TLF Version 1.006 Beta Released (Besieging And Federating)

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2014/04/tlf-version-1006-beta-released.html

Version 1.006 Beta is now out, and is another wonderfully vast one.  This one is still just in the beta branch (which you can optionally download inside the game itself from the updater) rather than as a full version that everyone gets automatically updated to.  So you can update or not for this one, at your discretion.  When the beta branch is fully tested out, we'll push it out in the normal way -- hopefully tomorrow or the next day, as I really want for everyone to be able to get these new goodies.

This version includes a whole lot of changes to how NPC vs NPC battles take place at planets, when one is besieging another.  This should result in much more pleasing results, but let us know what you think.  There are also some changes to where races will sometimes capture outposts rather than destroying them, which is also a nice (player suggested) touch.

Golly, there's also a bunch of new stuff relating to attitude shifts and influence shifts in various specific circumstances relating to certain hostiles alliances in particular.  Members of some hostile alliances can get disgusted with other members of their alliance and break away, which means that -- if you manipulate the attitudes to make this happen -- you can engineer the fall of an enemy alliance without having to resort to genocidal violence.  That's a nice new option. ;)

---------------Federating ---------------
The Federation Points system that I tried out last version were a fiasco, and a great example of why I wanted to do it as a beta branch.  Those have been removed, and a whole mess of other changes have been added relating to federating:

1. The general influence and credit costs for the standard routes of convincing races to join existing federations have gone up pretty much 10x.  You can't just speed through that anymore.  But!  Before you cry foul, keep reading.

2. Depending on what races are already in the federation, the influence requirements go either up or down.  So it can be either utterly ridiculous requirements for you to directly add them, making that impossible, or it can be something that goes back down to previous values, depending on the makeup of your federation.  That's pretty nifty.  But it's still not enough, so again keep reading.

3. There are now two new ways to get races into the federation.

3.a. If a race is getting beaten to a pulp by a non-federation race, then they suddenly become really open to the idea of the federation.  The credit costs are a lot lower, as are the influence requirements.  So you can opportunistically get races in this way.

3.b. If a race has an RCI value of -2000 or worse (the specific RCI category that is required varies for each race), then they will absolutely have the lowest possible thresholds for credit to join a federation, and they only require -200 influence from you, which is obviously pathetically low.  So!  This makes a non-influence, non-attitude way of getting races into the federation: if you can figure out a way to make their key RCI value go all the way down to Scarytown levels without them catching on that it is you (and thus hating you more than -200), then you can get them into the federation in a very dubious fashion.

4. But wait, there is still more!  Previously, the only real ways to get races to have attitudes that are better towards one another were through trade routes and gifting of techs.  Trade routes are cool, but they are basically risk-free (there is practically no opportunity cost to them), and they are also extremely finite, so not something that you can stack at all).

This release adds FIFTEEN new buildings that are all aimed at passive attitude shifts from other races toward the race that owns the building.  The races will not build these on their own, it's all at your discretion via Property Development.  My favorite bit about these new buildings is that they all have pros and cons -- some races are happy with each building to varying degrees, and others are unhappy with them to varying degrees.  Because of that interesting opportunity cost, you can stack these a lot more than you can the trade routes and it still works out well (in my testing so far).

5. And this is the last thing: previously, there were reports of essentially an exploit where you could federate and then just snap up non-spacefaring races as soon as they became spacefaring.  First of all, on hard strategic difficulty, time-until-spacefaring was getting longer instead of shorter, which is now fixed.  Facepalm.  But even more key, the races that are non-spacefaring start getting pretty miffed when you federate without even bothering to help them get spacefaring tech first.  Their attitude toward the federation races steadily drops, as does your influence with them.  I like this because it is absolutely sensible as a reaction from them, and it neatly nips that particular exploit off.

--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
All through this week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had.  This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees.  We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff.  You guys are all awesome!

