Prerelease 3.140 (Galaxy Map Organization, 3 Flak Turrets, Cmd Station buffs)

[lanstro]

This patch looks awesome.  Fully agree on the maths of command stations.

I note that this makes the Rebel colony (the one that you save) a lot worse than it was about a month ago.  Back then, planet resources hadn't been buffed and command stations hadn't been buffed, so their 55/55 income was actually quite nice.  Now it's way worse.

A question - does dragging the galaxy map planets around also change the map for your allies?  We play while on skype and when referring to planets I might say something like 'there's a Dyson on New York (we've got a custom planet name file)', and my friend would say 'uh... I can't see it' and I'd say 'it's on the bottom right'.  If our galaxy maps don't sync up after one of us reorders it then it'll be harder to do that second bit.

[Winter Born]

If they dont sync think about using the "Flare" function

[keith.lamothe]

lanstro, the game actually maintains 9 separate maps: the "official" one which is what you see in the lobby and what you see in-game at first, and one for each human player, which that player (and no others) can modify using the new controls.  You can look at someone else's modified map (which will equal the official if they have not changed it) by alt-A-(their player number, starting from 1).

So for collaboration purposes you'd probably want to decide on one master-map-maintainer if the official is in an undesirable layout.  But you could have someone else maintain different layouts for different campaigns or purpose (a really clear depiction of your defensive perimeter, etc).

In theory we could let the "unused maps" be editable by a specified player as well, but we'll figure out if that's necessary as we go along.

[Baleur]

   * New Hotkeys for galaxy map (likely to be changed to something else):
          o Alt+A+9 : switch to your alternate galaxy layout
          o Alt+A+(1-8) : switch to alternate galaxy layout of player 1-8 (respectively)
          o Alt+A+0 : switch to official galaxy layout
          o Please note that all alternate layouts start exactly the same as the official layout, but there's a flashing note in the bottom left of the screen if you're viewing an alternate layout.

    * While viewing your alternate galaxy layout you may:
          o Shift-left-click-drag planets around
          o Alt-left-click a planet to perform a basic automatic "pull in chains" operation that relocates subsidiary chains (defined as link cardinality <= 2) into a cluster near the clicked planet. On higher-connections-per-planet map types this may not help you at all; on snakes and spokes and such it can be a huge time-saver.

Can i make a related request??

It would be very very nice if a future patch could correct the wormhole locations "in-space" to match the planet locations on the galaxy map.
It would also make orientation so much easier.
As it is now, a wormhole at the far right at your homeplanet might lead to the planet to the south west on the galaxy map.

[x4000]

This patch looks awesome.  Fully agree on the maths of command stations.

I note that this makes the Rebel colony (the one that you save) a lot worse than it was about a month ago.  Back then, planet resources hadn't been buffed and command stations hadn't been buffed, so their 55/55 income was actually quite nice.  Now it's way worse.

Actually, at the moment the rebel colonies don't give any resources to the player at all, since they are never directly controlled by them (oops).  This is something that we need to correct, perhaps having rebel colonies provide those resources to every human player -- a new function for minor faction ships.  Keith, we could have that enabled by a flag on certain minor faction ships telling them to automatically add themselves to the metal/crystal producers lists of all players or something along those lines.  Can you look into that?

Can i make a related request??

It would be very very nice if a future patch could correct the wormhole locations "in-space" to match the planet locations on the galaxy map.
It would also make orientation so much easier.
As it is now, a wormhole at the far right at your homeplanet might lead to the planet to the south west on the galaxy map.

Unfortunately, this would never be possible, as that has extreme impact on gameplay.  The actual in-game locations of stuff affects the game to quite a large degree (especially when you build turrets, etc), so that's not open to customization.  The galaxy map spatial representation is non-simulation-affecting, which is why that can be reordered.

The nature of wormholes is such that they "fold" spacetime (in terms of the actual scientific theory of them), and hence their disconnected-ness in terms of their spatial location relative to that on the galaxy map.  That's how they would be in real life, assuming that the current theories of space time are largely correct.

[lanstro]

well then.  an example of the placebo effect in action in gaming eh?

