Prerelease/Expans 2.201 (New Updater, Major Perf+, Many Bugfixes/Balance)

[Minty]

I'm getting the same error as Shardz. It seems to fix itself when combat ships are in the sector for me, but only *while* combat ships are in-sector.

Another slight niggle to report: Zenith Trade Ships aren't immune to forcefields, so you can trap em on your planets by slapping a FF down on the exit wormhole. I've not tested it, but you may want to make sure they're immune to Black Hole gens (Or whichever the capturable is that prevents exit from the system) too, so they're *true* free-roamers, like Astro-Trains are currently.

Fantastic work on 2.201, by the way. I'm having a WHALE of a time.  

[Fiskbit]

The font's looking a lot better now, Chris. One more change I think would really help, though, is working on the 8 as it appears in the input boxes in the lobby. It currently looks more like a B than an 8.

Also, could you make the minor factions box a little wider in the lobby? It currently has a horizontal scrollbar to scroll it over one pixel, which takes up box space and doesn't supply any functionality for users because the current factions aren't visibly too long to fit in the box.

Edit: The advanced factory disappears when it's partially off the top or left of the screen.

[Revenantus]

The new sprites (the advanced factory, especially) are looking great. How many such sprites are expected to be included in the official release, are there more to come? My only concern is that while I really like the direction the art style is moving in, might it be better to wait for more of these new sprites to be ready before including them in the main game? Purely because they are so strikingly different to the current sprites, I worry that players/reviewers might fixate on the potentially inconsistent art style.

Also thanks to Marisa for the work on the font - it's now really user friendly and yet distinctive. Very impressed by the cold storage performance gains; at this rate there'll be a handheld version of AI War in a couple of months.

[Shardz]

The new sprites (the advanced factory, especially) are looking great. How many such sprites are expected to be included in the official release, are there more to come? My only concern is that while I really like the direction the art style is moving in, might it be better to wait for more of these new sprites to be ready before including them in the main game? Purely because they are so strikingly different to the current sprites, I worry that players/reviewers might fixate on the potentially inconsistent art style.

Also thanks to Marisa for the work on the font - it's now really user friendly and yet distinctive. Very impressed by the cold storage performance gains; at this rate there'll be a handheld version of AI War in a couple of months.

I was thinking the same exact thing, as probably many others were. It might have been a more tactical maneuver to plan for a massive "re-skin" DLC pack down the line and do a one-shot mass replacement and call it a free content addendum to entice purchases of the expansion. My eyeballs (or feeble brain, your choice) are having some difficulties adjusting to the partial changes; one of the downfalls of having a symmetrical left brain train of thought I suppose. Now that the long term game plan has been announced and Chris has made it abundantly clear that he has bigger fish to fry this weekend, I'm certainly not going to be the one to push the issue. I can only imagine the strain of crunch time he's going through this weekend as all developers do at the final moments of release time. He's rubbing BenGay on the fingers to avoid arthritis from all the typing amidst stacks of RedBull and Mountain Dew while taking catnaps of 20 minutes every half a day just to finish this on time. While I understand both views on either side of the debate, I think we'll have to give the guys a break on this one and let time sort it out.  

[Temper]

I have a bit of a problem when concerning the new art and some of the new features.  The only example I can name off hand is that, while the selection size for my Space Dock has grown a lot, the art for the space dock remains the same.  Also, the space dock itself is off center with the selection circle, and the body of the Space Dock resides outside the perimeter of my force field. 

[x4000]

I have a bit of a problem when concerning the new art and some of the new features.  The only example I can name off hand is that, while the selection size for my Space Dock has grown a lot, the art for the space dock remains the same.  Also, the space dock itself is off center with the selection circle, and the body of the Space Dock resides outside the perimeter of my force field. 

From the sounds of that, your update wasn't applied correctly and not all of the art assets have been updated.  The new space docks are huge, and fit inside the selection circle very snugly.  The advanced factory is off-center in the current release, but will be fixed in the next one.  I'd suggest re-unzipping the last prerelease zip file (making sure that it is preserving the directory structure when you do) to resolve the issue.

[x4000]

I'm getting the same error as Shardz. It seems to fix itself when combat ships are in the sector for me, but only *while* combat ships are in-sector.

Yep, that's the same thing, it will fix itself for anyone with that.  Will be fixed in the next version -- thanks!

Another slight niggle to report: Zenith Trade Ships aren't immune to forcefields, so you can trap em on your planets by slapping a FF down on the exit wormhole. I've not tested it, but you may want to make sure they're immune to Black Hole gens (Or whichever the capturable is that prevents exit from the system) too, so they're *true* free-roamers, like Astro-Trains are currently.

Oh, super good point there, too.  They were already immune to the black hole gens, but devouers, trade ships, and mining golems will all be immune to force fields in the next version, too.

Fantastic work on 2.201, by the way. I'm having a WHALE of a time.  

