New version .855 (Aggressive Combat, Tech Arms Race, Voiceovers)

[x4000]

Release notes: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=The_Last_Federation_Alpha_Release_Notes#Alpha_Version_.855

Restart steam to force a quicker update if you like.

Lots of goodies in this one, and I plan another one for later tonight, too.  Brief notes:

1. You know, there was a dire warning I was going to give about something, but you know what?  Nevermind.  Not because I'm mean-spirited, but because if the game doesn't tell you, then I want to know about it.  So... nevermind.

2. Combat now doesn't let you get away with that "kiting myself to bored tears" method of battle anymore.  Detailed notes in the release log, including my reasoning behind that.

3. 60 new techs that are part of a new arms race that you get to be involved in.

4. A number of rather key bugfixes, several of which were real groaners.  We seem to be whittling the number of those down, but who knows.

5. The voiceovers for the game are all now in place.


The main reason for this release rather than waiting until tonight was to get the combat stuff to you sooner than later.

Enjoy!

[Hyfrydle]

Thanks for this the shots that previously did 133,903 dmg now do 19,092 much less punishing 

When I select multiple targets to fire on they don't highlight red anymore is this correct?

[x4000]

They... should... hmm.  Not sure what is up with that, I noticed that myself without really realizing I noticed it.  Noted to fix...

[Billick]

Got to play for a couple hours after taking a couple of weeks break.  I'm apparently already 3 versions behind already, but here's a few quick thought that still apply:

1) Combat is much improved since the first iteration of the turn based combat.  Honestly, a big reason I took a break from the game was that I found that version of the combat unplayable for me personally.  Now it is quite fun!  I found myself using kiting more often than I should, so I'm glad you are changing that.

2) I really like the way you are doing the tutorial, with explaining a little bit of stuff at a time.  I was super confused on the solar system map with the early iterations of the game, but now I feel like I understand most of the basics.

3) I see you refer to "RCI" a lot.  Somebody who hasn't played Sim City will probably be confused by this.

4) I couldn't find where to give captured pilots back to their faction.  Is this something that gets added toward the end of the tutorial, or am I just missing it?

[x4000]

Awesome, glad to hear you're enjoying the combat now!  I know it was rough going there for a while with a lot of folks.

I figure that the simcity crowd is pretty large, particularly in terms of people who like this genre.  Then again, the term "DPS" was unfamiliar to at least one tester, so shared experiences definitely vary.  Anyway, I figure if that's just "what those numbers are called," that's clear enough -- anything else I thought of gets wordy really fast, and can't be expressed with an acronym that anybody would recognize, heh.

You can give captured pilots back in the political screens.

[Pepisolo]

Just found something out -- right-clicking over a planet or race symbol takes you to some cool planetary overview screen. Is right-clicking used for any other things? I clicked around and couldn't find a use for it. If not, it seems strange to have this be one of the few uses for right-click. Both the planet itself and the racial icon are clickable so instead of them both do the same thing, how about making it so that left-clicking the icon brings up the planet data screen? Or have it bring up a different screen. It's a bit odd having two clearly highlight-able sections that do the same thing when clicked on.

[x4000]

Just found something out -- right-clicking over a planet or race symbol takes you to some cool planetary overview screen. Is right-clicking used for any other things? I clicked around and couldn't find a use for it. If not, it seems strange to have this be one of the few uses for right-click. Both the planet itself and the racial icon are clickable so instead of them both do the same thing, how about making it so that left-clicking the icon brings up the planet data screen? Or have it bring up a different screen. It's a bit odd having two clearly highlight-able sections that do the same thing when clicked on.

Yep, that's a shortcut there.  Other places, right-click doesn't do much except cancel on some modes in combat.  Both of those things take you to the same screen because it can be very hard to actually click on the planet in some circumstances (lots of ships swarming it).  If you go to a planet, the screen you got by right-clicking is the same thing as just hitting the Planet Details button.  But the right-click saves you from having to move first (that "new" screen is just unrecognizably altered from one you used to see, heh).  The racial screen got combined into that as well, so there's really no other screen to take them to.

