Prerelease 1.201B (Faster starts, low power mode tweaks, more bg updates)

[x4000]

On the other forum you mentioned wanting to potentially wait on upgrading to the latest version just because of this!?  I'm very surprised this is such a major issue, I think it looks a lot better in general.  More specifics on what the issue is would definitely be appreciated, and I'm also very interested in what other people think about the new nebulae.

Can't say I've had any problems with the nebulae. I honestly didn't notice any difference between this version and the previous ones.

On a totally unrelated note, at AI10/8-start-world I do have a few issues seeing the nebulae behind all the ships. >.> <.<

Gotcha.

It doesn't help that I seem to be getting regular 10 second lag spikes for about 2 minutes after I kill every wave that comes through the wormhole, when my ships all seem to want to reposition themselves back in their original place. I don't think it particularly likes me having 6k ships in a single pile on auto-attack, on a single world.

Yeah, that's really incredibly pushing it.  In a real 8 player game, people wouldn't be batching up their ships all on just a planet or two like that, or at least not trying to control them all as one big group...

[CautiousChaos]

X - on the nebula, I wouldn't want to lead you to make changes just because a few folks indicated a preference.  It's not a significant concern, just a taste issue.  More than once I've been told my taste is not always within conventional norms...

-cc

[eRe4s3r]

You can lower the nebula density to your liking, you have options in the options menu, use them! I know i do (20%) which makes 80% of the stars not a nebula (or so) - perfect balance imo.

The first thing i did with these new nebula is reduce their density, even in 1.13 where i found them much uglier, but still equally disturbing.

Actually, i think we could improve nebula's as they are now with a different concept of integrating them, but for that i have to get my coffee and think about it.. before making a suggestion for it. Its a different idea for blending.. maybe even a different concept to what we have now, i haven't really checked nebula yet ;p

I don't particular care for them though, on 20% density they are.. pretty nice

[CautiousChaos]

Yep, I did that last night and it did make it better.  Good call!
-cc

[darke]

It doesn't help that I seem to be getting regular 10 second lag spikes for about 2 minutes after I kill every wave that comes through the wormhole, when my ships all seem to want to reposition themselves back in their original place. I don't think it particularly likes me having 6k ships in a single pile on auto-attack, on a single world.

Yeah, that's really incredibly pushing it.  In a real 8 player game, people wouldn't be batching up their ships all on just a planet or two like that, or at least not trying to control them all as one big group...

Definitely seems to be something to do with the pathfinding-to-group stuff. I decided to split them all up, every select-L-move-L-move-L-move-etc on a smaller chunk took half the time or less to reposition itself. Guess the trick is to avoid having more then 700-ish ships in a pile when dealing with large masses of ships.

Only noticed since I was consolidating a pile of my Mark I's from a few different worlds onto a single one to start pushing towards a long path to the V home worlds, and of course if I V-move them on the map they all cluster around the command station of the world I targeted so...

[Wacky Willy]

Woah woah!

Too many negative and neutral voices!  Let me throw in my opinion that the new starfield and nebulae are a huge improvement.  I don't see where the visibility complaints come from, I used to lose ships in those bright disco nebulae from the previous versions.  These new ones look more realistic, I have an easier time tracking my ships, and my system doesn't take a huge performance hit from rendering them in full detail.

Thumbs up for the visual improvement!  Good riddance to the bright disco nebulae.

EDIT:

If I were to make one suggestion on the new starfields, I see a lot of repeating patterns of thick spots and dark areas.  I don't know how you're tiling it, but you might want to try rotating the tiles here an there.  Right now I'm looking at a screen chock full of vertical dark swipes.

[x4000]

Woah woah!

Too many negative and neutral voices!  Let me throw in my opinion that the new starfield and nebulae are a huge improvement.  I don't see where the visibility complaints come from, I used to lose ships in those bright disco nebulae from the previous versions.  These new ones look more realistic, I have an easier time tracking my ships, and my system doesn't take a huge performance hit from rendering them in full detail.