Afterthis week, we'll see -- at minimum, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer.  A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something.  We'll vary it up, and make it fun.  I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is.  Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.

More to come tomorrow.  Enjoy!

This is a beta update that you can optionally download through the  in-game updater.  Steam will not automatically update it for you yet, as we don't think everyone wants that inflicted on them. ;)

[Platypus]

Cool, really liking pretty much the entire changelog for this one!

Can't wait to boot this up tonight and test some of the new mechanics out. I'm especially liking the sound of the Influence Buildings, who knows maybe I'll even come up with something useful to say besides the usual whining?

[GC13]

Well, tomorrow I'll be able to tell whether those increased influence gains are too tall an order or not, but at least it's something I can affect.

I also can't say I'm sold on each race having an immutable affinity for every other race. I'd have figured that setting a simple required average influence between current members and a prospective member would have been better.

[x4000]

Cool, really liking pretty much the entire changelog for this one!

Can't wait to boot this up tonight and test some of the new mechanics out. I'm especially liking the sound of the Influence Buildings, who knows maybe I'll even come up with something useful to say besides the usual whining?

Well, tomorrow I'll be able to tell whether those increased influence gains are too tall an order or not, but at least it's something I can affect.

Bear in mind that by my perspective:

1. General games should be lasting in the 36 to 63 solar year range, but a lot of people have been winning in under 9.  That's just... way off base for the past builds.  I understand that people like things that move fast, and I'm not trying to exponentially increase the length of the game or anything.  But there's a lot of interesting complexity and actually entire mechanics that don't even come into play until you pass certain hour marks.  So if you play a 9-year game, that's like always stopping at 1950 in SimCity, you don't even see everything.

2. I'm also specifically trying to marginalize that direct asking "hey do you want to join the federation for no reason but that you like me and the guys in it" mechanic.  It's an important mechanic, but I'm trying to make that more expensive not just to make people play longer to get to that, but also to hopefully go to other ways of getting races into the federation.

I also can't say I'm sold on each race having an immutable affinity for every other race. I'd have figured that setting a simple required average influence between current members and a prospective member would have been better.

Generally speaking, if we never put in any specific rules that are race-specific rather than situation-specific, then one race might as well be another, you know what I mean?  It's a delicate balance, because we want to have the game respond appropriately to situations, but also setting up natural affinities that may or may not be violated by circumstances is important, I think.

Also please bear in mind that this particular mechanic only affects the direct "hi, please join the federation" deals.  It doesn't affect federation formation, or any of the other case-specific join-federation deals (overwhelming attack, RCI, join strong, pressure, etc).  So it's of limited scope in terms of which things it affects in the first place, but it does help make that generally-most-available case vary more between games, since you presumably won't have the exact same races in the federation each time.

Anyway, just a few words about the design intent.

[GC13]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I love the races being different. It's just odd that the Skylaxians and the Burlusts can have a very high mutual attitude and yet one still not want to join the Federation because the other is in it, you know?

I like where things are headed, though. What are your plans for letting us secretly tank a race's RCI factors? >D

[Orelius]

I find it kind of strange that you constantly lose influence with other races when a fear empire exists...  I'm stuck in an equilibrium situation where the skylaxians are ridiculous powerful with 2 planets and an acutian fear empire of 6 planets.  They both absolutely love each other and there is no way I can increase my influence with either.

[Edit] This pseudo alliance has been going strong for 70 years with no hostile action.  The acutians have have over 10,000 attitude to the skylaxians, who in turn have around 5000 attitude.  I think it's gone far beyond the point where it's possible to influence the game without dying instantly.

[Edit2]  There are nearly 130 trillion skylaxians in existence and I think the ground troop power reading overflowed. 

[Edit3]  There are now nearly 2 quadrillion skylaxians.  I thought that the population was supposed to level off after some point.

[Edit4]  Just so we don't have these deadlock situations, would it be possible for a races to ally if they have sufficiently high relations for a ridiculous amount of time?  I'd think that two races fanatically devoted to eachother would be pretty lasting, haha.

