Prerelease 3.172 (Bugfixes)

[x4000]

Yeah, there's definitely been a lot of stuff lately, glad you're enjoying it.

[rubikscube]

x what's your opinion about starting knowledge?

[x4000]

x what's your opinion about starting knowledge?

It's not going to change; quickstix pretty much summed up how I feel about it.

[rubikscube]

I think starting knowledge is fine, especially with the harder difficulties. Otherwise taking the first few planets is a bit of a challenge, especially if you want to grab a Mk3/4 early, as I tend to do sometimes.

8000 for me means I can only unlock 2 mk 2 ships off the bat, then having to wait for the rest of the knowledge to accumulate before grabbing another mk 2 or tech. Other guys go straight for mk2 Command Stations at the start, which aren't too cheap either. The knowledge costs might have only gone up a bit, but they add up at the end of the game.

10000 is balanced with the 500 increase. Drop it to 8000 and you have to take the extra 500 knowledge of 4 more planets to make up for the 2000 drop, unless you feel like knowledge raiding, which is fairly difficult these days.

4 planets= 80 AIP + Time and effort. Too expensive for my liking, especially 80 AIP.

well, we can make it 9000 if you just like mk2 ships and let's see, other defensive structures,

yes you have to take 4 more planets to make it up but first, are you saying you don't unlcok any transports till like, 10th hour in the game? that's 1000 knowledge, especially it's a "must have for all games" i unlock it right away.

then again, your first planet has 500 extra knowledge, you capture another planet, with along the original 2000 knowledge over there, so you can't say 4 planets = 80 aip + time and effort, it should be 4 planets = free 2000 knowledge and no time or effort or aip, of course i may be mistaken because you may not capture 1 planet at all?

So, if we change it to experimental numbers (that's what the beta's for) we have several test values

5000
6000
7000
8000
9000

Given that you already dislike the idea of 8000, we'll rule out 567, now, it's a question of 8000 or 9000

Now, what we want players to unlock , do we want them to unlock 3 mk2 ships, "as you like it since it's easy" or do we want them to unlock balanced things such as turrets, defense structures, or even mk2 engineers. so with that, 2 mk2 ships is the most you should be able to unlock at the start, making it 8000 is perfect, and if they really want a balanced fleet at the beginnning, they will unlock 1 mk2 ship, 1 starship or turret, 1 defensive structure. or maybe just 2 mk2 or 1 mk2 and 1 mk3. So in this case we'll make it 8000. Seeing transports don't need to be unlocked , it's essentially 9000, plus 500, to 9500. then capture 1 more planet you get your 500 back, plus the original 2000.

[x4000]

I'm not going to debate it -- I've already gone all through the numbers when I made the last round of knowledge changes, and this was the balance I'd settled on.  I make no claim that the balance is the same as before, but there is absolutely a 0% chance of me reducing the starting knowledge.  That would just serve to slow the game down and annoy most players, it's just not something I would even consider at this stage.

[Fleet]

I think something to consider is x4000 might have a different idea of what a balanced game means than another player. So its important to keep in mind that this is indeed the developers game, and sometimes their ideas are at odds with another. The game is balanced, in that its at just the level of balance that the developers want. Which is fine because they largely serve the community requests.

This was not directed toward anyone in particular. I just browsed the past few comments and thought this relevant.

[rubikscube]

I totally understand and was just giving a helpful suggestion I mean, everybody has different opinions

[Ozymandiaz]

I would agree, starting knowledge is just fine as is. With all the new cool stuff, removing that knowledge will just make that stuff used less in the long run since eventually there will be a "best start unlock" scenario for the set amount of knowledge. Now I feel you got decent flexibility in addition to good limits.

Regarding transport; I do not find it all that useful on all my games, its not a given for me at all.

[vonduus]

I totally agree with Oxymandiaz. 10.000 (+ 2.500) k is not quite enough for me to unlock what I want in the beginning of a game. Which imo is proof that the game is well balanced: I am forced to make choices.

And like Oxy I don't really get all the fuzz about transports. I know how to use them, I even see their great utility, but I almost never use them myself,  unless I feel  I really have to. I guess it is because I regard the way they are supposed to be used as a kind of mild cheating, or an exploit, or what know I. I see they have been nerfed somewhat. Good.

