I noticed engineers are no longer teleporting
Is this intentional?
Edit: I just found the patch notes.
But I got to comment, I perfer the teleporting of the engineer. I did not think they where an annoyance, nor hard to learn
I agree. I hope this change does not make it to a full release. I disagree with the notion that the teleportation makes them more difficult to control, use, or manage.
Zero percent chance of that changing back. It's better this way, and vastly easier for new players. It's more functional even for advanced players.
Think about it: you're a new player, you see this engineer thing you're supposed to use, and you go to click on it. But then it just vanishes! WTF! You have to know to zoom out and find it, and even then if it's got a lot to do it's blipping around and finding it can be a devil. And you can never just go back to where you left it, it's always a hunt that frustrates even me.
No chance of going back to the old way, no chance at all, sorry... That's one of those things that I think is just too crucial of a learning curve problem, and it has been subconsciously annoying me enough that I couldn't believe I didn't realize how much I hated it before now, either. Plus it gets rid of the constant piff piff piff sound in all games on your planets.
I'm not sure what the objections are related to, if it's a worry that engineers are nerfed or what. They are actually just as functional, especially if you put them in FRD mode, even though they can't cover an entire planet with
quite the same speed. But it's pretty close, given their blazing move speed and their huge repair range.
Just got round to trying the new Unity betas, it certainly looks much prettier. I'm a little concerned about the startup time, though - the .net version loads in 2.5s, compared to almost 8s for the Unity version. Is that something that's likely to improve in future betas?
Glad you like it. But the .NET version loaded for you in 2.5 seconds? Hmm, let me see...
The first time after not having run it for a while (or having done a big update), it loads in 21 seconds for me. The second time after having run it recently, it runs in 4 seconds for me.
The first time running the Unity version after not having run it for a while (or having done a big update), it loads in 25 seconds for me. The second time after having run it recently, it loaded in 9 seconds for me.
Looking at it, there's an added 5 seconds of loading in there on the Unity side based on it preloading the starfields and nebulae, and all the special effect images, which the .NET version didn't do. That prevents the lag (that was
severe) on the .NET side at the time of loading the first savegame. Basically, the Unity version works butter-smooth then, but loads a hair slower because of the extra 300ish images it needs to load at the start of the game.
Unfortunately, there's not much way I can make the initial load any faster without impacting the in-game first-run performance, and overall I think it makes the game feel smoother to do it this way. But, those extra few seconds are saving you lag from down the line in-the game, so hopefully that's a good trade.