[eletheo]

... the races that are non-spacefaring start getting pretty miffed when you federate without even bothering to help them get spacefaring tech first.  Their attitude toward the federation races steadily drops, as does your influence with them.  I like this because it is absolutely sensible as a reaction from them, and it neatly nips that particular exploit off.

I'm wondering about why this is a sensible reaction from the races. Perhaps it is just confusion on my end but it seems like a over negative response. I am trying to think about it if we humans met an alien federation who had purposefully chosen to not give us the gift of spacefaring I think we would still be willing to join their Federation and wouldn't hold a lot of ill will towards them. I guess the analog is the UN and nations that are not members. But the only non-member states that actively resent the UN are ones that have committed deeds that the UN itself resents. The rest are often actively trying to join the UN, as is my understanding.

So for an in-game example, if the Boarians (intensely logical) became spacefaring on their own I think they would understand why I didn't give them the tech so they wouldn't have any opinion. Like a four-legged Vulcan.

Am I getting the lore and therefore logic of said lore in comparing it to a human response if we found a Federation already existing? I ask because it seems the races already are aware of space flight (and the activities of the solar system) they just don't have the tech? That seems to be the case as the Hydral has conquered all these planets previously and their populations remember that.

I love the game and really love testing the updates and seeing it change and grow.

[Lucian]

What happened with the bribes? Since 1.005 i can't raid for bribes. Can't see the option and even in political deals their is no option to bribe?

[Hyfrydle]

Raiding pirate convoys became something that happens randomly in game in similar way to the missions to get Hydral tech. Keep an eye on the announcements it will tell you if a convoy is available to raid.

Getting bribe items using this method was deemed too easy pre 1.005.

[Lucian]

Well but why is there is no option to bribe in the diplomatic menue?

[Conductorbosh]

Juat a heads up: that glitch where the orbital bomber doesn't do any population damage and gives an error message is still in play.

[Conductorbosh]

Just adding my testimony to that of others: the Acutians are also dominating every observer game I run, regardless of who I crash land with. They are the only race left in the galaxy, and it happens very soon.

I've run 20 observer games so far, each time crash landing on a random planet. The Acutians have won every single one.

The shortest amount of time it took them to conquer the entire galaxy was 7 years. The longest was 13 years.

[LaGrange]

Sorry for the two quick questions but:

1. Can I safely continue my 1.005 beta savegame with this 1.006 beta?
2. Can you get Steam Achievements when playing a beta?

Thanks.

[topper]

Sorry for the two quick questions but:

1. Can I safely continue my 1.005 beta savegame with this 1.006 beta?
2. Can you get Steam Achievements when playing a beta?

Thanks.

1. Updating should be fine with saves. If it will break saves, it will say so in the release notes, but they do not do that very often (possibly never after 1.0 is released).

2. Achievements should be fine. They are logged locally, and then updated with Steam periodically. Even if you launch the game without Steam and earn several, you should get the Steam achievements the next time you load the game with Steam.

[NickAragua]

Played about an hour of this last night. Prior to the patch, the Acutians were tossing fleet after fleet at the Thoraxians and getting wiped out. As soon as I patched up, BAM. I had time to do maybe two "Help Defend" missions before the poor bugs got splattered.

The Skylaxians then became spacefaring, at which point the Acutians stomped them into the ground just as easily.

Thankfully, I saw this coming earlier on and had the Evucks start trading with the Acutians, so I was able to form a federation between those two - so, at this point, even if the Acutians decide to gobble up everyone else, I still win (as long as they don't leave the federation).

Overall, I'm quite happy with this release, although I think you guys may have overshot the "speed with which combat is resolved" a little bit. Now, combat finishes almost instantly even between large fleets and I had to really scramble to be able to get in there even a little bit to try to shoot the invaders.

Also, I noticed that some of those "relationship building" buildings can improve a race's relationship with itself.