Thumbs up for the visual improvement!  Good riddance to the bright disco nebulae.

Thanks, WW -- I've passed that on to Phil.  We're looking at doing something that will be tweaked for higher visibility, but still to try to retain a more realistic look.  To start with there will be 60% fewer nebula parts in general, which should help with whiteout and such, and then we're looking at the levels some so that we can make them a little more vibrant and hopefully more visible for ships, but without going "disco" again.

[Revenantus]

Thanks, WW -- I've passed that on to Phil.  We're looking at doing something that will be tweaked for higher visibility, but still to try to retain a more realistic look.  To start with there will be 60% fewer nebula parts in general, which should help with whiteout and such, and then we're looking at the levels some so that we can make them a little more vibrant and hopefully more visible for ships, but without going "disco" again.

In general I think the new nebulae are a significant improvement on the old ones, though reducing the proportion of the background they cover is a good idea - I've lowered it on my machine too.

I think that perhaps having some well defined structures in the nebulae could work, swirls or other shapes for example, as it stands they're all largely homogenous and amorphous - definitely realistic, but not always the most aesthetically appealing.

We've been receiving a few comments on the IRC channel about the ERROR message on dreadnaughts, so I've attached the full unit relative strength xml file, and other data files, generated from 1.201B.

[x4000]

Thanks, WW -- I've passed that on to Phil.  We're looking at doing something that will be tweaked for higher visibility, but still to try to retain a more realistic look.  To start with there will be 60% fewer nebula parts in general, which should help with whiteout and such, and then we're looking at the levels some so that we can make them a little more vibrant and hopefully more visible for ships, but without going "disco" again.

In general I think the new nebulae are a significant improvement on the old ones, though reducing the proportion of the background they cover is a good idea - I've lowered it on my machine too.

I think that perhaps having some well defined structures in the nebulae could work, swirls or other shapes for example, as it stands they're all largely homogenous and amorphous - definitely realistic, but not always the most aesthetically appealing.

Phil and I talked about this more, and he came up with the idea to let players choose the version they prefer.  I thought that was very cool, so that way people can decorate how they like.

We've been receiving a few comments on the IRC channel about the ERROR message on dreadnaughts, so I've attached the full unit relative strength xml file, and other data files, generated from 1.201B.

Unfortunately, none of that has what I need.  I need the UnitRelative.dat file, whcih only gets generated when the game is run in a debug mode.  But I'll be sure to address that sooner than later.

[darke]

We've been receiving a few comments on the IRC channel about the ERROR message on dreadnaughts, so I've attached the full unit relative strength xml file, and other data files, generated from 1.201B.

Unfortunately, none of that has what I need.  I need the UnitRelative.dat file, whcih only gets generated when the game is run in a debug mode.  But I'll be sure to address that sooner than later.

Maybe change the ERROR word to something like UNKNOWN or UNAVAILABLE AT THE MOMENT or leave it blank or something if there's no data? Might make some of the questions go away anyway.

[Revenantus]

Phil and I talked about this more, and he came up with the idea to let players choose the version they prefer.  I thought that was very cool, so that way people can decorate how they like.

Hmm, sounds interesting, will that be implemented as additional sliders to alter the characteristics of the nebulae?

 - Coverage
 - Brightness
 - Homogeneity
 - Colour Variability
 - etc

Unfortunately, none of that has what I need.  I need the UnitRelative.dat file, whcih only gets generated when the game is run in a debug mode.  But I'll be sure to address that sooner than later.

Oh, oops.  

[x4000]

I will test the new release later, but I want to say something about in-game economy and how I seem to enjoy to play RTS in general regarding that. I like to build up an economy structure in the beginning of a game, when it comes to fighting the enemy I prefer not to have to take care of that a lot, but to dive into the action.

I'm the same way -- I'm in no way trying to make the economy more complex (in fact, in general the latest releases are aimed at making it simpler to "set up and forget" with the flow-based economy).  However, what I am trying to prevent is players just starting with a few planets and then never expanding beyond those.  The main goal is to have players need to expand so that they can build more reactors and everything else, rather than letting them turtle up and raid.  I'm trying to be very careful not to increase the micromanagement burden of the economy, quite the opposite in general.

