Prerelease/Expans 2.801 (3 new map types, targeting fixes, other fixes)

[Shardz]

Or...we could have the Command Station be mobile! Hrmmm....that might be interesting.

[x4000]

Or...we could have the Command Station be mobile! Hrmmm....that might be interesting.

That used to be the case, but there are too many exploits.  You can then send it way out into the nether, making it impossible to kill, etc.

[eRe4s3r]

granted (radial repositioning that is) But i still rather have nothing move at all - after all the current positions are that way for a reason - not because its aesthetically pleasing - reshuffling stations will break defenses and it will break games if it reshuffles near adv factories or core fabricators during an attack, if your command station is gone, so is supply and that means all your defenses are nill as well. Not everyone saved in a peaceful situation ;p

[Lancefighter]

granted (radial repositioning that is) But i still rather have nothing move at all - after all the current positions are that way for a reason - not because its aesthetically pleasing - reshuffling stations will break defenses and it will break games if it reshuffles near adv factories or core fabricators during an attack, if your command station is gone, so is supply and that means all your defenses are nill as well. Not everyone saved in a peaceful situation ;p

Perhaps not, but id assume there is enough room for error when it comes to the larger forcefields.

Perhaps what we need instead is a cheat that pauses all shooting, and pauses all ai movement? would certainly be a cheat, but would allow you to reposition your defenses in such a case..

Random thought - i am perhaps suggesting way too many things. Someone find a large trout and hit me with it if i keep doing that.

[eRe4s3r]

No your suggestions are great - but way too complicated, a simple "no reshuffling on gameload" would suffice, and it would be easy to code (unlike radial repositioning of everything)

I really hope this comes soon though because as you can see, i had BAD luck with reshuffling my home station But much worse luck with my outpost - which made the command situation sit right on top of a wormhole

[x4000]

In the next version, which should be out within an hour, they will no longer shift -- eRe4s3r is right, it causes too many problems.

[Lancefighter]

yeah that would help lol

[quickstix]

-Three new expansion-only map styles have been added to the game: Snake, Vines, and Grid.  They provide somewhat more orderly alternatives to Tree and Spokes, with explorations in different sorts of connection-patterns between planets, providing more variety in terms of planet adjacency, numbers of hops, and so on.

These sound like fun. How many more variations of map do we have now?

New command station is a winner in my books. Good call on the new laser sound effects, especially as those are usually the first things to fire as you approach enemy clusters.

Finally, new trailer is every single kind of awesome.

[x4000]

In total, there are now 5 map variations in the expansion.  They are not as visually unique as I would like, but they have a heavy impact on gameplay, which is good.  I think some more visually interesting and unique map styles will be a big focus for the second expansion, later this year -- but, this expansion is just brimming over in every other department, so that's a good thing.  And these aren't bad, they just aren't as spectacular as I'd wanted.

Glad the new command station and laser sound effects are a hit, too.  The lasers were an attempt to make battle sounds less grating, and I'm glad that seems to be working out well.  It's been an ongoing project for Pablo between other composition work.

And my wife will be happy to know people like the trailer -- she did the whole thing as far as visuals go, based on the score that Pablo put together.  I did all the other videos before now, but I didn't have time to do this one.  She did a better job than I would have, anyway.

[Guardia]

The new building style looks totally awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing future changes in that direction. I still think most of the ships in their current form are charming in their own right though. This a few prereleases late now, but having the important structures listed in a different colour for the galaxy map information is fantastic. It was quite a big headache to scan the structure list of each new planet I scouted.

I haven't had much of a chance to dip into a lot of the new content, but hopefully after release tomorrow I'll get a few people together and get a game going.

Keep up the great work x4000. (Actually, I suppose that should be, 'Enjoy a nice break after tomorrow x4000')

[Lancefighter]

... I didn't have time to do this one.  ...

Not to see stalkerish or anything, but I've been watching you steadily move stuff over from the 'bug reports' to the 'completed stuff' section for a while now

hope you arent keeping yourself up too late doing all those!

[x4000]

Thanks, Guardia!  Glad that stuff's a hit, I thought the labels for those icons in the galaxy map were handy, too.  And I'm really pleased with the giant new structures from Phil, as well.

And LanceFighter, no worries, I've had people stalking my releases before.  As long as it's the releases and not me, that's cool.

[Lancefighter]

well i mean, your usually the only one that posts in that section of the forums, and I'm stalking more the forums than you.. soo.. uhh.. I think thats ok   

[x4000]

I know -- I was just kidding around.

[quickstix]

In total, there are now 5 map variations in the expansion.  They are not as visually unique as I would like, but they have a heavy impact on gameplay, which is good.  I think some more visually interesting and unique map styles will be a big focus for the second expansion, later this year -- but, this expansion is just brimming over in every other department, so that's a good thing.  And these aren't bad, they just aren't as spectacular as I'd wanted.

The gameplay changing elements are definitely great. I especially like Spokes myself, as it has that unique challenge of high connections and, more recently, forcefields on every planet. I haven't tried the new ones yet as I just got home, but I look forward to seeing them. I'm a big fan of map styles as I love the challenge of territorial and strategic positioning advantages (height, choke points), and it's always a real challenge to do that in space, where things like height advantages don't exist. The fact that there are billions of different map generations is really the best part, because it's always a unique challenge every time I start a new game.

A visual aspect of map styles sounds really interesting, although I think I've got enough content to last me a few years at the moment.