TLF Version 1.013-1.014 Released (Love, Hate, And Challenge)

[x4000]

Yep, that makes sense.  In terms of the sorts of things you're referring to with quests and writing and whatnot, that mainly boils down to time constraints.  Writing is one of my other key passions, actually.

[DrFranknfurter]

Writing is fundamental, universal and the first step down many creative paths so I can understand it being a key passion. (But not all - Dance, Sculpture, Painting and Music, the interests of the artistic designer each seems to have a language of its own)

Looking back at AI war, you'd think with a small company Arcen just wouldn't be able to match the man-hours of a bigger company but you do it by working every day, day in, day out for years. It's certainly one way to defeat the constraints of time. A time machine would be another... exploit the feedback of stable time-loop to work a billion consecutive hours a week... better than using a lifetime in a day by making a temporal-clone army.

[topper]

A time machine would be another... exploit the feedback of stable time-loop to work a billion consecutive hours a week...

I'm pretty sure that happened at some point during the alpha... and possibly reopened for a little while yesterday in bug fixing. 

[pinoangel]

Hi. With the frequency of updates to the game (which is great btw) I've quick question. Do I lose ANY new features when using savegame from older version of game? Or maybe I should start new campaign with each bigger update to be sure that I don't miss anything? tnx in advance.

[x4000]

A time machine would be another... exploit the feedback of stable time-loop to work a billion consecutive hours a week...

I'm pretty sure that happened at some point during the alpha... and possibly reopened for a little while yesterday in bug fixing. 

Just good old fashioned efficiency!

Hi. With the frequency of updates to the game (which is great btw) I've quick question. Do I lose ANY new features when using savegame from older version of game? Or maybe I should start new campaign with each bigger update to be sure that I don't miss anything? tnx in advance.

Welcome to the forums!  Well, your question is really a bit nuanced.  So, here we go:

TLDR: No, I wouldn't bother starting a new campaign with each bigger update, not remotely.

More specifially:

1. If there's something that only happens earlier in the game that is a feature we add, obviously any campaigns that are later in will be missing that thing.  This isn't a big deal, though -- almost never something to restart over.

2. If there's something that isn't time constrained (in the sense of "only happens before spacefaring," for instance), then you'll have that in your existing campaigns anyway.  That applies to 99% of the stuff we put out.

3. Despite point 2, obviously if a feature is added later through your campaign rather than being there from the start, that can cause it to play out different from how it otherwise would have.  That's... really neither here nor there, to me personally, as a player.  Each campaign plays out uniquely anyhow, so having cross-version campaigns add mildly to that really doesn't make much of a difference in the grand scheme.

4. Overall if we think it's something that will really handicap existing savegames if they are missing it (aka something that normally is added at start), then we have facilities in our code for automatically upgrading old savegames to include whatever that thing is.  So when something like that comes along, we tend to make use of that.  We had to do a lot of that with Valley 1 and Skyward, but honestly here we haven't particularly had to do it yet.  Anyway, so this mitigates the really severe cases of point #1 above.  Really #1 above only applies to pretty mild stuff that is definitely not worth restarting a campaign over.

Hope that helps!

[pinoangel]

Yes, Thank You for welcoming and answers.
I forgot to add in my First Post (I'm not very social:P), that I follow this forum from few days. And must say it is great pleasure for me. The clarity of information, great forum design in technical sense, community and, of course, staff commitment. So thank You again.
I also love strategy/rpg/fantasy/sci-fi/4x/sandbox/board games. Finding Arcen Games was one of the best things that happened to me lately and I'm looking forward on You. enough said:)

btw, at which tip tutorial ends/unlock everything?

[Misery]

As for the new difficulties, the higher influence loss sounds.... more annoying than anything.  Seems it'd lead to alot of grinding, which isnt fun/interesting. It becomes more of a time-sink rather than something that forces difficult decisions.  Heck, even just playing it on Normal (I definitely aint an expert at strategy stuffs... too airheaded and spacey), I tend to mostly avoid any hostile actions, as the influence loss is already very high, and I havent the undying patience necessary to fix it.   There just arent very many ways to cause big positive influence shifts, and for alot of actions (like tech theft, or worse, something like toxic dumping) the cost is already so high that all political actions shut down until you fix each one. Really slowly. Which may actually be a bit of a problem, come to think of it.... I have no suggestions for it though.

