Author Topic: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)  (Read 5331 times)

Offline x4000

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TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« on: May 07, 2014, 03:13:00 pm »
Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2014/05/tlf-version-1016-released-finish-him.html

Version 1.016 is now out, and has a huge amount of refinement to solar balance, autoresolve, and combat balance.

The way that races get techs is also a ton more clear, which also should help further clarify the uses of raw resources for players, too.  In the past version there was unfortunately a very nasty bug that made the races really unwilling to fight one another aside from their outposts or if you asked them to, or a few other cases like honor responses or whatnot.  So that was really skewing things, and hence the earlier release today.

Took quite a while to find that, though, and in the meantime a lot of other things also got improved.  In my test observer games since all the stuff has been in, I've seen the Boarines sweep the solar system; the Burlusts do the same; the Evucks and Skylaxians divide it and then the Evucks wipe out the Skylaxians before getting stuck against Peltians with a bunch of manufacturing outposts for 100 years, and so on.  It's a lot more diverse, with the Skylaxians not just dominating everything anymore.

The early missions tend to contain spy probes, and in recent versions they were underwhelming as well as mildly glitchy.  Those have been really fixed up a ton to be more interesting and work fully properly.

There are also three new kinds of race actions, one of which is actually quite dangerous to you if you are having races in the federation really hate you for a long time -- they'll potentially withdraw from the federation over that, now, so you can't just leave your allies loathing you forever like you previously could.  That's a pretty huge shift in terms of the difficulty of the late game from a strategic standpoint, so that should be interesting to see how it plays out.  It may be too sharp of a fallout at the moment, but I suppose we'll see.

Obviously I had said that I was going to work on quests "unless something else came up," sigh, and things did.  Firstly when I went to work on quests, the broken stuff with spy drones and auto-resolve were staring me in the face.  Then there was the fiasco with races not attacking properly, and all the stuff I was doing to improve things in general while I hunted that down.  My roster is clear for the rest of the workday, though, so I'm going to focus my remaining time on quests (barring some other bug).

--------------- 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 last week it 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 another month, which means that you're going to be seeing lots of good things coming.  If you've liked what you've seen in the last two weeks, you can imagine what another month of that will be like.  We do have two other things in the works as well, but we're not quite ready to reveal either one of them (although I am betting that most long-time Arcen fans can guess what both of them are).  Suffice it to say, neither one of these two other things are going to impact the general updates, improvements, and free additions to TLF that are coming over this month.

More to come either tonight or 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.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline MaskityMask

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2014, 03:23:30 pm »
Huh, the new race action seems like we will finally meet The Betrayed :D Which is good since previously they would have never formed since why would you do hostile actions agaisnt federation members except to be a dick?

Anyway, copy pasting my worry about spy drones from last thread:

"Previously, only on nightmare difficulty with max amount of different races on combat map it was impossible to get to dispatch area without getting caught. If amount of drones are doubled, then that would mean that on higher than normal its impossible at all to do any of dispatch missions without getting caught.

Like, does on normal the "You can't avoid them even if you are careful" thing come only in play when there are five races on the map? I'd think that would be fair assuming same applies to higher difficulties.. If it comes after second race then I think its rather strict. Then again, what do I know about game balance?"

So yeah, I guess I have chance to test this later tomorrow how it works now, but I certainly hope higher difficulties aren't impossible now. I did have quite bit of fun with them.

Offline GC13

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2014, 03:37:49 pm »
I'm looking nervously at the change to the smuggling missions. I know I wanted them to be livelier, but I was imagining having some mobile enemies to interact with, not making the puzzle harder. You can't even really see at a glance whose spy probe it is, so you have to hover over each individual one trying to find the path. Really, so long as the game doesn't automatically color-code every pixel to show whose probes you'll trip by flying there, it's artificially inflating the difficulty by making you jump through hoops to see where's safe and where isn't.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that Hari must be destroyed.

Offline x4000

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2014, 04:05:42 pm »
In terms of the spy probes, once you alert one from one race, then it all the ones of that race lose their big rings and start after you.  It definitely gets a lot livelier then, haha.

Regarding making the pathing hard or impossible, it is true that pretty much even on normal you have to alert somebody, which is kind of the idea.  But you don't have to alert everybody.  By finding a nearby group of guys of one faction, you can alert one of them and then a path is suddenly right there.  If you care a lot which race you are alerting, then you can go alert someone proactively, and then watch the path be easier, etc, too.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline MaskityMask

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2014, 04:16:53 pm »
Yeah, but... Previously on nightmare with five races, there were so many probes that some of them overlapped. If amount of probes on all difficulties are higher now, wouldn't it mean that they overlap so much that triggering one triggers several other ones?

Ah well, I'll see how it works tomorrow. I could be totally wrong

Offline jonasan

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2014, 04:18:04 pm »
nicely done... all the spy drones of one race activating when you trip one is a perfect way to deal with the potential issue.. excellent work! plus all together more scary when they all attack you! looking forward to it ;)

also.... with this bug....

Fixed a, ah, rather critical bug in the prior version of the game where races would not attack each other in most cases unless they were already involved in a war. There were certain circumstances where wars could still break out, but they were exceedinly rare, leading to rather peaceful solar systems.

nightmare wasn't really nightmare.. :D .... can't wait to try again now!

and the 'grumble' addition which can cause races to leave the federation if they are very unhappy with the hydral is brilliant... and a very good start to livening/toughening up the end game!

