New Return of the Shakturi 1.5.0.6 Public Beta Available!

[J HG T]

Nu uh! Quantum gives you more powa! 

[Bingeling]

I don't have a history to look at when it comes to DW/Matrix patches, but for sure, you don't want to change a lot between beta and live patch.

Maybe some small tweaks.

I see this one as the little tweak to the last one, to make it ready for "launch". Fixes seems mainly balance now, while the last patch had real programming fixes.

[Caesar_Augustus]

With regards to research labs, I've just read the following in the game manual:
under section 12. Technology, 12.1 Laboratories (page 70), states

"Space ports have built-in laboratories, but the player can build dedicated facilities for more
productive research."

I gather then, therefore, that since in the lastest patches (1.5.0.6 and 1.5.0.5),
the AI now builds more space ports than it did in 1.5.0.4,
this problem is supposedly somewhat more mitigated than before.

Also, research labs can be installed on ships, but are only useful when stationary;
who knows?, maybe AI-built ships have a tendancy now to have research labs aboard,
which might compensate a little. Still, a minor tweak is probably in the works, if the devs
esteem it.

Just thinking aloud... [:)]

[Fishers of Men]

Love all the improvements here. I might also suggest that no new spaceport construction can occur at colonies that are being blockaded, as well as under attack or invasion. It appears that any blockading fleet just allows the enemy to rebuild its defenses without taking any action. Would that really happen?

FoM

[Litjan]

I guess "blockading" the planet is still not quite the level of aggression as attacking or invading. Therefore it would be understandable if blockading ships will not interfere with any construction going on at the planet. If they openend fire on the spaceport, it would be no longer just a blockade...

Jan

[tjhkkr]

ORIGINAL: J HG T
Having two pathces so fast is incredible....Elliot runs on hydrogen.

No, not hydrogen: more like anti-matter. But yes, I agree. His work is phenomenal![:D]

Original: Caeser Augustus
Very well! This game is really something, eh? Even at the smallest galaxy setting, it is still a big universe. I truly love the aesthetics of the galaxy: star systems, planets, moons, asteroids, gas clouds, nebulae... and of course ships and facilities.

TRULY: this system is SOMETHING. And being a coder, I know there is some really great work involved.[8D]

[Caesar_Augustus]

After reading the helpful Galactopaedia, it seems that research stations are most useful when
built near galactic phenomena, but in any case, there is a "natural limit" of research bonuses,
insofar as a large empire will not do much better than a medium empire, as far as bonuses go.

So, even if this issue in previous beta patches may be deemed by players somehwat "off" for AI-empires,
I feel that this has been mitigated to some degree, or at least that is what I hope is the case...

[Data]

Also, research labs can be installed on ships, but are only useful when stationary;
who knows?, maybe AI-built ships have a tendancy now to have research labs aboard,
which might compensate a little

All great ideas come when we think aloud. I'll use the editor from time to time to steal AI ships and check their design, if they did this than it's an interesting idea. I might not want to destroy their fleets [:)]
Come to think of it, we could do it the other way around and give the AI more research....but there are easier ways to do this.

[Bingeling]

See the teleporting colony ship report bug in the tech forum.

If that one is not just me (with a 100% success rate), it really should be fixed before final patch.

[tornnight]

Wow excellent updates. I'm having a great time with this version so far.

I'm early mid game now and having a tough time against the Mortalens. I had 10+ more colonies than them but many had Mortalen majority on them.

The moment the Mortalen empire declared war, my colonies defected. To make matters worse, retaking and holding those colonies requires a large number of troops.

They had me nervous for a little while and scrambling to prevent a complete meltdown of my empire. That is surprising after being in position of power.

[barbrady]

I would suggest to remove research labs from space ports designs and build dedicated research stations or special space port with research facilities to achieve the research potential of the colony and to get bonuses from special locations.

The main problem with AI:

-Doesn't build dedicated station on the first years so it wastes research potential of the colony
-Building research facilities on each space port leads to high maintenance cost (the research capacity on mid game is major than the research potential of your colony) , so the AI has less money than a player who manages the research station / space port correctly

Solving this doesn't seem too difficult, simply remove research facilities from space port design, and build special space ports (new design needed) / research dedicated station to achieve your research potential. This will give the AI less maintenance costs and more research output during all the game.

[barbrady]

ummmm and simplifying even more, you could argue that scientists can not work with all the noise produced at space ports, so space ports can not handle research facilities. The player / AI should build research stations to do research and manage them correctly.

[Bingeling]

It is actually a decent proposal.

You can argue that there is no reason why such a module could not be placed on a space port. But then I would ask ... why do you have to build it in space?

One could remove the space port labs, and give some background research outcome from colony populations and planet sizes. To make things easy this could be a percentage of the research potential. And then you have to build research stations to fill the gap, as really fancy research must be at a quiet spot in space...

To make more sense, require all labs to be at a research location, and make more (weak) research locations. So finding a spot to build is not hard, but finding a good spot is a little harder.

I think the complaints about slow AI research expansion compared to players, are more a problem of game design than poor AI. The massive human research buildup has a feeling of being loopholeish.

[Caesar_Augustus]

Interesting... but since I have not experimented extensively with this "issue",
I wonder how can the players tell if AI-empires are slower at tech expansion?
By the use of the editor?

And in any case, I would imgaine that a fairly simple "workaround" is, in addition to the above-mentioned tweaks,
the tweaking of the research percentage increase in the races.txt for the empires you want.

[Litjan]

I would like to take things even a bit further: Why not just do away with research labs for generating the basic research points? Let´s have the population generate research automatically (it is just some mouseclicks to build the research stations around your homeplanet, anyway).

We could then concentrate on the fun part of building research stations at research locations to get those juicy boni - something exciting and worth fighting about.

[barbrady]

I like litjan proposal too. It's easy to improve the current situation.

"I wonder how can the players tell if AI-empires are slower at tech expansion? "

Easy, on earlier game, simply go with your explorers and see what the AI is building. AI does a decent job with mining, fleets, expansion (latest patches)... but not with research.

On later game as the AI uses the default design to build space ports it has a lot of research capacity, more than needed, so it wastes a lot of maney on unnecesary research facilities.

[Bingeling]

It is very easy to learn how the AI does stuff.

Let the AI run your empire, and watch the results...

The AI is good at building resort and research bases, but not until it locate suitable bonus locations. (Resort outside one would not make sense, anyways).

Players retrofit to 10 of each lab on their starting port for almost no money, and just stuff single lab station at the best bonus locations. If they need more, they retrofit more. This is loopholey.

[hewwo]

+1 for litjan's idea. It would really improve the research mechanics. Cut away the fat and concentrate on the fun stuff!

[Merker]

hmm, generally I tend to just leave the AI to do my research, and it all works balanced enough for everyone. Anyway, most of the time the other AI empires end up outteching me if I'm not building my custom bases or am with the humans. I just can't help not building the compiled space lab tough, it seems way too odd for me to build dedicated labs next to each other. And it all balances out from what I've seen, the AI doesn't build any more labs if you build a high yield custom base with lots of labs. It also becomes a target for your enemies and it's a risk to lose your whole research potential, or at least a large part of it so it becomes balanced.

I love being outteched though, makes the game MUCH more interesting, needing 2-3 ships to take out one of theirs of the same class.

[Shuul]

Isn't it like a week after that last beta patch? Maybe its time to release official update?