Generally speaking, for the folks that are looking for a higher strategic difficulty, it's a matter of looking for tougher choices.  That of course means things being more complicated and "smarter" where possible, but in general I don't want to restrict too much stuff to higher difficulties or else the game winds up being simplistic on the lower difficulties.

So that kind of means increasing the opportunity costs for things on the higher difficulties, because then every step you take is a tense one fraught with potential woe.  You're a whiz at the tactical stuff, so think of it like the high damage from enemy ships on Misery difficulty.  For you it's no problem because you want that extra intensity and you are quickly playing through that and dodging and not taking many hits.  But for most people, they would be getting killed immediately because they take too many shots already, and the only way they really know how to avoid taking shots is to string out a battle to an incredibly tame, grindy, un-fun length.  But you don't do that, because you're able to dodge and whatnot, and so it winds up being tense without being grindy, because you know what you're doing (much better than me, even).

I think that's a really analogous thing for the strategic mode, honestly.  For someone who is really considering all their options very carefully and selecting optimum choices, they're finding that there's not enough pushback -- there's not enough consequence for making the right choices, and thus by continuing to make right choices the game becomes increasingly trivial.  Which is great for those of us who don't make optimum choices every last time, but quite boring for those that do.  From the AI War side, it's interesting to me how a lot of the players play on difficulties 8, 9, or even (shudder) 10 with that sort of thing where it is just absolutely bananas.  It's not something for most people, for sure.

To me, that doesn't mean throwing in the towel on fixing exploits or improving the consequences of things even on normal difficulty, or even the possibility of some stuff that only shows up on Hard or Harder or whatever, but step 1 is definitely getting those opportunity costs up there.   Kind of the TLDR there is that if you're enjoying Normal difficulty, then this isn't for you, any more than Misery combat difficulty is for those guys, heh.

Hmmm, that's some good points.

Though, I will say, it at least does seem to create the perception of extreme grinding, which may be another issue on it's own.

The problem is that, as far as I know, once you're locked off of political actions, there simply are no real options for increasing influence other than tech gifting (which can only be done so many times, and isnt all that much), popping pirate bases (rare), and the one that strikes me as the problem, which is grinding the hell outta dispatch missions.   And heck, even with political options open, most of those usually dont give hardly any influence as a rule.

It gives the perception of "Well, if I ever use such-and-such action, I'll have to spend 80 years just clicking dispatches over and over before I can do anything again", which seems to destroy any benefits/uses that the influence-lowering action may have.  It just takes too long to undo it, and the act of undoing it doesnt seem to involve much strategy.


And all of this brings up the question of:  Am I missing something here?  Is there some mechanic/option that I'm not seeing?  I cant imagine that the players wanting to play at higher difficulties would really actually enjoy it much if they too had to grind dispatches into oblivion every time they ask the Evucks/Acutians to do something, so surely there's something here I"m not seeing.  As far as I can tell from what I've learned of the game so far, there are only two ways to give meaningful influence increases, which is to give a race spacefaring tech, or complete a quest, which arent in yet and are random anyway (though they'll sure help!).   There's got to be something I've overlooked.

[x4000]

@pinoangel:

Thank you very much for the kind words!

For the tutorial bits, those branch into two parts. One part is based on completing combats, but the other counts combats and dispatches.

The last one on the combat branch is I believe the special abilities, so it does not take long.

The last one on the non combat branch is raw resources, I think. I added and rearranged a few times, so it gets hard to remember. But I do believe that the raw resources are the very last thing on that.

[LaGrange]

TLDR: No, I wouldn't bother starting a new campaign with each bigger update, not remotely.

I completed a game that started with 1.005, and ended with 1.012, progressing through all those betas individually. (Is that a record?) Too bad I lost. But there weren't any crashes, or weird behaviors that I could tell.

[x4000]

Hmmm, that's some good points.

Though, I will say, it at least does seem to create the perception of extreme grinding, which may be another issue on it's own.

The problem is that, as far as I know, once you're locked off of political actions, there simply are no real options for increasing influence other than tech gifting (which can only be done so many times, and isnt all that much), popping pirate bases (rare), and the one that strikes me as the problem, which is grinding the hell outta dispatch missions.   And heck, even with political options open, most of those usually dont give hardly any influence as a rule.

It gives the perception of "Well, if I ever use such-and-such action, I'll have to spend 80 years just clicking dispatches over and over before I can do anything again", which seems to destroy any benefits/uses that the influence-lowering action may have.  It just takes too long to undo it, and the act of undoing it doesnt seem to involve much strategy.