[Pepisolo]

Yep, that's a shortcut there.  Other places, right-click doesn't do much except cancel on some modes in combat.  Both of those things take you to the same screen because it can be very hard to actually click on the planet in some circumstances (lots of ships swarming it).  If you go to a planet, the screen you got by right-clicking is the same thing as just hitting the Planet Details button.  But the right-click saves you from having to move first (that "new" screen is just unrecognizably altered from one you used to see, heh).  The racial screen got combined into that as well, so there's really no other screen to take them to.

I see. Will people be able to find this shortcut in the tutorial or just through trial and error? No big deal, I'm just thinking most people aren't going to use it.

Is it just me or does anyone else think they would like to be able to zoom out a bit further on the combat map?

Also, any thoughts on this idea, Chris? http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=13670

[Mick]

Is the first combat meant to take like 50+ turns now? (maybe I'm just doing something wrong)

EDIT: I feel like 95%+ of the shots I fire miss now because the faster moving ships. Bullets seem really slow relative to the ship speed.

[Hyfrydle]

I just  played a destroy pirate base mission and it was really brutal but in a good way. No more hiding from the enemy I had to plan each move carefully and I failed a few times until I got the hang of the increased speed and more vicious AI. This is quite a way into the game and as far as I can tell it works well.

I will test out the first battle in a new game and see how that feels.

Took me 50 turns too, four ships is perhaps too many for the first combat especially without special abilities. I guess landing on the platform is an option but it still feels a bit too brutal.

[Tridus]

Are the racial descriptions missing from the solar map on purpose? If you mouse over one of the races on the map now, it doesn't tell you anything about them if they're not spacefaring yet... which makes it kind of a lottery to figure out if I want to make them spacefaring or not.

It used to have some information about the race in that tooltip.

[Endymion]

This probably only happened to me but I guess I should mention it anyway, the first time I was playing the new version the voiceovers sounded like they had some sort of distortion effect on them and as a result some of them were very hard to understand but after I restarted the game the effect seems to have disappeared.

[Professor Paul1290]

I really like where this is going.

This might be a bit of a stretch, but it would be nice if enemy flagships didn't keep going straight if the player is straight in front of them. Right now if you are in front of them that results in them coming straight at you and that's often the best way to engage them now.

Maybe if they avoided going straight and offset their pursuit somewhat either side to attempt a flank it would break them out of that more easily.

I don't know how easy or hard that would be to do as I have no idea how the AI works here.

[Endymion]

Just found something out -- right-clicking over a planet or race symbol takes you to some cool planetary overview screen. Is right-clicking used for any other things? I clicked around and couldn't find a use for it. If not, it seems strange to have this be one of the few uses for right-click. Both the planet itself and the racial icon are clickable so instead of them both do the same thing, how about making it so that left-clicking the icon brings up the planet data screen? Or have it bring up a different screen. It's a bit odd having two clearly highlight-able sections that do the same thing when clicked on.

Yep, that's a shortcut there.  Other places, right-click doesn't do much except cancel on some modes in combat.  Both of those things take you to the same screen because it can be very hard to actually click on the planet in some circumstances (lots of ships swarming it).  If you go to a planet, the screen you got by right-clicking is the same thing as just hitting the Planet Details button.  But the right-click saves you from having to move first (that "new" screen is just unrecognizably altered from one you used to see, heh).  The racial screen got combined into that as well, so there's really no other screen to take them to.

Hmm is the screen supposed to look like in the attached screenshot? (I wouldn't describe it as cool so I dunno if I my tastes are just different or it actually is different)
I think it's missing something that was there in the previous version but I'm not sure I think I liked it more before despite it not showing that much then. At least the info on the right could be displayed a little better than just as a long list of various stats.

[Pepisolo]

Hmm is the screen supposed to look like in the attached screenshot? (I wouldn't describe it as cool so I dunno if I my tastes are just different or it actually is different)

Yeah, that's the screen. I may have exaggerated a bit with cool. It was more that I wasn't expecting the right-click to do anything, so when it did I was like "Oh. Nice!". Maybe that screen was there before. I'm not sure as I haven't devoted as much time as I could have. I've tried to really get into this game, but I keep bouncing off. Conceptually the general idea of the game is amazing, but everytime I sit down for a session, I just end up quitting. Those smuggling missions, I kind of detest them for some reason (even though I know they're not that bad), so I should really stop attempting them. They're just not "smuggly". It's more like a ram-raid. Going off on ramble so I'll just stop.