Offline x4000

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #6 on: May 07, 2014, 04:22:07 pm »
Thanks guys. :)

And in terms of the overlap, it's not been a problem in my testing, but I've not tested it on Nightmare.  But do remember that on nightmare you are kind of meant to all but lose.  So if you think you can get away scott free delivering spacefaring tech to 7 races on nightmare... I really don't see that happening.  One or two?  Sure, probably.  But I mean, these guys are trying to blockade you and they've just been doing a terrible job of it until now. ;)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline MaskityMask

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #7 on: May 07, 2014, 04:24:42 pm »
Hey, delivering spacefaring tech to all races without problem wasn't possible xD It was up to fifth space faring race since after that drones covered everything, after that you had to choose which races to anger

But yeah, I guess that bug relating war explains why I was able to complete nightmare <_< Now that I think about it, they didn't really have more wars than normal... Now I feel sad about my victory since it means I didn't actually win the real difficulty xD

Offline ElOhTeeBee

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #8 on: May 07, 2014, 05:43:13 pm »
Spy Probe "Improvements"
*Going stealthy in a stealth mission is now impossible.

Offline jonasan

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #9 on: May 07, 2014, 05:49:38 pm »
erm... i dont think the smuggling missions are working as intended on higher difficulties ... normal/normal seems as you wanted, but nightmare/misery gives some rather odd behaviour?!

ticket here: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=15016


Offline casualsax

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #10 on: May 07, 2014, 08:13:39 pm »
Can we make the spy probes for the spacefaring missions have race-specific color indicators?

Offline lifehole

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #11 on: May 07, 2014, 09:40:42 pm »
a VERY solid update this time. I like it. I still would appreciate more info screens (in particular, RCI info screens and the effects of it.) But it's really nice to have things that make the strategic game more interesting, along with combat re-balances.

Offline MaskityMask

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #12 on: May 08, 2014, 02:27:39 am »
Okay, I have tried every strategic difficulty higher than normal and spy drone arcing around dispatch zone opposite of you bug applies to all of them.

Ya know, when I was worried about spy drone mechanics changing higher difficulties too much, I wasn't expecting this  ;D

Edit: Okay, I tested it on normal and... Well, spydrones still arc, but at least this time dispatch area is inside the arc. However, you can still sometimes pass to dispatch area with five races on map without getting caught.

Previously the spydrones circled the dispatch zone which covered a LOT more area... I think the drones should again cover the dispatch area in circular area with zone being in middle... Arc doesn't seem to work
« Last Edit: May 08, 2014, 08:21:43 am by MaskityMask »

Offline Misery

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #13 on: May 08, 2014, 07:41:02 am »
Okay, I have tried every strategic difficulty higher than normal and spy drone arcing around dispatch zone opposite of you bug applies to all of them.

Ya know, when I was worried about spy drone mechanics changing higher difficulties too much, I wasn't expecting this  ;D

Edit: Okay, I tested it on normal and... Well, spydrones still arc, but at least this time dispatch area is inside the arc. However, you can still sometimes pass to dispatch area with five races on map without getting caught.

Previously the spydrones circled the dispatch zone which covered a LOT more area... I think if instead of being shaped like circle instead of arc that this problem would be fixed with dispatchment zone being in middle of circle...

Ok, seeing this as well, with a "wants Terraformer" mission.

Also.... are there supposed to be 50+ of the things?  Only two races are spacefaring, one being the Burlusts who just exploded into space the very instant I hit the solar map despite them not being the ones I started with.  Havent even done any "give spacefaring" stuffs yet...


On another note, it turns out the Minigun isnt terrible after all.... it's actually quite good, at least with an aggressive playstyle anyway.  There is evil cackling included with that.  ....except when dealing with Hypersonic Pods, but I did a Mantis ticket related to them.


And really looking forward to those quests!  I love the difficult decisions these present, even in their "barely there" current form.  Not to mention the great benefits once you make your difficult choice. And the consequences too, hah. 

EDIT:  .....am I supposed to have no abilities whatsoever in the Terraformer mission?  This actually presents a major balance problem, considering that the game instantly farts out well over 50 ships of all sizes the instant the battle starts....  Aside from being a nightmare of a battle, it's going to take bloody forever.  Would this even be POSSIBLE if the probes were in place?  This battle only seems viable WITHOUT the probes.   This may be different on lesser difficulties, but on Misery it's absolute freaking chaos.   

EDIT:  Ok, there's WAY more than 50.  Way more.  One way or another this needs a change... even I may have to declare this one impossible, or so unholy difficult that it may as well be. Theoretically it's possible for me to win this, but I think it'd take hours.  There's THAT many of them.  And I'd have to play PERFECTLY the entire time.  There's so many bullets that just one mistake would destroy me in a single turn.


Okay, just to assist in pointing out the magnitude of this issue:



I got through that particular barrage without TOO much damage, but.... that's what I'd call a "calmer moment" for this fight.  25 turns later, it started to get loopy.  And me without any abilities, and the enemy being seemingly endless.  They just keep coming.

Imagine this WITH the probes.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2014, 08:08:17 am by Misery »

Offline MaskityMask

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Re: TLF Version 1.016 Released (Finish Him!)
« Reply #14 on: May 08, 2014, 08:22:48 am »
Damn, I had really bad mistake in post you quoted :p Now everyone sees me messing up sentence so badly that you can't even think of way to make that mistake