I think that, frankly, you underestimate the desire of some players for a long, drawn-out war of the universe on that scale.  In AI War, for instance, you're specifically discouraged from trying to take all the planets.  It makes it into a huge grind if you try to, and generally kills you.  And yet some players put it all the way up to 100+ planets and spend over 200 realtime hours grinding it out to take every. last. planet.  That sort of thing surprised me, too.

There are also the players who play on 10/10 difficulty on AI War, where I would think it would be an impossible grind if winnable at all.  But they enjoy looking for small chinks in the armor, and then using those to get closer and closer to victory.  There are surprisingly many of the players of that mindset with AI War, and I think the same is true here.  But you have to have the seemingly-impossible circumstances first, and then that lets you really start looking for chinks.  If it doesn't seem impossible to start with, there's no need to do that search.

I guess it depends on what your definition of "grind" is.  Would it be a grind to me?  God yes.  There's a reason I don't try to play those ways in AI War, and why I wouldn't play on Nightmare strategic difficulty here.  But it doesn't cost me anything to add those things for the people who do like it.

And all of this brings up the question of:  Am I missing something here?  Is there some mechanic/option that I'm not seeing?  I cant imagine that the players wanting to play at higher difficulties would really actually enjoy it much if they too had to grind dispatches into oblivion every time they ask the Evucks/Acutians to do something, so surely there's something here I"m not seeing.  As far as I can tell from what I've learned of the game so far, there are only two ways to give meaningful influence increases, which is to give a race spacefaring tech, or complete a quest, which arent in yet and are random anyway (though they'll sure help!).   There's got to be something I've overlooked.

Probably, although I'm not sure what it is.  People know things about AI War and TLF that I frankly don't.  Past a certain level of play, they start going "I did A B and then C, and went around my elbow and then did X Y Z and I won super easily!"  It's kind of always an arms race with people like that, and actually I find that really fun (and so, with the AI War folks, do they seem to).  They find some obscure way to win at the "impossible" difficulty level, we then discuss a way to "fix the glitch" that made the game winnable, and then they go back to trying to find another chink.  It kind of makes for an interactive AI for them, in the case of AI War.  I'd expect a similar dynamic here, with a similar group of players.

Honestly I find Normal difficulty to be plenty hard for me -- not impossibly so, I tend to win, but it's hard enough to be entertaining while never frustrating.  But I'm playing it more of a "vanilla way," without looking for chinks or sideways solutions beyond the normal amount of out of the box thinking the game requires to play at all.  It's why I play on diff 7 on AI War, too.  So in those circumstances, on both cases, I'm missing out on all sorts of advanced strategies that other people have developed.  Are you missing something?  Undoubtedly.  So am I.

But in terms of the more average-to-above-average strategic player style of play, I don't think you are.  If that makes sense.

[x4000]

TLDR: No, I wouldn't bother starting a new campaign with each bigger update, not remotely.

I completed a game that started with 1.005, and ended with 1.012, progressing through all those betas individually. (Is that a record?) Too bad I lost. But there weren't any crashes, or weird behaviors that I could tell.

Probably a record for this game, anyhow.  I know that in AI War there was an epic 120-hour gametime (and 200+ hour realtime because of lag on low-powered machines in a crazy situation) game that two guys played from August 2009 until something like early 2011.  That was from version 1.something to version 4.something, even changing game engines, haha.  There are still savegames from during the alpha in May 2009 that work just fine loading up in AI War.  We broke savegame compatibility twice during the TLF alpha, but that's something we almost never do, and now that the game is out I don't expect we'll ever do it again.

[Misery]

Hmmm, that's some good points.

Though, I will say, it at least does seem to create the perception of extreme grinding, which may be another issue on it's own.

The problem is that, as far as I know, once you're locked off of political actions, there simply are no real options for increasing influence other than tech gifting (which can only be done so many times, and isnt all that much), popping pirate bases (rare), and the one that strikes me as the problem, which is grinding the hell outta dispatch missions.   And heck, even with political options open, most of those usually dont give hardly any influence as a rule.

It gives the perception of "Well, if I ever use such-and-such action, I'll have to spend 80 years just clicking dispatches over and over before I can do anything again", which seems to destroy any benefits/uses that the influence-lowering action may have.  It just takes too long to undo it, and the act of undoing it doesnt seem to involve much strategy.

