing craft by using their own to defend because they have none. Other races like the Cintari would have more of a hybrid tactic as they can utilize landing craft like the other younger races but also have access to weapons that destroy planets like the older ones do.

As for the tech trees that seems promising and having a limit of 3-4 pre requirements is good to know. I will look into trying to make a flow chart of the ones stated here along with my own this weekend.

Oh yea, that is defently not something to be trying to implement right now but I did want to get an idea of if it would ever come to the game so that I can come up with some tech for it and jsut leave it out of the trees until the ships are updated in the future for it to work.

And btw SteinerX, My I encourage you to disable the colored skyboxes? Would give better impression of vast space (but thats just my preference )

Behold the vastness of space

EDIT: Yes, the ships look better in it!

Sounds good! Just try to keep the ship release date in the general timeline correct.

Thanks for helping us and welcome to the team!

Tobiwahn: Any thoughts on Entrenchment 1.04 ... to upgrade or not to upgrade that is the question (for the next release 0.34)?

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Hi guys,

looking forward to this MOD, Babylon 5 is perhaps my favourite Sci-fi TV show alongside DS9. If you are interested, I found on my drive Centauri Vorchan model, i started to do few years ago and never finished. So i am willing to finish it now and then if you want its all yours. Right now it looks like this:

http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii21/dusanko/?action=view&current=centaurivorchanWIP.jpg

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Nice loading screen!!

As to the Vorchan - Well, help is appreciated, but unfinished models will not be of help I think, as for everything to fit together, I feel it is better to start from scratch or have a model where there are just some Details missing. Thanks nevertheless.