If you want to raise the difficulty, I'd prefer to see it in the way an AI behaves in a game (generally, not your game particularly!), not how hard it is to build up your structures mid-game and maintain the inflow to your economics over the point where you just have to keep an eye on it.

Yes, I completely agree.  However, that's not what all this is supposed to be.

I know you do those pre-releases to test new stuff on your audience and get feedback, so I know you won't take this as harsh criticism.

Nope, feedback is much appreciated!  If the feeling is that micromanagement is increased with the new systems, then that's a perception that concerns me.  Overall, I think things are getting simpler, although the more recent prereleases of this version are a bit more difficult than the earlier prereleases of this same version, just because the earlier versions were imbalanced.  So this is aiming to correct that, provide the players with a few new options, and provide an impetus for expansion, but nothing more.

[x4000]

When starting with 8 planets, it only builds 13 Engineer II's rather then the expected 16. I'm guessing it's hitting the limit of normal-number built and the max is multiplied afterwards.

Oh, very intersting.  Will fix.

Only 5 Tachyon Drones as well, they're not multiplied like everything else.

Good catch, that will also be true for a number of other ships. Will fix.

Tachyon Drones suck. (That's more of a general observation then anything specific to 8-start-worlds. >.> <.<) Maybe a boost of speed is in order? Or cloak them? Or something? There's really no reason to use them in exchange for the higher level emplacements. And they're really too slow to sweep mines, which is what I end up using scout starships for most.

Good point, I'll buff speed, range, and give them cloaking.

I get the feeling that 8x the number of each ship is getting a bit excessive, but I'm not going to complain about 2k Mark I parasites too loudly.

Well, the enemy also has around 8x the number of ships.  This is a pretty "deathmatch" style mode in many ways though, that's for sure.

Starships don't multiply... but honestly I think that's probably a sane decision, along with missiles non-multiplication. I really can't conceive needing more then 2 nukes anyway.

That will be fixed with the tachyon drones.

Advanced Research Station (controlled by the AI) seemed to be trying to head towards my slowly building command center in an attempt to attack it? Convenient since the thing moves dog slow since that way it's closer to my wormhole when I take over it.

It's probably trying to escape, actually.

On that note, I'm not sure it's physically possible for an Advanced Research Station to move any *slower*.

No, it's not.  That's by design.  They used to not move at all.

Using an attack force of nothing-but-starships is considerably less effective then I thought it would be.

Yes, the anti-starship arachnids will see to that.  The starships are best complementing a fleet of other ships by design (I've worked darn hard trying to make that the case, actually).

Turtle AI's could be meaner. I think the other AI types have been significantly buffed due to increased attack waves, so the non-waving-AI's are a bit weaker as a result. They really need something neat rather then just a metric ton more ships on their planets though.

Good point, I think that would be much more interesting.

I wouldn't particularly complain about a Science Lab III that researched at the Science Lab II's speed, but was a little spritelier (say 24 speed?) I would happily pay some knowledge for it.

Added to the future DLC list!

[x4000]

X - on the nebula, I wouldn't want to lead you to make changes just because a few folks indicated a preference.  It's not a significant concern, just a taste issue.  More than once I've been told my taste is not always within conventional norms...

-cc

Well, when several players bring something up, I take that as a larger cause for concern.  The new options for selecting your preference should be the way to go, and I've tweaked the default a bit.  That way hopefully everybody is happy!

[x4000]

If I were to make one suggestion on the new starfields, I see a lot of repeating patterns of thick spots and dark areas.  I don't know how you're tiling it, but you might want to try rotating the tiles here an there.  Right now I'm looking at a screen chock full of vertical dark swipes.

Can you post a screenshot?  Unfortunately I can't rotate these background tiles because of the way they are being blended and the imprecision of rotating sprites (I don't think I can do texture mirroring with the D3DX sprites), but I haven't seen this issue myself.