TLF Version 1.020 Released (Piratical Influx)

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Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2014/05/tlf-version-1020-released-piratical.html

Version 1.020 is out, and has a variety of things in there:

- Pirates have been really laying low lately, thanks to Piratical Exodus not being as common as it was before.  So there are now a bunch of new ways that pirates build up, and they are now even more of a presence in the solar system than they previously were.  They're an excellent destabilizing force. ;)

- Spreadshot and related things are now working better and more balanced, which we know was a big sore spot with people who wanted to play certain flagships, such as the Burlust Longships.

- We did a bunch of performance improvements that give us around a 12% gain when super-fast-forwarding on the solar map, and the gains are probably similar in combat as well.  These are really helpful in the late game when you're on a lower-end computer or doing the super fast forward in observer mode.

- When you hover over RCI values  (either the under-the-planet overlay on the map itself, or in the planetary sidebar, or in the planetary details window) it now includes a listing of the specific effects of that RCI value.  That's a pretty huge amount of clarity added, and something that was a real bear for Keith to get in there because it aggregated so many things.  But now you have it!

Some other big-picture design stuff also continues, as does design and artwork for the upcoming expansion for the game.  But there's still lots of awesome stuff coming completely for free for the base game, so don't worry about that. :)

--------------- Ongoing Updates All This Month ---------------
The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me.  I've been promising daily new features, but since launch it has became clear that there are other things more on your mind.  Things like added interfaces, new AI behaviors and options, and things like that.  So, you know what?  I'm just going to go with that -- those count as features, really, in that they help to make the game more interesting and easier to understand and play.

So what else is going on?  Well, we're going to be working at this pace on the game for at least the rest of this month, which means that you're going to be seeing lots of good things coming.  We do have an expansion for both AI War and TLF in the works at the moment (just internally for now).  Suffice it to say, neither one of these two are going to impact the general updates, improvements, and free additions to TLF that are coming over this month.

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you.  To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.

[UnfriendlyBG]

  - When you hover over RCI values (either the under-the-planet overlay on the map itself, or in the planetary sidebar, or in the planetary details window) it now includes a listing of the specific effects of that RCI value.  That's a pretty huge amount of clarity added, and something that was a real bear for Keith to get in there because it aggregated so many things.  But now you have it!   

Nice! My ass was about to take a nap instead I'm heading straight to the computer.  Really curious about this.  A very helpful step towards adressing some RCI issues especially if it was hard to do.  Now that it's out of the way the path is clear for some value tweaking =P This might have saved me 2 or 3 hours of frustration yesterday depending on the info provided. 

Still very impressed with the responsiveness and frequency of the patches, I can't say I've ever seen anything like it.  Do youguys just QA it yourself?  I change a line in a Unix script at work and if I get a ton of signatures and the stars align I might get it through in a day.  Its like a devs dream....or worst nightmare.  You can't say 'qa should have caught it' if it starts erasing c drives lol.  The perks/responsibility of being the boss I suppose haha.

[Histidine]

Now when you mouseover an RCI value (either the under-the-planet overlay on the map itself, or in the planetary sidebar, or in the planetary details window) it will include a listing of the specific effects of that RCI value.

WOOOOOO

• The spreadshot (player) and scattershot (AI) weapons are now considered "Flak" weapon types, not Ballistic. Flak is a new weapon type. The wall turret and Model T wall weapons also now use this type.
• Armored Hulls now also have 85% resistance to Flak DMG, same as Ballistic.
• The following ships now have "flak vulnerability," which makes them take 200% damage from flak shots:
  Interceptors of all sorts, Hypersonic Pods, Monitors of all sorts, Predators, Pirate Snipers, spy probes, and velociter flagships. Additionally, the velociter flagships no longer have armored hulls.

Eww, more special damages
(I'm generally not a fan of them because they typically involve arbitrary and often invisible numbers)

[Misery]

Yeah, I dunno about that spreadshot change.

In my experience, it'd have to do way more than 200% damage to things at it's current firing rate/range.  That's just not enough.  The minigun definitely isnt nearly as good against large hordes as the spreadshot used to be, but right now it's still way faster even for hordes than using the spreadshot.  Currently I still dont use ships that dont start with it.

Honestly, the more I think about it the more it seems like it might be a good idea to just add more weapons of each type.  I use the minigun for that type of damage.... partly because right now there's no other real substitute.  Things like that.


What's the point of changing the damage type of the enemy shots though?  Doesnt that mean that those shots are much less threat now, since the player ship has that hull under the shields?  The scattershot from them was already kinda weak to start with (if it's the attack type I'm thinking of, with the yellow shots). 


Currently though I'm holding off on playing it until the game stops making missions take hours due to enemy flagship overload.

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Still very impressed with the responsiveness and frequency of the patches, I can't say I've ever seen anything like it.  Do youguys just QA it yourself?  I change a line in a Unix script at work and if I get a ton of signatures and the stars align I might get it through in a day.  Its like a devs dream....or worst nightmare.  You can't say 'qa should have caught it' if it starts erasing c drives lol.  The perks/responsibility of being the boss I suppose haha.

Thanks!  And yep, we do all our own initial QA, and then the rest is down to response from players.  The buck stops here, basically, so there's nobody else for me to blame if something goes wrong.



Regarding the spreadshot changes, the reason for the split in types is that it gives us finer control over what the purpose of ships are.  Having balanced a lot of strategy games at this point, I understand the reservations about damage types, but they really are something that is needed if you don't want things to get generically "anything works just as well as anything else."  A great many strategy games use them, and just don't always mention them.  Cavalry getting a bonus against ground units, archers getting bonuses when on high ground, pikemen getting bonuses against cavalry, etc, etc.

The reason for changing the one AI shot type was for consistency; it doesn't actually affect anything player-related, because the resistance is the same on player ships either way.  However, when you have those with AI vs AI battles that the player is in, those turrets are now much better at shredding the smaller enemy ships to the turret-holders.

In terms of the missions being endless slug-fests, that's something I've been mulling and will get to today.

[Misery]

Ahhhhh.... that's right, there are ships on my side sometimes that arent me.  Easy to forget sometimes about those huge metal decoys- er, allies.

Ok, that makes a bit more sense then.

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