Author Topic: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)  (Read 6034 times)

Offline quickstix

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #15 on: January 10, 2010, 11:19:44 am »
I noted that after reversion to the non-privileged account the registration/profile info still needed to be re-entered, but I tried that to see what would happen and it still located my saves normally.  Win7 weirdness perhaps?

Maybe. I'm running Vista and I updated just by using right click -> run as admin method, where it ran as though it had never been run before (as it was now working out of Program Files). When I ran normally again after updating and quitting, everything ran just as it always had. If you had to set your settings and profile again, it may be that the settings.dat file in your personal folder was removed/deleted or something.

As long as the saves are there :P

Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #16 on: January 10, 2010, 11:55:38 am »
I noted that after reversion to the non-privileged account the registration/profile info still needed to be re-entered, but I tried that to see what would happen and it still located my saves normally.  Win7 weirdness perhaps?

Maybe. I'm running Vista and I updated just by using right click -> run as admin method, where it ran as though it had never been run before (as it was now working out of Program Files). When I ran normally again after updating and quitting, everything ran just as it always had. If you had to set your settings and profile again, it may be that the settings.dat file in your personal folder was removed/deleted or something.

As long as the saves are there :P

I'm not sure specifically what transpired there, but most likely it was just a mixup of which folder it used when, something of that nature.  It shouldn't be an issue once the game properly runs itself in admin mode while updating, so that you don't have to manually do that, though.
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #17 on: January 10, 2010, 12:20:50 pm »
the info not available seemed odd - the mk1 and mk2 leech starships had /no/ info, whereas the mk3 had the info not available.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #18 on: January 10, 2010, 12:22:08 pm »
the info not available seemed odd - the mk1 and mk2 leech starships had /no/ info, whereas the mk3 had the info not available.

The mk1 and mk2 had no info because there was literally no data that was relevant to be shown.  The mk3 had no data because it had not even tried to calculate the data.
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #19 on: January 10, 2010, 01:08:40 pm »
so silly question; how do i make it get the data?
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Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #20 on: January 10, 2010, 01:17:08 pm »
so silly question; how do i make it get the data?

You can't, at least not directly.  It's a simulation that takes 30+ minutes to run on a quad core.  I then have to compile the results into the game for that to show up.  You can run the simulation by using the AI War Simulation shortcut in the game folder if you want to run the sim data just to look at (in the Data folder), though.  The reason for that message is to prevent people from asking me why there is no strong/weak data during prereleases when I don't have time to re-run the simulation data every prerelease.  Clearly, it's not working overly well. ;)
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #21 on: January 10, 2010, 01:37:31 pm »
Speaking of the trader - x4000 isn't it a bit "xploit" like that players can buy stuff and then pause it on demand? For example i bought 3 things from the trader i won't complete anywhere within the next 3 hours, but i have them. Shouldn't trading involve exchanging goods, i mean, completed goods. instead of "buying something on rates over 3 hours (or more like 5 hours when you buy the Zenith power gen at the start of the game ,p) " ?

Which feeds to my next request, can't we get more than 600k resources? Give us research + building that does increase limits pretty please ;D ;) (Hey, tis worth a try ,p) with the new things we can build i find myself in numbers that are more like -1600 per second - in 60 second thats 96000 resource per minute, or the entire resource stack gone within - 6 - Minutes

Just wondering really if thats something even to be considered.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #22 on: January 10, 2010, 01:44:49 pm »
Speaking of the trader - x4000 isn't it a bit "xploit" like that players can buy stuff and then pause it on demand? For example i bought 3 things from the trader i won't complete anywhere within the next 3 hours, but i have them. Shouldn't trading involve exchanging goods, i mean, completed goods. instead of "buying something on rates over 3 hours (or more like 5 hours when you buy the Zenith power gen at the start of the game ,p) " ?

Well, think of it as if they are giving you seeds, and you are growing "plants" out of them.  They are giving you blueprints, or nanites, or whatever.  Or they are charging you over time a fee for using their nanites to build it.  Whatever explanation you like -- the gameplay mechanic is the way I would want it.  Basically, this is almost like the super-expensive "experimentals" in SupCom, except that you can only build them on planets where the trader happens to visit; that's the limiting factor.  If you also had to have a massive amount of resources free there at the exact time that the trader comes by, people would hardly ever buy anything.  I'm not worried about this being an exploit.

Which feeds to my next request, can't we get more than 600k resources? Give us research + building that does increase limits pretty please ;D ;) (Hey, tis worth a try ,p) with the new things we can build i find myself in numbers that are more like -1600 per second - in 60 second thats 96000 resource per minute, or the entire resource stack gone within - 6 - Minutes

Just wondering really if thats something even to be considered.