I haven't played this game since 3.12, so a lot is new to me. So far I have only two comments:

1. Something has happened to the graphics, and, I believe, to the performance of the game. It looks better, and goes faster. Great!

2. As reported elsewhere, turrets and fleets on FRD now shoot at trains. Not so great. I guess it is okay with turrets, but seeing a large part of my fleet chase a semi-invulnerable train makes me want to micro my forces. Not a big deal, I don't mind microing, but I guess it violates the company policy of minimizing micro.

I'll report on more stuff as I go along.



edit: Okay, turret trains can be killed. No objections, then.

[superking]

Would it be possible to reduce the energy consumption of fabricators? given that they provide a very small shipcap of units, 10k energy is too much to leave on all the time just to refresh a shipcap of, eg, 17 core vampires. I feel inclined to turn it off after they are built and not turn it on again until they are all dead, leading to annoying on/off micro. if they were cheap enough to leave online and slowly replenishing the shipcap I would be a happy man 

[x4000]

I totally understand and was just giving a helpful suggestion I mean, everybody has different opinions

I'm not offended -- I'm just not having time for debates of late, far too much going on.

[x4000]

And like Oxy I don't really get all the fuzz about transports. I know how to use them, I even see their great utility, but I almost never use them myself,  unless I feel  I really have to. I guess it is because I regard the way they are supposed to be used as a kind of mild cheating, or an exploit, or what know I. I see they have been nerfed somewhat. Good.

Well, it depends on what map style you play, and what difficulty, etc.  And really your play style in general.  A huge part of the strategy of the game is in what planets to take, etc, and transports really help in giving you flexibility there, like a knight or a rook or a bishop in chess; otherwise it's just a game of pawns creeping around, eh? 

But, there are many drawbacks to having planets peppered around the galaxy (via transport use).  So it's not like you can just "skip your way to victory."  You wind up having a far harder time defending your flanks, but a much lower AIP overall, if you use transports a lot.  If you don't like them you don't have to use them, but especially in their newer nerfed form, they're fairly central to the game at this stage.  Again -- depending on playstyle, so it's certainly valid to do without them.

1. Something has happened to the graphics, and, I believe, to the performance of the game. It looks better, and goes faster. Great!

Well... great!  I don't think we've made any graphical changes whatsoever, but we have made a lot of performance improvements since 3.120.  Glad it's looking and playing great, at any rate!

2. As reported elsewhere, turrets and fleets on FRD now shoot at trains. Not so great. I guess it is okay with turrets, but seeing a large part of my fleet chase a semi-invulnerable train makes me want to micro my forces. Not a big deal, I don't mind microing, but I guess it violates the company policy of minimizing micro.

edit: Okay, turret trains can be killed. No objections, then.

Yeah, it's just the fairly-easy-to-kill turret trains that actually get chased and shot at.  Glad that's no worries, then!

[x4000]

Would it be possible to reduce the energy consumption of fabricators? given that they provide a very small shipcap of units, 10k energy is too much to leave on all the time just to refresh a shipcap of, eg, 17 core vampires. I feel inclined to turn it off after they are built and not turn it on again until they are all dead, leading to annoying on/off micro. if they were cheap enough to leave online and slowly replenishing the shipcap I would be a happy man 

Okay, that's in for the next version: down to 5k instead.

[vonduus]

Well... great!  I don't think we've made any graphical changes whatsoever

There is a lot of new lines on the screen, like from the sniper turrets, and the green repair line from the MRS also looked new to me (but I guess it isn't). The boosting of the MRS range is great. Still a bit too many tug types imo, but this boost is a nice workaround, now I don't need tugs as much as I used to. And thanks a lot for the new MRS control node, the one that restricts your repairs to your own MRS. I haven't tried it in mp yet, but I guess it solves most of the problems we encountered in our games.

I had a minor glitch: Two marauders kept trying to go through a wormhole, but was kind of repelled,  so that they did a crazy dance back and forth. There was no structures or other ships nearby, except two tractor turrets on the far side of the wh. I made a save, but the behaviour couldn't be reproduced, so I'll just mention it here.

[x4000]

Oh, that's right, the railgun lines are definitely new.   And yeah, I can imagine that some of the other non-visual shifts had visual-effects, it's just a matter of us having done it gradually over time and so being used to it, I guess.

That thing with the Marauders does happen every so often, we'll keep an eye out for that.  Thanks!