Author Topic: Hacking? And other feedback.  (Read 3546 times)

Offline Draco18s

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Hacking? And other feedback.
« on: May 13, 2017, 03:17:00 pm »
I can see that the hacking options are in, for corrupting and downloading ship designs, but I have yet to figure out how to actually do it.  Both times so far that I've had my fleet on a planet with a design server my ships went "pew pew!" and blew it up before I could figure out how to download the design.

On one of those planets I'll admit that I had the "capture planet" toggle enabled, so me culpa on that, but on the other one no. I specifically knew I was attacking a planet with a design server and as my ark got close I went to activate the design download hack (to see if I had to click ON the server) and pop, it was gone before I could even select the "design download" option. Destroyed by auto-targetting.

This...can't be intended.

On another front, I've had...an issue? where some units will stop moving. As if their engines had been destroyed, but as far as I can tell, that mechanic doesn't exist. But none the less they'd sit there, with move orders, and do....nothing (and don't get repaired of their affliction). I had to scrap them and rebuild.

Speaking of moving, I just poked at my first Mark3 planet (with a super secret ninja hideout) and discovered that my ark, upon popping out of the wormhole on the other side decided it was a super-good idea to mingle with the literal hundreds of enemy units (space tanks, armor ships, sentinels...) on the other side rather than staying put like it had on literally every other planet ever.  Same thing with all my other units. They would disperse away from the wormhole rather than staying clumped up. There's no reason for it, even if it was ship-ship collision pathing: the ark has a force-field which pushes units away.

On my third time popping my face in to try and do some clearing, I lost the ark. Game over.  And all because it decided--on its own!--that it was going to wander away from the wormhole and my retreat instruction didn't come soon enough.  Thanks, game.  Thanks.

Also...why are my ships not at cap?


At the time I controlled two planets and the only stuff on the other one was turrets.  7/10, no construction under way, plenty of metal. Fuel problem? I honestly have no idea.
(Also no idea why my power was negative, but I didn't notice it at the time, considering I built some stuff, then build an auxiliary power node, and then left it be)

I've also been seeing weirdness with bullets. Like, I'll destroy something...say, an AI force field, and from where its icon used to be there would come a spray of bullets that would fly off in all directions for several seconds, sort of like some kind of particle effect or invisible ship, only if it was the former, the effect was both too big (how far the particles went) and too small (particles were green and bullet shaped) and went on for too long.  Or whole lines of bullets (say, from a needler) that would go whipping across perpendicular to their (prior?) trajectory (acting more like a sweeping laser beam than a stream of shots) and moving much faster than normal.

Oh. Yes.
My other major complaint.

Building turrets is a god damn nightmare.

"Yes, I would like to build some MRLS turrets, one here and one he-...why did the UI just go away? Build->nothing here. Oh, my ark got unselected."

Build one turret (or force field, mine, any other structure, really) and you're done. Want to build another one of the same kind? Gotta click the UI again.  And forget about quickly doing that for anything listed at the far left of the menu, haha! Those buttons are hidden behind other things that intercept your mouse (clicking needler turret was impossible on a planet with enemies, and downright frustrating even on my own worlds, due to the hover-text somehow existing behind the button but stealing focus). Have fun. ;) Upside, force fields start with full shields as soon as you drop them down. Perfect for offense or defense! :P

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2017, 03:24:21 pm »
Yea, the UI's still got a long way to go and the recent changes to focus and whatnot aren't helping.

And yes, the design server being shootable is an issue.

No idea why your ark decided to wander on that one planet, unless it was in FRD.

On the screenshot it does look like you ran out of fuel.

Shot lerping is currently shot derping sometimes, yes.


In general I've been trying to plow through the content remaining for the beginning of EA, and it hasn't left much time to dealing with various issues with actually playing the game. Getting there step by step, though. Other stuff like shot lerping is more in Chris's court, but I'm helping on some parts of it.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2017, 05:06:24 pm »
Yea, the UI's still got a long way to go and the recent changes to focus and whatnot aren't helping.

I realize the UI needs some work, and there's a lot I didn't say about it because of that.

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And yes, the design server being shootable is an issue.

Ok, so I wasn't crazy.  It was actually being shot as a hostile.

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No idea why your ark decided to wander on that one planet, unless it was in FRD.

Nope.  I'm not even sure I know how to put it into FRD mode.

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On the screenshot it does look like you ran out of fuel.

I wondered, but I also had a working fuel node on the planet.  Which either means:
a) I don't know how this mechanic works
b) The feedback on how the mechanic works isn't there

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In general I've been trying to plow through the content remaining for the beginning of EA, and it hasn't left much time to dealing with various issues with actually playing the game. Getting there step by step, though. Other stuff like shot lerping is more in Chris's court, but I'm helping on some parts of it.

No worries Keith. I totally get it.  Some of my post was relatively minor things (shots derping, but it was just like "hold on, where did these things originate?") a few others were a little more frustrating. I'm all for more content and doing some polishing later, just wanted to throw a flag and say "this needs to get looked at."

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2017, 05:37:52 pm »
Nope.  I'm not even sure I know how to put it into FRD mode.
It's under commands. So 5->1 toggles FRD on the current selection.

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On the screenshot it does look like you ran out of fuel.

I wondered, but I also had a working fuel node on the planet.  Which either means:
a) I don't know how this mechanic works
b) The feedback on how the mechanic works isn't there
Both, probably. A mouseover tooltip on Fuel would go a long way. Basically it's just like power, but it's empire-wide, and it only applies to mobile (wormhole-traversing) military, whereas power only applies to stuff that can't go through a wormhole. So a low number doesn't mean your fuel tanks are empty, it means all your fuel production is being used every second. It's your fleet pop-cap, in other words.


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No worries Keith. I totally get it.  Some of my post was relatively minor things (shots derping, but it was just like "hold on, where did these things originate?") a few others were a little more frustrating. I'm all for more content and doing some polishing later, just wanted to throw a flag and say "this needs to get looked at."
Yep, and I very much appreciate the feedback. Things have generally been very quiet here because (I assume) most people have reached the point of "not playable enough to keep testing". So I hope that when I get to the end of batch 7 I'll just start playing through the game and making the changes which are necessary for me to do so without pulling my hair out by the roots.
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Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2017, 06:52:54 pm »
Draco, fyi, if your ships "Just Stop Moving For No Reason", they probably took engine damage. That mechanic is in the game, and there's currently no feedback for it. Chris said that would be in the next build though. I had the same confusion earlier.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2017, 09:49:31 pm »
Draco, fyi, if your ships "Just Stop Moving For No Reason", they probably took engine damage. That mechanic is in the game, and there's currently no feedback for it. Chris said that would be in the next build though. I had the same confusion earlier.

Oh ho.
But they don't get repaired either?

Offline daktaklakpak

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2017, 07:00:34 pm »
I've had occasions where shots are seemingly coming out of nowhere, but it turned out that the AI had flooded my system with stealth ships.  Last game I played they pumped hundreds of them into my starting planet while I was waiting for the controller to repair far enough to capture the metal producer.  There may have been words said....

Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #7 on: May 15, 2017, 07:16:11 pm »
On a related note, the "Planet Murdoch is under attack" messages are extremely high on my list of things I'd like. It's very hard to try to play a realistic game without something like that.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: Hacking? And other feedback.
« Reply #8 on: May 15, 2017, 10:17:59 pm »
On a related note, the "Planet Murdoch is under attack" messages are extremely high on my list of things I'd like. It's very hard to try to play a realistic game without something like that.

+1 hundred infinity thousand.