[Buttons840]

This patch looks awesome.  Fully agree on the maths of command stations.

I note that this makes the Rebel colony (the one that you save) a lot worse than it was about a month ago.  Back then, planet resources hadn't been buffed and command stations hadn't been buffed, so their 55/55 income was actually quite nice.  Now it's way worse.

Actually, at the moment the rebel colonies don't give any resources to the player at all, since they are never directly controlled by them (oops).  This is something that we need to correct, perhaps having rebel colonies provide those resources to every human player -- a new function for minor faction ships.  Keith, we could have that enabled by a flag on certain minor faction ships telling them to automatically add themselves to the metal/crystal producers lists of all players or something along those lines.  Can you look into that?

Can i make a related request??

It would be very very nice if a future patch could correct the wormhole locations "in-space" to match the planet locations on the galaxy map.
It would also make orientation so much easier.
As it is now, a wormhole at the far right at your homeplanet might lead to the planet to the south west on the galaxy map.

Unfortunately, this would never be possible, as that has extreme impact on gameplay.  The actual in-game locations of stuff affects the game to quite a large degree (especially when you build turrets, etc), so that's not open to customization.  The galaxy map spatial representation is non-simulation-affecting, which is why that can be reordered.

The nature of wormholes is such that they "fold" spacetime (in terms of the actual scientific theory of them), and hence their disconnected-ness in terms of their spatial location relative to that on the galaxy map.  That's how they would be in real life, assuming that the current theories of space time are largely correct.

I think he means arrange the map by wormhole locations rather than having the ability to physically move the worm holes.  I can understand this being a major pain to implement though.  I think the current system which allows us to arrange the planet displays ourselves is the best solution.  I'm just disappointed this wasn't in the last official release which I will be sticking with so I can play with a buddy.

Although it would be nice to cover all entrances with one minefield and turret pile.

[RCIX]

*does a little jig*
Yay draggable planets! I think i'll go spend a half hour arranging my galaxy...

[SgtScum]

* Added Flak Turrets: mkI, mkII, and mkIII. Graphics donated by HitmanN (with preliminary work and idea by superking, many thanks to both). The Flak Turrets have only received preliminary balancing, intended to be good against zenith viral shredders, cutlasses, and vampires, and mediocre against other very light ships, and only minorly effective against anything much bigger)


Haha! I promised myself I would finish a large game before I installed another beta patch but the game I'm trying to finish has those damn vampire ships that pretty much ignore all my defences and go right for the kill.

Damn you for these continuous tasty updates.. 

[superking]

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,5288.0.html

/plug

[keith.lamothe]

*does a little jig*
Yay draggable planets! I think i'll go spend a half hour arranging my galaxy...

Do let me know if you find any bugs or big usability things; I love manual graph untangling myself so I gave it quite a workout, but I never know what you guys will find

[wyvern83]

The use of shift with the dragable planets view prevents the using shift with placing priority assignments to planets. A minor inconvenience but it diminishes the awesome utility of this galaxy map mode a little bit.

(I probably spent over a hour yesterday arranging my current spokes map into looking like a subway map. This view mode is fantastic.)

[keith.lamothe]

Ah yes, the way it is now you'd have to do the priority assignment in a read-only view (the official or another player's).  Will have to find a way to de-conflict those.

[HitmanN]

I was so focused on the Flaks and other stuff that I missed the mention of draggable planets. From a quick glance, seems really nice. 

[keith.lamothe]

I think he means arrange the map by wormhole locations rather than having the ability to physically move the worm holes.  I can understand this being a major pain to implement though.

Yea, when I first read that I thought it would be easy, then I sat down to do it and realized, "oh".  Basically if a planet has 13 wormholes it has to be positioned relative to all of those other planets, which is doable by starting with an arbitrarily selected planet and working out from there (with galaxy map dx = some_multiplier * cos(line(planet_center,wormhole_center)) and dy = some_multiplier * sin(...)), but then you run into problems of stuff going off the edge of the map (can be clipped to it but then it's not proportional and probably overlapping and definitely ugly, etc) and it still doesn't really resolve the problem of so many relative positionings to maintain, etc, etc...

Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent