TLF Version 1.009 Released (Merging Beta Branch With Official)

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2014/04/tlf-version-1009-released-merging-beta.html

Version 1.009 is now out, and overall it is individually a small release.  But this is the first official update to include all the goodies from 1.005 onwards.  So for those not playing the beta branch, this new version is HUGE

For those who were playing the beta branch, this one mainly brings improvements to the NPC vs NPC battles getting stalemated in late game with the honorable races were the attackers.  We've gotten a bit derailed today, so no new features today, but I'll make it up to you as the week progresses. ;)

--------------- 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 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.

[LaGrange]

Yeah, I got mentioned in the patch notes! For my glorious contribution of identifying typos :-)

Truth be told, I've noticed a lot more than what I uploaded to Mantis, but this was a test run: is anyone listening? If not, no more typo reports. But the dev is clearly responsive to users, so I'll keep making those screenshots :-)

[x4000]

Just quoting bits of text is fine, you don't have to screenshot if you don't want.  But we are listening!

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, most typos are not high on our priority list, but it's great to have them all reported (or all the ones that are found, at least) so that when we do get around to the typos we can do most/all of them in one fell swoop.  Spending 2 minutes to fix 1 typo is often not an efficient use of our time.  Spending 10 minutes to fix 30 typos is much better.

[topper]

My TLF icon just became a really low resolution image of a planetcracker. I liked the alpha icon better since it was at least a higher resolution.

Also, there is not an entry for 1.009 in Mantis yet as of 9:40 EST.

Otherwise, looks pretty good!

[casualsax]

Fun little exploit (already mantis'd):  auto-resolve the initial first mission to give the first race (well, second race technically) spacefaring tech.  Then fly to their home planet and sneak in the tech again.

[Aklyon]

I'm going to agree with the confusion over the new icon.

[Histidine]

Okay, this game is definitely making fun of me.


Started a new game with 1.009, with Acutians as starting race. Flew around doing my Hydral thing, including setting up the race relations buildings so I could get the mutual +300 necessary to form the Federation (I eventually settled on starting with the Andors, Peltians and Evucks).

Meanwhile the Acutians, despite their poor homeworld conditions, were able to expand aggressively, overrunning the Burlusts, Thoraxians and Boarines. It was only after they had done this and formed a Fear Empire, however, that I had realized I had to stop them, and while I was repairing my ship after "dying" in a battle, they whacked the Andors as well. Then they went after the Skylaxians.

I was able to help repulse the invasion, and the surviving races began counterattacking:


At this point I was still 100-200 relationship points away from the closest viable Federation founding partnership (Peltian-Evuck):


Just one year later, this happened:


That's right. The Evucks and Peltians took one Acutian planet each, and since I had conveniently built up their relationship for them they decided to form a Solar Axis Pact together. And the only way to break it up is to undo all the work I did bringing them together for the Federation in the first place. FML.

God help me if the Skylaxians take an Acutian planet as well and decide to join the SAP too. Game over!


...So, I guess, what I'm saying is, +300 mutual relationship to form starting federation is really stiff. It could stand to be a lot lower than that. Especially when Create Federation for Safety/Create Strong Federation only need +90. Lower it pleaaaaase.

[lifehole]

Okay, this game is definitely making fun of me.



...So, I guess, what I'm saying is, +300 mutual relationship to form starting federation is really stiff. It could stand to be a lot lower than that. Especially when Create Federation for Safety/Create Strong Federation only need +90. Lower it pleaaaaase.

Histidine, it also has to do with this issue:

Ok, a bit of an update to this:

The more I mess with the game, the more I'm convinced that this is a really major issue. Alot of getting federations started seems to be luck, based on what the simulation and RNG does. Typically, if a given race has started doing something, or they have some event going that's screwing with the RCI, or whatever, the effects I can have on those things, regardless of method, are so weak/slow that they simply do nothing.

I've restarted the game multiple times, experimenting as I go, and it takes very little time before I reach a point where I've run out of strategic options that will actually DO something, making "wait and see" the only true effective option. Needless to say, this isnt very interesting.

For example, in my current game I decided to work on getting the Evucks and Acutians going into a Federation. At the start I had a few options.... start a trade route, stuff like that. Very quickly, the Evuck planetary situation went bonkers and just started falling apart. There is *nothing* I can do about this. Nowhere in the game is there any action I could take that could make even the slightest dent in the plummeting RCI values, among other things. It doesnt help that they've got a 200-month long negative event going on that I can also do nothing about.

The Acutians are a whole other issue; as they and the Skylaxians do sometimes, they are going out of control with sheer power... and again, I cant do anything to halt them. I have enough influence that I could take hostile actions to slow them down without making them loathe me, but the actions I can take are all pretty weak and will only very briefly slow them down. They simply advance WAY faster than I could do damage. Even with weaker races, this is typically the case.

Political actions tend to be too weak, having minor effects over time. Dispatches tend to be too slow, requiring absurd amounts of time before they really do much; only research and sometimes construction are worth doing. All of the other dispatches seem pretty useless most of the time.   And of course with the political stuff, I cant even do that if I dont have the influence... and if there are no techs to give, and no pirate bases to crush, getting influence is very slow, which further weakens the effectiveness of most political actions, particularly if I've needed to do anything hostile at all, or anything that lowered influence, since those tend to have very heavy penalties.  The super-slow influence gain can make political options worthless, as by the time you can use them, it's much too late for them to be of much help.

And that's just in my current game. Every other game I've started didn't take long at all before I hit this point.  One way or another, the player's options/actions need to DO something more than they currently are.  Situations spiral out of control quickly, but unlike with combat, the player's actions do not grow stronger or more effective as the game progresses.  Only research/building is an exception, but these are nowhere near effective enough simply by themselves, and it's hard to target these at any specific situation to work on it.  That being said, buildings/research ARE actively effective once done.... the numbers on these seem closer to the proper balance overall. Much much closer.  I think this fact is important.  To me it's one of the reasons why the tech/building mechanics are so good:  Because when used, they feel like they have real IMPACT, that you're accomplishing something with them.   But much more is needed than just these.  If other options were brought up to be more in line with these, it'd help ALOT.  THough, of course, some techs/buildings are REALLY powerful, and it's not like political/dispatches all need to be crazy strong, but still, being closer to that type of balance would be very good.


Currently I'm holding off on playing further until something changes... with my lack of patience I very quickly lose interest in any strategy title if a point when there's either too few options or too much "stand around and wait" occurs, and this is currently doing both at once very heavily.  The balance is just too messed up.  Combat is still very interesting, but it's of little use on the solar map itself, aside from dealing with outposts.   I can understand that overpowering things could be a definite issue... it would shorten the playtime of each game, and for a game like this, that'd rather suck.   But it isnt much fun if a good chunk of that playtime is waiting/hoping for something to happen that gives you an opportunity to really DO something.


Of course, if anyone has some overall tips, or thoughts on what I may be doing wrong, by all means, lemme know.  But so much experimenting so far always leads to this same result, even with me trying wildly different tactics each time.  And of course, the core reason I brought this up in the first place remains true, which is that new players seem to be still getting this same impression.

No, no, that about sums it up. I would really just copy+paste this entire post into mantis if it was appropriate, but it's too long/isn't appropriate (maybe it is iunno.) I hope the devs read this, because it really is spot with the issues it raises. The only routes that really feel like they do anything, are, as said, research/construction. And even construction feels very weak.

There's not much more to say than what misery already said. I agree with everything in this post, and it is also the reason I'm not currently playing. Maybe start a mantis tag or something, but if there's something else I want the devs to hear it's miserys post here.  By "something else" I mean they've already done a ton of troubleshooting/bugfixing on my "inspiration" as the patch notes say, which is amazing, and while I don't think I even deserve to be listed as that, it's nice of them. They've been doing a great job, and I think this is the next route to go down imo.

[casualsax]

I agree.  At the moment the universe chugs along and has lots of twisty surprises.  Twisty surprises are good.  After a few plays, though, it feels more like the game plays itself.  My current strategy has been to get everyone to like me, plant seeds of goodwill between races where-ever I can, and then pray I can find two races that like each other enough to start a Federation.

Actions that require more than ten solar months seem to be too costly to consider until late in a game.  In a year race relations can change drastically and races can be instantly wiped out while you're researching a new tech.

[GC13]

That's right. The Evucks and Peltians took one Acutian planet each, and since I had conveniently built up their relationship for them they decided to form a Solar Axis Pact together. And the only way to break it up is to undo all the work I did bringing them together for the Federation in the first place. FML.

Yeah, I kind of had that reaction in the 1.008 game I continued into 1.009. I set out for an Acutian-Andor-Boarine Federation, but the Boarine get taken out in around the time it took for me to blink. Darn Thoraxians. Oh well, the +Acutian buildings also help the Bur- Oh, they're dead too. That's okay, we'll just go with the Skylaxians after I- What's that? The Evucks have forty armadas and think the Acutian homeworld looks like a delightful vacation home? That's fine, the Acutians are great ground fighters, I'll have time to clear the fleets before- What? Why are they loading everyone into personnel transports? Well that's just wonderful.

So pretty much all of the work I've been putting into +attitude buildings is down the toilet (the Evucks have gone from really liking me to not thinking so much of me, even after returning over a hundred of their pilots), none of my attitude buildings are really worth anything (and I spent a lot of time putting them together—probably too much, which is how this all happened), and just argh.

[Histidine]

Well, it turned out fine in the end. All I had to do was make the Peltians give huge tax breaks to Cadbury and make every cinema in Evuck space play Indiana Jones movies 24/7. Eventually the Peltians were so offended by Indy that they quit the SAP (and went Fear Empire instead), allowing me to form an Evuck-Skylaxian Federation.

Shortly thereafter, the Peltians expressed their contempt for Evuck taste in films with an attempted invasion. The Evucks retorted and removed the Peltians from the universe.

Screwballs like this can be fun as well as !!FUN!!, as long as you can recover. Which I could in this case, so well done! 

(but all those complaints about information opacity and such are still relevant, I'd say)

[Conductorbosh]

Any thoughts on the biggest thread on the forums, devs?
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15453.0.html

I'm not being accusatory or anything, but these issues are getting lots of attention from players, and I haven't seen any dev comments despite the fact that you guys have been commenting pretty regularly on other posts (there is also a mantis collating many of these issues, but the thread is full of great suggestions). I'm wondering if y'all just haven't gotten around to reading the thread or the mantis, or if you're intentionally maintaining radio silence on these issues for some reason.

[topper]

Any thoughts on the biggest suggestion thread on the forums, devs?
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15453.0.html

I'm not being accusatory or anything, but these issues are getting lots of attention from players, and I was wondering if y'all just haven't gotten around to reading the thread or the mantis, or if you're intentionally maintaining radio silence on these issues.

If the trend holds, they probably will not have time to read every post in a huge thread. I think they typically wait for the players to come to a consensus and wait for Mantis tickets to be filed with specific suggestions. Huge paragraphs descriptions probably need to be narrowed down to workable ideas.

They have been pretty busy today if you look at Mantis  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view_all_bug_page.php

[Conductorbosh]

If the trend holds, they probably will not have time to read every post in a huge thread. I think they typically wait for the players to come to a consensus and wait for Mantis tickets to be filed with specific suggestions. Huge paragraphs descriptions probably need to be narrowed down to workable ideas.

They have been pretty busy today if you look at Mantis 

I've been an Arcen fan for years, despite the fact that I didn't start posting on the forums frequently until this game; trust me: I know they keep busy. Most games released with issues like the ones Arcen has already fixed would just have them forever; Arcen support is easily the best I've seen for any video game developer.

I mentioned that there is now a mantis for these issues, and I of course understand if they're busy cleaning up the small stuff first. I just wanted to make sure that that thread/mantis is at least something they're aware of, so they can come back to it when they do have time.