Given that this is a flow-based economy, I really don't think there's a need for more than 600k.  The only purpose for having more than that is if a player is doing really well and then wants to stockpile.  This cap is (and always was) designed to be a "tax" of sorts on players who are doing too well and are not actually spending their resources. In alpha versions of the game, sometimes players would get several million of metal or crystal if they went through a stretch that was too unbalanced in their favor, and that meant that then the campaign was essentially done because they'd never hurt for resources again, even if the tides turned not in their favor.  With the lower cap, that makes it so that the tides can actually turn -- if you were up and doing really well and maxed out your cap, that still doesn't matter if the AI then gets an advantage on you, since you'll go through that surplus in a hurry.  The goal of this cap is to basically allow for more back-and-forth in the game, and it's not something I'm particularly going to consider increasing since I think it would have those sorts of side effects that are highly undesirable.
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #23 on: January 10, 2010, 01:51:45 pm »
Ah i see, but now i am going to be very evil, does this worry you to be unbalanced, why not introduce...

Finite Resources  ;D (yeah yeah... just saying ,P) That would be.. interesting and make these distribution nodes so much more important (and force you to never touch one unless you really need it)

The only thing that would really be required for this system would be
1) Distribution nodes respawn randomly
2) Resources refill after 1 hour (so theres never a dead-end situation)
3) ???
4) Profit  ;D
5) Mining Golems could create instead of a exploded planet a planet with exposed core (like a stripped world) with lots of asteroid resources flying about for you to grab

I was playing Space Empires IV recently you see ;p

Maybe as alternate gameplay option (call it, hardcore ;p)
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Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #24 on: January 10, 2010, 01:54:45 pm »
Ah i see, but now i am going to be very evil, does this worry you to be unbalanced, why not introduce...

Finite Resources  ;D (yeah yeah... just saying ,P) That would be.. interesting and make these distribution nodes so much more important (and force you to never touch one unless you really need it)

The only thing that would really be required for this system would be
1) Distribution nodes respawn randomly
2) Resources refill after 1 hour (so theres never a dead-end situation)
3) ???
4) Profit  ;D
5) Mining Golems could create instead of a exploded planet a planet with exposed core (like a stripped world) with lots of asteroid resources flying about for you to grab

I was playing Space Empires IV recently you see ;p

Maybe as alternate gameplay option (call it, hardcore ;p)

Yeah, there is a topic somewhere with discussion of an option for this -- would be interesting at some point, but well out of scope for the moment.  Fiskbit has been suggesting that as an option since before 1.0. :)  Feel free to add comments to that other thread if you can find it (or create a new suggestion thread that we'll merge later).
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #25 on: January 10, 2010, 05:21:54 pm »
 ah, that simulation button. I was kinda wondering what it did.

Perhaps there should be a tool that auto-simulates battles involving new units? >.> might be a bit late to suggest something like this, but perhaps something to keep in mind later...


I suppose it doesnt really matter what raid/leech starships are good or bad against - ill end up using them how i feel fit anyway ^.^

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Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #26 on: January 10, 2010, 05:25:59 pm »
ah, that simulation button. I was kinda wondering what it did.

Perhaps there should be a tool that auto-simulates battles involving new units? >.> might be a bit late to suggest something like this, but perhaps something to keep in mind later...


I suppose it doesnt really matter what raid/leech starships are good or bad against - ill end up using them how i feel fit anyway ^.^

You're free to run the existing tool, but you just can't integrate it into the game (though if you post it, I generally will in the next release).  This hasn't been a real major issue.  For 2.300, coming up next, it's already handled as I've run the sim.  The sim is very nontrivial, literally taking hours of CPU time -- only made shorter by splitting it across multiple cores if you have them.
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Offline Temper

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #27 on: January 10, 2010, 05:30:28 pm »
Ah. I uninstalled the game to give it a fresh reinstall with a new download, in hopes of recovering the ship art and other missing locations.  Now, however, when I try to run just the base game even, the program shuts itself down and refuses to launch.  I am without light in any response to this problem.

Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #28 on: January 10, 2010, 05:32:30 pm »
Ah. I uninstalled the game to give it a fresh reinstall with a new download, in hopes of recovering the ship art and other missing locations.  Now, however, when I try to run just the base game even, the program shuts itself down and refuses to launch.  I am without light in any response to this problem.

If you are using your same old settings.dat file (which has your profile, settings, and achievements), it probably does not work with the 2.0 version of the game -- those are not backwards-compatible.  Now that you've downgraded, I'd suggest following the upgrade patch again and you should be good to go.
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Offline Temper

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Re: Prerelease/Expans 2.202 (Bugfixes, Trader/Miner/Rebel rebalance)
« Reply #29 on: January 10, 2010, 05:39:42 pm »
I don't even understand it.  I reinstalled the 2.2.0.1 patch, copying the files in the same order, not merging folders or anything.  The game launches now, but still says, "Missing Localization" on the new ship dock art as well as the Update menu.  With some difficulty, I can use the update menu to download 2.002, and still the artwork, "Missing Localization" and the update menu remain the same. =(