Thanks!  Glad you're enjoying it.

[x4000]

The font's looking a lot better now, Chris. One more change I think would really help, though, is working on the 8 as it appears in the input boxes in the lobby. It currently looks more like a B than an 8.

Also, could you make the minor factions box a little wider in the lobby? It currently has a horizontal scrollbar to scroll it over one pixel, which takes up box space and doesn't supply any functionality for users because the current factions aren't visibly too long to fit in the box.

Edit: The advanced factory disappears when it's partially off the top or left of the screen.

I'll make a note to Marisa about the 8, but I don't know how much can be done.  The advanced factory thing is simply because it is being shown offset in the wrong location; that will implicitly be fixed in the next release when it is shown in the right position.  Good catch about the minor faction textbox, that did not scroll horizontally last I looked at it -- but the font has changed a tad since then, and it was always right at the edge of the available size.  Fixed in the next version.

The new sprites (the advanced factory, especially) are looking great. How many such sprites are expected to be included in the official release, are there more to come? My only concern is that while I really like the direction the art style is moving in, might it be better to wait for more of these new sprites to be ready before including them in the main game? Purely because they are so strikingly different to the current sprites, I worry that players/reviewers might fixate on the potentially inconsistent art style.

I'm not too worried about people fixating on that -- some people always complain about the graphics to a degree, and others don't, so I don't expect it will get any more or less based on any such changes we make unless it started looking like Eve Online.  No more changes are planned before the official 3.0 release on Tuesday, this is the final art for now.  More changes will be coming over the next months in each DLC release, though.

Also thanks to Marisa for the work on the font - it's now really user friendly and yet distinctive. Very impressed by the cold storage performance gains; at this rate there'll be a handheld version of AI War in a couple of months.

I'll let her know, she'll be happy to hear all that is paying off -- definitely a time-consuming tweaking job.  Glad the cold storage is a hit, too.

[eRe4s3r]

See screenshot

AI used a Train Station as forcefield surrounded by 2 gravitational turrets and.. you see the rest on the screenshot

This i would consider a massive exploit because

1) Due to smaller range you can not damage the forcefield as you would larger ones
2) it has 80 million HP - this is on a MK1 world
3) its a train station, not a forcefield  
4) A Raid to
5) The trader is stuck on my world, mainly because it just flew through about 1000 of my mines, thanks.. stupid trader!

Would kindly request to remove forcefields from train-stations and give them more HP instead

Other issues

4 Warpgates
2 Ion cannons on top of each other (kinda hard to target the right one ^^)

Some issues already reported, some others really weird (raid to ) there is no raid engine anywhere near me

By the way, i had to bumrush that location because of the black machine thing

[x4000]

eRe4s3r, most of those things are already fixed by the changes to the Zenith Trader that are coming in the next release.  But, I agree about the train stations, the force fields there are nonsensical at this point, and generally useless except for the occasional exploit like this.  Next version will have those removed from trains stations, but the health the same (the force field itself does not provide any extra protection to the train station itself, just to stuff under it, so the time to kill train stations will remain the same).  Thanks!

[eRe4s3r]

In that savegame i attached take a look at the units at wormholes

They are black and their colormask is the only thing visible (guess its some kind of cloak?) but if its a cloak its a really bad cloak given that i can see them bright red shining

I am terribly sorry if that was already reported, its happening when i am not the first scout, and remains to be this way even if i send then scouts on a planet

[x4000]

In that savegame i attached take a look at the units at wormholes

They are black and their colormask is the only thing visible (guess its some kind of cloak?) but if its a cloak its a really bad cloak given that i can see them bright red shining

I am terribly sorry if that was already reported, its happening when i am not the first scout, and remains to be this way even if i send then scouts on a planet

Yup, that was the cold storage mode indicator -- that's something I'm ditching for the next version.

[Darloth]

I'm posting here because I'm not sure whether it's a bug or not.

Either way, it's a little irritating - I have a scout and an eyebot in a system, and since they're both cloaked the AI hasn't woken anything up from cold storage. That's fine, but the system summary doesn't show the deactivated units, which confused me, and also makes it very hard to -find- things.

In this case, I noticed on the galaxy map there was a shield-booster insystem, and went to the system view to see where it was and which wormholes it was closest to. Unfortunately I had to search around for it manually.

Is there some way to get around this? If it's an intentional change, perhaps a slow poll of the cold-stored units to update the system summary panel, perhaps once when switching to system, would still let you use it for locating things without adding extra constant CPU drain?

[x4000]

I'm posting here because I'm not sure whether it's a bug or not.

Definitely a bug, will be fixed in 2.202, reported by others already elsewhere.  Thanks!

[x4000]

4) A Raid to

That is actually correct, in looking at your save file. You only have one warp gate bordering your planet, and it so one of the AI players warps in raids outside of the direct adjacency, while one uses the direct route.