I think that, frankly, you underestimate the desire of some players for a long, drawn-out war of the universe on that scale.  In AI War, for instance, you're specifically discouraged from trying to take all the planets.  It makes it into a huge grind if you try to, and generally kills you.  And yet some players put it all the way up to 100+ planets and spend over 200 realtime hours grinding it out to take every. last. planet.  That sort of thing surprised me, too.

There are also the players who play on 10/10 difficulty on AI War, where I would think it would be an impossible grind if winnable at all.  But they enjoy looking for small chinks in the armor, and then using those to get closer and closer to victory.  There are surprisingly many of the players of that mindset with AI War, and I think the same is true here.  But you have to have the seemingly-impossible circumstances first, and then that lets you really start looking for chinks.  If it doesn't seem impossible to start with, there's no need to do that search.

I guess it depends on what your definition of "grind" is.  Would it be a grind to me?  God yes.  There's a reason I don't try to play those ways in AI War, and why I wouldn't play on Nightmare strategic difficulty here.  But it doesn't cost me anything to add those things for the people who do like it.

And all of this brings up the question of:  Am I missing something here?  Is there some mechanic/option that I'm not seeing?  I cant imagine that the players wanting to play at higher difficulties would really actually enjoy it much if they too had to grind dispatches into oblivion every time they ask the Evucks/Acutians to do something, so surely there's something here I"m not seeing.  As far as I can tell from what I've learned of the game so far, there are only two ways to give meaningful influence increases, which is to give a race spacefaring tech, or complete a quest, which arent in yet and are random anyway (though they'll sure help!).   There's got to be something I've overlooked.

Probably, although I'm not sure what it is.  People know things about AI War and TLF that I frankly don't.  Past a certain level of play, they start going "I did A B and then C, and went around my elbow and then did X Y Z and I won super easily!"  It's kind of always an arms race with people like that, and actually I find that really fun (and so, with the AI War folks, do they seem to).  They find some obscure way to win at the "impossible" difficulty level, we then discuss a way to "fix the glitch" that made the game winnable, and then they go back to trying to find another chink.  It kind of makes for an interactive AI for them, in the case of AI War.  I'd expect a similar dynamic here, with a similar group of players.

Honestly I find Normal difficulty to be plenty hard for me -- not impossibly so, I tend to win, but it's hard enough to be entertaining while never frustrating.  But I'm playing it more of a "vanilla way," without looking for chinks or sideways solutions beyond the normal amount of out of the box thinking the game requires to play at all.  It's why I play on diff 7 on AI War, too.  So in those circumstances, on both cases, I'm missing out on all sorts of advanced strategies that other people have developed.  Are you missing something?  Undoubtedly.  So am I.

But in terms of the more average-to-above-average strategic player style of play, I don't think you are.  If that makes sense.

Good grief.

Yet again it seems I indeed did underestimate the sort of players that that sort of thing appeals to.   So many hours and so much of the grinding (or what I percieve as grinding) in a single playthrough..... yeesh.  That sort of thing always amazes me, it does, in terms of both skill and patience.

Someday, perhaps, in the far-flung future, I may understand how those players gain the patience necessary for such a momumental undertaking.  Today is definitely not that day.

[LaGrange]

Probably a record for this game, anyhow.  I know that in AI War there was an epic 120-hour gametime (and 200+ hour realtime because of lag on low-powered machines in a crazy situation) game that two guys played from August 2009 until something like early 2011.  That was from version 1.something to version 4.something, even changing game engines, haha.  There are still savegames from during the alpha in May 2009 that work just fine loading up in AI War.  We broke savegame compatibility twice during the TLF alpha, but that's something we almost never do, and now that the game is out I don't expect we'll ever do it again.

Wow, I wish Paradox would update Crusader Kings II that way. Steam is always downloading a new update that ruins my current game. At the very least, their system isn't as foolproof as yours. I went through this headache with XCOM: Enemy Unknown as well. With a family and 1 1/2 jobs, I don't have endless hours to start and finish a single savegame prior to any updates!

[topper]

TLDR: No, I wouldn't bother starting a new campaign with each bigger update, not remotely.

I completed a game that started with 1.005, and ended with 1.012, progressing through all those betas individually. (Is that a record?) Too bad I lost. But there weren't any crashes, or weird behaviors that I could tell.

We started the Heads of the Hydral succession game over on the AAR forum on version .860 and plan to keep playing through